Run Around (25 page)

He let her get ahead and fell into step but on the far side of the road and a long way behind, so that any surveillance would visibly intrude between them and show up to him. And at last allowed himself the indulgence of some physical impression. The black, shoulder-touching hair bobbed as she hurried and on her frequent, backward-checking half turns, which she made without pause, he was aware of her breasts bouncing with her movement. She wore a khaki-coloured dress, belted, so that it was difficult to know whether it actually was a dress or a matching skirt and top and carried a large handbag, more a briefcase, supported from her shoulder by a strap. Always, as she walked, she kept her hand securely over it. Fuller figured than he had imagined from the photographs, Zenin decided: most certainly heavier busted. And not as tall, although that was a reflection at which he was surprised because he knew her height precisely from the already provided description.

She slowed when she reached the Rue des Terreaux du Temple, obviously seeking out the café, and then picked up pace when she identified it. When she reached it she hesitated again, looking around as if she were expecting a greeting from among the people who thronged the outside area. When nothing came she went forward and Zenin smiled, pleased, when she chose one of the few vacant outside tables. It was far back, close to the café, and well positioned to see anyone approaching. Which Zenin did not attempt. Instead he continued on to the corner of the Rue Bautte from which he had watched earlier that day, to ensure no surveillance had been established in the intervening period. While he watched he saw Sulafeh Nabulsi take a cosmetic compact from the large case and spend a long time examining her face and putting into place the hair that had become disarranged during her evasive approach from the Rue Barthelemy-Menn.

Zenin allowed ten minutes, alert now not so much upon her but upon anyone or any group getting into position around her: she had almost completed the mineral water she had ordered and was actually looking nervously about her before the Russian moved.

He crossed the street and threaded his way through the outer tables, smiling as he approached her table.

‘Hello,' he said, still testing. He spoke English.

‘I'm waiting for someone,' she said.

‘Maybe it's me.'

‘Go away.'

‘Why so hostile?'

‘If you don't go away I shall call a waiter. Or the management.'

‘We can talk, can't we?'

There was a waiter three tables away and Sulafeh looked towards the man and made as if to raise her hand in a summons.

‘Why be so difficult?' said Zenin, pleased at her reaction. ‘Why give me the run around?'

She dropped her hand at the code phrase. At first she stared at him quite without expression and then, slowly, she smiled. She gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the table and said: ‘Why don't you sit down?'

Zenin did, smiling back at her. Close up she was very attractive, almost beautiful. The olive skin of her face was perfect and unblemished and despite the compact she wore little make-up, only a suggestion of lip colouring. There was nothing at all around her eyes which were deep brown, open in apparent innocence and which were studying him with the interest matching that with which he was looking at her. He let his own eyes drop, briefly, to her body, particularly those full rounded breasts and she knew what he was doing and wasn't offended. The nearby waiter came up and Zenin remembered to order mineral water although he could have explained alcohol away by telling her he was a Christian Palestinian. Sulafeh accepted another drink and when the waiter left looked at him expectantly. He said: ‘Would you have called someone to throw me out?'

‘Of course,' she said, at once. ‘I've every reason to be here: we can't risk anyone getting in the way, can we?'

Zenin nodded, believing her. ‘Very good,' he said.

She swallowed, dipping her head at the praise. She said: ‘I'm being very careful.'

‘I know.'

‘How do you know?' she demanded at once.

‘I followed you here, all the way from your hotel.' He jerked his head to the Rue Bautte. ‘And then watched for a while, from over there.'

‘Why?'

‘To make sure you were alone,' said Zenin. ‘I'm being careful, too.'

‘I didn't know what to expect,' said Sulafeh. ‘Now, I mean.'

‘And?'

‘I still don't know.' She was immediately drawn to him, but was unsure if that were because of his obvious attractiveness or because of what she knew him to be.

‘I'm not sure either,' said Zenin, which was a lie but he was content to let her make what she wanted from the ambiguity.

She looked directly at him for several moments and Zenin held her eyes and a heaviness grew between them. To break the mood, Sulafeh patted the briefcase-type bag she had trapped between her leg and the chair leg and said: ‘I've got everything here.'

‘What's everything?'

‘Complete plan of the conference area, with all the rooms and chambers marked and identified. The most up-to-date schedule of the sessions—'

‘Which could be changed, of course?' Zenin interrupted.

‘I believe they frequently are,' she agreed.

‘How much warning do you get, as interpreter?'

‘Overnight.'

‘So we'll need to meet every day.'

She did not reply at once, looking directly at him again. Then she said: ‘Yes, we'll have to meet every day.'

Zenin smiled at her and she smiled back. He said: ‘Will that be difficult for you?'

‘I don't think so.'

Beneath the atmosphere growing between them Zenin was instantly aware of her doubt. ‘What is it?' he demanded.

‘It's not a problem with the conference arrangements,' she qualified. ‘Until the sessions start there's very little for me to do.'

‘What then?'

‘A man called Dajani, the other interpreter. He's becoming a nuisance.'

‘Sexually?' insisted Zenin, openly.

Sulafeh nodded. ‘He's made a play from the beginning. Hung around the conference area and the hotel …' She shuddered. ‘He's repulsive,' she said.

‘I can't kill him,' said Zenin, reflectively, ‘it would draw attention and we obviously can't risk that.'

Although she knew what he was – or believed she knew what he was – the casualness with which he spoke of killing astonished her. At once there was a further, wonderful sensation: the eroticism of it erupted through her and she felt the sexual wetness between her legs. ‘No,' she accepted, her voice uneven, ‘you can't kill him.'

Zenin was conscious of the change in her tone and wondered at it. He said: ‘Have you slept with him yet?'

‘No,' said Sulafeh. Her excitement continued to grow at the equally casual and detached way he was now talking of sex, and she wondered if it showed.

‘You might have to, if it's the only way.'

Stop it! she thought, as a fresh surge swept through her. She said: ‘I suppose so.'

‘Could you do it, if you had to?'

‘I can do anything to ensure that we don't fail,' insisted the woman, striving for control and for the professionalism she was supposed to have. ‘I just don't want to: like I said, he's repulsive.'

‘Like you also said, it's a nuisance,' agreed Zenin, reflective again. ‘I don't like the risk of anything unforeseen.'

‘There was no way I could have known.'

‘I wasn't criticizing you.' He thought she was flushed and said: ‘Are you all right?'

‘Fine.'

‘There's no change in the schedule, for the commemorative photograph?'

‘No,' she said.

Zenin gestured towards the bag and said: ‘Is the site marked there?'

‘Yes.'

He would have to visit the unseen apartment soon, to ensure the sightline was as he needed it to be. For his own enjoyment he reached across the café table, taking her hand. She reached forward to help him, enjoying his feel. ‘Such a small hand!' he said.

‘I don't understand.'

‘Have you ever fired a Browning automatic?'

It had not been necessary for him to touch her, to ask a question like that. ‘I thought you were trained in the Libyan camps, like I was?' she said. Throughout the planning Sulafeh had been told, by cut-outs she believed to be Arab but who were, in fact, KGB agents like Zenin, that he was a fanatical member of a breakaway faction of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal group.

‘I know the weapons I was trained on,' said Zenin, the escape easy and still holding her hand. ‘Not how women were instructed.'

‘Usually it was Kalashnikov, Chinese as well as Russian,' said Sulafeh. ‘But there were others – including Brownings.'

‘It's a parabellum: heavy,' said Zenin, freeing her hand at last. ‘You will need to be very close: the recoil could make you fire wide. Soft-nosed bullets, of course. Guaranteed to kill.'

Sulafeh felt the sensation growing again, at the return to casual talk about killing, and thought, please no! She did not think she could sustain much more. She said: ‘Interpreters have to get close; that's their job.'

‘What about conference security: getting the gun in that day?'

Sulafeh snorted a dismissive laugh. ‘Ridiculous!' she said. ‘I've completed the accreditation and got all my passes and I've made a particular point of becoming known to the security personnel, so that they recognize me.' She touched the bag. ‘I've carried that all the time, so that it has become accepted without question, like I am. Not once has anyone demanded to look inside.'

‘What about metal-detecting devices?'

‘They have the hand-held sort, to run over the body. Again, I've never been checked.'

‘There aren't any electronically governed doors you have to pass through?'

‘No.'

‘Careless,' judged Zenin.

‘To our advantage,' she pointed out.

‘I'll get you out, you know,' said Zenin, in sudden promise. ‘We'll need to go through everything very thoroughly, to make sure you understand, but I've already planned it. It'll work.'

‘I was told you would,' she said. ‘Look after me,' she added.

‘Trust me.'

‘I can, very easily,' she said, holding him with another of her direct looks.

There
was
the need to examine the apartment off the Colombettes road, thought Zenin. But alone. To consider – wildly imagine – taking her there would be madness, contravening all the training: that too intense, too action-packed training he'd earlier thought of so critically. It was part of the tension to want a woman, Zenin knew: excitement heightening all the senses and all the needs. He'd actually been warned about – and against – it during that training. But hadn't believed it, until now. He said: ‘Have you got to go to the conference centre any more today?'

Sulafeh shook her head. ‘I went this morning, to collect the up-to-date schedules.'

‘What else do you have to do?'

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘I left everything open.' Sulafeh allowed the pause and then added: ‘I did not know what you would want.'

It would be safer for her to hand over the schedules somewhere less open, he thought. And then he thought it was a very weak excuse. He said: ‘There is somewhere I have to go. To an apartment.'

‘Yes,' she said, expectantly. Ask me, she thought: please ask me!

‘Would you come?'

‘You know I will.'

‘I want you.'

‘I want you, too. Very much.'

‘It's not far.'

‘When we leave would you walk close behind me?'

‘Why?'

‘There might be a mark on my skirt.'

They sat apart in the taxi, savouring a pleasure by denying it to themselves. They did not talk, either. He took her arm after paying the cab off in the Rue du Vidollet and he felt her shiver and they were hurrying when they reached the apartment block, off Colombettes. The vestibule was deserted and so was the elevator – where again they stood apart – and Zenin was sure they entered the apartment unobserved by anyone. Inside neither could wait. He snatched at her and she grabbed back at him, pulling off his clothes as fast as he tried to undress her and they made love the first time on the floor just inside the entrance, Zenin still half wearing his shirt. They climaxed almost at once and together and he left her lying there while he hurriedly explored the apartment to find a bedroom. He led her there and they made love again, twice, but more calmly now, exploring one another, finding the secret, private spots, each wanting to please the other.

‘Wonderful,' Sulafeh gasped, the last time. ‘You're wonderful.'

‘So are you: fantastic,' said Zenin. He wanted to make love to her again, immediately, and knew he would be able to. He wondered if his excitement were hardened by realizing that in a few days' time he was going to kill her.

Charlie missed it the first time, picking out the significance only on the second, comparable study of the logs. Determined to be sure of everything, he caught the afternoon train to Bern and walked several times around the streets bordering the Soviet Embassy on Brunnadernain, expertly studying all the overlooking buildings to isolate the observation points from which the Swiss Watchers would maintain their surveillance. Although official checks were still necessary, Charlie was sure he knew what the answers would be, and that he was not mistaken.

‘Fuck it!' he said, to himself. ‘Too fucking late again!'

Back in Geneva he telephoned David Levy in advance of the Swiss counter-intelligence chief, curious to know if the Israeli had spotted the same inconsistency as he had. As a test, Charlie let Levy lead the conversation. The Mossad chief mentioned it at once.

‘Have you told Blom yet?' asked Charlie.

‘No. Have you?'