Lebanon

Lebanon links the book’s earliest intelligence work to its later conspiracy: Beirut is the base for a wartime submarine recovery, while a later operation there tests Dalby’s apparent allegiance and leaves the full relationship between him and Jay uncertain. The country is not merely a backdrop; its two appearances mark different kinds of intelligence work, from recovering a device to manipulating the people who accompany a prisoner.

Beirut and the wartime mission

During the Mediterranean War, Beirut served as a submarine base called Medway II, at a time when the Wehrmacht appeared to have overrun the region. A German submarine, U.307, had been sunk nearby in thirty-eight fathoms of water. Its submerged control room contained a new infrared sighting device intended for night viewing above the surface.

The device was recovered from the water and taken aboard an aircraft for London. It was still wet during the flight, where it dripped over the Unnamed narrator’s knees. The journey was also the occasion of the Unnamed narrator’s first meeting with Ross, giving the Beirut mission a lasting place in their shared history. The episode is later identified as the Medway II submarine recovery mission.

The later operation involving Raven

Lebanon returns in the account of the operation that Dalby carried out after Ross transferred the Unnamed narrator to WOOC(P). Ross had partly suspected Dalby and sent Murray to investigate; after the Unnamed narrator narrowly avoided arrest at a strip club, Ross made his suspicions known to Dalby. The narrator explains that this was dangerous, but that Dalby then performed an effective job in Lebanon, apparently to demonstrate his loyalty.

That apparent proof is complicated by what Dalby did during the operation: he shot everyone in the car with Raven. The narrator says that the extent to which this action ran against Jay’s wishes can never be known, because the people who might have clarified the relationship were all killed. Lebanon thus becomes the site of a successful recovery and a deliberate destruction of evidence at once: Raven is the focus of the operation, but Dalby’s methods make his allegiance harder to establish.

Place in the narrator’s history

The two Lebanese episodes frame very different stages in the Unnamed narrator’s intelligence career. In the earlier mission, a physical object is retrieved from a sunken submarine and carried back to London; in the later one, the central uncertainty concerns people, loyalties, and what can be inferred from a covert operation. The first brings the narrator to Ross, while the second becomes part of Ross’s effort to test Dalby.

Lebanon also recurs in the book’s closing account. When the Minister questions the Unnamed narrator, one of his casual questions concerns fishing in Lebanon. The reference does not explain the later operation, but it returns the country to the narrative at the moment the narrator is discussing how the affair ended. Across these appearances, Lebanon connects military recovery, secret service work, and the guarded language through which official conversations approach covert events.