The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Telemann said to her. ‘Tell me.’

  She shook her head, not looking round, and Telemann’s eyes went back to the report, still on Emery’s knee. Emery had his finger on a phrase towards the top of the page. He looked up. ‘You know anything about myelin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s stuff that coats your nerves. It’s like cladding.’ He paused. ‘Yours is fucked.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means you’ve got multiple sclerosis. It’s to do with the cladding. Your body stops doing what you want it to.’

  Telemann gazed at him, nodding slowly. He’d heard the phrase before, multiple sclerosis, but he’d never wanted to know what it meant, someone else’s bad news, someone else’s tragedy. He sat down on Laura’s bed, remembering the gas station in Hamburg, the pumps out of focus, the stuff hosing all over him, the smell of it, days afterwards.

  ‘The eyes?’ he muttered. ‘Does it affect the eyes?’

  Emery nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘And the balance? All that stuff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Telemann nodded, still smelling the gas. ‘So where does it end?’ he said. ‘Is it lethal? Does it kill you?’

  Emery looked up, closing the report, reaching for his robe. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s the problem.’ He paused. ‘That’s why Laura’s so upset. That’s what she’s been dreading. Having to tell you. Having you understand. That’s why she’s here.’

  Telemann nodded again, swallowing hard, his hand reaching back across the rumpled sheet. ‘Shit,’ he said softly. His hand found hers. He squeezed it, still looking at Emery. ‘You tell the Agency?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anyone? The physician?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  There was a long silence. Telemann squeezed his wife’s hand again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said numbly, ‘I guess I got it wrong.’

  Emery shrugged, returning the report to the envelope, letting the envelope fall to the floor.

  ‘Question of interpretation,’ he said drily. ‘Never your strong point.’

  *

  Next morning, half-past ten, McVeigh finally made the call.

  He was sitting in a corner of Amer’s office in the Ramallah Municipality Buildings, the phone to his ear, waiting for Friedland to answer. The office was packed with over a dozen people, most of them young men. They stood in a semi-circle around Amer’s desk, jeans and track-tops, the uniform of the barricades. Amer sat behind the desk, calm, patient, nodding from time to time, interjecting quietly in Arabic, letting the rhetoric wash over him. Speaking no Arabic, McVeigh hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. Only one word did he understand, hurled back and forth, a provocation, a rallying cry. ‘Saddam!’ someone would shout. ‘Saddam!’ the others would agree.

  The phone at the other end stopped ringing, and a voice answered. McVeigh recognized the voice. It sounded old, and tired, and slightly provisional, the voice of a man unconvinced by what the day might bring.

  ‘Mr Friedland?’ McVeigh said gruffly. ‘It’s me. Your Marine friend.’

  There was a silence. Then Friedland was back, slightly more animated.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Israel. West Bank.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’ He glanced across the room, wincing at the sheer volume of noise, trying to seal his other ear. ‘We’ve got some of the laughing stuff in Britain and the States. The States I know quite a lot about. Britain’s a bit sketchy. Except that the stuff’s safe.’ He paused. ‘You with me? You know about all this?’

  ‘Yes.’ Friedland paused. ‘You’re talking about the same commodity? Here and in the States?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Understood.’ Friedland paused again. ‘And you’re telling me it’s safe?’

  ‘Yes.’ McVeigh frowned. ‘Next, I’m going to the States. Tidying-up job. I’ve got the story on our Queen’s Gate friend, too. Tell the client. OK?’

  ‘Yes. Tell me—’

  ‘No. Listen. Do me a favour. Ring this number. The boy’s name’s Billy. Tell him his dad sends his love. Tell him I’ll be back soon. OK?’

  McVeigh didn’t wait for a reply but dictated the number, Sarah’s place, and hung up. Amer had been unhappy having him use the phone, nervous about Israeli intercepts, asking him to keep the call as short as possible, no names, no mention of nerve gas, nothing obvious. Quite what Friedland would make of ‘the laughing stuff’, McVeigh didn’t know, but the brief had centred on Yakov and he found it hard to believe that Friedland and his Arab client didn’t have their suspicions. They must have known the background. Must have. McVeigh got to his feet. Amer was shepherding the young men towards the door. The office empty, he gestured for McVeigh to sit down again. He looked exhausted.

  ‘Three more,’ he said finally.

  ‘Three more what?’

  ‘Killed. Yesterday.’ He nodded at the door, the departing youths in full cry again out in the corridor. ‘They want me to join a strike. Another strike. They’re going to close the shops and the factories. They’re going to stop the taxes being paid. They want me to withold the monies already collected. Not to give it to the Israelis.’

  ‘Will you? Will you do that?’

  Amer looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not. We have a big problem here with Saddam. Everyone wants Saddam to win. Everyone. Saddam wins, the Americans leave the Gulf, and who knows what may happen?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Of course. Saddam says he fighting for the Palestinians. That’s us. Why not believe him?’

  ‘But what if he loses?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Amer leaned back in his chair. ‘Then we would lose too. Already the Israelis say we’re traitors.’ He shrugged again. ‘But what choice do we have? The Israelis will never give us our country back. Never. They won’t even talk. You hear the kids just now?’

  McVeigh nodded.

  ‘You understand them? About the man Assali?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Assali was a terrorist. He came from Nablus. He blew up Egged buses. He went to live in Germany. Then he had a change of mind about Israel. He was prepared to sit down and talk about Israeli rights. About a peace conference. About living together. And you know what the Israelis did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They killed him. Because he was suddenly so dangerous. You understand me? Words, not bullets. That’s what the Israelis fear most. Words.’ He paused, glancing towards the door again. ‘The kids don’t understand that. Why should they? All they’ve ever known is Israeli occupation. Road-blocks. Curfews. Arrests. Beatings. That’s their language. The language the Israelis taught them.’ He paused again. ‘The Israelis took my brother-in-law Abu Yussuf. They had his son killed. They made him believe he was a terrorist. They gave him nerve gas. They wanted to make it look as though we would do anything to win the war. That way, they could turn the West against us, make the West see how dangerous we are, how ruthless we are.’ He smiled wearily. ‘You know this word? Ruthless?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Remember it. Abu Yussuf still has the nerve gas. I talked to him this morning again. I know where he is. So far, he knows nothing about his wife. Maybe he never reads the papers. Maybe he doesn’t watch television. But the moment he finds out about his wife—’ he shrugged, fingering the paper-knife on his desk, testing the blade against his thumb ‘—then the Israelis will have done it. They’ll have produced the monster. The monster from the West Bank with his nerve gas. You understand me?’

  ‘Yes.’ McVeigh hesitated. ‘So what will you do about it?’

  Amer sighed, putting the paper-knife down on the blotter, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I’m a moderate. All I want is peace. A decent life. For myself. For my children. I don’t want Abu Yussuf gas
sing anyone. But who knows? Maybe the kids are right? Maybe violence is the only language the world understands?’ He paused. ‘In any case, that’s not the point. The point is far simpler. The point is this. Who took Abu Yussuf to New York? Who gave him the nerve gas? Who had the idea in the first place?’

  ‘The Israelis,’ McVeigh said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘But how do you prove it?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Amer took up the paper-knife again, playing with it. ‘We think the Israelis may be looking for you,’ he said. ‘Cela, too. They’re very careful with me, with people who work here. But they listen to the calls.’ He nodded at the phone.

  ‘I didn’t use any names.’

  ‘I know. I was listening.’ He paused, opening a drawer, taking out a large brown envelope, closing the drawer again. ‘A man will look after you. A man from Ramallah. He has a truck. He’ll take you out of the West Bank. There are places for you to hide in the truck …’ He paused again, getting up, leaving the envelope on the desk, walking to the window. ‘He’ll take you to Nazareth. Someone else will pick you up there.’

  McVeigh frowned, following the itinerary. ‘Why not the Allenby Bridge?’ he said. ‘Why not straight into Jordan?’

  Amer smiled. ‘The West Bank is a prison camp,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve seen it for yourself. The Allenby Bridge is the only road to Jordan. That’s why they guard it so well.’ He shrugged. ‘Trucks that run to Jordan have to be tied up, like a parcel, everything sealed, special seals. Even the petrol tanks they look inside.’ He shook his head. ‘No one goes out through the Allenby Bridge.’

  ‘Where am I going, then? Which route?’

  Amer looked at him for a long time. Then he smiled again. ‘We have a good organization,’ he said. ‘You must trust us.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded at the desk. ‘In two days you’ll be with Yussuf. In the envelope are two letters. One is from me. One is from my wife. Give them to him, please.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘There’s a map in the envelope. He’s in Maine. There’s an address. You must phone me from the States when you get there. If he’s moved on, he’ll have told me.’ He paused. ‘There’s a photograph, too. His wife gave it to me. Before she died.’

  McVeigh nodded, eyeing the envelope. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but what about Cela?’

  Amer look at him for a moment, his face in shadow, a small, slight figure, silhouetted against the light. ‘Cela will come with you,’ he said quietly. ‘This morning.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘She makes her own decision.’

  *

  Ross was on the M4, travelling west out of London, when he got the call from Washington. Downing Street had given Sullivan the number of his car mobile.

  The American sounded even blunter than usual. ‘The guy McVeigh,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where is he? What’s he doing?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ He paused, eyeing the speedo. Bristol was 90 miles away. With luck, he’d be there in time for lunch. ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘The Israelis are crawling about all over the West Bank. Looking for him.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We’ve got the ELINT and AWACS birds up from Dharan. We’re reading their traffic. We need to know if they’re going to pull any stunts of their own.’

  Ross nodded. Since yesterday’s threats from Baghdad, the world had been waiting for some word from Tel Aviv. Saddam had promised to destroy Israel if the US tried to ‘strangle’ Iraq. The threat had been quite explicit, the kind of language the Israelis tended not to ignore, and so now the Americans were eavesdropping on their communications.

  ‘McVeigh,’ Sullivan was saying. ‘Find him. Find out where he is. Talk to him. Before the fucking Israelis do it for us.’ He paused. ‘Think you can manage that?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ross said automatically, signalling left, easing the car into the slow lane for the next exit.

  *

  McVeigh took the waiting ambulance from the Municipality Buildings to a warehouse on the outskirts of Ramallah. The windows in the back of the ambulance were opaque, and he lay full-length on the stretcher under a cellular blanket, surrendering to the attentions of a young para-medic. The medic spoke reasonable English, assuring him they wouldn’t be stopped. If they were, if the Israelis flagged them down, he had instructions to administer gas from the big cylinder strapped in the corner. Unconscious, with the mask pressed to his face, McVeigh would be just another accident statistic en route to the hospital.

  The journey to the warehouse took less than five minutes. The ambulance stopped and began to back, and McVeigh heard doors closing behind them. There were footsteps outside, then a murmur of conversation in Arabic, a man and a woman. The back doors opened, and McVeigh struggled upright, glad to have escaped the gas. Two faces peered inside. One he’d never seen before. The other was Cela. McVeigh grinned. She was dressed in a traditional Arab thoub, a long blue cotton garment. Her head was covered with a cotton scarf, and she had a pair of slippers on her feet, a garish green much favoured by the local women.

  He stepped back for a moment, admiring the effect, trying to guess where she’d been. The outfit suited her. ‘Where did you get it?’

  Cela smiled briefly. ‘It belonged to Hala,’ she said.

  She introduced the stranger, the truck driver who would take them to Nazareth. He was a middle-aged man, running to fat, large and cheerful. His truck was parked behind him, already loaded for the journey with a dozen crates of apples from the local orchards. McVeigh walked across to the truck. It looked as old as the driver, a Bedford 4-tonner, a survivor of countless accidents. The windscreen was cracked and the tyres were bald. In a country with no rainfall, there was even a problem with rust.

  McVeigh looked at Cela. ‘Where do we sit?’ he said.

  She laughed, beckoning him to the back of the truck. The chassis was deeper than usual, a boxlike construction caked with dirt. The back of the box was open, the interior stretching the length of the vehicle, dark, smelling of oil and exhaust.

  McVeigh eyed it dubiously. He had a horror of enclosed spaces. ‘In there?’ he asked.

  Cela nodded. It was a technique they’d picked up from Lebanon. It was the securest way for Hizbollah to transport kidnap victims from location to location. They’d lie full-length at the front of the box. The back would be stuffed with oil-drums and baulks of timber, sealing them in. Fresh air would enter through specially drilled holes in the underside. The truck was in use all the time, shuttling human cargoes around the West Bank.

  McVeigh shrugged, not wanting to show his fear, stuffing Amer’s envelope down his shirt, crawling into the cavity. Inside, the smell was appalling. The floor of the box was thick with oil. Wriggling forward on his belly, he could feel it on the palms of his hands, on his elbows, everywhere. There was no room for manoeuvre, nowhere to lay his head except directly on the metal floor, more oil. He made himself as comfortable as he could, peering down the length of his body, watching Cela crawl towards him. Finally she lay beside him, unwrapping the scarf from her head, folding it several times, each movement the work of a minute or so in the cramped space. McVeigh peered at her, an inch away, as she slid the folded scarf beneath his head, enough material for her own cheek, a cushion of sorts between themselves and the metal.

  The driver wedged the last baulk of timber beyond their feet, shutting out the daylight, and hissed something in Arabic, very close, through the bodywork. Cela answered him with a single word, then McVeigh felt the chassis move as the driver clambered into the cab and started the engine. Almost immediately, the space around them was filled with fumes, and McVeigh began to cough, trying to get his hands to his mouth, knowing that he’d never survive the next two hours or so. Claustrophobia had been a nightmare all his life. That, in part, was why he felt so at home in the mountains, with the sense of limitless space. The truck started to move, bumping out of the w
arehouse, the driver grinding up through the gears, and the exhaust began to thin a little, the taste of the air not quite so sour. McVeigh shut his eyes, willing himself to calm down, hearing Cela’s voice in his ear. ‘Small breaths,’ she was saying. ‘Just take small breaths.’

  He opened his eyes again, accepting her hand in his, squeezing it, marvelling at her composure, the way she could adapt, the total absence of fear or complaint. Yakov, he thought, had been the luckiest of men, as the truck turned on to the main road, heading north.

  *

  Friedland had been at his desk for less than an hour by the time Ross arrived back in London. He’d stayed overnight in Portsmouth, summoned by the local police who had grounds for thinking that his daughter had gone missing in the sea. She’d been seen wading into the water at the harbour-mouth, fully clothed. A witness had phoned when she’d failed to reappear.

  After a night without sleep, still numb, Friedland had risen early to meet the coastguard, a thin-faced, middle-aged man with a sour view of human foibles. They’d stood together on a tower at the harbour entrance in fitful sunshine, a strong wind blowing from the west. The ebbing tide was pouring out of the harbour-mouth, piling against the rocks at the foot of the tower, and Friedland had no trouble believing the coastguard’s gloomy predictions. His daughter’s body wouldn’t be easy to find. The sensible place to start looking was 6 or 7 miles east. After a month or so in the water, there wouldn’t be very much left.

  Now, back in London, Friedland sat at the desk in the big bow-window, his chair turned towards the square, wondering about a memorial service. He’d been through the same debate when his wife had died, a long session with the priest down in Carshalton, and he’d never arrived at a real conclusion. Could suicides ever be commemorated? Could the Church ever find room in its heart for those who’d turned their backs on life and elected for oblivion? Friedland gazed down on the square, watching Ross nudge his BMW into a resident’s parking space, still none the wiser. His wife, Steph’s mother, had chosen pills. He’d found her unconscious in bed, the cats fed, the central heating off, the bills paid, the entire house newly hoovered. The note, when it arrived through the post, had been surprisingly fond, a sentimental adieu that had further perplexed the Monsignor. Friedland shook his head, still staring out at the jigsaw of sunshine in the square, hearing Ross open the door uninvited, unannounced.