‘Keep convincing me,’ she said, still holding him. ‘Do your job.’
‘Is it not enough that Michel sends you, yet does not want you to go?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Should I quote Shelley to you – “the tempestuous loveliness of terror”? Must I remind you of our many promises to each other – that we are ready to kill because we are ready to die?’
‘I don’t think words do it any more. I think I’ve had all the words I can eat.’ She had buried her face in his chest. ‘You promised to stay close to me,’ she reminded him, and felt his grasp slacken as his voice hardened.
‘I shall be waiting for you in Austria,’ he said, in a tone calculated more to repel than persuade her. ‘That is Michel’s promise to you. It is also mine.’
She stood back from him and held his head between her hands the way she had held it on the Acropolis, studying it critically by the lights from the square. And she had the feeling that it had locked against her like a door that would let her neither in nor out. Cold and aroused at the same time, she walked back to the bed and sat down again. Her voice too had a new confidence that impressed her. Her eyes were on her bracelet, which she was turning thoughtfully in the half-dark.
‘So which way do you want it to be?’ she asked. ‘You, Joseph? Does Charlie stay and do the job, or does Charlie take the money and bolt? What’s your personal scenario?’
‘You know the dangers. Decide.’
‘So do you. Better than I do. You knew them from the start.’
‘You have heard all the arguments, from Marty and from me.’
Unclasping the bracelet, she let it slip into her hand. ‘We save innocent life. Assuming I deliver the explosive, that is. There are those, of course – simpletons – who might suppose one would save more lives by not delivering the explosive. But they would be wrong, I take it?’
‘In the long run, if all goes well, they will be wrong.’
He had his back to her once more, and to all appearances had resumed his examination of the view from the window.
‘If you’re Michel talking to me, it’s easy,’ she continued reasonably, fastening the bracelet on her other wrist. ‘You’ve bowled me off my feet; I’ve kissed the gun, and I can’t wait to get to the barricades. If we don’t believe that, your best endeavours over the last few days have failed. Which they haven’t. That’s how you cast me, and that’s how you’ve got me. End of argument. I’ll go.’
She saw his head nod slightly in acceptance. ‘And if you’re Joseph talking, what’s the difference? If I said no, I’d never see you again. It would be back to Nowheresville with my golden handshake.’
She noticed to her surprise that he had lost interest in her. His shoulders lifted, he let out a long breath; his head remained turned to the window, his gaze fixed on the horizon. He resumed speaking, and she thought at first that he was again evading the thrust of what she had been saying. But as she continued to listen, she realised he was explaining why, so far as he was concerned, there had never been any real choice for either of them.
‘Michel would be pleased with this town, I think. Until the Germans began their occupation here, sixty thousand Jews lived fairly happily up on that hillside. Postworkers, merchants, bankers. Sephardim. They came here from Spain, through the Balkans. By the time the Germans left, there were none. Those who were not exterminated found their way to Israel.’
She lay in bed. Joseph was still at the window, watching the street fires die. She wondered whether he would come to her, knowing he would not. She heard a creak as he stretched himself on the divan, his body parallel to hers and only the length of Yugoslavia between them. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone. Her fear of tomorrow intensified her desire.
‘Got any brothers and sisters, Jose?’ she asked.
‘One brother.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘He died in the war of ’67.’
‘The war that drove Michel across the Jordan,’ she said. She had never expected him to give a truthful answer, but she knew that he had. ‘Did you fight in that war too?’
‘I expect so.’
‘And in the war before? The one I can’t remember the date of ?’
‘’56.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And in the war after? ’73?’
‘Probably.’
‘What did you fight for?’
Wait again.
‘In ’56 because I wanted to be a hero, in ’67 for peace. And in ’73’ – he seemed to find it harder to remember – ‘for Israel,’ he said.
‘And now? What are you fighting for this time?’
Because it is there, she thought. To save lives. Because they asked me to. So that my villagers can dance the dabke, and listen to the tales of travellers at the well.
‘Jose?’
‘Yes, Charlie.’
‘How did you pick up those dishy scars?’
In the darkness, his long pauses had acquired a campfire excitement. ‘The burn marks, I would say, I got them sitting in a tank. The bullet-holes from getting out of it.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Twenty. Twenty-one.’
At the age of eight I joined the Ashbal, she thought. At the age of fifteen –
‘So who’s Daddy?’ she asked, determined to keep up the momentum.
‘He was a pioneer. An early settler.’
‘Where from?’
‘Poland.’
‘When?’
‘In the twenties. In the third aliyah, if you know what that means.’ She didn’t, but for the moment it didn’t matter.
‘What was his trade?’
‘A construction worker. Worked with his hands. Turned a sand dune into a city. Called it Tel Aviv. A Socialist – the practical kind. Didn’t think much of God. Never drank. Never owned anything worth more than a few dollars.’
‘Is that what you would have liked to be too?’ she asked.
He’ll never answer, she thought. He’s asleep. Don’t be impertinent.
‘I chose the higher calling,’ he replied drily.
Or it chose you, she thought, which is what choice is called when you are born into captivity. And somehow, quite quickly, she fell asleep.
But Gadi Becker, the seasoned warrior, lay patiently awake, staring at the darkness and listening to the uneven breathing of his young recruit. Why had he spoken to her like that? Why had he declared himself to her at the very moment when he was dispatching her on her first mission? Sometimes he no longer trusted himself. He would flex his muscles only to find that the cords of discipline did not tighten against him as they used to. He would set a straight course, only to look back and marvel at his degree of error. What am I dreaming of, he wondered, the fighting or the peace? He was too old for both. Too old to go on, too old to stop. Too old to give himself, yet unable to withhold. Too old not to know the smell of death before he killed.
He listened again as her breathing settled to the calmer rhythm of sleep. Holding his wrist Kurtz-style before him in the darkness, he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Then, so quietly that even wide awake she would have been hard pressed to hear him, he put on his red blazer and stole from the room.
The night concierge was an alert man, and had only to see the well-dressed gentleman approach him to sense at once the proximity of a large tip.
‘You have telegram forms?’ Becker demanded, in a peremptory tone.
The night concierge dived below his counter.
Becker began writing. Large, careful letters in a black ink. He had the address in his head – care of a lawyer in Geneva; Kurtz had signalled it to him from Munich after confirming with Yanuka, for safety’s sake, that it was still in use. He had the text in his head too. It began ‘Kindly advise your client’ and referred to the maturing of bonds in accordance with our standard contract. It ran to forty-five words, and when he had checked them over he added the stiff self-conscious signatur
e in which Schwili had patiently instructed him. Then he handed the form across the counter, and gave the concierge five hundred drachmas for himself.
‘I wish you to send it twice, you understand? The same message, twice. Once now by telephone, again in the morning from the post office. Don’t give the job to a boy, do it yourself. Afterwards, you send me a confirmatory copy to my room.’
The concierge would do everything exactly as the gentleman ordered. He had heard of Arab tips, he had dreamed of them. Tonight, out of the blue, he had finally landed one. There were many other services he would have wished to perform for the gentleman, but the gentleman, alas, was unreceptive to his suggestions. Forlornly, the concierge watched his prey stride into the street, then cut away towards the waterfront. The communications van stood in a car park. It was time for the great Gadi Becker to file his report and make sure all was clear for the big launch.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The monastery lay two kilometres from the border, in a hollow of boulders and yellow sedge. It was a sad, desecrated place of caved-in roofs and a courtyard of broken cells with psychedelic hula girls painted on the stone walls. Some post-Christian had started a discothèque here, but, like the monks, had fled. On the concrete pad intended as a dance floor stood the red Mercedes, like a warhorse being tended for the battle; beside it, the champion who would ride it, with Joseph the administrator supervising at her elbow. This is where Michel brought you to change the number plates and see you off, Charlie; this is where he handed you the false papers and the keys. Rose, wipe down that door panel again, please. Rachel, what’s that scrap of paper on the floor? He was Joseph the perfectionist once more, ordering every tiny detail. The communications van stood against the outer wall, its aerial gently nodding in the hot breeze.
The Munich number plates were already bolted in position. A dusty German ‘D’ had replaced the diplomatic sticker. Unwanted rubbish had been removed. With meticulous care, Becker now began introducing eloquent souvenirs to replace it: a thumbed guidebook to the Acropolis shoved into a door pocket and forgotten; grape pips for the ashtray, fragments of orange-peel for the floor; Greek ice-cream sticks, scraps of chocolate paper. Next, two cancelled tickets to the ancient sites of Delphi, followed by an Esso road map of Greece with the route between Delphi and Thessalonika marked in fibre-tip pen, with a couple of Michel’s scribbled marginal annotations in Arabic close to the point in the hills where Charlie had fired the gun one-handed, and missed. A comb with a few black hairs in it, the teeth smeared with Michel’s pungent German hair lotion. A pair of leather driving gloves, lightly sprayed with Michel’s body-mist. A spectacles case by Frey of Munich, the one that went with the sunglasses which had been inadvertently smashed when their owner tried to pick up Rachel at the border.
And lastly he submitted Charlie herself to an equally searching scrutiny, covering the whole surface of her clothed body, from her shoes to her head and down again by way of her bracelet before he turned – reluctantly, as it seemed to her – to a small trestle table on which were laid out the revised contents of her handbag.
‘So now put them in, please,’ he said finally, when he had made another check; and watched her pack everything in her own way – handkerchief, lipsticks, driver’s licence, coins, wallet, keepsakes, keys, and all the meticulously calculated junk that, on examination, would testify to the complex fictions of her several lives.
‘What about his letters?’ she said. A Joseph pause. ‘If he wrote me all those hot-breath letters, I’d cart them round with me everywhere, wouldn’t I?’
‘Michel does not permit that. You have strict instructions to keep his letters in a safe place in your flat and above all never to cross a frontier with them in your possession. However –’ From the side pocket of his jacket, he had drawn a small diary wrapped in protective cellophane. It was clothbound, with a little pencil in the spine. ‘Since you do not keep a diary, we decided to keep one for you,’ he explained. Gingerly, she accepted it and pulled away the cellophane. She took out the pencil. It was lightly dented with teethmarks, which was what she still did with pencils: chewed them. She leafed through half a dozen pages. Schwili’s entries were sparse but, with Leon’s flair and Miss Bach’s electronic memory, all her own. Over the Nottingham period, nothing: Michel had descended on her without warning. For York, a big ‘M’, with a question mark and a ring round it. In the corner of the same day, a long, contemplative doodle, the sort she did when she was daydreaming. Her car was featured: Fiat to Eustace, 9 a.m. Her mother also: 1 week to Mum’s birthday. Buy present now. So also was Alastair: A to Isle of Wight – Kellogg’s commercial? He hadn’t gone, she remembered; Kellogg’s found a better and more sober star. For her monthly periods, wavy lines, and once or twice the facetious entry off games. Turning forward to the Greek holiday, she found the name Mykonos, printed in large pensive capitals, and beside it the departure and arrival times of the charter. But when she came to the day of her arrival in Athens, the whole double page was illuminated with a flock of soaring birds, in blue and red ball-point like a sailor’s tattoo. She dropped the diary into the handbag and closed the catch with a snap. It was too much. She felt dirty and invaded. She wanted new people she could still surprise – people who could not fake her feelings and her handwriting so that she could no longer distinguish them from the originals. Perhaps Joseph knew that. Perhaps he read it in her brusque manner. She hoped so. With his gloved hand he was holding open the car door for her. She got in quickly.
‘Look at the papers once more,’ he ordered.
‘I don’t need to,’ she said, looking straight ahead of her.
‘Number of the car?’
She gave it.
‘Date of registration?’
She gave it all: story within the story within the story. The car was the private property of a fashionable Munich doctor, name supplied, her current lover. Insured and registered in his name, see the false papers.
‘Why is he not with you, this active doctor? It is Michel asking you this, you understand?’
She understood. ‘He had to fly back from Thessalonika this morning for an urgent case. I agreed to drive the car for him. He was in Athens to deliver a lecture. We’ve been touring together.’
‘How did you meet him in the first place?’
‘In England. He’s a buddy of my parents – he cures their hangovers. My parents are mountainously rich, hint, hint.’
‘For the extreme case, you have Michel’s one thousand dollars in your handbag, which he has lent to you for the trip. Conceivably, for their overtime, for the inconvenience you have caused these people, they may graciously consider a small subsidy. What is the name of his wife?’
‘Renate, and I hate the bitch.’
‘The children?’
‘Christoph and Dorothea. I’d make a marvellous mother to them if only Renate would stand aside. I want to go now. Anything else?’
‘Yes.’
Like you love me, she suggested to him in her mind. Like you’re a bit apologetic about launching me halfway across Europe with a carful of high-quality Russian plastic explosive.
‘Don’t be overconfident,’ he advised her, with no more feeling than if he were examining her driver’s licence. ‘Not every frontier guard is a fool or a sex maniac.’
She had promised herself no farewells and perhaps Joseph had done the same.
‘So, Charlie,’ she said. And started the engine.
He neither waved nor smiled. Perhaps he said, ‘So, Charlie,’ back, but if he did she didn’t hear. She reached the main road; the monastery and its temporary inhabitants vanished from her mirror. She drove a couple of kilometres fast and came to an old painted arrow saying ‘JUGOSLAWIEN’. She drove on slowly, following the traffic. The road spread and became a car park. She saw a line of charabancs and a line of cars and the flags of all nations cooked to pale pastel by the sun. I’m English, German, Israeli, and Arab. She took her place behind an open sports car. Two boys sat in the front, two
girls in the back. She wondered whether they were Joseph’s. Or Michel’s. Or police of some kind. She was learning to see the world that way: everyone belongs to someone. A grey-uniformed official waved her impatiently forward. She had everything ready. False papers, false explanations. Nobody wanted them. She was over.
Standing on the hilltop high above the monastery, Joseph lowered his binoculars and returned to the waiting van.
‘Package posted,’ he said curtly to the boy David, who typed the words obediently into his machine. For Becker he would have typed anything – risked anything, shot anybody. Becker was a living legend for him, complete in all his abilities, somebody he should aspire ceaselessly to copy.
‘Marty replies congratulations,’ the boy said reverently.
But the great Becker seemed not to hear.
She drove for ever. She drove with her arms aching from grasping the wheel too tight, and her neck aching from keeping her legs too rigid. She drove with her belly feeling sick from too much slackness. Then sick again from too much fear. Then sicker still when the engine stalled and she thought: Oh hooray, we’re having a breakdown. If you do, then dump it, Joseph had said; run it into a side turning, hitch a lift, lose the papers, catch a train. Above all, get as far away from it as you can. But now that she had started, she didn’t think she could do that: it would be like running out on a performance. She went deaf from too much music; she turned off the radio and went deaf again from the din of the lorries. She was in a sauna, she was freezing to death, she was singing. There was no progress, only movement. She chatted brightly with her dead father and her bloody mother: ‘Well, I met this simply charming Arab, Mother, marvellously well educated and frightfully rich and cultural, and it was just one long screw from dawn till dusk and back again . . .’
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