by Sam Bourne
‘OK, his building is number six. Let’s park here.’ They were on Mapu Street, which, judging by the class of cars parked at the kerb, seemed to be one of Tel Aviv’s more upscale neighbourhoods. The building itself was nothing special, rendered in the same white concrete. They walked through a kind of underpass, past the lines of metal mailboxes, and found the entrance and its intercom. Uri pressed number seventy-two.
There was no reply. Impatient, Maggie reached past Uri and pressed the button again, for much longer. Still nothing.
‘Try the phone again.’
‘It’s been on voicemail all afternoon.’
‘And you’re sure this is the right apartment?’
‘I’m sure.’
Maggie began pacing. ‘How come there’s nobody in? They can’t all be out.’
‘There is no “they”. It’s just him.’
Maggie stopped, puzzled.
‘He’s divorced. Lives alone.’
‘Bollocks. What the hell can we do now?’
‘We could break in.’
Maggie suddenly became aware of the cold. What on earth was she doing here, shivering on a Tel Aviv street corner when she should have been picking out sofa-beds in Georgetown? She should be home, with Edward, cosy on their couch, ordering takeout, watching TV or whatever it was normal people did once they stopped being twenty-five-year-old maniacs who worked all hours, hopping from one nuthouse country to the next. Edward had managed it, making the transition from backpacking idealist to Washington suit, so why couldn’t she? God knows, she had tried. Maybe she should just call Judd Bonham and tell him she was pulling out. They weren’t using her properly anyway. She was a mediator, for Christ’s sake, she should be in the room. Not playing at being a bloody amateur detective. She reached into her pocket and felt her cellphone.
But she knew what Bonham would say. That there was no point in her being in the room until the two sides were ready. And the way things were going, that moment was getting more remote by the day. Pretty soon, there’d be no room to be in. Her job was to get the two sides back on track, and that meant closing down this Guttman/Nour problem, whatever it was. They couldn’t afford for her to fail. She knew, better than anyone, what happened if a peace effort came close only to fall apart. For an instant she saw it again, the flash of memory she worked so hard to keep out. She had to succeed. Otherwise, that would be her career, even her life story. It would be reduced to one single, lethal mistake.
Quietly, she turned back to Uri and said, ‘No, we can’t break in. Imagine if we got caught: I’m an official of the United States government.’
‘I could do it.’
‘Yeah, but you’re with me, aren’t you? Still trouble. Is there any other way?’
Uri shook his head and punched his fist against the door of the building, sustaining what looked like serious pain without so much as a wince.
‘All right,’ said Maggie, turning away. ‘Let’s think. What happened when you called the newspaper?’
‘It was just the night news desk-said they didn’t know the movements of their columnists. Gave me his cellphone number.’
‘Which we already had.’
The silence lasted for more than a minute, Maggie straining to think of a next move. Then, suddenly, Uri leapt to his feet and all but sprinted back to the car.
‘Uri? Uri, what is it?’
‘Just get in the car.’
As they drove, Uri explained that in the army he had dated a girl whose brother had gone to India with Baruch Kishon’s son. When he saw Maggie’s face, a scrunch of incredulity, he smiled and said only, ‘Israel’s a small country.’
A few calls later and he had a cellphone number for Eyal Kishon. Uri had to shout into the phone: Eyal was in a club. Uri tried explaining the situation, but it was no good. They would have to go there.
While they drove, Uri put on the radio news, giving a brief translation at the end of each story. Violence on the West Bank, some Palestinian children dead; Israeli tanks re-entering Gaza; more Hizbullah rockets in the north. Talks with the Palestinians now in the deep freeze. Maggie shook her head: this whole thing was unravelling. Then: ‘A poll in America has the president five points behind. He did badly in the TV debate, apparently.’ Last item: ‘They’re getting reports of a fire at a kibbutz in the north. Might be arson.’
They parked on Yad Harutzim Street and walked straight into the Blondie club. The noise was immediate, a pounding rhythm that Maggie could feel in her guts. There was a steady bombardment of light, including one sharp, white beam that swept across the dance floor like a searchlight.
The place was hardly full, but already there seemed to be lithe, sweaty bodies in every corner. Maggie was struck by the range of faces. In front of her were two girls, blonde with porcelain skin, while just behind was a tall black man with an Afro and thin, sharp features. Dancing alongside were a man and woman, each with dark, corkscrew curls. Maggie thought back to the briefing pack Bonham had given her, the page about the multiple tribes of Israel: Russians, Ethiopians, the Mizrachim, those from Arab countries. They were all here.
Maggie caught a glimpse of herself on a mirrored wall and was sufficiently shocked by what she saw to stop and stare. All her working life, she had been the youngest in the room. At negotiations between middle-aged men, she was the novelty: not only a woman, but a young and, let’s be honest, attractive woman. They didn’t know what to make of her. How many times had she been asked when her boss, the mediator, would be along? Or asked to be a love and bring three coffees over to the French delegation. Or told how nice it was to have some decoration in these dull, grey talks.
She had got used to it and, of course, used it to her advantage. It wrongfooted the negotiators, made them more candid than they intended to be. They said things to her they would not have said to a ‘real’ mediator, as if talks with her were a kind of dress rehearsal. Only once the deal was done would they fully understand that she was indeed the real thing. But her greatest asset was the competition. Without realizing it, these suits would compete for her attention. She first spotted it when she ran a back-channel session for the Sri Lankan civil war, held in a log cabin in Sweden. At mealtimes, she noticed, the participants would jostle to be seated near her. They wanted her to laugh at their jokes, to nod at their insights. They couldn’t help themselves: it was how they were conditioned to behave around an attractive woman. But for her it was inestimably useful. Every little move she pushed them to make, inch by tortured inch, was one they knew would keep them in her affections. If they held out over this word in a treaty, or that line on a map, she would be disappointed in them. And they didn’t want that.
But she didn’t look like that here. Now, surrounded by these gorgeous creatures, none older than twenty-five, with their glowing skin and skimpy tops, she realized she must be the oldest person in the place. She saw the black trousers, Ann Taylor jacket and Agnes B shirt of her own outfit: fine for work, positively elegant when meeting diplomats and ministers. But here it was dull. And those crow’s feet around her eyes, or the creases when she smiled…
‘He’s over there.’
Uri gestured towards a man sitting back watching the dancing, his hand around the neck of a beer bottle, nodding to the music. He looked part-stoned, part-drunk-and fully out of it.
Uri sat beside him and, after a brief, seated embrace, spoke into his ear. While they spoke, Maggie scoped the club. By the entrance she could see a man, newly arrived, who looked as out of place as she was. He wore rimless glasses, which declared him ‘adult’ amongst these partying children.
She could see from Eyal’s expression that Uri had reached the point in the story where he had lost both his parents. Eyal was shaking his head and pulling on Uri’s shoulder, as if initiating another hug. But Uri was already bringing out the cellphone to show Eyal that the last call Shimon Guttman had made had been to Baruch Kishon.
Eyal shrugged apologetically; he didn’t know anything. Uri kept up the question
s, now turning back to Maggie with snatches of translation. When had he last spoken with his father? On Sunday morning. His father was off on ‘assignment’. Nothing unusual there. The old man was always going away; that’s why he and Eyal’s mother had broken up. Had he said anything about where he was going? Nothing Eyal could remember. Mind you, he had been off his face the night before. Eyal smiled.
‘Eyal, did your father mention a trip to Geneva?’
Careful, thought Maggie.
‘As in, like, Switzerland? No. He usually tells me when he’s going abroad. Likes me to check on his apartment. Pretty anal that way.’
‘So you don’t think he’s abroad?’
‘Nope.’
‘But you haven’t spoken to him since Sunday? And you’re not worried?’
‘I wasn’t worried. Till you guys started freaking me out.’
They drove back fast, with Eyal, no longer blissed out, in the back. Uri kept up the questioning, extracting only one more detail: that when Eyal and his father spoke on Sunday morning, Baruch Kishon had seemed in a good mood. He said he had a ‘hot’ story to work on. Or maybe it was cool. Eyal couldn’t remember.
The eleven o’clock news came on, Uri passing on only that the kibbutz arson story was now the lead item: they had found among the wreckage some charred human remains. An IDF spokesman said there was firm evidence that this was a terror attack, mounted by Palestinians from Jenin. Speculation was already mounting over the political fallout. This raid was bound to be seen as a threat to the already fragile peace talks in Jerusalem, and a further blow to the standing of Prime Minister Yariv.
Maggie pulled out her phone and saw that she had missed a call. The noise of the club had drowned it out, no doubt, dulling her senses even to the silent vibration of an incoming call. She listened to the voicemail: Davis, letting her know about Bet Alpha. ‘An attack on a kibbutz now, Maggie. The Deputy Secretary asked me to give you this message. “Whatever else Maggie Costello is up to, remind her that her job is to stop relations between these two sides deteriorating any further. Make sure she’s got that.” OK, you got it, verbatim. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’
The worst thing was, she couldn’t argue. The Deputy Secretary was right: she had to keep the lid on this violence. And she knew how it would look, her taking off on some speculative quest involving anagrams and pottery patterns. Yet she was sure that the two key deaths, Guttman’s and Nour’s, were linked. Finding out how was surely the best way, maybe even the only way, to stop this current round of killing. The alternative was to hold an endless round of meetings where people would make the right noises-but the violence would just keep on going. She had been round that track before and was determined not to go round again.
They were at Kishon’s apartment twenty minutes later. Eyal seemed nervous about opening up the place. After what he had heard about Uri’s parents, he was clearly fearful of what he might find. He walked in first, switching on lights, calling out his father’s name.
‘Eyal, look around.’ It was Uri, scoping the apartment as if it was a movie location. ‘Look carefully. Tell us if you notice anything different, anything out of place. Anything at all.’
Maggie herself could see nothing: the place was preternaturally tidy. Anal was right. Mindful of her success at the Guttman house, she asked Eyal where his father worked. He directed her to a desk in the corner of the living room, while he went to check the bedroom.
‘Hey, Eyal, there’s no computer here.’
He reappeared in the doorway. ‘Oh, yeah. I forgot. He always works on a laptop. That’s the only machine he uses. Sorry.’
Damn. In this place, as neat as a mausoleum, it had been her best hope. There were no stray pieces of paper, no piles of books to work through. This was a dead end.
She took one last look at the desk. Think, Maggie, think. Just a phone, a fax, a blank message pad, a picture of what she assumed was Eyal and his sister as kids, and a pen in a stand. Nothing.
She stepped away, then turned back. She pulled the pad towards her, picked it up and held it up to the light.
‘Uri! Come here!’
There, as if engraved into the page, were the inkless markings of what she hoped was Hebrew handwriting. She imagined it: Baruch Kishon taking the call from Shimon Guttman, scribbling a note on his message pad, peeling it off, rushing out the door-leaving the impression of the note on the page below.
Uri saw it, too. He held the piece of paper above his head, trying to divine its meaning through the ceiling light. He squinted and he grimaced until eventually he gave a small smile. ‘It’s a name,’ he said. ‘An Arabic name. The man we want is called Afif Aweida.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
J ERUSALEM , THE PREVIOUS T HURSDAY
This was the sound Shimon Guttman wanted to hear, the throb of carnival. The whistles, blown repeatedly; the steady pounding of dustbin lids; the clamour that could only be generated by a group of people strong in number and, above all, strong in conviction.
He had been at a hundred demonstrations in his time, but this one made him prouder than all the rest. The crowd, gathered here at Zion Square, was enormous, a mass of people packed together, some carrying placards, the rest either waving their fists in the air or clapping in unison. They looked striking, each one of them clad in orange. T-shirts, hats, even shorts and face-paint, all in the brightest, most luminous orange. But what made Shimon tremble with pride, a glow rising from deep within, was that this massed rally against Yariv and his treachery consisted entirely of the young.
When he had issued the call, he had no idea if it would be heeded. The conventional wisdom these days held that Israel’s young had grown apathetic. They were the internet generation, more concerned with Google than the Golan, happier bumming around India or trekking in Nepal than pioneering in Judea or tilling the soil in Samaria. His own son, Uri, who had given up a career in army intelligence to pursue some limp-wristed job in films, was proof of the malaise.
Yet here was compelling evidence that such pessimism about the state of Israel’s youth was misplaced. Look at them, Guttman thought, massed on the streets, determined to save their nation from the surrender and appeasement plotted by their own prime minister. Those of his contemporaries who always moaned about kids today, complaining that they wouldn’t have the gumption to fight the way our lot did back in sixty-seven-they should be here now. This sight would soon shut them up.
For this was shaping up to be a fight, good and proper. Facing the army of orange, separated by a thin line of police and the odd news photographer and TV cameraman, was another crowd, nearly as packed, almost as vociferous. They had no single colour, but just as many placards as their opponents. He saw one, carefully placed near the news crews, that read simply, and in English: Yes to Peace.
Shimon Guttman had been at the head of the orange column-one of only a half dozen oldies granted such elevated status-but as the trouble started, they were ushered out of the way. Partly for the seniors’ own safety, partly he suspected to allow the young men of action to get stuck in. From his vantage point on the sidelines he could see that this would soon descend into a medieval pitched battle, two armies charging at each other. All that was missing were the horses.
Soon a young man was emerging, an orange Venus from the water, out of the crowd, elevated by some hidden hand until he was able to stand unsteadily on somebody’s shoulders to deliver his speech. As the youngster barked into a megaphone, Guttman concluded that he was an inexperienced speaker, unaware that, when amplified, it wasn’t necessary to shout.
Shimon was smiling, reflecting back on his younger self, when a pleasing thought dawned on him. The movement he had helped build was, after all, in safe hands. Whatever perfidy Yariv had in mind, there was a new generation ready to arise and resist. ‘I am not needed here,’ Guttman thought. He quietly withdrew, happy to let the young people get on without him. It also meant he would now gain a precious hour in a day jammed with this rally, a television deb
ate this evening and a strategy meeting with Shapira and the settlers’ council in between. He checked his watch. The sensible course would be to slope off to a café, have a smoke and recharge his batteries. But Guttman decided he would grant himself a rare treat. He would go somewhere else entirely.
A quick visit wouldn’t delay him too badly. As he walked through the Jaffa Gate, ignoring the kids hawking cans of soda and postcards of the Old City, turning into the Arab market, he realized that this was his greatest weakness. Other men could be diverted from their duty by wine or women, but Shimon Guttman had only one comparable passion. Drift the scent of the ancient past before his nostrils and he would forget everything else. He would be a bloodhound, following the trail until he had found his prey.
He walked briskly down the cobbled alleys of the shouk, as the Israelis referred to it, a soft ‘sh’ where the Arabs would sound an ‘s’. Not that Israelis ever came here. Since the first intifada in the late 1980s, few Jewish Israelis dared set foot inside the Old City, except of course for the Jewish Quarter and the Kotel, the Western Wall. It had become a no-go area; a spate of fatal stabbings had seen to that.
But Guttman was not frightened. He believed as a matter of principle that Jews should have full access to all of their capital city, that they should not be intimidated into retreat from any part of it. That was one reason why he had left Kiryat Arba when he did. His comrades in the settler movement were populating the outer edges of Samaria and stretching to the beach shores of Gaza, but they were neglecting the beating heart of the Land of Israel, the heart of Zion: Jerusalem. The Israeli right were taking the eternal city for granted, not realizing that, as they stretched out their hand to liberate land elsewhere, the great pearl of Jerusalem was slipping from their grasp. If they were not careful, they would find they had lost East Jerusalem the way the British acquired an empire: in a fit of absent-mindedness.
