Magda. She checked the time: 5.45 p.m., 9.45 a.m. in LA. She dialled her friend’s office. It rang for a long time, which was unusual – Magda was a stickler for office etiquette. Eventually a woman answered and said that Magda was unavailable. A chill of apprehension crept into Nat’s stomach.
‘When will she be back?’
‘Magda’s been taken to hospital. I can’t say any more.’
‘What happened? Which hospital is she in?’
‘I’ve been advised not to release that information.’
‘But, she’s alive?’
‘The hospital will only talk to her family,’ said the woman self-importantly.
Nat took a moment to still the tremor in her throat, then asked: ‘What law firm do you use?’
‘Keslake and Swift. Julie Swift is our attorney. I don’t think they’ll tell you anything, either.’
Nat got the number from her, dialled and asked for Julie Swift.
‘Did Magda Podolski leave some papers for me?’
‘Who am I talking to, please?’
‘Nat Kocharian.’
‘Oh, right. Ms Kocharian. I’m glad you called in. Ms Podolski left a question for me to ask to verify your identity. Please hold.’ Nat heard her tapping at a keyboard. ‘OK, what restaurant did you and Ms Podolski eat at when you first met?’
‘The Opera Café in Frankfurt.’
‘Thank you. Ms Podolski left a sealed dossier for you. Do you wish to come in and collect it?’
‘Is Magda OK?’
‘She was badly hurt – I believe they are keeping her unconscious because of a head injury. This dossier she left for you – could it have anything to do with the break-in? The police are asking for information about her cases.’
‘Did you tell them about the dossier?’
‘May I give them your co-ordinates, Ms Kocharian?’
‘No. . . Later perhaps.’
‘May I ask why not?’
Nat didn’t reply.
‘It does sound as if I should release these papers to the police immediately. May I do that?’
‘No.’
Nat hung up and went and lay down on Sulamani’s narrow canvas bed. She felt dazed. Magda, unconscious in a hospital bed? Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped them away furiously. Another person half-killed because of you. She’d known from the start Magda would not refuse to help her. Magda loved her, and Nat had used her affection to secure the information she needed to make herself rich. Big, sweet-natured Magda with her brassy talk and sisterly smile. Magda, who’d faced seven shades of shit in her life and come out swinging. Magda, who’d made a pass at her and blushed.
Fuck this, she thought, I’m turning Grey Tony in. I’m taking him down.
That would mean nixing the deal, once and for all. Quitting, Magda would call it. She’d hate that. As long as the dossier was safe, the deal was on. Grey Tony had shown that he’d do anything to suppress it. She knew exactly where she stood with him now – and if the stakes were high, well, that suited her fine. I can still put Grey Tony away, she thought. And I’ll double Magda’s cut. We can start a charity: the Podolski Fund for Gay Polish Women: Fighting Prejudice on Three Fronts. . .
She called Alakhine again.
‘One more thing, Pete. Tell your boss that the dossier we discussed is ready for release.’
‘I can do that,’ said Alakhine. ‘What does it mean?’
She hung up. If Grey Tony could organise a break-in at Magda’s, she realised, he could have a crack at Keslake and Swift, too. She got Julie Swift again and instructed her to send copies of the dossier to half a dozen addresses, a task which the lawyer felt entitled her to extract $1,200 from Nat’s credit card.
‘If you haven’t heard from me within a month, hand the dossier to the Washington Post. I’ll be dead,’ Nat said, feeling that if she wasn’t, she certainly deserved to be.
Claude Zender had been knocking on and off for two hours before Nat finally opened the door to him.
‘I see the patient is much recovered,’ he said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Good evening, Mr Kocharian.’
‘Is that the fat fuck who had me beaten up?’ Mr Kocharian shouted from his gurney. ‘I’ll rip your balls off and string them from your ears!’
Nat ushered Zender back into the corridor.
‘He seems in good spirits,’ Zender said.
‘Just keep out of his way.’
‘Will you dine with me, Natalya? I hate to think of you shut in here like a caged bird.’
‘Why ever would I feel like that?’
She consented to join him at the table in his office. They helped themselves to lamb and couscous from a charred tagine. The sweet aroma of cardamom filled the air and made the room seem less inhospitable. Nat ate hungrily. She was in no hurry to strike up a conversation.
‘How is your poor arm?’ Zender asked.
‘My arm is sore, where your doctor cut me. And the fingers of this hand feel fat and clumsy. I’d be dead if Sulamani hadn’t come in, don’t you think?’
‘Dronika is unpredictable. But she is not entirely murderous, I suppose.’
‘Claude, I’m leaking blood like a sponge because of that woman. As far as I’m concerned, she came straight from hell and I hope she goes back there.’
‘You are perceptive, Natalya. Hell is where she came from. She’s an Albanian, captured by Serb militia in Kalinovik in I think ’98. They discovered she had medical training, and she was forced to remove organs from her fellow prisoners. There was a brisk trade in kidneys at the time. Most distasteful. When the Serbs retreated towards the end of the war, she wreaked a certain amount of revenge which I imagine was of a rather extreme nature. Then she opened a practice in Sarajevo, which is where I came across her. I do not think things were going well, and she came within the week when I asked her. We needed a doctor here and the desert is not to everyone’s liking.’
‘A doctor to look after people like my brother, who you had beaten up in your casino,’ Nat said hotly, her resolve to maintain a strategic calm deserting her completely. ‘Which you told me you knew nothing about?’
‘I have explained, Natalya, that it was a case of mistaken identity.’
‘Why didn’t you talk to him at the casino? You would have found out in a minute who he was.’
‘He was unconscious and injured. I thought it best to bring him here, where he could be properly treated.’
‘There are plenty of hospitals in Marrakech. I took you to one, remember?’
‘I wonder why you insist on interrogating me like some street thief whose fictions will unravel at the drop of a hat,’ said Zender, casting his large face into a caricature of the wronged innocent.
Several reasons came to mind, but Nat said nothing.
‘Let’s not quarrel,’ he went on, ‘for I intend a happy outcome to this affair. Though I trust you are not expecting anything by way of an eleventh-hour cavalry charge from those two buffoons you dispatched to Smara in a taxi yesterday. It will be a miracle if they arrive at all, and if they do, they will find themselves separated from the Kocharians by the largest army in North Africa.’
Nat felt disappointed, and realised that in some part of her mind set aside for improbable fantasies, she’d been hoping her brother’s sidekicks would perform a dashing rescue.
‘I still have Dr Palatine’s box, as I told you,’ said Claude Zender after a pause, ‘though I would gladly swap it for Pandora’s. As you predicted, it does not work.’
‘Was Palatine the Englishman you held prisoner here?’
‘An Englishman, here? Your brother is imagining things, Natalya.’
He looked at her steadily, and the guileless expression on his face was all the more repellent to her because she might once have been taken in by it. He didn’t know, of course, that she had overheard him discussing the Englishman with Colonel Sulamani the previous night.
‘Pay me enough, and I’ll take the IPD400 off your hands,’ she said.
They negotiated – Zender seemed uncharacteristically indifferent, she thought. He quickly agreed to accept a mark-up of $1 million over the price his client had paid to Grosvenor. When they flew back to Marrakech, they’d take the IPD400 with them and the transaction could be completed.
‘Well, that was easy,’ Natalya said. ‘You must be getting old.’
‘You routinely credit me with the cunning of Machiavelli, whereas if that man could have witnessed our discussions over the years he would testify that I have always been putty in your hands.’
Nat knocked back her glass of Lezongars. Was her deal to buy back the IPD400 and sell it on to Grey Tony for a $4 million profit really almost done? Nearer $5 million, in fact, now that Zender had rolled over so easily. The events of the last few days seemed to have battered her natural optimism into submission, and it was hard to savour this almost surreal triumph. All she knew for sure was that so long as they were marooned in this grim compound, they were at Zender’s mercy.
She pushed back her chair. ‘I’ll sleep next door again.’
‘Your devotion does you credit, but really, it isn’t necessary. Dronika is locked in the conference room, where she will stay until you say otherwise.’
‘I won’t risk it. She can probably walk through walls.’
‘All day I have been observing how fury and indignation brings the tone of your cheeks to perfection and lends an uncommon brilliance to your eyes. Even weariness becomes you. I believe we might soothe away our tribulations in the time-honoured way?’
‘No.’
‘You are very beautiful, Natalya.’
She stood up to leave. Zender laboured to his feet. He’s exhausted, distracted and carrying a bullet wound, yet still he makes a pass at me! But his eloquence had lost its charm. It has nothing to do with me, she thought, it’s like turning on a tap. His bulk was not impressive but gross. And his expression, which she’d thought so full of devotion, was merely dogged now.
The flow of traffic picked up towards six o’clock. James was stretched out in the shadow of the goat shed, watching the road, while the two Ukrainian men dozed inside. One of the white MINURSO Land Cruisers passed by, heading south into Smara. James checked the time: 6.20 p.m., exactly three hours after the one they’d seen as they’d fled town. At 6.40 p.m., another turned up, this one going north. A regular patrol, thought James, in and out of Smara every three hours.
Salif arrived, bringing with him a tall, bony boy in his late teens with a length of cotton wrapped round his head and dressed in an extensively holed blue T-shirt and a pair of dusty canvas trousers which were wide enough for two of him.
‘Brother’s boy,’ said Salif, throwing an arm around his companion’s hunched shoulders. ‘Benoit. Ready to fight for Polisario!’
Benoit looked far from ready. He was thrusting out his jaw and surveying the scene with a show of manly indifference, but his large eyes had the look of a startled fawn. James shook him by the hand, then told Salif what had happened that morning. When he came to the fight in the café, Salif sucked his teeth and asked James to describe the man who had stabbed him.
‘In jail for kill his friend. Many like him in Smara. Flies on shit. Other men, they come with us?’
‘Anton and Mikhail?’ James indicated the shed. ‘In there, with the goat.’
As if on cue, the goat trotted out, kids bleating in her wake. A look of glee spread over Salif’s face. ‘Princes from Europe,’ he said, ‘they find love in Sahrawi goat shed!’ He crumpled with laughter, wheezing and cackling until the tears streamed from his eyes. ‘Now she walk out on them!’
He straightened up and gave his nephew a thump in the chest. The princes from Europe now emerged, and the expression on Benoit’s face changed to one of astonishment. Seeing them through the boy’s eyes, James was filled with misgiving.
‘Everyone still up for this?’ he asked, wondering if his visions of driving out of the compound with Zender and Little Sister in the back seat were about to evaporate.
Salif grinned. Mikhail pressed a hairy fist into his solar plexus.
‘Just about,’ said Anton. ‘You have a plan?’
‘Sure,’ said James. ‘It goes like this.’
Part III
Chapter Eighteen
I had an email from Palatine. He knows about Anemone.
The words played compulsively in Clive Silk’s head, but he found he could not speak them. He’d asked for a meeting with Sir Iain Strang and Nigel de la Mere so he could report that James Palatine had made contact. Now, seated in Strang’s office, he was trying to suppress the panic caused by the unsuppressable thought that Strang already knew about the message and would regard it as incontrovertible evidence that he’d been colluding with Palatine. Or perhaps they’d recorded his phone call to Zender from the car park in the Surrey Hills. He’s an intelligence chief, not a soothsayer, Clive told himself. But GCHQ hear everything. . . He couldn’t even remember quite what he’d said.
‘We still don’t know anything concrete about our psycho-geek’s role in this?’ Strang was saying. ‘Or even where he is?’
De la Mere shrugged.
‘I’ll take that as a no-fucking-clue, shall I?’
‘I had an email from Palatine. He knows about Anemone.’
The two men turned and stared hungrily at Clive. He felt himself redden. ‘I thought you should know.’ He took a printout from his jacket pocket and handed it to de la Mere. Strang’s butcher’s hand shot out and snatched it.
‘What a bilious little missive,’ said de la Mere, reading it over his boss’s shoulder. ‘No wonder you’re a bit jumpy. The wording is identical to the secure messages we get from Zender. He must have seen them.’
‘Did you reply?’ asked Strang.
‘No. I—’
‘Don’t. I won’t be goaded by Palatine.’
‘The return address is [email protected],’ said de la Mere. ‘Droll. We could try and establish a location for the IP used to open the account.’
‘Get Julian on to it.’
While de la Mere called through to Twomey-Smith, Clive pretended to look through a file he’d brought with him for just this purpose. He could feel the MI6 chief inspecting him – it was like being sized up by a bored cat.
‘Maybe we should tell the Moroccans about Anemone,’ Clive said when de la Mere rejoined them. He was still under investigation, as per the diktats of Caroline Hampshire’s book of Service protocols; but having secured a temporary readmission to the inner circle, he was eager to make a contribution. ‘We should be able to guarantee—’
‘Tell them what exactly?’ said Strang viciously. ‘It’s a bit fucking late for the truth.’
‘Of course, yes. I was just thinking. . . ’ Clive mumbled, unable to complete the sentence because what he was now thinking was that he wished he hadn’t spoken at all.
‘Attempting to discuss Anemone with me is a breach of quarantine procedure. Go away. Let Lisa know where to find you.’
‘I was visited by a detachment of Foreign Office groupies this morning,’ said Sir Iain Strang when Clive had left. ‘It seems the Moroccan contingent at the UN have spent all morning lobbying the Security Council to let them launch a lightning raid on the Zender-Polisario compound.’
‘They’re after Mansour Anzarane,’ said Nigel de la Mere. ‘Their supposed Agadir Bomber.’
‘He’s at the Polisario compound in the Free Zone, they say, chuckling over photos of dead American holidaymakers. Remind me what the Gnome of Rabat said to the Kocharian girl in Marrakech.’
‘Al Hamra told her Zender’s been hobnobbing with Mansour in the Free Zone and she ought to give him a wide berth.’
‘And this was on Friday night.’
‘Correct.’
‘But he said nothing to you?’
‘We had a pointless little joust over brandies and soda.’
‘You were never much good at that sort of thing.’
‘Let me understand this,’
said Nigel de la Mere. ‘The UN Security Council are going to authorise a raid in a UN-protected territory?’
‘Don’t be dense, Nigel, they won’t authorise anything. The Moroccans will be given to understand that Washington will look after them if they get caught. The worst they can expect is a motion of censure – along with a chorus of briefings about the right of sovereign nations to defend themselves from acts of terror.’
‘Can’t the FO dig their heels in, say it’s not UK policy to support such adventures, threaten to go public and so forth?’
‘Why would they? They’re standing shoulder to shoulder, where they belong. Thirty-eight US citizens died in Agadir, don’t forget – no one in London or Washington is going to risk being accused of obstructing efforts to bring the bomber to justice. The Moroccans are also saying that the arms cache at the compound is in violation of UN resolutions.’
‘They’ve been on about it for years,’ said de la Mere. ‘The Polisario say it belongs to Zender and Zender says it belongs to clients who shall remain anonymous.’
‘No one cares, anyway. The hawks at the Pentagon are demanding something be done to stop the region becoming the new Afghanistan – and here are the Moroccans trotting round with proof on a platter that it’s already started. They expected al Qaeda in the Maghreb to kick off first, but anything that starts with al will do. The chatter says they’ve already been told to get the raid over and done with before anyone notices.’
Strang reached into a drawer of his desk and took out a small leather case, from which he extracted a rubber mouthpiece. He thrust it between his lips and started to chew. His eyes blanked over, wads of muscle fattened over the hinges of his jaw, and a sequence of rhythmic squelches issued from his mouth. The ritual was familiar to de la Mere, and he knew not to comment. Strang had the habit of grinding his teeth, and his dentist had advised that he’d wear them down to the roots if he didn’t use the mouthpiece periodically through the day, particularly at moments of stress. The MI6 chief had even once produced the revolting thing at a meeting attended by a posse of officials from the Ministry of Defence.
Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel) Page 27
