The Twisted Wire

by Richard Falkirk

  Ralston’s finger stroked the trigger. ‘I’m afraid I can’t go along with you on that one. I rescued you, remember? I figure that most people – Miss Rabinovitz included – would believe that Yosevitz killed you.’

  ‘With a .45 Colt?’

  Ralston said: ‘You amaze me. You really do. I thought I’d be dealing with the original absent-minded professor. Now you turn out to be a little old authority on ballistics.’

  ‘Not really,’ Bartlett said. ‘But it stands to reason that a Polish Jew representing the Russians would hardly be shooting people with an American police-issue pistol. No, Mr Ralston, I don’t think you would kill me here with that gun.’ He stood up. ‘In fact I don’t think you want to shoot me anyway.’

  Ralston stuffed the gun away. ‘No, I guess you’re right. There’s no harm in trying to threaten you. I should have known better now I come to think of it. You didn’t improve that Arab’s vocal chords with the neck-lock you put on him.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you slug me or something?’

  Ralston shook his head. ‘No, no slugging. Where are those goddamn maps?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ Bartlett said. ‘I promise that I won’t help the Arabs or the Russians.’

  ‘And the Israelis?’

  ‘And the Israelis. I want to do this thing on my own. Believe it or not but I have a few ideas myself. In fact I think I can handle it better than. you.’

  ‘Please leave it to the professionals, Mr Bartlett.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen of the professionals I think I can do a better job.’

  ‘You do me an injustice.’

  ‘All right, present company excepted. But I’m still going to handle it myself. For a couple of days, at least.’

  ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re going into the Sinai with Miss Rabinovitz?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m a professional, Mr Bartlett. I have contacts in this city. So does Yosevitz. He’s a professional too. You can bet your bottom lira that he knows where you’re going too. You have, I believe, ordered a Jeep.’

  ‘Raquel has.’

  ‘An Israeli agent, Mr Bartlett. You know that as well as I do. She must have made her play by now. Have you told her anything about those maps?’

  ‘She’s asked one or two questions. I haven’t given her the answers.’

  ‘Do you promise that you won’t? She is a very attractive girl. In the desert, under the stars – can you be so goddamn sure that you won’t tell her anything?’

  ‘I can be sure.’

  ‘Okay then. I’m going to trust you. I reckon maybe I’m nuts or something. But anyway I’ll trust you. If you give that information to anyone it will be me. Right?’

  ‘I promised you that I wouldn’t help anyone else.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ralston said. ‘I’ll go along with that.’

  ‘You can’t really do anything else,’ Bartlett said.

  They sat watching each other waiting for the knock on the door. It came within a few seconds. Bartlett said: ‘Who’s that?’

  She said: ‘It’s me, Raquel. Who else did you expect?’

  ‘You never know,’ Bartlett said.

  He opened the door and she came in. He observed her controlled surprise when she saw Ralston.

  ‘Good morning,’ Ralston said. ‘I was just leaving.’

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  Ralston turned to Bartlett and said: ‘I’ll keep you to that, Mr Bartlett. Don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Bartlett said.

  Ralston walked out of the room with his measured tread.

  Bartlett looked speculatively at Raquel. He hoped that she would tell him the truth about herself before he had to confront her with his knowledge. She had exactly four hours in which to do so.

  At last, he thought, he had the advantage over them all. Because, although he had pleaded ignorance to Ralston, he now knew why everyone wanted the maps – or one of them. It should have been obvious to him before. But then he had certain information of which they knew nothing.

  NINETEEN

  They struck southwest towards Gaza.

  Bartlett said: ‘You handle a Jeep very well.’

  ‘I learned when I was a soldier,’ she said.

  ‘When you were a policewoman, you mean. Do you always get your Jeep from the same place?’

  ‘Always.’ She frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I suggest you try somewhere else in future.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Thomas? Today you talk in riddles.’ She swung out and overtook three half-tracks, waving at the crews. ‘And what was Mr Ralston doing in your room?

  ‘He just came to visit me.’

  ‘Was he asking a lot of questions?’

  ‘Why should he, Raquel?’ He fed her the opportunity to tell him the truth and waited.

  She shrugged. ‘No special reason. He just seems like the sort of person who would ask a lot of questions.’ She changed the subject without subtlety.

  ‘I have arranged something special for you today. About ten miles outside Gaza the Bedouins are giving a lunch for an Israeli officer who is leaving the district. I have arranged for you to be invited.’

  ‘You seem to have an entrée to a lot of things in Israel,’ Bartlett said. Again he waited; but she didn’t elaborate.

  The air was becoming hotter and he could smell the desert, clean and dry in his nostrils. Old excitements stirred. He wished they were going south to the burned and razored mountains veined with green wadis – to the wilderness in which Moses wandered – where he had worked a decade ago. But there wasn’t time.

  Raquel drove quickly and competently. Past the orange groves and refugee camps of Gaza; past its mud-hut poverty and its expensive taxis.

  Bartlett said: ‘Why does a place like Gaza have such luxurious cabs?’

  ‘It’s where all the smuggling is done. And, of course, the United Nations were here.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That they’ve got the money to support taxis.’

  ‘You don’t think much of the United Nations?’

  ‘Would you?’ Raquel said. ‘If the United Nations hadn’t withdrawn there wouldn’t have been a Six Day War.’

  ‘But they’re trying to do their best now, aren’t they?’

  ‘If they are,’ Raquel said, ‘I wouldn’t like to be around when they weren’t trying.’ She hooted a herd of goats off the road. ‘Did you see the observers up on the Golan Heights driving around in their cars? What good are they doing? There’s hardly any shooting there. Yet on the cease-fire line on the Jordanian border where there’s shooting every day there’s not an observer to be seen. Why? Because the Jordanians won’t have them on their side, that’s why. Not that it matters because they don’t do any good when they are around. Look at the Suez Canal. Every day the shooting gets worse. And do you know how they have to negotiate a cease-fire?’

  ‘Through some sort of telephone or radio link, I suppose,’ Bartlett said.

  ‘Nothing as simple as that. The observers on the Egyptian side have to get in touch with Cairo and the observers on our side have to get in touch with Tel Aviv. Then Cairo and Tel Aviv get in touch with each other. I ask you – what is the point of them being there? And when they get wounded this side of the Canal Israeli troops have to rescue them while the Egyptians continue shooting.’

  Bartlett resolved to keep off the subject of the UN. The crops were becoming sparser now as they neared the end of the Gaza Strip and as they passed a refugee camp Raquel accelerated.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Bartlett said.

  ‘It’s a favourite spot for the schoolgirls.’

  ‘Do you mean they might shoot us?’

  ‘Stone us,’ Raquel said. ‘Although one of them was arrested the other night for throwing percussion grenades near the police station. Her boyfriend persuaded her to do it.’

  Bartlett wondered how things were in the main stre
et of Lewes, Sussex.

  When they were outside the strip and the desert was permed with dunes Bartlett told her about the phone call from the President of the United States. She listened with quiet intensity.

  Then she said: ‘How do you know it was him?’

  ‘Because he was introduced as the President. Because the Ambassador called him the President and because I recognised his voice.’

  ‘It could have been a hoax.’

  ‘No. Why hoax me, for heaven’s sake?’

  She thought about that for a couple of minutes. They passed an Arab with two camels laden for market and turned right down a dirt road feeling its way through looming dunes. The breeze nosing among the dunes was hot and loaded with dust. Bartlett loved it all.

  Raquel stopped to tie a scarf round her hair. Now, Bartlett thought, was the time for confessions. He glanced at her face, her eyes were screwed up against the sun. She looked worried. He imagined the conflicting loyalties with which she was contending – Israel and him.

  Finally she said: ‘So you didn’t understand what the call was all about?’

  ‘Not at the time. I got the vague impression that they were talking about the Ambassador in the third person at one stage. I was pretty confused and I was in a hurry and I was expecting to hear my wife’s voice. Now of course I realise that they were talking about me.’

  ‘Why do you realise that?’

  ‘I should have thought the answer was fairly obvious – ever since I overheard that conversation a lot of people have tried to kill, kidnap or rob me.’

  ‘Perhaps they are trying to stop you repeating whatever you heard.’

  ‘Why should the Arabs and the Russians do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her face was tense. ‘I suppose you must have some knowledge that the Arabs and the Russians want to get hold of.’

  ‘And the Americans,’ he said. ‘Let’s not forget Everett. And now Ralston, I suppose.’

  ‘You think he is a spy?’

  ‘I think a lot of things these days that would never have occurred to me before.’

  ‘I suppose you are right.’ She restarted the engine and they bounced off towards the sea. ‘Thomas.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘I’m very fond of you,’ he said.

  ‘But do you love me?’

  He looked at her hands on the driving wheel. Very small, very hard. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  ‘Why can’t you answer me properly?’

  Why can’t you be honest with me? he thought. It was, after all, his life that was in danger. ‘Are you being perfectly honest with me?’

  She didn’t bother to look surprised. ‘I wish you had said you loved me.’ He began to speak but she stopped him. ‘We’re there,’ she said. ‘Is it not beautiful?’

  It was, he thought. The advance of the dunes was stopped by the wind from the sea and the last of them fell away steeply to the beach. To their left the beach swept away towards Suez, soft-sanded and laced with waves. On their right was a grove of bearded palm trees straying down to the waves. The sea was brochure blue.

  The last of the Bedouins were arriving by camel. They sat cross-legged under a long, camel-hair awning supported by sticks. They smoked continuously and their teeth were as brown as their lined faces beneath their white head-dresses.

  Bartlett shook hands with one of the four sheikhs giving the lunch. He was a plump and happy man and over his robes he wore a double-breasted jacket as long as an overcoat bearing a label Superfine quality worsted made in England.

  Raquel motioned to him to sit down beside a long carpet running the length of the improvised tent. She sat beside him. Beside them a Bedouin with an autumn-leaf face took sips of smoke from a cigarette held between three fingers.

  Raquel said: ‘He is probably not as old as he looks. They all suffer from dehydration, you see. They should have ten litres of water a day but they only get about two. It’s my job to try and make sure that they get more.’

  ‘Why are you so interested in the Bedouins?’

  ‘Because they are our responsibility now.’

  ‘And you want their co-operation, I suppose.’

  Raquel said: ‘Already you look for other motives. Why cannot you accept that we do this for their good? We feed them too, you know.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Bartlett said. ‘But you get help, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure. CARE sends us food from the States.’

  Bartlett wondered if this was the opportunity to coax the truth from her – while their only companion was one Bedouin ancient absorbed with his cigarette. ‘Israel gets more aid from America than anywhere else, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Raquel said.

  ‘Is there any aspect of your own work in which you don’t co-operate with the Americans?’

  She stared at the glittering sea; her features were strained. After a few moments she said: ‘There are some aspects, I suppose.’

  He didn’t know what she had been about to say. In any case it was too late. Other Bedouins sat around them and a bespectacled Israeli officer in a fawn shirt and a girl soldier sat opposite them. The girl had difficulty crossing her legs and revealed pink underwear instead of the khaki issue that Bartlett had somehow expected. An Israeli major spoke to her angrily and she sat sideways with her legs tucked underneath her – her face blushing the colour of her pants.

  Raquel said: ‘He was quite right – it upsets the Bedouins.’

  ‘Not only the Bedouins,’ Bartlett said.

  They ate with their right hands from great trays of rice and mutton, and drank mineral waters. The sheikhs made speeches, thanking the departing Israeli officer for his help, asking if the Bedouins could work in Israel and seek more financial aid. The Israeli orators replied without commitment and warned the Bedouins about harbouring terrorists.

  It was very hot under the camel-hair ceiling and the speeches in Hebrew and Arabic had a powerful soporific effect on Bartlett. Outside the Bedouin children were finishing off the remains of the food. He stared at the sea and found its gentle movement a powerful ally to the speeches. His head jerked forwards.

  He was awoken by the puny shrilling of his wrist watch. The time for the confrontation had arrived. He wished that she had spoken first.

  ‘Raquel,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Thomas?’

  ‘I know all about you,’ he said.

  As he spoke the Bedouins began to get to their feet and the children slid down the last sand dune on to the beach as if they wore skis.

  ‘They are going to have camel racing on the beach for us,’ she said.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  She nodded sadly.

  ‘Come on then, we’ll watch the camel racing together away from the rest of the crowd.’

  The camels didn’t share their riders’ enthusiasm for racing. A Bedouin fired a pistol and one camel moved lethargically forward; the other four watched it contemptuously.

  ‘They are very lazy animals,’ Raquel said.

  ‘I said I know all about you.’

  ‘I know. I heard you. But I do not think you know all about me. Perhaps not even I know that.’

  ‘I know you are an Israeli agent and that your assignment is to keep tabs on me. Was it so from the very beginning?’ If only she would say no, he thought.

  But she didn’t. ‘From the very beginning,’ she said. ‘It was arranged that we should sit next to each other on the plane.’

  ‘And has it all been your job? Everything that has happened since?’

  She shook her head and stared at the recalcitrant camels. A warm breath of air stirred her fringe. Behind them a helicopter hopped the dunes noisily.

  ‘That’s very difficult to believe.’

  ‘All right I don’t ask you to believe it. But I tell you that it was not all my job. My God’ – she turned to him angrily – ‘did I expect that I would fall in love with an English geologist, of all people?’

/>   The reference to love warmed his soul; he wished he could believe it; but even at the end she hadn’t told him the truth. ‘You could have told me,’ he said.

  ‘Told you? Do you think I am crazy already?’ Her eyes were moist and the cobweb creases at their corners showed up beneath the dust. ‘How could I betray my country? My faith? Do you not think that I was tortured by it? But you must see that the future of my country comes before everything?’

  ‘Perhaps if you had told me we could have worked something out.’

  ‘Perhaps you would have put your country first.’

  ‘I can hardly see that Britain comes into it.’

  ‘Britain is one of the four powers concerned … in any case this was information that Israel needed for herself. How was I to know whether or not you would pass the information on to the Americans?’

  ‘But America is your ally. Your backer.’

  ‘That does not mean that our secret service works with theirs. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. We have the best intelligence system in the world – the Shin Beit. Why should we work with anyone else?’

  ‘Because you haven’t the largest,’ Bartlett said.

  Down on the sandy straight beside the lace waves the camels were lining up again. This time a sheikh fired the pistol in the hope that the camels would be impressed by his person. They all moved off sideways in a crablike shambles. Faster this time but in different directions.

  ‘We give information to no one,’ Raquel said. ‘We have learned our lessons.’ She paused. ‘What is going to happen now?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s very sad. But I don’t see why we should let it ruin the day.’

  ‘You don’t see why we should let it ruin the day? My God! Don’t you see that I’ve got to get information from you? How can we go on as before?’

  ‘You were going to try and get information from me anyway.’ He picked up a fragment of pottery lying on top of the dune. ‘In fact you haven’t been making much of a job of it, have you?’

  ‘No.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘I have not done well. I tried to ask you once or twice but you never answered me properly. And it always seemed so deceitful.’ She brightened a little. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what I want to know now? Then we can continue as before?’ She looked at him uncertainly.