Shake Off (9 page)

O
ne of my first tasks after finishing training in Moscow was to go to Geneva, buy six tiny Minox cameras and bring them back to Berlin for Abu Leila to take through to the East. Abu Leila said they were for the Russians, a “thank you” for my training. Each camera was no bigger than a Swiss army knife and you could fit two of them inside an empty cigarette packet. They were used primarily to photograph documents, and produced a tiny negative that was easy to smuggle or put in a dead-letter drop. The Soviets had tried to make their own version of the camera but it had proved unreliable. I told the supplier that they were for a pharmaceutical company that was having an exercise to test their own security against rival companies. I “thanked” the Russians on a number of occasions for a couple of years after I said goodbye to Vasily, although it was never anything heavy, just making the odd pick-up of documents or microfilm and taking them to West Berlin, where Abu Leila would take it across through diplomatic channels. Then it all just stopped, although sometimes it was difficult to know whether I was doing things for Abu Leila or for someone else, as nothing I did was explained to me.

In fact, the Cambridge meeting was the first time I’d understood the purpose behind my actions. I’d delivered packages without knowing their contents, passed on telephone messages that I didn’t understand, made large payments of money to people at airports, checked names against public records and carried out countersurveillance for Abu Leila when he held meetings in West Berlin. I didn’t know what these meetings were about, but since I was a student and looked like one, no one paid me any heed when I wandered around with my books. The meetings were always in public places (steakhouses were a favorite of his) and usually involved only one other person. I even heard Abu Leila talking Hebrew at the start of some of these trysts, before I’d moved out of earshot. I would scout the venue beforehand, looking for the telltale surveillance box, and would also watch the target go into the venue (always first) before giving Abu Leila the all-clear.

Only once did we have a situation where the meeting had to be aborted. I had arrived at the restaurant where the
tref
was to happen an hour beforehand, to make sure that whoever Abu Leila was meeting didn’t have backup. I had checked the inside of the restaurant, then gone to sit in a café across the road with my newspaper to watch for the target, with the intention of scouting the neighborhood afterwards for any company he may have attracted. He arrived with two other men, and the three of them stood outside the restaurant chatting before he went in alone. The two men then came over and sat at a table next to mine. They were wide men in suits, speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent, discussing their flight plans to Romania the following day. I assumed they worked for one of the many Syrian intelligence agencies. I left the café and walked the two blocks to where Abu Leila was waiting in a taxi. I put my newspaper in a bin as I passed him, the signal to abort the meeting.

Afterwards, when we met up in East Berlin, Abu Leila said they were probably Syrian Air Force intelligence operatives, since most of the Syrian security services (there were many) were preoccupied with spying on their own population, as well as Palestinians living in Syria. Most Arab countries thought of the Palestinians they hosted as an undesirable revolutionary force that needed to be contained and tolerated rather than welcomed, despite the supportive rhetoric you might hear spouted. The last thing they wanted were subversive ideas of democracy or free speech trickling into their own populations.

Ask any Palestinian who they’d rather be interrogated by, an Arab or an Israeli, and they’d be hard pressed to choose between them.

Ramzi would be suffering, that’s for certain, and I thought of him as I passed UCH, where both he and Fadia worked. I had just sat my “viva” at SOAS (it was, as Jack would have said, “a piece of piss”) and was on my way to meet Helen for lunch. I thought of the beautiful, angry Fadia, alone and pregnant. Maybe I should have felt guilty. I felt bad for her, but not responsible. They have an expression, the English, about making an omelet: you cannot do it without breaking eggs.

I met Helen in a café off the Euston Road. It was run by Italians who did an all-day English breakfast. When we’d ordered, she said, “Niki wants me to go on a field trip this summer, to visit some ancient burial grounds in Turkey. It’s related to my thesis.”

Niki would be short for her supervisor’s name, Nikolos, as I had seen on the article in her room. I asked a question I didn’t want to ask. “And will Professor Niki be going on this trip as well?”

She shook her head but did not look up from her plate.

“No, I don’t think so.”

My chest and throat became constricted by her lie. “Will you be gone the whole summer?”

“No, it’s only for a week or two. Anyway, I don’t know that I’ll be going yet.” This was another lie, I thought. “I’ll probably go up to Scotland as well, my mother has a house there.” We ate for a while without looking at each other, mopping our plates with toast. My face must have betrayed my feelings, for she said, “You mustn’t get too attached to me, Michel. I’m not worth it.”

I looked at her for a few seconds and I got a glimpse of a different, more mature person. “You seem so sure of yourself but you are like a leaf, going whichever direction the wind blows. You don’t know what you want so you just do whatever’s easiest, whatever someone suggests to you,” I said.

She crossed her arms and looked out of the window. Maybe I had gone too far. She turned back to me and said in a low voice, “And what about you,
ma belle,
do you know what you want or where you’re heading? Are you so different to me?”

“It’s
mon beau,
not
ma belle
.
Belle
is for a woman.”

She stood up, scraping her chair back in the process. I paid the bill and caught up with her outside. Then, as if nothing had taken place between us, she asked, “Have you ever been to Scotland?” I shook my head. It was true, I had never been. “Perhaps you’d like to come up for a few days. It’s on the beach.”

I had no love of the beach, but to spend some time with Helen without Professor Zorba knocking on her door would be good. The only fly in the ointment (as Jack would have said) was the liberation of my people from occupation. I had no idea how long the Cambridge meeting would take.

“I would love to go,” I said, but I was still thinking about her trip to Turkey. We parted with a hasty kiss and she strode off to college. The cursory nature of our parting hurt me, as did the knowledge that she was on her way to be near that man. I told myself not to be an idiot and to concentrate on what was important. I went to Knightsbridge to pick up some money and ID from my safety deposit box in Harrods, as I was going to Cambridge the next day.

T
he first thing I registered about Cambridge Railway Station was that it had only one exit, whatever platform you arrived at. There was also just one exit from the station building onto the street. I phoned Rachel, the estate agent, and she offered to come and get me. I waited outside, noticing that a single road led to and from the station; this meant that it would be easy for one person to watch for arrivals. I wondered why only one person was working the security for such an important meeting; a team of six to ten would be needed to do it properly. I was trying to work out Abu Leila’s thinking when Rachel’s black BMW came up the road, just as she’d described it.

I’d dressed to give an impression of money: in an expensive but casual suit and shirt, no tie, and good shoes. She stopped at the curb and I got into an air-conditioned interior that reeked of cloying perfume. She looked too small for the BMW. She wore a pinstripe suit with a skirt that was very short when sitting down. Her uniformly blonde hair was tied up hard at the back of her head. Her make-up was copious but meticulously applied, and she had a gold Star of David around her neck. The star didn’t bother me, except that, according to Abu Leila, it was not unknown for pro-Israeli Jews outside Israel to be asked for help by the Israeli “competition.” Someone who could provide empty properties would no doubt fall into that category. On the other hand, I had given my name as Roberto Levi, so she could just be wearing it for my benefit; sales people will stop at nothing to clinch a deal. She may have fished it out of a drawer, perhaps forgotten since she’d been given it by her grandmother.

But I was being unfair to Rachel; I was tired and irritable from waiting up for Helen last night, not wanting to take any codeine and fall asleep in case she knocked on my door. But she hadn’t come home and wasn’t there when I knocked early in the morning. I’d thought about picking the new lock but decided it wouldn’t be a good idea, just in case she was inside. I sat back in the leather seat of the BMW while Rachel explained the housing market in Cambridge. I listened to very little of what she said, but her voice was pleasant enough and it was a nice car with comfortable seats. Every once in a while, when it was safe to do so, I treated myself to an eyeful of her legs.

The first house we went to was unsuitable. I knew it before we even got out, but I didn’t say anything. It was a semi-detached house on a narrow street of terraced houses; exactly what I had said I didn’t want. It would be a nightmare to secure. We went in anyway. Rachel had to put her heels on before getting out of the car, but even with them on she only came up to my shoulders. She looked worried.

“You don’t like it, do you, Mr. Levi?”

I shook my head.

“I knew it wasn’t right, but my boss made me include it—he’s been trying to shift it for months.” She seemed genuinely upset.

“Don’t worry, Rachel. Let’s look at the ones that you chose for me.” We drove for ten minutes to another property, and I could see a finger-width of stocking top. I wondered what it would be like to be with her, and whether she wanted me to wonder. She was intent on the road though, having to peer over the top of the steering wheel because she was so short. She was not the type of woman I ordinarily found attractive, she had made too much of an effort with her appearance so that you noticed that more than the person underneath. Though I was vaguely interested in knowing what she was like under all that make-up, pinstripe and perfume.
Helen
possibly went to the same effort but always looked like she hadn’t bothered. Again I wondered if she’d spent the night with Zorba somewhere, to avoid bringing him back to Tufnell Park. I didn’t understand Helen and her insistence on maintaining contact with that buffoon. I hated myself for being drawn to her, knowing it to be a weakness and a distraction from what was important.

“I think this is more what you’re looking for,” Rachel said, as we turned off a main road onto a quiet street with large detached houses. Each house had its own big frontage so it was set back from the road. She turned in to one of them. A gate led onto a drive, but it looked like it had never been closed and you didn’t want to attract attention by changing the status quo. Rachel was telling me that the owners were in Australia and needed tenants for the summer. I’d told her on the phone that I needed the house for a group of businessmen of various nationalities who were looking to buy into some of the innovative technology companies starting up in Cambridge: I had done my research. They didn’t want to stay in a hotel, I told her, because of the expense, but needed somewhere comfortable.

“I like this one already,” I said, as we drew up on the gravel drive. She unlocked the front door for me and ushered me inside. It was expensively furnished and had several rooms downstairs, six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a TV. Rachel kept up a running commentary as we went around. I walked outside and looked around the garden. None of the house was overlooked, although the bottom of the garden could be seen from the adjacent houses. I couldn’t imagine that whoever was staying would have time for the garden but there would have to be some rules, some areas would be off limits. I’d said to Abu Leila that if I was going to arrange this then I needed to be fully in charge of security and be able to lay down the law. No wandering into town on their own, no telephone calls telling family or mistresses where they were, no visitors. People were stupid when it came to security, even those who should know better.

Rachel followed me around like a happy puppy, pleased that I was pleased. I made her show me where the house was on the map, which she had to clack off in her heels to get from the car. Looking at the map, I liked what I saw and told her that we didn’t need to look at any other places.

“I’m happy with this one, Rachel.” I looked at my watch, it was only mid-morning.

“Do you want to go and do the paperwork then?” I looked at her round, powdered face. Her mascara-thickened eyelashes moved up and down rapidly. We were standing alone in the large open-plan kitchen, alone in the “good-sized, well-appointed house.” Maybe Helen was right, maybe I shouldn’t get too attached to her; perhaps she wasn’t the right person for me after all.

“When does your boss expect you back?”

“We were due to see four places, well, five, with the one he threw in, so I’m not expected back until later this afternoon.” She splayed her stubby fingers on the worktop, her immaculate red fingernails contrasting against the shiny black granite. She raised her shaped eyebrows and smiled. “Why, Mr. Levi, what are you thinking?”

I smiled. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was thinking Rachel and I could go upstairs and try the “well-proportioned bedroom with queen-sized bed” and I could forget about
Helen
. “What I am thinking is that I have never seen Cambridge. Maybe you could show it to me and we could have lunch. What do you think?”

“I think I would like that.”

“I’ll tell your boss that you showed me all the houses,” I said.

“You’re a nice man, Mr. Levi, not everyone would do that.”

“Call me Roberto.”

She locked up the house as I waited in the car. I watched her walk around and get in. She turned to look at me, taking in my face and said, “Where shall we go first?”

“I understand there’s an airport here?”

“You want to see the airport? It’s tiny.”

“Indulge me, Rachel.”

The Star of David sparkled at her neck as she refreshed her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. The lipstick matched the color of her nails. It was such an intimate thing to do, I thought, as she reversed—to put on lipstick in front of a stranger.