by Daniel Silva
“All Bar One, Leicester Square, nine o’clock.”
STOP. PLAY.
“I’ll be there.”
Gabriel picked up the telephone and punched in the number for Isherwood Fine Arts.
23
LEICESTER SQUARE, LONDON
All Bar One stood on the southwest corner of Leicester Square. It had two floors and large windows, so that Gabriel, seated outside on a cold wooden bench, could see the action inside as though it were a play on a multilevel stage. Crowds of tourists and filmgoers streamed past him. The street performers were out too. On one side of the square a German sang Jimi Hendrix through a crackling microphone, accompanied by an amplified acoustic guitar. On the other a group of Peruvians played the music of the mountains to a disconsolate-looking gang of urban punks with purple hair. A few feet from the entrance of the bar a human statue stood frozen atop a pedestal, face painted the color of titanium, eyeing Gabriel malevolently.
Yusef arrived five minutes later, accompanied by a trim, sandy-haired man. They negotiated the short line at the door by bribing the muscled ape who was standing guard. A moment later they appeared in the window on the second level. Yusef said hello to a lanky blonde. Gabriel removed a mobile phone from his coat pocket, dialed a number, murmured a few words, then pressed the END button.
Jacqueline, when she arrived five minutes later, wore the same clothes she had worn to Isherwood’s gallery that morning, but she had let down her long hair. She presented herself to the doorman and inquired about the wait. The doorman promptly stepped aside, much to the annoyance of the other patrons gathered outside. As Jacqueline disappeared into the bar, Gabriel heard someone mutter, “French bitch.”
She went upstairs, bought herself a glass of wine, and sat down in the window a few feet from Yusef and his friend. Yusef was still talking to the blonde, but after a few moments Gabriel could see his eyes wandering to the tall, dark-haired girl seated to his right.
Twenty minutes later, neither Gabriel nor the statue had moved, but Yusef had disengaged himself from the blonde and was sitting next to Jacqueline. She was feeding on him with her eyes, as though whatever he was saying was the most fascinating thing she had heard in years.
Gabriel stared at the statue, and the statue stared back.
At midnight they left the bar and walked across the square through a swirling wind. Jacqueline shivered and folded her arms beneath her breasts. Yusef put an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. She could feel the wine. She had found that judicious use of alcohol helped in situations like these. She had drunk just enough to lose any inhibitions about sleeping with a complete stranger—inhibitions that might betray her—but not enough to dull her senses or instincts of self-preservation.
They climbed into a taxi on the Charing Cross Road.
Jacqueline said, “Where do you live?” She knew the answer, but Dominique Bonard did not.
“I have a flat in Bayswater. Sussex Gardens. Shall we go there?”
She nodded. They rode up the Charing Cross Road, past darkened shops, then west along Oxford Street toward Marble Arch and the Park. Sometimes they would pass a lighted shop or slip beneath a street lamp and she would see his face for an instant, like a photograph flashed on a screen and then taken away. She studied him in profile. The hinge of his jaw was a perfect right angle, his nose long and slender with crisp lines along the bridge, his lips full. Long eyelashes, wide eyebrows. He had shaved carefully. He wore no cologne.
Based on what Gabriel had told her, she had expected Yusef to be cocky and overly confident. But instead he displayed a pleasant, somewhat shy intelligence. She thought about the German chemical executive she had seduced in Cyprus. He was bald and had foul breath. Over dinner he had told her how much he hated Jews. Later, in bed, he had asked her to do things that made her feel sick.
They headed up the Edgware Road and turned into Sussex Gardens. She wanted to look up and find the flat where Gabriel had established his listening post. She forced herself to look at Yusef instead. She traced her finger along his jaw. “You’re quite beautiful, you know.”
He smiled. She thought: He’s used to compliments from women.
The taxi arrived in front of his building. It was a charmless place, a flat-fronted postwar block house with an air of institutional decay. He helped her out of the taxi, paid off the driver, led her up a short flight of steps to the front entrance. He walked on the balls of his feet—like Gabriel, she thought—as if he were perpetually prepared to lunge or pounce. She wondered if Gabriel was watching them.
He removed his keys, singled out one for the front door—Yale model, she noted—and inserted it into the chamber. He led her across a small lobby of checkered linoleum, then up a dimly lit flight of stairs. She wondered how he would make his move. Would he open a bottle of wine, play soft music, or light candles? Or would he be straightforward and businesslike? If they talked she might learn something about him that could be helpful to Gabriel. She decided she would try to stretch the seduction a little longer.
At the door of his flat he used a second Yale to unlock the dead bolt, then an old-fashioned skeleton for the latch. Three locks, three separate keys. No problem.
They entered the flat. The room was in darkness. Yusef closed the door. Then he kissed her for the first time.
Jacqueline said, “I’ve wanted you to do that all night. You have beautiful lips.”
“I’ve wanted to do other things all night.” He kissed her again. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“A glass of wine would be nice if you have any.”
“I think so. Let me check.”
He switched on a light, a cheap standing lamp with the beam focused on the ceiling, and left his keys on a small table next to the door. Jacqueline placed her handbag beside them. Shamron’s training took over. She quickly surveyed the room. It was the flat of an intellectual revolutionary, a sparse, utilitarian base camp. Three cheap Oriental carpets covered the linoleum floor. The coffee table was a large, square piece of pressboard propped on four gray cinder blocks surrounded by a foursome of mismatched chairs. In the center of the table was an ashtray the size of a dinner plate containing several brands of cigarette butts. A few were smudged with lipstick, two different shades. Around the ashtray were a half-dozen small cups, stained, like Rorschach test patterns, with Turkish coffee grounds.
She turned her attention to the walls. There were posters of Bob Marley and Che Guevara, another of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their gloved fists at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. There was a black, green, and red Palestinian flag and a print of a painting depicting a village girl being bathed by other women on the night before her wedding. She recognized the painting as one of Ibrahim Ghannan’s. Everywhere there were books, some stacked, some in piles, as if they were awaiting gasoline and a match—volumes of Middle East history, histories of the Middle East wars, biographies of Arafat, Sadat, Ben-Gurion, Rabin.
“You read a great deal,” Jacqueline said.
“It’s an addiction of mine.”
“Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Palestine.”
He came into the room from the kitchen and handed her a glass of red wine. Then he held out his hand. “Come with me.”
Gabriel stood in his window. Karp’s laser microphone picked up snatches of their conversation, but it was like listening to a vinyl record album that skipped. When they moved to the bedroom to make love, Gabriel said, “Shut it off.”
“But, Gabe, it’s just getting to the good part.”
“I said, shut it off.”
Karp lowered the microphone and switched off the power. “I’m hungry. I’m going for a walk.”
“Go.”
“You all right, Gabe?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure about that?”
“Go.”
One hour later Yusef climbed out of bed, walked to the window, and opened the curtains. The yellow str
eet lamp had turned his olive skin the color of old newsprint. Jacqueline lay on her stomach. She placed her chin atop her hands and looked at him, eyes following the line from his square shoulders to his lean, muscular waist. She wondered if Gabriel was looking at him too.
Yusef was watching the street—looking into parked cars, scanning the building opposite. He turned his body slightly, and she could see a wide, flat scar on his back, running between his right shoulder blade and the center of his ridged spine. She had felt it when they were making love. It was hard and coarse, like sandpaper. Like the skin of a shark.
He had been a gentle lover, meticulous in his attempts to give her pleasure. When he was inside her, she had closed her eyes and imagined it was Gabriel, and when she felt the scar between his shoulder blades she imagined it was Gabriel’s scar, a relic from one of his secret missions, and she wished that she could pass her hand over it and make it go away.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
Yusef turned around and folded his arms across his chest.
“Have you ever slept with an Arab before, Dominique?”
She thought: And you’re changing the subject. She said, “You’re my first. I may have to do it again sometime.”
“Not while you’re sleeping with me.”
“Are we sleeping together now?”
“That’s up to you.”
“All right, we are now officially sleeping together.” She rolled onto her back, looked at the light from the street falling across her body, imagined it was Gabriel’s gaze. “Do you think we should get to know each other a little better, now that we’re officially sleeping together?”
He smiled and said, “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what happened to your back.”
He turned and looked out the window.
She studied the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.
“There are some things about my past that you might find unpleasant,” he said.
“Bad things you’ve done?”
“No, Dominique. Bad things that were done to me.”
“How did you get that scar on your back?”
He turned and looked at her. “I grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon—the Shatila camp in south Beirut. Perhaps you’ve heard of Shatila, Dominique.”
“Of course I’ve heard of Shatila.”
“The PLO had offices in the Shatila camp, so when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in ’eighty-two, they shelled the camp day and night. A missile fired by an Israeli fighter jet hit the building where our family lived. The building collapsed on top of me, and a chunk of concrete tore away the skin of my back.”
“Why were you in Lebanon?”
“Because that’s where my family ended up after they were driven from their ancestral homes in Palestine by the Jews.”
Jacqueline looked at the ceiling.
Yusef said, “Why do you look away from me when I tell you that?”
“I met some Israelis once in a nightclub in Paris. They were debating this issue with a group of French students. They said that the Jews didn’t have to expel the Arabs from Palestine because the Arabs left on their own.”
Yusef laughed and shook his head. “I’m afraid you have fallen for the great Zionist myth, Dominique. The myth that the Palestinians would voluntarily trade the land where they had lived for centuries for exile and refugee camps. The myth that the Arab governments told the Palestinians to leave.”
“It’s not true?”
“Does it sound as though it could be true?”
“Not really.”
“Then trust your instincts, Dominique. If it doesn’t sound plausible, it probably isn’t. Do you want to know the truth about what the Jews did to my people? Do you want to know why my family ended up in a refugee camp in Beirut?”
“I want to know about you.”
“I’m a Palestinian. It’s impossible to separate me from the history of my people.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“By the way, which nightclub in Paris?”
“What?”
“The nightclub where you met the Israelis. Which one was it?”
“I can’t remember. It was so long ago.”
“Try to remember, please. It’s important.”
“We call it al-Nakba. The Catastrophe.”
He had pulled on a pair of loose-fitting cotton pajama bottoms and a London University sweatshirt, as if suddenly self-conscious about his nakedness. He gave Jacqueline a blue dress shirt. It was unspoken, but the implication was clear: one mustn’t discuss something as sacred as al-Nakba in a state of postcoital undress. Jacqueline sat in the middle of the bed, her long legs crossed before her, while Yusef paced.
“When the United Nations presented the plan to partition Palestine into two states, the Jews realized they had a serious problem. The Zionists had come to Palestine to build a Jewish state, but nearly half of the people in the new partition state were to be Arabs. The Jews accepted the partition plan, knowing full well that it would be unacceptable to the Arabs. And why should the Arabs accept it? The Jews owned seven percent of Palestine, but they were being handed fifty percent of the country, including the most fertile land along the coastal plain and the Upper Galilee. Are you listening, Dominique?”
“I’m listening.”
“The Jews devised a plan to remove the Arabs from the land designated for the Jewish state. They even had a name for it: Plan Dalet. And they put it into effect the moment the Arabs attacked. Their plan was to expel the Arabs, to drive them out, as Ben-Gurion put it. To cleanse Jewish Palestine of Arabs. Yes, cleanse. I don’t use that word lightly, Dominique. It’s not my word. It’s the very word the Zionists used to describe their plan to expel my people from Palestine.”
“It sounds as though they behaved like the Serbs.”
“They did. Have you ever heard of a place called Deir Yassin?”
“No,” she said.
“Your view of the conflict in the Middle East has been shaped by the Zionists, so it’s hardly surprising to me that you have never heard of Deir Yassin.”
“Tell me about Deir Yassin.”
“It was an Arab village outside Jerusalem on the road to the coast and Tel Aviv. It isn’t there anymore. There’s a Jewish town where Deir Yassin used to be. It’s called Kfar Sha’ul.”
Yusef closed his eyes for a moment, as if the next part was too painful even to speak about. When he resumed he spoke with the flat calm of a survivor recounting the last mundane events of a loved one’s life.
“The village elders had reached an accommodation with the Zionists, so the four hundred Arabs who lived in Deir Yassin felt they were safe. They had been promised by the Zionists that the village would not be attacked. But at four o’clock one April morning, the members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang came to Deir Yassin. By noon, two thirds of the villagers had been slaughtered. The Jews rounded up the men and the boys, stood them against a wall, and started shooting. They went house to house and murdered the women and the children. They dynamited the homes. They shot a woman who was nine months pregnant, then they cut open her womb and ripped out the child. A woman rushed forward to try to save the baby’s life. A Jew shot the woman and killed her.”
“I don’t believe things like that happened in Palestine.”
“Of course they did, Dominique. After the massacre word spread through the Arab villages like wildfire. The Jews took full advantage of the situation. They mounted loudspeakers on trucks and broadcast warnings. They told the Arabs to get out, or there would be another Deir Yassin. They concocted stories about outbreaks of typhus and cholera. They made clandestine radio broadcasts in Arabic, masquerading as Arab leaders, and urged the Palestinians to take flight to avoid a bloodbath. This is the real reason the Palestinians left.”
“I had no idea,” she said.
“My own family came from the village of Lydda. Lydda, like Deir Yassin, no longer exists. It is now Lod. It’s where the Zionists p
ut their fucking airport. After a battle with the Arab defenders, the Jews entered Lydda. There was complete panic. Two hundred fifty Arab villagers were killed in the crossfire. After the town was captured, the commanders asked Ben-Gurion what should be done with the Arabs. He said, ‘Drive them out!’ The actual expulsion orders were signed by Yitzhak Rabin. My family was given ten minutes to pack a few belongings, as much as they could carry in a single bag, and told to get out. They started walking. The Jews laughed at them. Spat at them. That’s the truth about what happened in Palestine. That’s who I am. That’s why I hate them.”
Jacqueline, however, was thinking not of the Arabs of Lydda but of the Jews of Marseilles—of Maurice and Rachel Halévy and the night the Vichy gendarmes came for them.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“Your story upset me. Come back to bed. I want to hold you.”
He crawled back into bed, spread his body gently over hers, and kissed her mouth. “End of lecture,” he said. “We’ll resume tomorrow, if you’re interested.”
“I’m interested—very interested, in fact.”
“Do you believe the things I’ve told you, or do you think I’m just another fanatical Arab who wants to see the Jews driven into the sea?”
“I believe you, Yusef.”
“Do you like poetry?”
“I love poetry.”
“Poetry is very important to the Palestinian people. Our poetry allows us to express our suffering. It gives us the courage to face our past. A poet named Mu’in Basisu is one of my favorites.”
He kissed her again and began to recite:
And after the flood none was left of this people
This land, but a rope and a pole
None but bare bodies floating on mires
Leavings of kin and child
None but swelled bodies
Their numbers unknown
Here wreckage, here death, here drowned in deep
waters
Scraps of bread loaf still clasped in my hand.
