Beirut's Great Mystery

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Hariri quickly began plotting a comeback, aiming to win a landslide victory for his Future Movement in Lebanon's 2005 parliamentary elections. "He concluded that he could not achieve anything with Bashar," Hamade, who is recovering from eight operations after surviving the attempt on his life, told TIME. Hariri worked secretly behind the scenes to forge a powerful alliance opposed to Lahoud and the Syrians. The so-called Bristol Gathering brought together Christian, Druze and Sunni leaders. "He was the pillar of the opposition," says Jumblatt. On Jan. 29, Hariri met with his two main political allies, Basil Fleihan, a Protestant who was his closest economic adviser, and Dr. Ghattas Khoury, a Maronite Christian surgeon. Says Khoury: "After that meeting, we were vocal about our opposition to the Syrians. Rafiq Hariri would not anymore go fifty-fifty with the Syrians." That's the message Hariri had just given Rustum Ghazali, the chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon. He rejected Ghazali's demand that pro-Syrian candidates be included on his electoral ticket. "I'm not going to work with people who stab me in the back," Hariri told colleagues.

Hariri's swelling defiance made him a target. He avoided the telephone, holding important conversations in secure sites like his garden or the bathroom. "He knew that there was a price in confronting Syria, but he was willing to pay it," says a former Hariri adviser. Hariri jokingly asked Jumblatt, "Who will be assassinated first, you or me?" Still, he shrugged off warnings that he might be killed, claiming to have U.S., French and Saudi assurances for his safety. On Feb. 10, Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. envoy overseeing Resolution 1559's implementation, met Assad in Damascus. According to people familiar with the conversation, Assad was preoccupied with Hariri's brazenness. "There is no opposition," Assad told Roed-Larsen, according to a Hariri aide. "There is only Rafiq Hariri." The next day, Roed-Larsen dined with Hariri in Beirut. Hariri informed Fleihan that Roed-Larsen had warned Hariri that his life might be in danger. Roed-Larsen encouraged Hariri to adopt a less confrontational approach. "You have to be very, very careful," he said.

On Feb. 14, Hariri left parliament at about 12:30 p.m. With Fleihan and Khoury, he walked across the street to the Cafe de l'Etoile. "He was confident about his decision to break with the Syrians," recalls a diplomat who chatted with him. "He said, 'I'm sick and tired of the sons of bitches.'" Dr. Khoury was beeped to perform an emergency operation at American University Hospital. Hariri got behind the wheel of his armor-plated Mercedes Benz, with Fleihan in the passenger seat, and drove toward his West Beirut mansion in a six-vehicle convoy. As they passed the seafront Hotel St. Georges, a Beirut landmark, an explosion caused by a 1,000-kg bomb turned the site into an inferno. Hariri's charred body was identified by a ring on his finger and a swatch of fabric from the necktie he had put on that morning, which had burned into his flesh. Fleihan died two months later in a French hospital.