The Assassin (11 page)

He had never talked about himself to anyone before; it was difficult to find the words. He had never told Souha anything, and she had never thought of asking. But Elizabeth had taught him that a woman could be a companion, an equal and an ally. He pulled her down and kissed her. She had a soft mouth and he loved running his hand down her smooth hair. It was like fine silk; he could blow strands of it in the air. You're a fool. He said this to himself a dozen times. A fool living in a fantasy and what you're doing with this girl is insane for both of you. But he couldn't stop what was happening. It had gone too far and too fast. He couldn't stop making love to her and now he couldn't stop the deadly, insidious joy of loving her for every other reason too. Like the colour of her brown eyes, which had green lights in them, or the way she kissed him to wake him in the morning. He loved her because she was intelligent; she could talk and he forgot she wasn't a man. And he loved her even more because she was suddenly silly, and had never heard of Dien Bien Phu.

‘What do you want to know about me?' he said.

‘Everything. What was it like to be in an orphanage?'

‘I don't know,' Keller hesitated, trying to remember. What could he say to describe the long years of an existence so uniform that time itself had no relevance? The routine, the smells, the discipline, the punishments, the crushing lack of privacy. He couldn't explain them except by one word, and this was a better summary than most.

‘It was lonely,' he said. ‘But it was better than being outside. I knew that much from some of the other children who came later. My mother didn't keep me for long; she gave me to the nuns when I was a few weeks old.'

‘How could she?' Elizabeth said angrily. ‘How could she have abandoned you?'

‘I used to think that,' Keller said. ‘I used to brood about it and call her names—whoever she was. But afterwards I understood a little. She must have been poor; she'd been seduced and left with a bastard. With my name, the man must have been a German, maybe a visitor—I saw women trying to keep a child. It isn't easy for them.'

‘It wasn't exactly easy for you either,' she said. ‘Were you well treated? Were they kind to you?'

‘There were three hundred of us, and a war going on,' he said. ‘They were as kind as they could manage to be. One nun was good to me; she used to pay me some attention, more than the others. She asked me to write to her when I left. I did, once, but I had no address so I never got an answer.'

‘What did you do then, after the orphanage?' Elizabeth asked him. She was beginning to regret having asked. There was such a bleakness in his description.

‘I tried working. I was fifteen. I worked for a grocer in Lyons. He paid me nothing and his daughter kept trying to get me to sleep with her. I remember her; she was a little older and she had a way of coming round me all the time and looking at me.' He laughed. ‘I hadn't seen any women except the Sisters; I didn't like that one much, and so she got me thrown out. She told her father I was stealing.'

‘And were you?' Elizabeth asked.

‘Yes, of course. I didn't get enough to eat. So I stole and sold the stuff on the black market. There was a lot like that; a job here and there. Never enough money to live, so I started to live the other way. And I'm not going to tell you about that.'

‘All right,' she said gently. ‘You've told me enough anyway.'

He lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, remembering the things he wouldn't tell her. The beating-up he got from the couple who took him in to work in a café after he hitch-hiked from Lyons to Paris. He had misunderstood the job and let the American troops get out of the place without importuning on behalf of the brothel which was running at the back of the café. He had been kicked black and blue and left in the street outside, retching blood into the gutter. It was not his first beating, but he was sixteen and he had decided then, wiping the tears and spittle away from his damaged face, that it would be his last. He had never taken anything again without making sure he gave it back, and doubled it.

‘I was a thief,' he said. ‘I worked for the black market and I sold everything I could get money for. But I lived like a dog, sniffing round dustbins, hungry and hating the world which had so much and wouldn't give me any of it. So I took. It was the way I learnt to live. When it got too hot for me I joined the Legion. It seemed better than getting arrested.'

‘It wasn't your fault,' she said. ‘Whatever you did, you had no choice. You were only a child, and there wasn't anyone to give a damn what happened to you.' She put her arms round him and held him. ‘You never had a chance. But do you know something? When I think of you as a little boy, growing up like that, being alone in the world—it makes me love you even more!'

He smiled and let her hold him. ‘I thought you might be shocked,' he said. ‘I left the Legion to make a new start.'

‘And that's when you came to Beirut,' she said. ‘Will you tell me about your girl there—how did you meet her?'

‘I found her in the gutter as I was walking home one night. She had passed out with hunger. There are hundreds of refugees like her, selling themselves for a few pence. But she wasn't a whore. She was too thin and ugly, poor little devil. Nobody would have wanted her.'

‘But you did,' Elizabeth said slowly.

‘I didn't know what to do with her and she wouldn't go away,' Keller corrected. ‘Have you ever had a human being lie outside your door and try to kiss your feet? I took her in. And she cared for me.'

‘She must love you,' Elizabeth said. ‘She must love you very much.'

‘I think she does.' He reached out for the cigarettes; they both smoked for a while without speaking. ‘Most Arabs would have robbed me naked the first night and then run off. But not Souha. The only thing she wants is me.' He turned and looked at Elizabeth. ‘If we were in Beirut she'd poison you,' he said, ‘and think she was right to do it.'

‘How nice.'

‘Don't judge,' Keller said quietly. ‘It's a different world to yours. When you have nothing you fight very dirty to keep even that. In your world I'm nothing; to someone like her I'm the prize. A man who doesn't beat her or put her out to whore, someone to buy her sweets and make her laugh. I gave her some money before I left. Maybe it would buy that fur coat of yours. But she's rich for life now. Whatever happens she'll be all right.'

‘What could happen?' Elizabeth drew back from him. In the dim light he could see the anxious eyes, the changing look of fear in her face. He was talking too much. And he had nearly made a dangerous admission. He took her in his arms and told a lie.

‘I might decide not to go back,' he said.

Fuad Hamedin had bought himself a new car. He had a passion for sleek American models with chassis like space ships; he loved the huge parking lights that opened a monster red eye in the dark, the heaters, the radio, the electrically operated windows, the power-assisted steering. He bought a beautiful Ford convertible, two-tone blue and beige, with white-walled tyres, and he stroked it as if it were a woman. The money for fixing Keller had been very good. He had been paid through the post, and that was the end of it. He wondered what that bum was doing to earn his fortune, or if he'd ever earn it. Fuad thought not; those sort of jobs carried a double risk. Capture by the law and disposal by the employer. Keller would be very lucky if he saw a dollar of his money. That would leave his girl with a nice little cache he had provided for her. She might be worth visiting later on, when Fuad was sure it was safe. He drove his new car home and took his wife and their three children for a long drive. His wife was a pretty girl, his two sons and a daughter were plump and pampered; the youngest boy whined continually because both his parents spoilt him. They settled back in the new car, talking and laughing, shouting at the children and at each other, the radio turned on a frequency with high-pitched Arab music. It was a fine day and Fuad took his family up in the hills behind the city, where the view was magnificent, the sea spread out from the curving green land like a sheet of blue silk. The sun shone, and inside the car it was warm. Fuad had only taken delivery that morning. It drove like a bird; the narrow roads wouldn't allow him to accelerate and he changed direction, bringing the car down from the heights to the broader highway leading into the city itself. To try it out properly he drove down to the coast road, and on towards the airport. It was two in the afternoon, and there was little traffic. He nudged his wife, and she laughed. The speedometer said sixty. Fuad began to press on the accelerator. They had reached eighty when the mechanism attached to the speedometer needle fired the explosive charge. Under that speed he could have driven the car with safety for a year.

Ten miles from the airport where he had first acted as a tout twenty years before, Fuad Hamedin and his family blew up in a tangle of steel and scything engine parts. The remains of the car and the bodies were scattered over fifty yards. Druet had kept the first part of his promise. Only Keller's girl was left to silence.

‘It's nice to see you again, Liz. You're looking great.' Peter Mathews smiled at her across the table. He had contacted her as Leary wanted; the phone call had been difficult; on the other end her voice was cold, disinterested. Mathews didn't feel snubbed; he had been told to see her and that's what he was going to do. No, she couldn't lunch. Or dine. Or let him come up for a drink. Mathews had a real instinct that she was not alone in the apartment while they talked. Another boy friend? It wasn't Eddi King; he was in Frankfurt. They had checked on that. In the end she agreed to have a drink with him and he chose the 21 because it was a place they used to go. She did look good; he meant the compliment sincerely. They faced each other over the little table, and he noticed that the position was her choice; she deliberately avoided the banquette. She hadn't always felt like that about him, he remembered. She used to be the one who wanted to hold hands all the time.

‘You're looking well too,' she said. Keller had thought the call was for him. Only relief that it wasn't had trapped her into accepting Peter's invitation at all. That and the fear that he might just come on up to the apartment if she refused to meet him. He hadn't changed at all; in the few encounters since they split up she had never really looked at him. Now she could and did, because he meant so little to her that it might have been a stranger with the Martini in his hand and the same old grin on his mouth.

‘Why the reunion?' she asked him.

‘Why not? I thought it might be my last chance. I've wanted to call lots of times, Liz, but I felt maybe you wouldn't feel like Auld Lang Syne just yet. You were a bit sore at me, weren't you?'

‘A bit,' she admitted. ‘But not any more. Is that what you wanted to hear?'

‘Partly. Partly that you're not sore and partly that you wouldn't say no if I called you up now and again. It was like getting a diamond out of a showgirl persuading you to come tonight.'

‘You must have got a lot of diamonds back, then,' she said. ‘For here I am. Aren't any of your other girl friends free tonight?'

‘I didn't try them,' Mathews said. ‘It was just you, my darling, only you I wanted.' He put his hand on his heart; in spite of herself she laughed.

‘You really haven't changed at all. Still the song-and-dance man, aren't you. And not married?'

‘No. No, no, no. If I wouldn't marry you, Liz, who else would get me? Or want me. Okay I said it for you. But how about you—how about those rumours I hear that you're going to marry that publisher guy Eddi King?'

‘What!' Putting on an act wasn't in her line; that one word and the expression on her face was all the denial Mathews needed. But she went on, angry and incredulous. ‘Eddi King? He's a friend of my uncle's. I've never heard of anything so ridiculous!' She put down her drink and some of it spilled.

‘You look great when you're angry too,' Mathews said. ‘But what's so ridiculous about it? He's only middle-aged, and you're not seventeen; he's loaded, and he knows all the right people. After Onassis all the old guys are shaking out the moth balls. Besides, if you go off on holiday with a man, what do you expect people to think?'

‘What do you mean, on holiday?' she said. How had he heard about Beirut?

‘It was in the Suzy Knickerbocker column.' Mathews told the truth. ‘“Seen strolling along the exotic back streets of Beirut”—you know the kind of crap.'

‘You couldn't have chosen a better word,' Elizabeth said. ‘He went on business for my uncle; I'd never been to the Lebanon, so he suggested I come along.'

‘Well, if it isn't King, then stop getting so mad and tell me who it is that's put the stars in your eyes. You never looked like that when you were with me.'

‘No,' Elizabeth said slowly. ‘I imagine not.' She kept seeing Keller when she looked at Peter Mathews; the talk about herself and King had made her feel as if something were creeping over her skin. It was funny to think that it showed. Stars in her eyes, he called it, and she didn't bother to retort. She was happy, and fulfilled and in love. Sitting there in the warm atmosphere of the smart people's night haunt, the scene of so many dates in the past, she knew that this described what Mathews saw. She was in love. In love with a man who had as much in common with all the pleasant pre-packed types like Peter Mathews as an Apache Indian. Ugly. Keller was ugly, thick and broad without the flippant graces that were a part of looking down at life from a mountain of dollar bills. Mathews was watching her; the expressions shifted quickly on her face, but there was a self-containment about her which didn't change. She had changed a lot; she had always been beautiful, smartly dressed with the
chic
of the best New York couturiers, but the gleaming hair hung loose over her shoulders, and the eyes were wide with a knowledge that they had never held before. Now, she was really something a man might want.