The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  McVeigh reached down for his glass and swallowed a mouthful of Guinness. He drank rarely during the week. Clients didn’t like it, and they had a point. It took the edge off you. It slowed you down. Tonight, though, was different. Tonight, for the first time he could remember, he’d lost Billy. The kid had gone away from him, in his head, where it mattered most. When McVeigh had dropped him off at his ex-wife’s house over in Highgate, the child had barely said goodbye, turning up his cheek for the ritual kiss, his flesh cold to the touch. Then he’d run inside and slammed the door behind him, without even a backward glance.

  McVeigh, hardened to most of life’s surprises, had driven home with a pain in his belly, a thick, choking fury in the very middle of him, part grief, part something less easy to define. Outside the flat, he’d parked the car, let himself in, and retrieved his singlet and shorts from the line in the tiny square of back garden, then run north, against the gradient, twice his normal distance. At the top corner of Hampstead Heath, in the half-darkness of a London summer evening, he’d paused under the shadow of a copse of trees and done press-ups, sets and sets of them, first a hundred, then a pause, then a hundred more. The exercise and the run back had taken away the worst of the hurt, transforming it into a simple physical pain that he found infinitely more acceptable.

  Fatherhood had never been easy, not when the child lived 4 miles down the road, yet each succeeding year it had become more and more important. Now, sitting by the open window, his bare feet on the sill, McVeigh knew the boy meant everything to him, the one part of his life he was determined to get right. Work had always been irregular, and he could never afford to turn jobs down, but whenever he was back home, Billy came to stay. At first, his ex-wife had muttered about routines and the inconvenience of it all, but McVeigh had fattened the maintenance he paid, knowing that money was a fair swop for something literally beyond price. The boy was his. He had the same brown eyes, the same blond hair, fine, short, dead-straight. He had the same laugh, the same way of holding his pen, his spoon. He ran like McVeigh, an easy lope, and lately his face had begun to change, shedding some of the puppiness of childhood, starting to acquire the square jaw and the high, angular cheekbones that McVeigh encountered every morning in the shaving-mirror. Billy was small for his age, but McVeigh had been that way too, and in the evenings, after football, when he sometimes fretted about it, McVeigh was able to grin, and give him a hug and tell him that yes, no question, he’d be at least 6 foot, just like his dad.

  Now, emptying the last of the Guinness, McVeigh grinned again, the pain quite gone. The phone directory lay beside him on the floor. He reached down, switching on the small table-lamp, finding the number he wanted. Then he picked up the phone and dialled. The number answered at once, the embassy switchboard, a courteous male voice, lightly accented.

  McVeigh closed his eyes, leaning back in the ancient leather chair, marvelling at how simple it all was, now that the boy had finally driven him to a decision. ‘I’m a friend of Yakov Arendt’s,’ he said. ‘And I’d like an appointment.’

  2

  That same evening, Tuesday 19 August, a small Cypriot-registered freighter called the Enoxia slipped up the River Scheldt from Vlissingen, puttered past the giant cranes of the new container terminal, entered the Tidal Basin and negotiated the tricky passage into one of the few remaining quays still used in Antwerp’s inner harbour.

  An hour later, a shipping agent arrived in an old Renault van and conferred briefly with the master on the dockside. An order was noted for fresh fruit and vegetables, a note made about a minor oil leak from one of the main bearings in the single prop-shaft. Arrangements were made to load a part-cargo at seven the following morning. The master was still trying to remember the French word for ‘pesticide’ when two of the half-dozen crew aboard shuffled down the gangway and headed for one of the nearby bars.

  Past midnight, they were still there, sitting around a table playing cribbage. They were both Greeks, in their early twenties. One of them was quietly drunk, nursing his fourth glass of Stella Artois, playing his cards with a careless bravado, savouring this brief run ashore before the next leg of the voyage across the English Channel to Sheerness, and then the long haul south to the Maltese port of Valletta.

  A stranger sat behind them at the bar, a slightly older man, Mediterranean, perhaps a little darker. In the smoky gloom, neither of the card-players took much notice. If they thought anything, they assumed he was – like them – a seaman, a thousand miles from home, killing time.

  At half-past one, the stranger approached the table. He spoke to them in French. Neither man understood. He picked up the small bundle of notes in the middle of the table and pocketed them. Then he walked out.

  The smaller of the seamen went after him. Outside in the street, he found the man at the kerbside, counting the notes, looking for a cab. The seaman tried to grab the notes. The stranger, a bigger man, solid, fended him off. The seaman kicked him hard on the side of the knee. The stranger folded the notes into his jeans’ pocket and turned on the sailor, pinning him against the metal shutters of the shop next to the bar. Then he beat him senseless, with short, economical jabs to the body and head, one hand holding him steady, the other doing the damage, the shutters rattling with each new blow.

  The incident was over in less than a minute. The Greek sailor slumped unconscious against the shop-front, his nose broken, his jaw shattered, his breathing barely audible to the frightened shipmate kneeling beside him on the wet cobble-stones, waiting for the ambulance. In the log of the local police station, a gaunt two-storey building 3 kilometres away, the incident formed a one-line entry in the midnight–6 o’clock shift. ‘Assault,’ read the terse, handwritten scrawl. ‘No witnesses.’

  Next morning, a big Mercedes truck arrived on the quayside. In the back, under a tightly roped tarpaulin, were 180 5-gallon drums. Each drum was painted red, with carefully stencilled warnings on the side and lid. The warnings, in English and German, read ‘Pesticide. Dangerous Chemical. Handle with care’.

  The loading took nearly two hours. By midday, the freighter had slipped her moorings and was pursuing the last of the ebbtide towards Vlissingen and the open sea. On the bridge, behind the wheel, the first mate was still waiting for the replacement crewman to confirm the tally of drums onloaded from the Mercedes truck. On the dockside, there’d been some confusion. The manifest said 180. There appeared to be 181.

  Passing the lighthouse at Walcheren, the new crewman finally appeared in the wheelhouse. He’d come through the agent, highly recommended. They’d been lucky to get him at such short notice. The first mate glanced over his shoulder and asked him the score. The new crewman, a young Dutchman with a radical crew-cut and tiny tattoos behind each ear-lobe, gazed out through the salt-caked bridge windows. ‘One hundred and eighty,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Like the manifest says.’

  *

  The interview in New York was, as the old man had been promised, merely a formality.

  He took the train in from New Jersey, half-past ten, the worst of the commuter hour over. He walked the six blocks from Grand Central Station, keeping himself in the very middle of the sidewalk, trying to avoid the beggars lounging against the shiny, over-stocked shop-fronts. Just once, he stopped to check the map he’d been given and to re-read the letter. The interview was to take place at eleven-fifteen. He was to check in at reception and ask for Mr Aramoun. His work permit and his certificates, already sent with the job application, would be returned during the course of the interview.

  The old man folded the letter into the pocket of his jacket and began to walk again. The jacket, brand-new, felt stiff and hot. His slacks, too, and the 100-dollar lace-up shoes and the diamond-patterned tie were all wrong. He felt like a parcel, ribboned and addressed by someone else. Abu Yussuf, he told himself for the hundredth time. That’s your name. That’s who you really are. Abu Yussuf.

  The office building, number 1831, was on the corner of 18th Street and Avenue of the Americas. T
he old man paused outside, his head back, looking up at the sheerness of it, the unbroken wall of black glass. He began to count the floors, eyes narrowed against the brightness of the sun, but he gave up at forty, shaking his head, dizzy with the heat and the noise and the sour, slightly metallic taste of high summer in New York. Forty floors, he thought. And still less than halfway up.

  He walked cautiously into the sudden cool of the reception hall. The place was walled in flecked grey marble. He was pursued towards the reception desk by the sound of his own footsteps, very loud. He was searched at a low rope barrier by a black security guard. The man looked into his eyes as the hands parted his jacket and raced lightly over his torso. He knows already, the old man thought. He knows I’m really Abu Yussuf. He knows the immigration papers are fake. He knows.

  At the reception desk, he produced the letter again. The receptionist checked on a telephone and directed him to the wall of elevators. Listed beside the call buttons were the names of the tenant companies. There were dozens of them. He searched for the company on the sixty-fifth floor and found it almost at once. Impex (Beirut), it read. It looked new, cleaner than the rest, handsome lettering, white on blue.

  Minutes later, calmer now, he sat in a corner office on the sixty-fifth floor stirring tiny pellets of saccharine into a cup of black coffee. Until now, he’d never tasted saccharine in his life, never dreamed that so much sweetness could come from such a tiny thing. It was an astonishment to him, a real discovery, one of the thousands of toys with which this strange, rich, eager society had overwhelmed him. Saccharine. Sweeteners. One hundred and fifty in a box, and less than a dollar fifty.

  The man across the desk, Mr Aramoun, finished writing on the pad before him. He looked up, pocketing the pen. The two men had already shaken hands, a light, dry touch, a scent of after-shave, the smell of lemons. He spoke in Arabic, with a Lebanese accent. He smiled. ‘You like New York?’

  ‘Very much.’

  Mr Aramoun looked at him, the smile widening. ‘Not like Ramallah, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  Mr Aramoun eased back in the chair, turning it slightly, favouring the long chasm of 18th Street with a slightly proprietorial glance, the busy, successful New Yorker with the city at his feet. ‘Very hot today. Stinking hot. Horrible month, August …’

  The old man nodded, aware already of the role in which he had been cast, the recently arrived immigrant, one of the stateless brothers, the dafawim, orphans from the West Bank, victims of the Zionist storm, derided by Arabs and Israelis alike. Trash, thought the old man. He thinks I’m trash, just like the boy back in New Jersey thinks. He thinks I’m good for the janitor’s job, good with the plumbing and the cable runs and mopping up the office spills. But not much else.

  The old man put his hands together in his lap, aware of how big they were, how clumsy they must look in this huge office with its wall-to-wall carpet and its big pictures and its low crescent of padded leather sofa. Mr Aramoun bent briefly to a form on the desk, reaching for his pen again. Looking at the form, screwing up his eyes, the old man could just recognize his own writing.

  ‘You’ve been here three months?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have a place to live?’

  ‘Yes. In Newark.’

  ‘Good place? Comfortable?’

  The old man nodded, eager to please, thinking of the corner tenement, the plastic bags of refuse on the street outside, savaged by the neighbourhood cats, the endless flights of broken stairs, the smell of the place.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s all I need.’

  ‘And you plan to stay around? Put in some time with us?’

  ‘Yes.’ The old man did his best to smile. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Mr Aramoun nodded, making notes on the pad. The pen paused. He looked up. ‘We have the whole floor here. That’s twenty-three offices. We may expand some more. There’s the place to be kept clean, there’s help with security, there’s help in the mail-room, there’s help for the folk who take care of the catering operation, coffees, teas, all kinds of beverage.’ He leaned forward. ‘You think you can handle that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mr Aramoun nodded slowly. The old man waited. This was where the interview would lead. Ask about the money, they’d said. Complain a little. Haggle. He’ll want you for nothing, so do it the New York way. Show him what you’ve learned in your three brief months. Don’t make it too easy for him.

  The old man coughed, already embarrassed. ‘The money …’ he began.

  Mr Aramoun lifted a finger, cutting him short. ‘It’s low,’ he said quickly, ‘very low. I know that. But do a good job for us, and it’ll get better …’ He smiled. ‘Much better.’

  He got up and held out his hand, and the old man looked up at him, blinking, ready with his little speech, realizing suddenly that the interview was over, and the job was his, and his coffee was only half-finished.

  The old man got up and shook the proffered hand, muttering his thanks, and made a tiny bow, backing awkwardly towards the door. Mr Aramoun turned away, one hand already reaching for the phone, telling him to fix a start date with the secretary in the office down the hall.

  Afterwards, back at Grand Central, the old man found a pay-phone and called the number, as agreed. The number answered. It was the young boy again. Since he’d lost his job, he was always there. He never went out.

  ‘The job,’ the old man said gruffly. ‘They liked me. I got it.’

  *

  Coming out of the Embassy, looking for a cab in the stream of traffic pouring down Palace Gardens, McVeigh was still thinking about Yakov.

  He’d just spent half an hour with a youngish Israeli called Rafael in a sparsely furnished room on the third floor. Rafael, who’d evidently known and liked Yakov, had said he was sorry about his friend’s death. It had come, he’d said, as a shock to all of them. Yakov had been working at the Embassy for nearly a year. His posting was due to end in the autumn. He’d been popular with his colleagues, a bit of a clown sometimes, but a man with a soul, too, a man who liked to shoulder the troubles of others, a man to go to when times got rough. Quite why he’d died was anyone’s guess, but Rafael’s own belief was that Yakov had been mistaken for someone else, someone perhaps not from the Embassy at all.

  McVeigh had followed the low monotone without comment, only interrupting at the end to wonder who it might have been to pull a gun in a residential London square, broad daylight, lunch-time for God’s sake, and execute a killing with such cold efficiency.

  At this Rafael had nodded, suddenly sombre, his eyes straying to the window with its distant glimpse of Hyde Park. His voice fell even lower, a murmur, but the words he used and the shapes his hands made in the space between them left McVeigh in no doubt that London – Europe – was a jungle, a battlefield for international terrorists, most of them Arabs. In this ceaseless blood-letting, Israelis were often targets of simple opportunity. Killing Israelis, he said, was a day’s work for a half-dozen Palestinian terror groups he could identify by name. It was a constant threat, a constant possibility, and if you happened to be Israeli, then you did what you could to avoid getting shot. But sometimes, just sometimes, they got lucky, and when that happened, and someone you knew and loved got killed, then it was horrible, like a death in the family.

  Yakov had been a real friend, a special man, and now he was gone. His wife had already flown over from Tel Aviv. She’d returned to Israel only yesterday, with her husband’s body in the hold of the big El Al 747. At the Embassy, during her visit, they’d done what they could to soften the blow. Mercifully, there’d been no children.

  But as for the rest of it? Rafael had smiled, a smile of resignation, shepherding McVeigh towards the door. Scotland Yard were very good, he’d said. As a police force, they had the Israelis’ genuine respect. If there was any possibility of finding whoever had killed Yakov – if – then they were the men to do it. McVeigh had hesitated at this, standing by the lift, wondering quite how to
end the conversation, whether to reminisce about his son’s dead friend, his passion for football, his talent with the kids, or to enquire a little more deeply into his real role at the Embassy, what he was there for, what he actually did. But when the lift rumbled upwards and the doors sighed open, and Rafael offered a handshake, all he finally managed was a smile and a muttered word of thanks. ‘Nice bloke,’ he said, as the lift doors closed between them. ‘Real shame.’

  Now, sitting in the back of a taxi heading east towards Victoria, McVeigh recognized the exchange for what it had really been: an expression of sympathetic regret, half an hour of routine condolence devoid entirely of the kind of information he’d come to find. Foolish, he thought, to expect anything else. Rafael, after all, had got it about right. The Israelis were permanently in a state of war. Here. In Europe. At home. Everywhere.

  The taxi dropped him outside a pub in Buckingham Gate. The saloon bar was already crowded with lunch-time drinkers. Towards the back, the usual place, he found the man he’d come to see, the man he’d phoned first thing, home number, still in bed, his new wife already complaining in the background.

  The man looked up and nodded a greeting. He was in his middle thirties, once athletic, now beginning to run to fat. The pint glass beside the folded copy of the Daily Mail was nearly empty. McVeigh reached for it and went to the bar. He ordered a plate of sandwiches and two packets of crisps. The other man eyed the crisps when he finally sat down.

  ‘Fucking à la carte again?’ he said, reaching for the beer.

  They talked for nearly an hour. The other man, George, confirmed what little he’d told McVeigh on the phone. The Met had mounted an immediate investigation into the Queen’s Gate killing and set up an incident room at the Yard. Given the circumstances, it looked political, so they’d pulled in a couple of blokes from the Anti-Terrorist Unit, and opened lines to the MI5 boys, and run traces on the more visible of the likely hitmen. All told, including the clericals, the team had numbered over twenty, and they’d got as far as a short list of four suspects when the bell had gone, and the referee had stepped into the ring, and it was suddenly all over.