The Little Drummer Girl (38 page)

Charlie hung on. All her instincts of survival told her to. She saw that he had once more turned round to look at her, and she met his black stare knowing that her own face was visible where his was not. Who are you fighting? she thought; yourself or me? Why are you the enemy in both camps?

"We haven't finished the scene," she reminded him. "I'm asking you--both of you--what's in the car? You want me to drive the car--whoever does--however many of you there are in there--I need to know what's in it. Now."

She thought she would have to wait. She had expected another three minute warning while his mind whirred through the options before it printed out its deliberately desiccated answers. She was wrong.

"Explosives," he retorted, in his most detached voice. "Two hundred pounds of Russian plastic explosive divided into half-pound sticks. Good new stuff, well cared for, capable of standing extremes of heat and cold, and reasonably plastic at all temperatures."

"Oh well, I'm glad it's well cared for," Charlie said cheerfully, fighting off the tidal wave. "Where's it hidden?"

"In the valance, cross members, roof-lining, and seats. As an older make of car, it has the advantage of box sections and girders."

"What's it going to be used for?"

"Our struggle."

"But why does he have to schlep all the way down to Greece for the stuff--why not get it in Europe?"

"My brother has certain rules of secrecy and he obliges me to obey them scrupulously. The circle he trusts is extremely small, and he will not enlarge it. In essence he trusts neither Arab nor European. What we do alone, we alone can betray."

"And what form exactly--in this case--does our struggle take, would you say?" Charlie enquired, in the same blithe, over-relaxed voice.

Again he did not hesitate. "Killing the Jews of the diaspora. As they have dispersed the people of Palestine, so we punish them in their diaspora and declare our agony to the ears and eyes of the world. By this means we also arouse the sleeping consciousness of the proletariat," he added, as a less assured afterthought.

"Well, that seems reasonable enough."

"Thank you."

"And you and Marty--you just thought it would be nice if I ran it up to Austria for them as a favour." With a small intake of breath, she rose and very deliberately went to the window. "Will you put your arms round me, please, Jose? I'm not being fast. It's just, for a minute there, I felt a trifle lonely."

One arm went round her shoulder and she shivered violently against it. Leaning her body along his, she turned in to him and reached her arms round him, and hugged him to her, and to her joy she felt him soften, and return her clasp. Her mind was working everywhere at once, like an eye turned upon a vast and unexpected panorama. But clearest of all, beyond the immediate danger of the drive, she began to see at last the larger journey that was stretching ahead of her and, along the route, the faceless comrades of the other army she was about to join. Is he sending me or holding me back? she wondered. He doesn't know. He's waking up and putting himself to sleep at the same time. His arms, still locked around her, gave her a new courage. Till now, under the spell of his determined chastity, she had believed in some dark way that her promiscuous body was unfit for him. Now, for reasons she had yet to understand, that self-distaste had left her.

"Keep convincing me," she said, still holding him. "Do your job."

"Is it not enough that Michel sends you, yet does not want you to go?"

She didn't answer.

"Should I quote Shelley to you--‘the tempestuous loveliness of terror'? Must I remind you of our many promises to each other--that we are ready to kill because we are ready to die?"

"I don't think words do it any more. I think I've had all the words I can eat." She had buried her face in his chest. "You promised to stay close to me," she reminded him, and felt his grasp slacken as his voice hardened.

"I shall be waiting for you in Austria," he said, in a tone calculated more to repel than persuade her. "That is Michel's promise to you. It is also mine."

She stood back from him and held his head between her hands the way she had held it on the Acropolis, studying it critically by the lights from the square. And she had the feeling that it had locked against her like a door that would let her neither in nor out. Cold and aroused at the same time, she walked back to the bed and sat down again. Her voice too had a new confidence that impressed her. Her eyes were on her bracelet, which she was turning thoughtfully in the half dark.

"So which way do you want it to be?" she asked. "You, Joseph? Does Charlie stay and do the job, or does Charlie take the money and bolt? What's your personal scenario?"

"You know the dangers. Decide."

"So do you. Better than I do. You knew them from the start."

"You have heard all the arguments, from Marty and from me."

Unclasping the bracelet, she let it slip into her hand. "We save innocent life. Assuming I deliver the explosive, that is. There are those, of course--simpletons--who might suppose one would save more lives by not delivering the explosive. But they would be wrong, I take it?"

"In the long run, if all goes well, they will be wrong."

He had his back to her once more, and to all appearances had resumed his examination of the view from the window.

"If you're Michel talking to me, it's easy," she continued reasonably, fastening the bracelet on her other wrist. "You've bowled me off my feet; I've kissed the gun, and I can't wait to get to the barricades. If we don't believe that, your best endeavours over the last few days have failed. Which they haven't. That's how you cast me, and that's how you've got me. End of argument. I'll go."

She saw his head nod slightly in acceptance. "And if you're Joseph talking, what's the difference? If I said no, I'd never see you again. It would be back to Nowheresville with my golden handshake."

She noticed to her surprise that he had lost interest in her. His shoulders lifted, he let out a long breath; his head remained turned to the window, his gaze fixed on the horizon. He resumed speaking, and she thought at first that he was again evading the thrust of what she had been saying. But as she continued to listen, she realised he was explaining why, so far as he was concerned, there had never been any real choice for either of them.

"Michel would be pleased with this town, I think. Until the Germans began their occupation here, sixty thousand Jews lived fairly happily up on that hillside. Post workers, merchants, bankers, Sephardim. They came here from Spain, through the Balkans. By the time the Germans left, there were none. Those who were not exterminated found their way to Israel."

She lay in bed. Joseph was still at the window, watching the street fires die. She wondered whether he would come to her, knowing he would not. She heard a creak as he stretched himself on the divan, his body parallel to hers and only the length of Yugoslavia between them. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone. Her fear of tomorrow intensified her desire.

"Got any brothers and sisters, Jose?" she asked.

"One brother."

"What's he do?"

"He died in the war of ‘67."

"The war that drove Michel across the Jordan," she said. She had never expected him to give a truthful answer, but she knew that he had. "Did you fight in that war too?"

"I expect so."

"And in the war before? The one I can't remember the date of?"

" ‘56."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"And in the war after? ‘73?"

"Probably."

"What did you fight for?"

Wait again.

"In ‘56 because I wanted to be a hero, in ‘67 for peace. And in ‘73"--he seemed to find it harder to remember--"for Israel," he said.

"And now? What are you fighting for this time?"

Because it is there, she thought. To save lives. Because they asked me to. So that my villagers can dance the dabke, and listen to the tales of travellers at the well.

"Jose?"

"Yes, Charlie."

"How did you pick up those dishy scars?"

In the darkness, his long pauses had acquired a campfire excitement.

"The burn marks, I would say, I got them sitting in a tank. The bullet-holes from getting out of it."

"How old were you?"

"Twenty. Twenty-one."

At the age of eight I joined the Ashbal, she thought. At the age of fifteen--

"So who's Daddy?" she asked, determined to keep up the momentum.

"He was a pioneer. An early settler."

"Where from?"

"Poland."

"When?"

"In the twenties. In the thirdaliyah, if you know what that means."

She didn't, but for the moment it didn't matter.

"What was his trade?"

"A construction worker. Worked with his hands. Turned a sand dune into a city. Called it Tel Aviv. A Socialist--the practical kind. Didn't think much of God. Never drank. Never owned anything worth more than a few dollars."

"Is that what you would have liked to be too?" she asked.

He'll never answer, she thought. He's asleep. Don't be impertinent.

"I chose the higher calling," he replied drily.

Or it chose you, she thought, which is what choice is called when you are born into captivity. And somehow, quite quickly, she fell asleep.

But Gadi Becker, the seasoned warrior, lay patiently awake, staring at the darkness and listening to the uneven breathing of his young recruit. Why had he spoken to her like that? Why had he declared himself to her at the very moment when he was dispatching her on her first mission? Sometimes he no longer trusted himself. He would flex his muscles only to find that the cords of discipline did not tighten against him as they used to. He would set a straight course, only to look back and marvel at his degree of error. What am I dreaming of, he wondered, the fighting or the peace? He was too old for both. Too old to go on, too old to stop. Too old to give himself, yet unable to withhold. Too old not to know the smell of death before he killed. He listened again as her breathing settled to the calmer rhythm of sleep. Holding his wrist Kurtz-style before him in the darkness, he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Then, so quietly that even wide awake she would have been hard-pressed to hear him, he put on his red blazer and stole from the room.

The night concierge was an alert man, and had only to see the well-dressed gentleman approach him to sense at once the proximity of a large tip.

"You have telegram forms?" Becker demanded, in a peremptory tone.

The night concierge dived below his counter.

Becker began writing. Large, careful letters in a black ink. He had the address in his head--care of a lawyer in Geneva; Kurtz had signalled it to him from Munich after confirming with Yanuka, for safety's sake, that it was still in use. He had the text in his head to thirteen. It began "Kindly advise your client" and referred to the maturing of bonds in accordance with our standard contract. It ran to forty-five words, and when he had checked them over he added the stiff self-conscious signature in which Schwili had patiently instructed him. Then he handed the form across the counter, and gave the concierge five hundred drachmas for himself.

"I wish you to send it twice, you understand? The same message, twice. Once now by telephone, again in the morning from the post office. Don't give the job to a boy, do it yourself. Afterwards, you send me a confirmatory copy to my room."

The concierge would do everything exactly as the gentleman ordered. He had heard of Arab tips, he had dreamed of them. Tonight, out of the blue, he had finally landed one. There were many other services he would have wished to perform for the gentleman, but the gentleman, alas, was unreceptive to his suggestions. Forlornly, the concierge watched his prey stride into the street, then cut away towards the waterfront. The communications van stood in a car park. It was time for the great Gadi Becker to file his report and make sure all was clear for the big launch.

thirteen

The monastery lay two kilometres from the border, in a hollow of boulders and yellow sedge. It was a sad, desecrated place of caved-in roofs and a courtyard of broken cells with psychedelic hula girls painted on the stone walls. Some post-Christian had started a discothèque here, but, like the monks, had fled. On the concrete pad intended as a dance floor stood the red Mercedes, like a warhorse being tended for the battle; beside it, the champion who would ride it, with Joseph the administrator supervising at her elbow. This is where Michel brought you to change the number plates and see you off, Charlie; this is where he handed you the false papers and the keys. Rose, wipe down that door panel again, please. Rachel, what's that scrap of paper on the floor? He was Joseph the perfectionist once more, ordering every tiny detail. The communications van stood against the outer wall, its aerial gently nodding in the hot breeze.

The Munich number plates were already bolted in position. A dusty German "D" had replaced the diplomatic sticker. Unwanted rubbish had been removed. With meticulous care, Becker now began introducing eloquent souvenirs to replace it: a thumbed guidebook to the Acropolis shoved into a door pocket and forgotten; grape pips for the ashtray, fragments of orange-peel for the floor; Greek ice-cream sticks, scraps of chocolate paper. Next, two cancelled tickets to the ancient sites of Delphi, followed by an Esso road map of Greece with the route between Delphi and Thessalonika marked in fibre-tip pen, with a couple of Michel's scribbled marginal annotations in Arabic close to the point in the hills where Charlie had fired the gun one-handed, and missed. A comb with a few black hairs in it, the teeth smeared with Michel's pungent German hair lotion. A pair of leather driving gloves, lightly sprayed with Michel's body-mist. A spectacles case by Frey of Munich, the one that went with the sunglasses which had been inadvertently smashed when their owner tried to pick up Rachel at the border.

And lastly he submitted Charlie herself to an equally searching scrutiny, covering the whole surface of her clothed body, from her shoes to her head and down again by way of her bracelet before he turned--reluctantly, as it seemed to her--to a small trestle table on which were laid out the revised contents of her handbag.