Shake Off

by Mischa Hiller

  Afterwards I stopped at a private postbox bureau in Westminster. One of the first things I had done on arriving in London was to register at three of these services using different identities. All I needed was a fake driving license and a matching utility bill. I kept a variety of these documents in a bank deposit box registered under yet another name, along with other documentation and money. Six large envelopes were in the postbox, five of which contained sales leaflets and technical documents that related to military radio equipment that I was collating for Abu Leila. The sixth envelope was one I had had couriered from West Berlin the day before yesterday, given to me by Abu Leila. I hadn’t wanted to carry it, especially since I was carrying the money and didn’t want the two things connected. I could perhaps explain the money, but not the money and whatever was in that envelope. I also found a letter posted from Rome. I opened it before leaving the bureau. Inside was a single sheet with a list of twelve names and addresses typed in Arabic, but no explanation of what they were. The addresses were all in towns on the West Bank; they could have been informers or potential recruits, it was not my concern. I bundled the brochures into one large envelope and posted them to a PO box in West Berlin that Abu Leila checked on a regular basis.

  Thirty minutes later I entered Westminster Reference Library off Leicester Square, where there were few people at that time of day. Removing a Shorter Oxford Dictionary from a shelf, I sat at a desk and ciphered the names in the letter using a code that Abu Leila had come up with.

  I had to rewrite the names in English, using an agreed transliteration of the Arabic. Western intelligence agencies had great problems processing and cross-referencing Arabic names because of the variety of ways one could spell them in English, but Abu Leila had standardized the process, adding a layer of consistency. The system involved using the Shorter Oxford to generate a reference number for a word, a combination of the line and page number. The downside was that I had to have access to the same dictionary as Abu Leila, but it couldn’t be one that I kept at home, hence my use of the library. It was laborious and there were surely better and more secure ways of communicating, but we had stuck with it because we were the only ones who used it, and I liked it because I came across new words every time. When completed, I destroyed the original letter, flushing the torn and soaked remains down the public toilet in the library. I posted the coded letter to Berlin as soon as I was outside.

  Back in Tufnell Park I had a bath. I thought of the girl who had lain in it the night before. I thought of the towel high on her long legs. I thought of the noises I’d heard in her room. I didn’t have much to go on from last night so I thought of Kurdish Esma. I missed her for her head-stroking, but I missed her for other things too.

  The last time I had been with a woman was several weeks ago, someone I’d picked up in a Berlin bar and taken to my hotel room. I couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like, except that she had large breasts, thick ankles and stubbly legs. All of my sexual encounters were of this nature, as little was expected by either party beyond a certain release. I found it easier to say nothing than to lie, as getting to know someone unfortunately meant telling them about myself, letting them see beyond the façade. I’d been taught to be wary of women, especially those who initiated contact: I heard many stories (from Abu Leila and my Soviet trainers) of people falling foul of this most ancient of honey traps. An Israeli nuclear scientist had been lured from London to Rome by a Mossad agent who had picked him up in Trafalgar Square, of all places. I knew that one’s ego could blur the reality of a situation: it is easier to believe that a woman finds you irresistible than that she is trying to ensnare you. So on the whole I ignored the women who started things and always made the approach myself, although I was aware of the signals that could be given out to make you initiate contact: a smile, a lingering look, someone asking for directions or a light. It was hard work, having to be alert all the time, and once or twice I had considered using a prostitute. I imagined that with a prostitute you could relax completely; a transaction was entered into. Logically it made sense, given my circumstances, and yet something, a sense of shame or pride, stopped me from going through with it.

  I often wondered what it would be like to be completely honest with someone about myself, even considering asking Abu Leila whether I could be coupled with a woman in the same position. I had a recurring fantasy involving a pair of agents traveling Europe, staying in hotels and going to restaurants together (I hated eating in restaurants alone) once our business was done. It made sense from an operational point of view, as a couple attracts less attention than a person on their own. As I drained the bath I promised myself that I would bring it up with Abu Leila when I saw him next.

  Four

  On the whole, my foster “auntie” and “uncle” (I could never properly think of them as surrogate parents) left me to my own devices, although they obliged me to be sociable when they had visitors. A lot of people came to the apartment in the first weeks, and it became clear that they had come to see me. Not to talk to me but to look at me, as if my tragedy might have some physical manifestation. I felt uncomfortable in their presence, sensing their curiosity and pity.

  “Poor thing,” the coiffed women would say to each other, as if I couldn’t hear them. “Imagine, his whole family in one go!”

  I would say nothing, withdrawing to my room, where I conjugated French verbs and practiced writing joined-up English in ruled notebooks. Sometimes Esma the maid would come in brandishing a duster and pretend to clean. I could not determine Esma’s age beyond that she didn’t seem much older than me, and I sensed that she would rather be doing anything but cleaning for this kindly but reserved couple. I would jokingly admonish her in my beginner’s French, telling her not to disturb me or that she had missed dusting a shelf, and she would laugh because she couldn’t understand me, covering her mouth to hide her gold-filled teeth. But by then I had caught the spark in her pitch-black eyes and would try to provoke her further.

  “Please would you tell me the way to the Louvre?” I would ask her in French. When she was doubled up I would continue in a deadpan voice, “Do you have a double room free for the night?” until she was in hysterics and biting into the duster so her employers wouldn’t hear. On one occasion I had hidden in my room to escape some gawping guests, and lay on my bed reading an abridged Huckleberry Finn, wrestling with the language with the aid of a heavy dictionary. Esma came in and pretended to wipe the dust-free surfaces. As always, she had her maid’s floral housecoat on; I’d never seen her in anything else apart from her slip that first night she had come into my room.

  “What are you reading?” she’d asked, obviously bored. The voices of the visitors in the sitting room traveled down the hall, although their words couldn’t be made out. I started to read aloud to Esma. She giggled and started to flick at my legs with the duster. I put on a mock angry French voice, telling her to behave or go to her room. She flicked at me some more and with careful timing I caught the duster and pulled, underestimating how light she was and so jerking her onto me. We wrestled briefly, grunting and huffing quietly, and she got astride my chest, trying to pin my arms to the bed with her knees. I let her do it. I could see her white thighs and feel her hot breath, and for a second we were still and panting at each other, her unraveled black hair tickling my face. Then my dictionary slid off the bed and thudded to the floor and she was off me and gone, leaving the duster on my chest and red knee prints in the soft inside of my biceps.

  A chain-smoking Abu Leila visited my foster aunt and uncle’s home six months after the killings. It was the first time a man had visited the apartment on his own. He filled an armchair and would not allow his hosts to take his raincoat, preferring to drape it over his knees. He dismissed the selection of different cigarette brands on offer, fishing in his raincoat for his own, a flat-boxed brand that I had never seen before, with oval-shaped cigarettes inside. He lit up and peered at me through glasses so heavy-rimmed he had to repeatedly push
them back up his hooked nose. The smoke from his cigarettes was sweet and rich, like the incense I used to smell in the Greek Orthodox church Mama took me to at Easter. I had never spoken to anyone in a suit before and I was nervous, associating him with officialdom. The feeling was reinforced when I entered the room and saw him handing over an envelope to my foster aunt and uncle, who expressed their gratitude with an effusiveness I’d not seen before.

  “Michel,” Abu Leila had said, “let me speak with these good people alone, then we will talk.” He spoke in a Palestinian accent, with a voice damaged by years of smoking. I had never been asked to go to my room before and I didn’t move, not knowing what to do. “Go,” Abu Leila commanded softly, waving at me with his cigarette and winking through a grubby lens.

  Forty minutes or so after re-reading the same page of algebra at my desk I heard a knock at my door and Abu Leila came in, closing it softly behind him. He sat on the bed and lit one of his cigarettes, filling the small room with pungent blue smoke. I turned to face him and watched him run nicotine-yellowed fingers through his thick hair. He had his raincoat with him. I opened the small window above the desk and watched the smoke escape. No stranger had come into my room like this before.

  “Tell me what happened in Sabra—tell me everything,” Abu Leila said, pushing his heavy glasses up his nose and peering at me. The request was made in a tone that could have been used to ask how I was finding school, or whether I liked my new bedroom, but it was this lack of emotion in Abu Leila’s voice, the fact that he did not affect concern, that allowed me to consider telling him about the killings. It was also the first time that anyone had asked me what had happened, apart from the enemy soldier who had found me wandering around outside the camp in my bloodstained clothes. Not my own blood, it turned out, but the blood of my father. I recalled that the Israeli soldier, an Arab-​looking Israeli (another revelation to me, as I had never seen one before), had hidden his M16 rifle—hidden it because I’d started to shake when I saw it—before crouching down to question me in a funny-sounding Arabic. The soldier had listened as an Israeli medic checked me for injuries, looking at the ground and holding his face in his hands as if it had happened to him. And so I told Abu Leila the story, starting with my family and me sitting down to dinner and ending with me escaping from the camp into the arms of the Israeli who handed me over to the Red Cross.

  It had felt good to tell it, like when you’ve been keeping something from your parents and come out with it at last. It feels good even if the consequences of telling it may not be good. And when Abu Leila heard it, he lit another cigarette and after a silence said, “Do you want to see justice done, Michel?” I looked up and blushed and nodded, because it was as if he had looked into my head and seen my secret wish: that I should somehow avenge what happened and make up for not doing anything to help Mama. He carried on, saying, “Then you need to know why this was done to you.” Did he not mean who had done this to me? “Do you play chess, Michel?” Yes, I told him, my father had taught me, and we’d played until I’d started to beat him. He smiled and dragged on his cigarette. “The pawn is often sacrificed, Michel, so the bishops and the knights can live on to achieve greater victory.” He looked at me intently. “Do you understand me?” I said yes, although I didn’t fully at the time. What I did intuit was that he was offering me a way out of my situation, a way to rebuild my shattered life—he was giving my experience a reason and purpose. He smiled and shook my hand, as if we had just signed a contract satisfactory to both parties.

  Now, according to an older Abu Leila in Berlin, my purpose was becoming clearer, but I always clung to that first conversation, even though we never talked of my family or of revenge again.

  Five

  It’s Roberto, can I speak to your father?” I said to the boy who answered the phone. I was calling from a phone box outside Finsbury Park underground station. It went quiet at the other end and I could hear raised voices in the background, women and children shouting in Turkish. Then a man’s voice shouted and it went quiet.

  “Roberto! My favorite customer,” a male Turkish voice boomed into my ear. “When are you coming to visit?”

  “Lemi, I’ll be there in an hour,” I told him. I sat in a café diagonally across from Lemi’s house, just three streets from the station. I watched the traffic, looking for people sitting in parked cars or standing around, the same person coming and going, anything that indicated Lemi was being watched. I wasn’t that thorough, relying on the fact that Lemi would only be of interest to the police rather than the intelligence services, and any surveillance they carried out would be obvious. A lot of my time was spent watching and waiting.

  During my training the Soviets had told me that waiting for contact with agents was a third of the job, avoiding surveillance a third, and reassuring agents that they were doing the right thing another third. But Lemi the Turk was no agent of mine. He was just one of the people, a technician, that I used for specific jobs. He was a genius at adapting everyday luggage and objects so that things could be smuggled or hidden in them. He’d once shown me a whole chess set that he’d hollowed out in his attic workshop, ready to be filled before the bottoms were faultlessly glued on. When I’d asked what was worth smuggling in such small quantities Lemi told me that he was adapting twenty such chess sets for a bulk shipment of cocaine. Although I found such things interesting, I lacked confidence in the Turk’s discretion, a requirement in such an occupation. Intelligence agencies would have a whole department to do just what Lemi did, but I had no access to such facilities, except through Abu Leila and the Stasi and KGB, and although Abu Leila had been happy to use them for training, he trusted them not one bit with anything operational.

  “We are useful to them and they support our struggle to an extent, but we are not fighting for the same thing,” he’d once told me. Abu Leila was particularly wary of the East Germans. “The Stasi are obsessed with spying on their own people and the West Germans,” he said. “And for some reason they are also obsessed with the English,” he’d added on reflection. “All they want to do is recruit British academics. Just be glad that they don’t know you are in England.”

  Ten minutes before Lemi was expecting me, I knocked on his door and was let into the house by the small dark boy who’d answered the phone. Lemi’s security was nonexistent; he thought it was enough of a cover to be a family man and sculptor. He greeted me from the top of the stairs, a broad smile under his thick moustache. He looked like he ate well. He owned a whole house in a neighborhood where most people lived in houses sectioned into smaller units, much like where I lived.

  “I won’t offer you any coffee, my friend, I know you are always in a hurry.” He pretended to look hurt and I followed the big man upstairs. I could hear children on the lower floor and smell Middle Eastern cooking. A woman was shouting at the children in Turkish. I always felt at home in Lemi’s house. The atmosphere and the smells were so familiar, even if the language was not. The Turk had a workshop (he called it a studio) in the attic, where he did his modifications. You could only get up there using a pull-down ladder, which didn’t look like it would take Lemi’s weight. I had been referred to the Turk by a Parisian woman who sometimes forged documents for me. She was another artist, not just in what she did, but because she painted larger-than-life canvases of male nudes lying on crumpled sheets. I had once seen her work on sale in a gallery in London. With her the forgery was to support her artwork, whereas with Lemi the carving was just a front for his real passion. She was in her fifties, twice as old as any of her models; they were all young and looked into the viewer’s eyes with a sensuality that made me uncomfortable. What struck me was that they all looked equally vulnerable.

  “On the outside you look like a man,” she told me when I’d first gone to pick up a fake driving license from her studio. “But you have something of a boy about you on the inside.” She’d looked me up and down and asked me if I’d pose for her. I’d fidgeted and declined, worried not so much by
being naked in front of her but by ending up looking like the others in the paintings, although in retrospect it would have been an excellent excuse for my visits. “Perhaps next time,” she’d smiled, openly appraising me. I’d been relieved to get out of her studio.

  Lemi handed me a hard suitcase, the sort you could take onto an aircraft. It had little wheels and a retractable handle. I’d sent it to him two weeks ago by minicab.

  “Go on, have a look,” he said. He was like a kid showing someone a puzzle. I opened the case and felt along the inside, looking for clues. I pressed the inside but could detect no telltale give of a false bottom. The lining was flush. Lemi laughed. “Good, eh? You’ll never open it, my friend.” He then bent down next to me and unscrewed one of the feet. By pushing in the resulting hole with his finger the bottom lining came away slightly at one point inside the case, a big enough gap that he could get his finger inside. He ran it between the lining and the edge and the whole thing came away in one rigid piece. Lemi chuckled as it revealed a gap two centimeters deep. “When you put whatever you want in there, make sure you fasten the lining back on around here,” he said, indicating the lip of the removed lining. “It will stick to the case.” He demonstrated. “But this is not for drugs, is it?” he asked as he closed it. It was obvious that the hidden compartment was not big enough for drugs but I let the Turk think what he wanted. I thought maybe I should use someone else: an Algerian I knew in Paris, for instance, although he was too politically active for my liking. The Turk had no political connections, which meant that he was unlikely to be on any intelligence service radar. I said nothing as I handed over £500, plus £20 for one of his teenage sons to take the case to a locker at Victoria Station and post the key to the PO box address I gave him. I inhaled the cooking smells before I stepped out onto the street.