The Run Around cm-8

by Brian Freemantle

  The entrance was large and pillared and she halted, looking not directly at it but at the surrounding grassed area, consulting one of the maps that had been provided to establish where the commemorative photograph would be taken. To the right, she recognized, on a lawn landscaped in a gentle gradient to guarantee that everyone would be clearly visible: according to the schedule, it was timed for 11 a.m. on the opening day. Sulafeh smiled briefly to herself, at her own personal joke: there was going to be more recorded for posterity than any of them could possibly guess.

  Still following the guide, Sulafeh located the conference chamber at the end of a corridor that appeared practically the width of the building itself, but wasn’t, not quite. Off it ran the committee rooms and offices allocated to each delegation: the Palestinian quarters were to the right, a honeycomb of boxed areas. Her desk was already designated by a nameplate. Dajani’s was on the far side of the office, for which she was grateful: it might spare her at least the groping pressure the man seemed to imagine was seductive.

  As she passed down the corridor, Sulafeh mentally ticked off the offices of the Syrian, Jordanian, American and Israeli secretariats. Diplomatically the Israeli rooms had been separated from the Arab section by the Americans being placed in between and inside the conference chamber the diplomacy was continued, by the arrangement of the table at which they would sit. The room was vast, with high, corniced ceilings picked out in gold leaf, with the gold colouring continuing in the floor-to-ceiling curtaining in front of the enormous French windows, which opened on to gardens. The room was lighted by a series of glittering chandeliers which hung over a central but empty space. Around it, in a huge rectangle, was arranged the table, two long sides running the length of the room, with two shorter links at the top and bottom. The initial impression was that the entire rectangle was one continuous table but Sulafeh saw there was a separating gap of about a foot keeping apart the top and bottom seating arrangement from those on either side. She smiled again, contemptuously this time, sneering at the stupidity of it all. It meant that it was possible for Jew to meet Arab, with America as the mediator, but that both sides could claim with diplomatic pedantry that neither had sat at the same table. She supposed it was in this same room that a dispute over table arrangement had delayed the start of talks to end the Vietnamese war and cost an extra 2,000 lives in the two months it took to resolve.

  Behind the chairs at which the delegates would sit were arranged the accommodation for the support staff, serried rows of small tables already set out with notepads and blotters and a tub of pencils. The Palestinian negotiators were placed at the further end of the chamber, at one of the smaller cross-tables, and the Israelis as far away as possible, along the shorter section at the top of the room.

  Sulafeh walked down to their area and again found a place already assigned to her. It was on the second bank of tables, directly behind the secretaries at the delegates’ shoulder, positioned for immediate consultation. Sulafeh found the device upon which the translation would be made, a plastic cone fashioned actually to fit over her ear. Experimentally she tried it, surprised at its comfort, and twisted the selector dial clearly marked in the various languages. None, of course, was operating. She looked about and located the translation booth, a smoked-glass box impossible to see into, deciding it would be wise to make herself known in the translator’s section.

  In fact, it was important to make herself known to a lot of people, she realized. She went back out into the corridor, at once encountering a group of Swiss security men: two, she thought, had been on duty at the entrance that morning but she was not absolutely sure.

  She said hello in English and they replied in English, too. She stopped and so did they and she said she was a member of the Palestinian delegation, needlessly indicating her identification wallet. She said she guessed security was always a problem and one of the men, blond and apparently in charge, agreed it was but of particular concern for this specific gathering.

  ‘Nothing can be allowed to cause any difficulty, now that negotiations have progressed this far,’ insisted Sulafeh, enjoying the sound of her apparent sincerity.

  ‘We don’t intend it to,’ said the man, furthering her amusement.

  He asked if this were her first visit to Geneva and she admitted it was and flirtatiously the man said it was an interesting city with a lot to see and Sulafeh responded just as flirtatiously, saying she hoped to do just that and maybe find someone to show her. Dajani appeared from the door of their offices, further up the corridor, beckoning her forward and Sulafeh walked away, satisfied she had established herself in their minds just as she intended establishing recognition among as many security staff and permanent officials as possible in the lead-up to the conference, to reduce the risk of any spot-check challenge.

  Dajani’s summons had been for her to attend the first briefing session from the secretariat Director, a man named Zeidan who had been with Arafat from the halcyon days of the PLO presence in Jordan. It was a pointless lecture, delivered only to bolster Zeidan’s self-importance. He told them to orientate themselves completely with the conference facilities and to minimize contact with the secretariat of any of the other delegations, to avoid the slightest risk of indiscretion or compromise. He concluded by assuring them that they were present at an important moment in Palestinian history and there was a mumble of agreement from the people assembled in offices which proved to be cramped when they were all together at the same time. Sulafeh’s lack of response was undetected in the murmur of general acceptance.

  ‘I guess we’d better discover where everything is,’ said Dajani.

  ‘I’ve already done that,’ refused Sulafeh.

  ‘Why not show me then?’

  ‘I’ve other things to do.’ From now on she slept with whom she wanted, not with whom she had to.

  She’d noticed the kiosk in the secretariat building and returned to it, studying the available street maps of Geneva and finally buying the most detailed. She ignored the waiting delegation bus, walking by it in the car park and twice made a point of engaging in passing conversation with groups of security guards, to extend her automatic acceptance. At the check-point exit she went to the main guardhouse and pretended to need help understanding her map to ensure that the people on duty there would remember her.

  Sulafeh used the pedestrian underpass of the Ferney highway which Vasili Zenin had already isolated as a barrier to his advantage and walked back into the city along the Rue de Montbrilliant which the Russian had also explored, earlier. She located the post office she was seeking on the obviously named Quai de la Poste, just across the Coulouvreniere bridge, but did not go into it because the planning decreed there were still three more days before she could expect the instructions to be delivered at the poste restante facility and it would have been wrong to present herself prematurely, remote though the risk was of her later being remembered by any of the counter staff. Instead she found a pavement cafe and ordered coffee, sitting relaxed with her legs stretched out before her, staring over the lake. Was the man with whom she was going to work already here in Switzerland? Or still to arrive? And what would he be like, physically? Different, she hoped, from Dajani, with his sagging belly and sour, uncleaned breath. Would it ultimately be necessary to sleep with Dajani, to placate the man? She did not want to but she would if it were necessary: she could always close her mind and her sensations to the act, like she had so often in the past.

  Barbara Giles chose for a lawyer a man named Henry Harris because they’d attended high school together and even dated once or twice but halfway through the meeting she wished she had gone instead to a stranger to handle the divorce because although she supposed it was unavoidable she found the probing questioning embarrassing. Hot with difficulty she said her sex life with Roger was satisfactory and that she did not believe he had a mistress and that financially he provided everything she asked for, did not drink excessively and had never, ever, hit her. They rarely even rowed.

&
nbsp; Harris, a ginger-haired, freckle-faced man whose college muscle had turned into indulged fat looked up finally and said: ‘So what the hell’s the problem!’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said the woman, inadequately.

  ‘Barbara,’ said the lawyer, encouragingly. ‘You’ve got to do better than this. So far I haven’t got grounds for a divorce petition: I’ve got a nomination for marriage of the year!’

  ‘We’re just not interested in each other any more.’

  ‘You sure that’s true?’

  ‘Roger doesn’t appear to be, at least.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me his job.’

  ‘He works for the government,’ said the woman, producing the familiar cliche.

  ‘The CIA?’ recognized Harris, at once.

  ‘I guess that’s the problem,’ she said. ‘We’ve lived in all sorts of exciting places and now we’re back here and he’s got a senior grading and it should all be wonderful and it isn’t. We can never talk about anything, like all the other husbands and wives in the country talk about things. It’s actually like he does have a mistress.’

  ‘Thought about getting guidance?’

  ‘What can a counsellor tell me that I haven’t already told myself?’

  ‘I would have thought it was worth a try: it’s certainly a better idea than thinking of a divorce,’ said the lawyer. ‘Like I said, there aren’t proper grounds at the moment.’

  ‘What about disinterest?’

  ‘From what you’ve said, Roger isn’t disinterested,’ disputed Harris. ‘What exactly does he say about dissolving the marriage.’

  ‘That he’s willing to do whatever will make me happy.’

  ‘And will a divorce make you happy?’

  Barbara Giles looked down into her lap, lower lip between her teeth. ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘You’ve got to work it out between the two of you and at the moment I’m not the one to help,’ decided Harris, positively.

  ‘You know what I find it impossible to understand?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That people — ordinary people — actually believe working in intelligence is some sort of exciting job.’

  As she spoke her husband was in the code room at the American embassy at Bern, translating the series of messages coming in from the CIA headquarters at Langley. The unnecessarily repeated theme through most was the high presidential authority attached to the conference, which had to be protected at all costs. The last said: ‘Distrust all offered British help. Consider their representative, Charles Muffin, as hostile to be treated as such at all times.’

  Five streets from the US embassy, Vasili Zenin despatched the meeting instructions to Sulafeh Nabulsi at the poste restante section of the Geneva post office she had already isolated.

  And in Geneva itself the hotel check by Swiss counterintelligence finally reached the small, breakfast-only auberge off the Boulevard de la Tour.

  ‘Yes,’ said the clerk, ‘I think I recognize him.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Although he was ahead of the time given in the unexpected summons — wanting again to be first — Charlie was in fact the last to arrive in the Geneva office suite where he’d had the initial meeting with the other intelligence officials. They all appeared relaxed and settled, coffee already set out before them and Charlie wondered if there’d been a prior discussion between them from which he’d been excluded.

  ‘Tried not to be late, too,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not,’ said the Swiss intelligence chief, smoothly. He smiled, encompassing them all, and said: ‘It would seem, gentlemen, that our immediate problems are over.’ At once he corrected the expression of satisfaction, concentrating upon the CIA supervisor. ‘But that your FBI might have inherited them.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Giles, at once.

  ‘There’s been a positive identification,’ declared Blom, triumphantly. ‘A night clerk at a small auberge in the city says the man in the picture booked in on the night of the thirteenth. He checked out on the morning of the sixteenth. His destination was New York.’

  Nobody else offered so Charlie served his own coffee, noting the American’s reaction. He decided it was genuine so whatever they’d been talking about before he arrived it hadn’t been this. He said: ‘Identified by name?’

  ‘Klaus Schmidt,’ disclosed Blom, at once.

  ‘The ubiquitous Mr Smith, although a Swiss or German variation this time,’ said Charlie. There’d been three Smiths on the London flight. The bastard had tried to be too clever and ended up making another mistake.

  The huge Israeli chief shifted in his chair, discerning Charlie’s disbelief, and said: ‘You don’t go along with it?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie at once. ‘It can’t be him.’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Blom, openly irritated by what appeared almost permanently sarcastic disdain.

  ‘The passport won’t support the name,’ said Charlie. ‘We know our man had an English passport, right? And can travel without it being examined from London to mainland Europe. But he couldn’t from Geneva to New York because airlines always confirm that the US visa is valid. If it isn’t they get fined and stuck with the expense of repatriating the person back to his airport of origin.’

  ‘What if there’s a British passport issued in the name of Klaus Schmidt?’ asked Giles. He wished he’d seen the flaw as quickly as the Englishman from whom he’d been warned away.

  ‘There won’t be,’ said Charlie. ‘But if there is we’ll be in luck because British passport applications must be accompanied by a duplicate photograph, which is kept in records. And it’ll be better than the one we’ve already got.’

  Levy was nodding, also admiring. ‘If you’re right then there’s no doubt the man’s a professional.’

  ‘I’ve never had any doubt that he was but I don’t think this is professional,’ said Charlie.’I think he tried something outside his training …’ He looked to Giles. ‘You’ll have immigration searched, of course. And the applications?’

  The American swallowed, uncomfortably. ‘Searched?’ he said.

  ‘Klaus Schmidt must have a US visa. And those applications have duplicate photographs, too,’ reminded Charlie. ‘I guess there’ll be a lot of them but it’ll give us another comparison. And an entrant into America has to give an address, on the incoming flight.’

  Blom appeared to be deflating, like a leaking balloon. He said: ‘I do not think this sighting should be dismissed as cursorily as you are suggesting.’

  Charlie frowned at the man. ‘The last thing I’ve been suggesting is that it should be cursorily dismissed,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you how I’m going to have it checked in Britain and suggested a similar way of doing it in America …’ He paused and said: ‘You do have a definite flight?’

  ‘There was a Klaus Schmidt on the Swissair midday departure, on the sixteenth,’ said Blom.

  The man was already qualifying himself, Charlie recognized. He said: ‘What about picture comparison from the aircrew? Or from anyone at Geneva airport?’

  ‘There has not been time yet,’ said Blom, in further qualification. ‘It is being done.’

  ‘It should be,’ said Charlie. ‘Although it’ll draw a blank.’ He hadn’t intended the remark to sound as arrogant as it did, but Blom’s attitude from the beginning had been one of reluctance verging upon the obstructive, and Charlie was curious to know what they had been talking about before he arrived.

  ‘For a moment it looked as if our conference might have proceeded uninterrupted, too,’ said Levy.

  Charlie was categorizing everyone more completely now, with the benefit of this second encounter. Blom was obstructive. Also, to a degree, frightened and therefore clutching at the smallest sprig of straw. Possibly, too, resentful at being expected to deal on what appeared an equal footing with a subordinate, which Charlie recognized himself clearly to be. And not just a subordinate, a street-working subordinate who’d blown a fair-sized hole in what the man
had obviously considered a major detection breakthrough. Charlie decided there were similarities with Giles’s hand-on-the-nose attitude, which Charlie guessed from the advice that Sir Alistair Wilson had included in the diplomatic bag to be Langley’s ordered response to his presence. And to which he’d become resigned, after the episode with their Director. Which left David Levy. Neither hostile nor friendly: neutral, like the country they were in was supposed to be. Except that Charlie had never considered the Israeli neutral in anything. His assessment was more that Levy was at this stage quite comfortable upon the fence between them, gauging advantage against disadvantage, the only consideration the benefit to David Levy and the country he represented. In matching circumstances it was the way he would have behaved. Insistently he said: ‘It’s still got to be the most likely target.’

  ‘You’ve no justification at all for saying that,’ rejected the American. ‘You seem determined to substantiate a theory unsupported by any facts.’

  He didn’t have to take any shit from the American, Charlie decided. He said: ‘Your people buggered up the debrief, mucking about with that silly lie detector machine. But about one thing you got the same answer, word perfect, as everyone else — Novikov insisting that the target is to be public and political.’ He paused, further advised by the material from London. ‘And the most dramatic, high profile political event in the calendar for November is the Middle East conference to which your President is personally committed … a President who seemingly just by chance is going to be here, in Europe, with the American Secretary of State. Just how does that look to you?’

  ‘I’m not aware of the President’s personal commitment,’ said Giles. He was unhappy at Langley’s insistence that there should be no co-operation between them.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be here,’ said Charlie, going at once for the weakness. ‘I’m aware of it and I’m not even a member of your service!’