‘What d’you mean?’
‘Can you keep the dog from coming here? Tell me! Quick! Can you do it?’ No time now to get a marksman to shoot the dog. The handler looked baffled but obeyed. She put two fingers in her mouth and produced a high, braying whistle. The dog stopped swimming, lifting its head, the cloth package still safely in its jaws. But then it started off again, heading steadily back to shore.
‘Do it again,’ said Liz. ‘Please. Quick. Stop him.’
Again the hand went up to the woman’s mouth, and again came a high-pitched whistle, even louder. This time the dog stopped, with a questioning look in its eyes. The handler gave a short blast on her whistle, and suddenly the dog swivelled like a seal in the water and began paddling slowly back towards the island. Liz held her breath while the handler looked at her angrily. ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Why are we doing this?’
She suddenly went quiet as Liz raised a warning hand; she was in no mood to be challenged, not until she knew it was safe and that she had been wrong. She would be happy then - more than happy - to take whatever criticism came her way.
The dog reached the island and pulled itself up onto the bank, though more slowly than before - Kreuzer was tired. He panted like a swimmer who’d crossed the Channel, yet he still held the package tightly in his mouth as he vigorously shook the water from his coat. If there was anything wrong with that package we’d know by now, thought Liz, as water sprayed from the dog’s taut skin.
Suddenly the ground shook and simultaneously Liz heard the deafening noise of an explosion. On the island, a mound of earth lifted straight into the air and separated into thousands of tiny pieces that fell slowly into the lake, followed by an enormous cloud of dust.
The shock wave rolled over the spectators, rocking Liz back onto her heels as she winced from the sudden pain in both her ears. On the lake, the water rose up like a geyser, momentarily obscuring all sight of the island. When the air cleared at last, a crater the size of a large lorry had been dug out of the island’s earth. Of Kreuzer there was no sign.
Next to Liz, the dog handler was staring white-faced at the remains of the island. Behind her, there was complete silence among the spectators. Liz looked back, but they were all standing just as they had been; no one seemed to have been hurt. Fortunately, they had all been far enough away.
The silence was broken by the Syrian President. Turning to the Israeli Prime Minister and smiling broadly, he clapped his hands together in apparent delight, then clapped again. The rest of the Syrian delegation seemed to rouse themselves, and followed their President’s lead by clapping dutifully as well, joined a moment later by the Israelis. Soon the applause of all the spectators echoed around the edges of the little lake.
The Syrian President leaned over and said something to the Israeli Prime Minister, who turned and spoke urgently to Ari Block. The Mossad man looked back at Liz. ‘Wonderful!’ he shouted with an enthusiastic smile. ‘The President asks if there will be more fireworks like this one.’
Thank God for diplomacy, thought Liz, as the sound of police sirens echoed round the grounds. She would probably never know how much the Syrians really knew about the background to the explosion, but their President had obviously decided that the evening was going to be a success whatever happened. And as no one had been killed, except poor Kreuzer, a success it would be.
FIFTY-SEVEN
It was Private Grossman who saw the footprint. Lieutenant Wilentz was leading the other men to the truck after they’d stopped for a ten-minute break when Grossman called out: ‘Sir!’
‘What is it?’ the lieutenant shouted irritably. They’d been out here on the Golan Plateau for over six hours, and everyone wanted to get back - to hot showers, hot food, and cold air-conditioning. The dry season had been unusually prolonged and the temperature was an unseasonal eighty-five. In the distance, the snow-covered peaks of the Mount Hermon range shimmered in the heat like a tempting icecream.
‘There’s a footprint here,’ said Grossman, pointing to the dust lying thickly on the packed earth of the track.
Wilentz came over at once. They were two miles from the Quneitra Crossing, the one official access point between Israel and Syria, though it operated strictly one-way - young Syrians living in the occupied Golan Heights were allowed into their former homeland to pursue their studies, but could only return to their families once a year.
There were frequent incursions; most recently Hezbollah had been active in the area, even setting off landmines on the Syrian side in an effort to ratchet up the tension between the neighbouring states. There was growing concern among the Israeli army command that Hezbollah would venture onto the Israeli side as well, which was why Wilentz and his patrol were there.
The officer studied the print, Grossman beside him. ‘It’s pointing towards the border,’ said the younger man, trying to sound analytic. He was only eighteen.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Lieutenant Wilentz, who tried to be tolerant with the soldiers under his command. Most of them were kids like Grossman, doing their National Service. ‘But,’ he added, ‘that’s not the most important thing. Look at the footprint. Does it tell you anything else?’
Grossman looked down at the indentation in the dust, wondering what he was missing. ‘It looks freshly made,’ he said.
‘Yes. What else?’ Suddenly Lieutenant Wilentz stamped down with his boot, about six inches from the print. ‘Look,’ he ordered.
Grossman peered down, and then he saw it. ‘It’s almost identical.’
‘Exactly. It’s an army boot that made this print. An Israeli army boot.’
Wilentz called to the other men in the patrol and barked orders. They left the truck where it was and moved on foot, Wilentz out in front. As they got further from the road, the footprints became clearer and Wilentz, following the tracks, walked without hesitating.
After half a mile they came to a small rise with a mix of large boulders and loose shingle on its lower slope. The officer signalled his men to halt, then walked back to the group to issue more orders. Five minutes later Private Grossman was clambering up the rocky slope accompanied by Alfi Sternberg, a Haifa conscript he knew from college. Why would a soldier be out here on his own? he wondered. Gone AWOL? But then why was he heading for the Syrian border?
He saw the water bottle first, lying beside a boulder in a small dip in the rock. As he moved towards it, he realised that behind the boulder, sheltered by a larger boulder balanced above it, there was a big space. He gestured with his hand to Sternberg, and together they moved cautiously towards the spot, their rifles at the ready.
Suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed the water bottle, then a man rose to his feet from behind the boulder. He was tall and lean and wore fatigues. He stood facing them with the assurance of a veteran soldier, cradling a T.A.R. assault rifle in his arms.
‘Glad to see you,’ he said laconically. ‘I’ve been watching you out there for some time.’
Sternberg laughed in relief and relaxed his grip on his rifle. Grossman hesitated; he didn’t understand what this man was doing here. ‘Who are you?’ he blurted.
‘I’m Leppo,’ the man said at once. ‘Sammy Leppo. I’m out here on Special Patrol. You’ll know what that means, I’m sure,’ he added meaningfully.
Sternberg nodded, but Grossman was still uneasy. With Hezbollah in the vicinity, he could understand why Leppo had hidden when he first heard them moving along the plateau - but something about the situation seemed odd. He said, ‘I’ll need to check that out.’
Leppo nodded easily, but then he said, ‘That’s not really a good idea.’
‘Why?’ asked Grossman, his suspicions returning.
Leppo suddenly swung his rifle round and covered him and Sternberg. ‘Drop your weapons,’ he ordered. There was nothing relaxed about his voice now. Sternberg dropped his rifle at once, and Leppo pointed his rifle at Grossman. ‘Drop it.’ Grossman obeyed, suddenly certain this man would kill him without hesitation.
Behind Leppo, Lieutenant Wilentz appeared; he’d circled the rise and climbed down. Now he stood on top of the boulder behind Leppo and snapped his finger. The four other members of the patrol appeared, weapons pointing at Leppo’s back.
Wilentz said, ‘You’d better come with us. There will be plenty of time for you to tell us all about this Special Patrol.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
This time Ma Folie was not closed; it was doing a busy lunchtime trade. At the bistro on the South Bank, the food was French, old-fashioned and excellent. As Liz took her last bite of onglet, grilled in shallot butter, she felt a curious contentment.
The near-disaster at Gleneagles had not derailed the peace conference, though none of the participants would have claimed it a total success. Three days of intensive talks had led to no dramatic breakthrough, but the discussions had been conducted in a positive spirit by all sides. Enough had been accomplished for another conference to be scheduled in four months’ time, long enough to allow informal follow-up talks, but soon enough to ensure that all momentum would not be lost. Liz and her colleagues had sighed with relief when the venue for the next conference had been announced: France.
The Czech girl, Jana, had cracked within minutes at Liz’s second interrogation, though what she’d had to say had not added much to what was already known. It served mainly to confirm Kollek’s skill at manipulating people. Jana had fallen so completely under his spell that she hadn’t hesitated when he’d asked her to wipe a rag over the nose of the German pointer, even though she was rather scared of dogs. She hadn’t even questioned why she was doing it, or why he’d given her money to send young Mateo into the hills to collect a package.
Liz assumed she just didn’t want to know. Kollek had a lot to answer for, she thought, remembering Jana’s face (this time her tears had been genuine), but at least there was the satisfaction of knowing that, having been captured by the army just two miles from the border with Syria, the man would be explaining himself at some length. He was in the hands of Mossad now and it was pretty likely that a certain squat, tough veteran of Israel’s many wars would be yet again postponing his retirement until he had finished the interrogation.
Miles had rung Liz a week after her return to London, and just twenty-four hours after his own from the Middle East. By some unspoken agreement they’d spent most of lunch talking about almost anything but the events at Gleneagles. He’d asked about her family, and she’d told him about her mother, and how wrong she herself had been about Edward Treglown - Miles had laughed when she’d described the gold-digging old buffer she’d been expecting. Then he told her all about Damascus, describing a capital city, and indeed a country, which was an odd mélange of the old and new, a land where the latest computer software and the ancient souk were uneasy bedfellows, and Islam pushed against a form of Christianity that was equally well established.
It was only now, as she declined the waiter’s offer of dessert and they both ordered coffee, that Miles fell silent, and Liz felt it was appropriate to make some reference to the complicated chain of events they had both been involved in.
‘You know, you were instrumental in helping us to solve all this Kollek business.’
‘I was?’ Miles looked pleasantly surprised. Liz thought again there was something attractive about his modesty.
‘Yes. If you hadn’t gone to Tel Aviv and got all that out of Teitelbaum, we’d never have known what was driving Kollek - why he did what he did.’
Miles acknowledged this with a reluctant nod. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ he said, and went silent again. There was a lot to think about. Kollek’s plot was probably quite simple to begin with, but it had grown infinitely complicated by the time it concluded so bizarrely - with an explosion that, if it had taken place on land as he’d intended, would have killed both the Syrian President and the Israeli Prime Minister. As it turned out, it was only the dog handler’s skill at redirecting the dog back to the island in the little lake that saved them all. In the end, the dog had been the only victim. Sad, even poignant, but a minor disaster. Certainly very far from the worldwide impact that Kollek had hoped for.
But Kollek had been very clever, thought Liz - at least at first. She said as much to Miles.
‘What about the Oval?’ he said, just as Peggy had done at Gleneagles.
She shook her head. ‘Even that worked to his advantage. When we spotted them, we immediately suspected Bokus, not him. In fact, every time we found some link with Kollek, we always assumed he was being run by an intelligence service, particularly Mossad of course. But he was playing them - all of us, in fact.’
Miles poured Liz the last of the bottle of Crozes Hermitage. She’d ignored her usual limit of a single glass of wine at lunch - what the hell, she’d decided, sensing a valedictory quality to the occasion.
‘What I’ve never understood,’ Miles declared, ‘is what Kollek was originally hoping to pull off. I mean, suppose we’d never had the information from Geoffrey Fane’s source in Cyprus. We wouldn’t have known anything at all of what was going on.’
‘Oh, I think that’s pretty clear. He planted the information on the Syrians that Veshara and Marcham were spying on them, hoping that they would try to kill them. He wanted the hawks in Damascus to win out and the heavies to move in. And he almost succeeded. If both Marcham and Veshara had been assassinated, Israel would have been furious, since they were both giving information to Mossad. Kollek would have made sure the finger was pointed at Damascus, and that might well have been enough to scupper the prospects for peace, certainly this time round. It would have created more bad blood for years to come.
‘Of course, that all went awry when news about it leaked from Geoffrey Fane’s source in Cyprus, Abboud. And then, bizarrely, Kollek learned of the leak from Bokus. That was his great stroke of fortune, though you could argue that what he did next was a mistake. By telling the Syrians there had been a leak from inside their secret service, he focused their attention on the mole, rather than on Marcham and Veshara. Then he killed Marcham himself, hoping it would look as though the Syrians had done it. But the way he killed him was too subtle for the Syrian heavies, so we never thought it was them.’
Liz looked ruefully at her wine glass. ‘But we let ourselves get preoccupied with Abboud’s murder -particularly with trying to work out how the Syrians had discovered that he was working for Geoffrey Fane’s colleague. We thought at first the leak could be you and then that it could be Andy Bokus; then when we saw Bokus with Kollek we decided it had to be him. Only we were wrong.’
Miles said sympathetically. ‘That’s not surprising. Who in a million years would have thought that the source of the story of the supposed threat would find out that his story had been leaked?’
‘And Kollek exploited the freak opportunity brilliantly. Here we were, two intelligence services supposedly working together, yet increasingly suspicious of each other. While the real ringmaster stood back and let distrust get to work. We were blind to the fact that it might all be just one person driven by his own weird agenda.’
Miles finished his wine and slowly put down his glass. ‘What I always find surprising is that with all our sophisticated technology and the big bureaucracies we work in, a single person can still do so much damage.’
Liz thought about this for a minute. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘when you think about it, so much of our work is about the actions of individuals - not governments or bureaucracies. That’s what makes it so fascinating. If it were just about process or gizmos, do you think you’d want to be doing the job?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Miles emphatically. ‘And neither would you.’
He suddenly sounded rather sad, and she regretted the melancholy note that had crept into their lunch. But then he brightened up again. ‘There’re a couple of loose ends still, aren’t there?’ he said.
‘More than a couple, I’m sure,’ said Liz. But that was true of every case; there
were always threads left hanging. ‘Which ones are you thinking of?’ she asked.
‘I was wondering what was the point of Hannah Gold? Why was Kollek so interested in her?’
‘I think originally he wanted her as a back-up - in case the conference went ahead in spite of his efforts. She’d probably have helped place explosives or trigger them -unintentionally of course. But then quite accidentally, Kollek learned that her daughter-in-law Sophie had been in the Security Service. He may even have thought she still was. I imagine he’d been watching Hannah, and he must have seen me visit and put two and two together. He thought of getting rid of me—’
‘He didn’t just think it, Liz, he tried to do it.’
She nodded. ‘When that didn’t work, he dropped the Hannah idea. Too risky. So he used her as a red herring instead.’
‘He had a lot of those, didn’t he? The Spanish “sniper,” the non-existent rifle - as well as Hannah.’
‘He was clever and he improvised brilliantly.’
‘I’d say he was lucky, too.’
‘Would you?’ asked Liz. ‘I’d have said we were the lucky ones.’ She thought of the breaks they’d had - her own spotting of the ‘gardener’ at Marcham’s house, Abboud’s position high up in Syrian intelligence, an envious Dougal happening to spot Jana’s assignation with Kollek by the equestrian centre; they were all strokes of luck.
‘Perhaps,’ said Miles. ‘But the point is, you rode your luck. Not everyone would have managed that, believe me.’ He raised a hand towards the waiter and gestured for the bill.
‘This was lovely,’ said Liz. ‘You were right about this place. Next time, it’ll be my shout.’
Miles gave a funny little smile. ‘You’ll have to visit.’
Visit? Her eyes must have betrayed her puzzlement.
‘Yes. Visit Damascus.’ He looked at her intently, and she saw surprise in his eyes. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘Know what?’ she asked. She was tired of mysteries; whenever she thought she had disposed of one, another seemed to crop up, even here during an enjoyable lunch with a man she was starting to like a lot.
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