‘The maps?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The maps. I suppose you’ve known for some time that it was the maps. Have you known for some time that I was supposed to be spying on you?’
‘I suppose so. It had to be you, didn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’
Down by the waves the camels were under starter’s orders once more. The last sand dune had become a grandstand for the Bedouins and their Israeli guests. Along the brink of the dune stood a few Israeli soldiers armed with captured Kalashnikov rifles. One of them wore a yarmulke.
Bartlett showed her the piece of pottery he had picked up. ‘You know what this is, I suppose?’
‘Roman?’
He nodded. ‘I think we’re standing on the site of a Roman fort.’
‘Will you give me those maps, Thomas?’
‘Do you know why everyone wants them?’
She turned away from him. ‘I only know that they are very important to Israel. Something to do with negotiations with the Arabs.’
‘And that’s all you know?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s all I know.’
Bartlett thought sadly: You’re lying, Raquel. A breeze from the sea tucked her denim skirt – longer than usual for the benefit of the Bedouins – in between her legs. He would have like to put his arm around her waist.
‘And you expect me to hand over my maps on a feeble pretext like that?’
‘Feeble? You say it’s feeble? The future of my country could depend on those maps. It might not matter to you whether this land is occupied by Israelis or Arabs. It might not matter to you if we are all driven into the sea. We have been betrayed enough times by the West …’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t get hysterical.’
Below them the camels were loping along as if they were deliberately arranging a dead heat.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right, I’m sorry. But please – where are those maps?’
‘You know I hid them,’ he said.
‘I know, I know. We’ve tried to think of everywhere but we failed.’
‘We?’
‘My colleagues. Most of them thought that you would have hidden them in some quaint place with your British sense of humour. The Garden of Gethsemane or the Dome of the Chain.’
‘Or the Rockefeller Museum.’
‘Where did you hide them, Thomas?’
‘It was quaint all right,’ he said. ‘Rather cunning, too.’
‘Where?’ she said. ‘Just tell me. Where?’
‘And what will you do if I tell you?’
She frowned. ‘I shall have to tell my people.’ She dropped her cigarette end in the sand. ‘You see – I cannot really be dishonest with you.’
‘You haven’t done too badly over the past few days.’
‘Where did you hide the maps?’
‘In Yosevitz’s room,’ Bartlett said. ‘It seemed to be the least likely place in the whole of Jerusalem.’
The metal on the Jeep was too hot to touch. It smelled hot, too. Hot and oily and vapoured with gasoline. She took the road between the dunes fast bumping him against the door.
‘What’s the hurry?’ he said.
She didn’t answer. At first she had been astounded, then alarmed, then amused. Then all three together. It was the nearest, Bartlett decided, that she would ever get to hysterics.
They lurched round a bend scaring a couple of camels waiting haughtily for their owners.
Finally she said: ‘You must be crazy leaving it in the Russian’s room.’
‘He’s a Polish Jew, actually.’
‘Yosevitz is working for the Russians. This could be a tragedy for Israel. Why didn’t you give me those maps, Thomas?’
‘Because you didn’t ask for them.’
‘But you knew I wanted them. You knew who I was.’
Bartlett detected a sob in her voice.
‘Frankly I didn’t know what the hell was going on to start with. You could have told me.’
She drove into deep sand on the side of the road. The wheels spun, gripped – and they were off again.
She said: ‘Whereabouts in his room did you hide them? Under his pillow?’
‘No, under his carpet.’
She whimpered. ‘We must get back there.’
‘Get back? Why?’
‘To get the maps of course.’
Bartlett grinned. So far everyone else had made the play. Yosevitz, Ralston, the Arab, Raquel. Now it was his turn.
She said: ‘I ask you – what are you grinning at? Do you think it is funny that my country may be faced with disaster? That it is all my fault?’
He put his hand on her knee. ‘Don’t fret yourself,’ he said.
‘What do you mean – don’t fret myself?’
‘I didn’t leave the maps in Jerusalem.’
The Jeep stopped abruptly near the crossroads at which they had turned earlier that day. ‘Where are they then?’
‘In a satchel in the Jeep,’ Bartlett said. ‘Under your seat as a matter of fact. You’re sitting on them.’
TWENTY
The first thing Ralston did after Bartlett left Jerusalem was to check out his destination with a contact at the garage which had supplied the Jeep to Raquel Rabinovitz.
The contact, who was an Arab mechanic, said: ‘Why do you want to know this information?’
Ralston handed him 150 Israeli lira: ‘That’s the only reason you need to worry about.’ He paused. ‘In fact they’re friends of mine – I want to surprise them.’
‘That will be difficult,’ said the mechanic. He had fawning manners and an oily voice.
‘Why?’
‘Because I saw the pass that the girl has got. They are going to Kantara.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I would not lie to you,’ said the Arab.
‘I hope for your sake that you haven’t.’
As Ralston left the garage a cab pulled up and Yosevitz got out. Everything about him was shiny – his damp hair, his sunglasses made for the ski slopes, his non-porous nylon shirt, his glowing cheeks and forehead.
Poor bastard, Ralston thought. Sometimes you had to hand it to the British – they had ways of doing things. Nevertheless, beneath the Pierrot’s disguise, Yosevitz was still a professional. Efficient and dedicated.
Or was he so dedicated? Ralston wondered why Yosevitz had failed to move up behind him at the Wailing Wall and attempt the execution that he had almost certainly planned? Had the faith which he had been born into suddenly asserted itself at its fount?
Ralston backed into a coffee shop as Yosevitz walked across the sidewalk into the garage. He was wearing his jacket despite the heat. Because, Ralston knew, he had an automatic underneath. They never went far without their guns.
Ralston climbed into his own cab and told the driver to take him to the Damascus Gate where he had another meeting with Brandon from the American Embassy. Brandon wouldn’t be enthusiastic about letting Bartlett motor into the Sinai Desert with an Israeli agent. Nor was he. But there was no alternative.
He looked out of the window and saw an Israeli policeman standing outside a curio shop listening to a group of Arabs and a European tourist, all talking at the same time. He guessed that the tourist’s pocket had been picked. Or perhaps someone had cut the strap of his camera and run off with it.
The policeman looked very young. He was dark and thin, and yet tough in the Israeli way, a toughness bred by necessity whatever the physical limitations. His face was patient beneath his peaked cap; his uniform wasn’t very smart.
Ralston remembered his days on the beat in Chicago. At night in particular. The drunks, the bums, the car. thieves, the junkies. And the night people who were his friends, from clubs, newspaper offices, restaurants; sweepers, cleaners, milkmen, cab drivers. Good honest days.
Then promotion to the plain-clothes department. And his involvement – through what had appeared to be a routine murder – in the capture of a Russian who
had shot an American diplomat in an apartment high above the city. The call to Washington, the praise for efficiency and discretion. It was the latter quality that particularly impressed them. Promotion to this, the highest echelon of plain-clothes work, and an education in dishonesty that relegated the escapades of the crooks he had once arrested to the nursery. Berlin, Geneva, Paris, Vietnam.
But all the time it had seemed to Ralston that he had managed to retain honesty of purpose if not method. A small diamond set in the cotton-wool of deceit. The West versus Communism, them versus us; scuffles of cunning that you hoped were contributing to a pattern that benefited mankind. The small diamond had always been bright with that honesty of purpose. But not on this assignment. Politics and prestige. A formidable partnership that had clouded the diamond’s polish.
On the sidewalk the policeman was smiling. So were the Arabs and the tourist. One of the Arabs had probably decided that he had ‘found’ the tourist’s pocketbook in the gutter. Property returned, complainant satisfied, Arab not punished but possibly deterred. A good cop. Ralston envied him.
The cab rounded a corner and Ralston lost sight of them. They drove past the Notre Dame de France and stopped outside the Damascus Gate. The tall, balding figure of Brandon was standing at the entrance. Ralston’s depression deepened.
Brandon said: ‘You must be crazy. Just like you were crazy to let that guy Yosevitz follow you with a gun when you were coming to meet me this morning.’
‘Maybe,’ Ralston said. ‘What do you figure I should have done?’
Brandon shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘Held him, I guess. Persuaded him to tell you where these goddamn maps are.’
‘Great,’ Ralston said. ‘Just great. How would you. have justified holding a British geologist prisoner in his hotel room?’
‘Bartlett would have played ball with you eventually. He’s not against us, after all.’
They walked on the outside of the wall towards Herod’s Gate.
After a couple of minutes Brandon said: ‘I suppose we are sure that he’s not against us. He’s not a Red, is he?’
Ralston said: ‘He’s about as Red as Queen Elizabeth.’
‘I still think you’re screwing up this whole operation,’ Brandon said.
Ralston stopped and took a picture of an Israeli soldier with an Uzi on one arm and a soldier girl on the other. Perhaps he might even be able to sell some of his pictures to a magazine. He said: ‘I don’t care What you think, Brandon. Do I need to remind you about the order of our seniorities?’
‘Jesus,’ Brandon said. ‘So now he’s trying to pull rank.’
‘Right,’ Ralston said. ‘Now get this – you’re Embassy Security. Nothing more. And if you play your cards like this you never will be anything more.’
Brandon held up his hands. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So I’m sorry.’
Ralston looked at him speculatively. Slow but dependable. A good man on the beat. He smiled and the depression began its exit.
Brandon said: ‘So what are you grinning about?’
Ralston shook his head. ‘Bartlett’s out in the Sinai with this girl. Right?’
‘Right,’ Brandon said.
‘So here’s what we’ve got to do,’ Ralston said.
Ralston went back to his hotel room after he had primed Brandon and checked his .45 police-issue Colt. At least it was a good honest sort of gun, he thought.
TWENTY-ONE
Raquel Rabinovitz knew what she had to do as the Jeep bowled on towards El Arish, Kantara, and the Suez Canal. The knowledge made her intensely sad but there was no alternative. At least she did not have to do it immediately; the rest of the day was theirs. What happened after that depended on Bartlett’s capacity for understanding.
She glanced at him sitting beside her. Face deeply tanned now with only a few peelings of skin on the bridge of his nose. Even the peeling skin was endearing. They passed a group of soldiers hitching lifts in the opposite direction. Muscled, brown and arrogant with their guns on their shoulders and their peaked desert caps. Pride gleamed inside her; but her love was reserved for the Englishman with the sensitive features and greying hair sitting beside her.
Bartlett said: ‘How on earth did you manage to get passes to go as far as Kantara?’
‘My work,’ she said. ‘I really am an expert on soil irrigation, you know. There is an irrigation project south of Kantara north of the Gidi Pass. I have work to do there.’
‘And they’ll let both of us into Kantara?’
‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘They will today because the Red Cross has arranged a truce. Arabs who were stranded by the June war are being exchanged across the Canal. Some had crossed the Canal to visit relatives this side, others had gone across to Egypt. So today there will not be any shooting. Not until the exchange is over anyway.’
‘And then they’ll start killing each other again?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Do you Israelis really want a peaceful settlement?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We have everything to lose because of the fighting.’ She took one hand off the steering wheel and touched his arm. ‘If the fighting stopped I could perhaps stop this other work and just help the desert to blossom.’ Her thoughts accelerated into a peaceful future. ‘Perhaps we could work together, you and I. Would you like that, Thomas?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘Are you still angry with me?’
‘I’m not angry. I wish you could have trusted me.’
‘We could explore the Sinai together. You have told me how you love it to the south. Where Rhutm grows in the wadis, where leopards roam the mountains.’
‘It’s very beautiful,’ he said.
She continued the seduction. ‘Drive up Wadi Feiran perhaps. You studying the formation of the mountains while I find sites for boring wells.’
She imagined them sleeping together in one of the guest rooms of St Catherine’s Monastery and wondering if it would constitute blasphemy.
They stopped at El Arish for refreshment. Most of the sand-coloured buildings were pitted with scars. The rest were truncated or devastated. In the centre of the town where they sat drinking beer and eating peta stuffed with humus and cold French fries there was a red-painted restaurant called the Café of Peace.
Their café was packed with troops. Jeeps and half-tracks stood outside. Men and machines exuded a triumphant virility. It was contagious. Despite her sadness Raquel revelled in the swagger around her. The soldiers smelled of sweat and oil and cordite. They wore sand goggles and their faces were powdered with dust. She studied them; bank clerks, surveyors, waiters, accountants, shopkeepers. And she thought of the man she had been going to marry. She was silent for a few minutes; then she touched Bartlett’s hand. He smiled at her as he gulped at his glass of ice-cold Gold Star.
She said: ‘There was a big battle here.’ She pointed towards the sea. ‘The Egyptian officers were having beautiful houses built on the beach. Once upon a time it was a rest centre for the British.’
‘Wc rested everywhere,’ Bartlett said.
Across the table a huge soldier who looked like Fidel Castro winked at her. His interest only enhanced her tenderness for Bartlett who had none of the characteristics which she had imagined she admired in a man. Except bravery. But with Bartlett it seemed as if everything was shared. The desert, the hot sky, the rustle of the wind in the palms. She wished he could share the Israeli triumph with her.
He bought two more beers and gestured around the small, hot café. ‘I don’t give much for the Arabs’ chances.’
‘They have no chance,’ she said.
‘I feel a little incongruous here. Only John Wayne’s missing at the moment.’
She wanted to kiss him. ‘You are not incongruous. I cannot imagine you being incongruous anywhere.’
‘Not even in the ladies’ changing rooms?’
‘You were not incongruous in the ladies’ changing room at El Hamma.’
She
would ask him once more to let her have the maps, she thought. When they were on the road to Kantara. If he refused again she would have to act before they reached the Canal in case he had some crazy idea about handing the maps over to the United Nations. Which was as bad as handing them over to the Arabs or Russians.
Bartlett stood up and said: ‘Shouldn’t we be on our way?’
‘I suppose so.’
But she didn’t really want to go because the road might lead to the end of the sharing.
‘Come on then.’
He walked out of the café. Different in his slacks and bush shirt, but not incongruous. She followed him, aware of the gaze of Fidel Castro and his colleagues.
Outside Bartlett bought her a necklace of tiny shells threaded on string from one of the Arab stalls.
‘How much did that cost you?’ she said. She was aware it was an Israeli question.
‘You shouldn’t ask.’
‘How much?’
‘One Israeli pound.’
‘You were robbed.’ She put the necklace on. ‘But I shall always keep it.’
They drove beside long deserted sands and telegraph-pole palms and long waves moving in slowly as if they were pulled on thread.
Bartlett said: ‘Back home ten thousand people crowd on to a stretch of sand half a mile long.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it here,’ Raquel said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because it’s probably mined already.’
Soon, she thought, she would have to ask him for the last time. When they reached the outskirts of Kantara.
They drove on through desert and scrub. Past skeletons of trucks and tanks. Past a rusting ammunition train perforated with holes like a colander when its freight had exploded. Past resting camels, leaning palms and sleeping Arabs.
About fifteen miles before Kantara they were stopped at a roadblock beside a tented Army camp. Raquel showed her pass. The Israeli soldier, cigarette in mouth, looked curiously at Bartlett.
Raquel said in Hebrew: ‘He’s going to help me find more water for all of you.’
The soldier, who looked about eighteen, grinned and said: ‘Any cigarettes?’
She gave him a pack. He waved them on. Eight miles later she said: ‘Thomas, will you let me have those maps?’
The Twisted Wire Page 15
