The Little Drummer Girl (40 page)

Litvak had, in all, nine men and four girls. He could have done with sixteen but he was not complaining. He liked a good stake-out, and the tension always filled him with a sense of well-being. This is what I was born for, he thought: in the run-up to action he thought it always. He was becalmed, his body and his intellect were in a deep sleep, his crew was lying on the deck daydreaming about boyfriends, girlfriends, summer rambles in the Galilee. Yet the lightest whisper of a breeze and every one of them would be at his post before the sails had caught the first strain of it.

Litvak muttered a routine checkword over his headset and had one in reply. They were speaking German in order to attract less attention. Their cover was now a radio-taxi firm in Graz, now a helicopter rescue service based on Innsbruck. They changed wavebands frequently, and used a variety of confusing call signs.

At four o'clock, Charlie pottered into the square with the Mercedes, and one of the watchers in the car park cheekily trumpeted three notes of a fanfare over his headset. She had problems finding a space, but Litvak had ruled she should not be helped in this. Let her play it as it plays, no feather bedding. A space became vacant; she took it, got out, stretched, rubbed her backside, fished her shoulder bag and guitar from the boot. She's good, thought Litvak, watching her through his glasses. A natural. Now lock the car. She did, leaving the boot till last. Now slip the key into the exhaust pipe. She did that too, a really deft movement as she stooped to her luggage; then set course wearily for the railway station, looking neither left nor right. Litvak settled down to wait again. The goat is tethered, he thought, recalling a favourite phrase of Kurtz's. Now all we need is a lion. He spoke a word into his headset and heard his order confirmed. He imagined Kurtz in the Munich flat, crouching over the little teleprinter as the communications van tapped the signal through. He imagined the fraught, unconscious wiping gesture of his stubby fingers pulling nervously at his constant smile; the lifting of his thick forearm as he sightlessly consulted his watch. We're stepping into the dark at last, Litvak thought as he watched the early dusk gather. The dark is what we have been looking forward to all these months.

An hour passed, the good priest Udi paid his modest bill and disappeared at a pious pace down a side street for a rest and a change of profile in the safe flat. The two girls had finished their letter at last and wanted a stamp. When they had one, they departed for the same reason. Litvak watched with satisfaction as their replacements took up their positions: a battered laundry van; two male hikers needing a late lunch; an Italian guest-worker for a coffee and the Milan newspapers. A police car entered the square and made three slow laps of honour, but neither the driver nor his colleague showed any interest in a parked red Mercedes with its ignition key hidden in the exhaust pipe. At seven-forty, amid a resurgence of excitement among the watchers, a fat woman marched straight up to the driving door, forced a key into the lock, then did a comedy double-take and drove off in a red Audi instead. She had got her make wrong. At eight, a powerful motorbike made one swift pass before anyone could get the number and roared out again. Pillion passenger, long hair, could be female, looked like two kids on a spree.

"Contact?" Litvak asked over his headset.

Opinions were divided. Too careless, said one voice. Too fast, said another--why run the risk of being stopped by the police? Litvak's own view differed. It was a first reconnaissance, he was sure of it, but he didn't say so for fear of influencing their judgement He settled down to wait again. The lion has taken a sniff, he thought. Will he come back?

It was ten o'clock. The restaurants were beginning to empty. A deep country quiet was descending over the town. But the red Mercedes sat untouched, and the motorcycle had not returned.

If you have ever watched one, you know that an empty car is a truly stupid thing to stare at, and Litvak had watched a lot of them. With time, just by holding its focus, you find yourself remembering what a fatuous thing a car really is without man to give it meaning. And what a fatuous thing man is to have invented cars in the first place. After a couple of hours it is the worst piece of junk you have ever seen in your life. You start to dream of horses or a world of pedestrians. Of getting away from the scrap metal of life, and returning to the flesh. Of your kibbutz and its orange groves. Of the day when the whole world finally learns the risks of spilling Jewish blood.

You want to blow all the enemy cars in the world to pieces and set Israel free for ever.

Or you remember it is the Sabbath; and that the Law says it is better to save a soul by working than to observe the Sabbath and not save the soul.

Or that you are expected to marry a plain and very pious girl you do not particularly care for, and settle down in Herzlia with a mortgage and enter the baby-trap without a word of protest.

Or you reflect on the Jewish God, and on certain Biblical parallels to your present situation.

But whatever you think or don't think, and whatever you do, if you are as well trained as Litvak was, and if you are in command, and if you are one of those to whom the prospect of action against the tormentors of Jewry is a drug that will never let you go, you do not for one second take your eyes off that car.

The motorbike had returned.

It had been in the station square for five and a half eternal minutes by Shimon Litvak's luminous wristwatch. From his place at the window of the darkened hotel room, not twenty yards away as the bullet flies, he had been watching it all that time. It was a motorbike from the upper end of the range--Japanese, Vienna registration, and the high handlebars were custom built. It had coasted into the square on no engine, like a runaway, bearing one leather-clad, helmeted driver, gender still to be determined, and one male, broad-shouldered pillion passenger, instantaneous alias Longhair, in jeans and sneakers and a heroic neck scarf knotted at the nape. It had parked close to the Mercedes, but not so close as to suggest they had designs on it. Litvak would have done that too.

"Party collected," he said softly over the headset, and received four acknowledgements immediately. Litvak was so sure of his ground that if the couple had caught fright and run for it at that moment, he would have given the order without a second thought, though it would have meant the end of the operation. Aaron, from the cab of the laundry van, would have stood up and shot them to pieces in the square; then Litvak would have gone down and rolled a charge into the mess to make sure. But they didn't run for it, which was much, much better. They stayed on their bike, they fidgeted with their chinstraps and buckles and sat tight seemingly for hours, in the way motorcyclists can, though it was actually about two minutes. They continued to take the scent of the place, checking side turnings and parked cars, and upper windows such as Litvak's, though the team had made sure long ago that absolutely nothing showed.

Their period of meditation over, Longhair languidly dismounted from his pillion, then ambled past the Mercedes, his head innocently tilted while he presumably marked down the fishtail of the ignition key protruding from the exhaust. But he didn't make a lunge for it, which Litvak as a fellow performer appreciated. He strolled past the car and headed for the station concourse to the public lavatory, from which he emerged again immediately, hoping to wrong-foot anybody unwise enough to be following him. Nobody was. The girls couldn't anyway, and the boys were far too canny. Longhair passed the car a second time, and Litvak besought him very hard to stoop and help himself to the key, because he wanted a conclusive gesture. But Longhair declined to oblige. He returned instead to the motorbike and his companion, who had stayed in the saddle, doubtless in order to be able to make a smooth getaway if one were needed. Longhair said something to his companion, then pulled off his helmet, and, with a flick of the head, turned his face carelessly into the light.

"Luigi" said Litvak into his headset, giving the agreed cover name

As he did so, he experienced the rare and timeless blessing of pure satisfaction. It's you, he thought calmly. Rossino, the apostle of the peaceful solution. Litvak knew him really well. He knew the names and addresses of his girlfriends and boyfriends, of his right-wing parents in Rome and of his left-wing mentor at the musical academy in Milan. He knew the upmarket Neapolitan journal that still published his preachy articles insisting that non-violence was the only acceptable path. He knew Jerusalem's long-nurtured suspicions about him, and the whole history of their repeated fruitless efforts to obtain the proof. He knew the smell of him and his shoe size; he was beginning to guess the part he had played in Bad Godesberg and in several other places, and he had very clear ideas, as they all had, about what could best be done with him. But not yet. Not for a long time. Not till the whole tortuous journey was behind them could that score be settled.

She's paid her way, he thought joyously. With this one identification, she has paid her whole long trip till here. She was a righteous Gentile, and in Litvak's estimation one of a rare breed.

Now at last the driver himself was dismounting. He was dismounting, and stretching, and unbuttoning his chinstrap, and Rossino was replacing him at the custom-built handlebars.

Except that the driver was a girl.

A slim blonde girl, according to Litvak's light-intensifying glasses, with delicate bony features and an altogether ethereal air to her, despite her mastery of the motorbike. And Litvak at this critical stage refused point-blank to bother himself about whether her travels might ever have taken her from Paris Orly apparently to Madrid, and whether she made a practice of delivering suitcases of gramophone records to Swedish girlfriends. Because if he had gone that route, the cumulative hatred among the team might have overridden their sense of discipline; most of them had shot people in their time, and in cases like this were quite without compunction. So he said nothing at all over his headset; he let them make their own tentative identifications, and that was all.

It was the girl's turn to visit the lavatory. Fishing a small bag from the luggage grid and handing Rossino her helmet to look after, she walked bareheaded across the square and straight into the concourse, where, unlike her companion, she remained. Once more, Litvak waited for her to make a dive for the ignition key but she didn't. Her walk, like Rossino's, was lithe and effortless, and it didn't falter. She was undeniably a most attractive girl--no wonder that wretched Labour Attaché had fallen for her. His glasses went back to Rossino. Rising slightly in the front saddle, he had cocked his head as if listening for something. Of course, thought Litvak, as he strained his own ears to catch the same faint rumble: the ten-twenty-four from Klagenfurt, due any minute. With a long slow shudder, the train pulled up at the platform. The first bleary-eyed arrivals emerged in the concourse. A couple of taxis shuffled forward and stopped again. A couple of private cars drove away. A tired excursion group appeared, a carriage-load of them, everyone with the same luggage labels.

Do it now,Litvak pleaded. Grab the car and get out with the traffic. Make sense of what you are here for.

He was still not prepared for what they actually did. An elderly couple was standing at the cab rank and, behind them, a demure young girl like a nanny or companion. She wore a brown double-breasted suit and a strict little brown hat with the brim down. Litvak noticed her as he noticed a lot of other people in the concourse--with a trained, clear eye made clearer by the tension. A pretty girl, carrying a small travel bag. The elderly couple hailed a taxi, both together, and the girl stayed close behind them, watching it arrive. The elderly couple clambered in; the girl helped them, handing in their bits and pieces--obviously their daughter. Litvak returned his gaze to the Mercedes, then to the motorbike. If he thought anything about the girl in brown, he assumed she had got into the taxi and driven away with her parents. Naturally. It was not till he gave his attention to the tired group of trippers who were filing along the pavement towards two waiting coaches that, with a leap of sheer pleasure, he realised it was his girl,our girl, the girl from the motorbike; she had done a quick change in the lavatory and fooled him. And, having done so, tagged herself on to the coach party in order to get herself across the square. He was still rejoicing as she unlocked the car door with her own key, tossed in her travel bag, settled herself into the driving seat as chastely as if she were leaving for church, and drove away with the fishtail still glinting inside the exhaust pipe. This touch too delighted him. How obvious! How sensible! Duplicate telegrams, duplicate keys: our leader believes in doubling his chances.

He gave the one-word order and watched the followers discreetly peel away: the two girls in their Porsche; Udi in his big Opel with the Euro flag on the back, stuck there by himself; then Udi's partner on a much less flashy motorbike than Rossino's. He stayed at his window and watched the square slowly empty, like the end of a show. The cars departed, the charabancs departed, the pedestrians departed, the lights went down around the station concourse, and he heard a clang as someone closed an iron gate and locked it for the night. Only the two inns had stayed awake.

Finally the codeword he was waiting for crackled over his headset."Ossian": the car is heading north.

"So where's Luigi heading?" he asked.

"For Vienna."

"Wait," Litvak said, and actually took off his headset so that he could think more clearly.

He had an immediate choice to make, and immediate choices were what training was about. To follow both Rossino and the girl was impossible. He lacked the resources. In theory he should follow the explosives, and therefore the girl--yet he still hesitated, for Rossino was elusive and by far the greater catch, whereas the Mercedes was by definition conspicuous, and its destination a near certainty. For a moment longer, Litvak hesitated. The headset crackled but he ignored it while he went on running the logic of the fiction through his mind. The idea of letting Rossino out of his grasp was nearly unbearable to him. Yet Rossino was for certain an important link in the opposition's chain: and, as Kurtz had repeatedly argued, if the chain did not hold, how could it draw Charlie into its toils? Rossino would return to Vienna satisfied that thus far nothing had been compromised: he was a crucial link, but also a crucial witness. Whereas the girl--the girl was a functionary, a driver of cars, a placer of bombs, the expendable infantry of their great movement. Moreover, Kurtz had vital plans for her future, whereas Rossino's future could wait.