The Devil's Breath (20 page)

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But you think he might be?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘It’s possible.’

Ross said nothing, hunched over the rail, and Friedland suddenly realized what was new about the conversation, what he hadn’t seen before. Ross, like everyone else in the world, was finally vulnerable. Friedland turned away, permitting himself a small, cold smile, amused by the thought.

Ross stirred. ‘McVeigh was my idea,’ he said at last. ‘He has a boy called Billy. The child wrote to the Israelis. Evidently he and McVeigh knew Yakov Arendt.’

‘Who?’

‘Arendt.’ Ross turned away from the rail, buttoning his coat. ‘The Israeli who got himself shot. Last week. In Kensington.’

‘And?’

Ross shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection with the video business. Has to be.’ He paused. ‘So I needed a ferret. To put down the hole. McVeigh’s the ferret, hired through our Arab friend.’ He paused again. ‘It seemed a good idea,’ he said wearily, ‘at the time.’

Friedland looked at him. ‘There are better ways,’ he said softly.

‘Like what?’

‘Like telling me in the first place.’ He paused. ‘Why use the Arab? Why did you need a cut-out? Why not use me to hire McVeigh?’

Ross shook his head, saying nothing for a moment. Then he shivered, pulling his coat around him. ‘Zahra’s been offering his services for years. He’s happy to pay the bills and he says he’ll keep his mouth shut. From where I sit, that’s a nice relationship.’ He hesitated for a moment. Then he shook his head and turned away, his voice low. ‘We’re in a mess …’ he said slowly. ‘We’re losing ground. Every week we’re losing ground. It’s been bad for a while. Now it’s close to critical.’

‘We?’

‘The management.’ He shrugged. ‘Poll tax. Europe. ERM. You name it.’ He paused. ‘The war will help. But only for a while …’

Friedland looked at him, surprised at how quickly the conversation had changed track, curiously flattered that Ross
should be so open. As far as Downing Street was concerned, of course, he was right. After eleven years of government by diktat, the stockade was well and truly under siege. Friedland stepped across to the rail. Shooting London Bridge, he could suddenly smell the cold dank breath of the river.

‘The key to this thing is the Americans,’ Ross said softly. ‘There’s a man called Sullivan. You may have heard of him …’

Friedland shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

‘He’s a White House staffer. Extremely well placed. Pulls lots of serious strings.’ He paused. ‘His phrase. Not mine.’

‘You know him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Yes …’ He hesitated. ‘It was a social thing at first, but…’ He shrugged. ‘Yes.’

‘What does that mean?’

Ross shook his head, emphatic, refusing to answer, and Friedland, studying him, suddenly realized the truth of it, what the man had been up to all these years, guarding the back passage to the White House, bypassing the usual channels, securing for his political mistress what all politicians sought: an independent power-base, free from the deadening hand of the Establishment. Now, of course, the link was all the more important. With Thatcherism dead in the water, Ross badly needed a lifeboat.

Friedland leaned forward. His tone of voice was deliberately light. The best interrogations, as ever, were a conspiracy. ‘Why would the Americans need us?’

‘Because they’re facing a chemical threat. Must be. You’ve seen the video. That’s Manhattan. Not Oxford Street.’

‘So what have we got that the Americans might need?’

‘Nothing. Yet.’

‘But you think that might change?’

‘With luck, yes.’

‘Because of McVeigh?’

‘Yes.’

Friedland nodded. ‘You should have come to me,’ he confirmed. ‘Not the Arab.’

Ross frowned, visibly irritated, his judgement questioned. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘Because Al Zahra works for the Americans too.’ He smiled. ‘Has done for years.’

*

It was three in the afternoon by the time McVeigh arrived at the bus station.

It lay in the heart of Tel Aviv, an acre or so of oil-stained tarmac off the Petah–Tikvah Road. He’d walked the mile and a half from the hotel where he’d stayed for what remained of the night, the single bag looped over his shoulder. His hands were still swollen and painful, but the American doctor at the clinic three blocks from the hotel had given him two tubes of a special anti-inflammatory cream and assured him that the damage was largely superficial. The blisters would soon burst, and he should be careful of infection, but his hands would be back to normal within a fortnight. McVeigh had thanked him and enquired briefly about the kibbutz named on the back of Cela’s photo. The doctor had never heard of it, but the young Israeli nurse who’d tended McVeigh’s hands picked up the name and drew McVeigh a map. Shamir was in the north, at the top of the Galilee. You followed the coast road up to Haifa and then you went inland, beyond Rosh Pinna, to a new town called Kiryat Shemona. The journey took about seven hours. With hands like that, she recommended the bus, rather than a hire car.

The bus roared north, along the coast road, the heat bubbling in through the open windows, the driver crouched over the wheel, hunting for news stations on the radio. McVeigh sat at the back, gazing out at block after block of office buildings, stained concrete and crooked lintels, as the city gave way to the suburbs and the traffic began to thin. Tel Aviv had taken him by surprise, the noise and the ugliness, and he hadn’t liked it much. There was a jumpiness about the place, a note in the pitch of public conversations too complicated to put into words, though the English-speaking newspaper he’d picked up at the hotel had tried hard enough. ‘UN EMBARGO TIGHTENS’ went the headline in the
Jerusalem Post
, ‘SADDAM THREATENS WAR’.

An hour and a half later, the bus squealed to a halt at the
terminus in Haifa. The city climbed the slopes of Mount Carmel, terrace after terrace of tall apartment blocks, windows ablaze with the late afternoon sun. McVeigh, changing buses, liked the place at once. It had height, space, a certain dignity. It behaved the way a city should.

A second bus, slower, more crowded, drove inland, up into the mountains. Away from the sea and the endless sprawl of the coastal strip, the land began to reassert itself, the bare, stony hillsides shouldering down to the road. The driver swung the long bus into bend after bend, oblivious to oncoming traffic, drawing a long tail of dust across the grey folds of the mountains. Occasionally, at a raised arm or a pointed finger by the roadside, he’d stop to pick up yet more passengers. Some of them were plainly Arabs, the men prematurely aged, the women girdled with sundry baggage. There were kids with them, too, with dirty faces and deeply black eyes, gazing at McVeigh as the bus ground north.

Once, near Safed, the bus picked up a soldier. He fought his way down the aisle and sat down at the back next to McVeigh, sweating, unshaven, dishevelled, his uniform shirt unbuttoned to the navel. He started a conversation at once, loud, heavily accented English, telling McVeigh what a pain the Iraqis had become. Like everyone else in the country, he was liable for military service. He’d done his three years and now he was in the reserve. The last year, he’d been trying to expand his business. He worked as a plumber, self-employed. Prospects, at last, were good. Yet here he was, shuttling back and forth every day from the barracks on the coast to his home in the mountains, trying to do two jobs at once. When the bus stopped again to let him off, some unvoiced arrangement with the driver, the soldier stood up, his hand on McVeigh’s shoulder. ‘Let the bastard come tomorrow,’ he said, ‘then we can spend October in peace.’ McVeigh grunted, non-committal, watching the man body checking his way towards the front of the bus. The back of his shirt was blotched with sweat, and his boots had seen better days, but the shoulder-slung Uzi sub-machine-gun was spotless, the working parts glinting with newly applied oil.

Past Safed, the road descended to a valley floor, dead straight,
flanked on either side by rows of dusty trees. McVeigh gazed out of the window. The bus was emptier now, and in the gathering twilight he could glimpse fields beyond the trees, and apple orchards, and the occasional neat rectangle of water. The girl at the clinic had told him about this valley. The land had been settled by immigrants from Eastern Europe. They’d lived in tents for years, working every daylight hour, clearing the stony hillsides by hand, turning malarial swamp into thousands of acres of productive farmland. She’d seen it herself, on trips to her boyfriend’s relatives, and it was a fine achievement, though given the choice she infinitely preferred the noisy bedlam of downtown Tel Aviv.

McVeigh wasn’t so sure, getting out of the bus at journey’s end, shaking the stiffness from his legs. It was dusk now, and beyond the ugly clutter of concrete buildings around the bus station he could see the dark swell of the Golan Heights across the valley. There were lights halfway up the mountain, clusters of them, miles apart. Each one signified a settlement – had to – one of the collective farms they called kibbutzim. McVeigh had learned a little about them from Yakov, afternoons on the touch-line. He’d talked about his own with affection and pride. A kibbutz was one place in the world where socialism went beyond a list of empty phrases. A kibbutz was where you owned everything and nothing. A kibbutz was a way of life that had bred the cream of one of the best armies in the world.

McVeigh left the bus station and began to walk east, out of the town. In his pocket was the map from the girl in the clinic. Cross the main road, she’d said, and look for a signpost. When you find the signpost, you take the secondary road across the valley. This goes on for 5 miles. Maybe you get a lift. Maybe you walk. Either way, at the end of it, up the mountain, is the place you want.

Crossing the main road, McVeigh found the signpost. He looked up at it, grinning. In Hebrew and English, it said ‘Kibbutz Shamir’. Shouldering his bag, hearing the cicadas in the orchards on either side, he began to walk, a tuneless whistle in the hot darkness.

*

There was perhaps a second of warning, no more.

Telemann was standing beside the Mercedes on a garage forecourt in the suburbs of Hamburg. The filler hose was in his right hand, the fuel pumping into the empty tank. He was watching the read-out on the pump, wondering why it was so blurred. He stepped towards it, irritated by his own eyesight, trying to force the electronic digits into focus. A figure confirmed, he turned back to the car, reaching for the nozzle, pulling it out. Then the car began to revolve, absurdly, coming up towards him, his feet seeming to slip on the greasy forecourt. He smelled petrol, gusts of it, then it was all over him, his face, his neck, his clothes, the stuff still pumping from the nozzle in his hand. He stared at it, uncomprehending, hearing the soft clunk of the Mercedes door, the girl’s footsteps running towards him, a face bent over his. Then the fuel stopped hosing out of the nozzle, and there was only the drip of the stuff on to the tarmac, and the taste of it in his mouth.

Slowly, he got to his knees, looking round, trying to shake the woolliness out of his head. Another car drew up beside the pumps on the other side of the island. A large man got out, holding the door open, staring down at Telemann. Beside him, in the passenger seat, a woman was smoking a cigarette. The girl, Inge, shouted in German at the man. The man nodded, closing the door at once. Telemann looked up at Inge, still on his knees, transfixed by the image, the cigarette in the woman’s fingers, his own body soaked in gasoline, a 98-octane accident, the ugliest of deaths.

He got up, stumbling, hopelessly embarrassed. He felt the girl supporting him, her fingers tight inside his upper arm. He sat in the car, the window open, while she paid for the fuel. Only when they were three blocks away from the filling station, heading back in towards the city, did he trust himself to talk.

‘Thanks,’ he said simply.

The girl looked at him. Her window was open, too.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah.’

She looked at him again, shaking her head, supplying her own answer. They drove to an area north of St Georg, turning
into a wide tree-lined street overlooking the Aussenalster. They stopped outside a sixties apartment block, big picture windows, generous balconies. They took a lift to the fifth floor, Inge beside him, fumbling for the keys of a door at the end of the corridor. Inside, there were flowers everywhere, stands of flag iris, smaller bunches of freesia, a huge vase of geraniums, exquisitely arranged. All Telemann could smell was gasoline. Inge threw the keys on to a table and led him by the hand into a big lounge. The place was expensively furnished. Outside, beyond the silvered mirror of the lake, a traffic jam tailed back from a minor accident.

Inge unlocked the big french windows. The flowers stirred in the sudden draught. She led him on to the balcony.

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

Telemann turned to pursue the conversation, but she’d gone. He hesitated for a moment, then slipped his jacket off. The jacket, an old favourite, was made of linen. The fuel, already evaporated, had left blobs of light brown stain. Putting the jacket to one side, Telemann began to unbutton his shirt. Then the girl was back. She had a bucket and a sponge. There was water in the bucket, hot to the touch, and a bar of soap. She left the bucket beside him, a wordless invitation, and returned with a green silk dressing-gown. Telemann looked at it, beginning to sponge his upper body, working up a lather with the soap, hearing the girl in the kitchen, the clatter of china, the sound of water from a tap.

They had coffee in the lounge, Telemann sitting on the low sofa, the leather cold against the backs of his legs. His hair was wet from the sponge, and his clothes were still outside, a small untidy pile, reeking of gasoline. His head was clear now, the woolliness and the bewilderment quite gone.

‘I must have slipped,’ he said. ‘Oil or something. Underfoot.’

Inge was looking at him over the rim of the coffee cup. ‘I was watching you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t slip.’

‘So what happened?’