The Little Drummer Girl (44 page)

Litvak pulled a high shrug. "She knows of a big north German called Edda. She only met, her once. Beyond Edda there's another girl, who's a voice from Paris on the telephone. Beyond the voice is Khalil, but Khalil doesn't hand out visiting cards. She's a half-wit," he repeated. "She drugs so hard you get stoned just standing over her."

"So she's a dead end," said Kurtz.

Litvak was already buttoning his dark raincoat. "A dead end is what she is," he agreed, with a mirthless grin. But he didn't move towards the door. He was still awaiting the specific order.

Kurtz had a last question. "How old is she?"

"Twenty-one next week. Is that a reason?"

Slowly, self-consciously, Kurtz too stood up, and faced Litvak formally across the cramped little room, with its carved, hunting-lodge furniture and wrought-iron fittings.

"Ask each kid individually, Shimon," he ordered. "Does he or she wish to stand down? No explanations needed, no mark against anyone's name who does. A free vote, right across the board."

"I asked them already," Litvak said.

"Ask them again." Kurtz raised his left wrist and looked at his watch. "One hour from now exactly, telephone me. Not earlier. Do nothing until you have spoken to me."

When the traffic is at its thinnest, Kurtz meant. When I have made my dispositions.

Litvak departed. Becker stayed.

Kurtz's first call was to his wife, Elli, and he reversed the charges because he was punctilious about expenses.

"Stay right where you are, please, Gadi," he said quietly as Becker rose to leave, for Kurtz prided himself on living a very open life. So for ten minutes Becker listened to such urgent trivia as how Elli was getting along with her Bible study group, or coping with her shopping problems while the car was off the road. He did not need to ask why Kurtz had chosen such a moment to discuss these matters. In his day, he had done the same thing exactly. Kurtz wanted to touch base before the killing. He wanted to hear Israel talking to him live.

"Elli's just fine," Kurtz assured Becker enthusiastically as he rang off. "She sends love, she says ‘Gadi hurry on back home.' She bumped into Frankie a couple of days back. Frankie was fine too. A little lonely for you, but fine."

Kurtz's second phone call was to Alexis and at first Becker might have supposed, if he hadn't known Kurtz better, that it was all part of the same affable round-up of good friends. Kurtz listened to his agent's family news; he asked about the coming baby--yes, mother and child in excellent health. But once these preliminaries were over, Kurtz braced himself and went straight and hard to the nub, for in his last few conversations with Alexis he had sensed a distinct easing in the Doctor's devotion.

"Paul, it appears that a certain accident we recently spoke of is about to occur at any moment and there is nothing you or I can do to prevent it, so get yourself a pen and paper," he announced jovially. Then, changing tone, he poured out his instructions in a brisk Germanic stream: "For the first twenty-four hours after you receive the official word, you will confine your enquiries to the student quarters of Frankfurt and Munich. You will let it be known that the principal suspects are a left-wing group of activists known to have connections with a cell in Paris. You have that?" He paused, allowing Alexis time to write things down.

"On day two, after midday, you present yourself at the Munich main post office and you collect a poste restante letter addressed to you in your own name," Kurtz continued when he had apparently obtained the required reassurance. "This will provide you with the identity of your first culprit, a Dutch girl, together with certain background data regarding her involvement in previous incidents."

Kurtz's orders now proceeded at dictation speed, and with great force: no searches to be made in Munich city centre until day fourteen; the results of all forensic tests to be sent to Alexis alone in the first instance, and not put into distribution until cleared by Kurtz; public comparison with other incidents made only with Kurtz's approval. Hearing his agent bridle, Kurtz held the receiver a distance from his ear so that Becker could hear it too. "But, Marty, listen--my friend--I must ask something, actually--

"Ask it."

"What are we looking at here? An accident is not a picnic, after all, Marty. We are a civilised democracy, you know what I mean?"

If Kurtz did, he refrained from saying so.

"Listen. I must demand something. Marty, I demand it, I insist on it. No damage, no loss of life. This is a condition. We are friends. You follow?"

Kurtz followed, as his terse answers testified. "Paul, there will surely be no damage to German property. A little bruising maybe. No damage."

"And life? For God's sake, Marty, we are not primitive here!" cried Alexis, with a resurgence of alarm.

A massive calm entered Kurtz's voice. "No innocent blood will be shed, Paul. You have my word. No German citizen will suffer so much as a scratch."

"I can rely on this?"

"You'll have to," said Kurtz, and rang off without leaving his number.

In normal circumstances, Kurtz would not have used the telephones so freely, but since Alexis now had the responsibility for the tapping of them, he felt entitled to take the risk.

Litvak rang ten minutes later. Go, said Kurtz; the green light; do it.

They waited, Kurtz at the window, Becker in his chair again, looking past him at the uneasy night sky. Grabbing the central catch, Kurtz unfastened it and shoved the two casements as wide as they would go, admitting the boom of the traffic from the autobahn.

"Why take needless risks?" he muttered, as if he had caught himself in an act of negligence.

Becker began counting at the soldier's speed. So long to arrange the two of them in position. So long for the last checkup. So long to get clear. So long before a break in the traffic was signalled from both directions. So long to wonder how much human life is worth, even to those who dishonour the human bond completely. And to those who do not.

It was as usual the loudest bang anyone had ever heard. Louder than Godesberg, louder than Hiroshima, louder than all the battles he had fought. Still sitting in his chair, looking past Kurtz's silhouette, Becker saw one orange ball of flame burst out of the ground, then vanish, taking the late stars and early daylight with it. It was followed at once by a wave of oily black smoke that rushed to fill the space left behind by the expanding gases. He saw débris fly into the air and a spray of black fragments spin away from the rear--a wheel, a chunk of tarmac, something human, who would ever tell? He saw the curtain brush itself affectionately against Kurtz's bare arm, and felt the warm puff of a hair dryer He heard the insect-like buzz of hard objects trembling against each other and, well before that had stopped, the first cries of indignation, the yapping of dogs, and the slopping of scared feet as people in bedroom slippers collected in the covered gangway that linked the chalets, and said the nonsense sentences to each other that people say in films of sinking ships: "Mother! Where's Mother! I've lost my jewels." He heard a woman in hysterics insist that the Russians were coming, and an equally frightened voice assure her that it was only a petrol tanker going up. Someone said it was military--the things they move at night are a disgrace! There was a radio by the bed. While Kurtz stayed at the window, Becker switched it to a local chat programme for insomniacs and kept it running in case they cut into it with a bulletin. To the wail of a siren, a police car hurtled down the autobahn, blue light flashing. Then nothing, then a fire engine, followed by an ambulance. The music stopped and gave way to the first announcement. Unexplained explosion west of Munich, cause unknown, no further details. Closure of autobahn in both directions, traffic advised to take alternative route.

Becker switched off the radio and put on the lights. Kurtz closed the window and drew the curtains, then sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes without untying the laces.

"I, ah, had a word from our people in the Embassy in Bonn the other day, Gadi," said Kurtz, as if something had just refreshed his memory. "I asked them to make a couple of enquiries about those Poles you are working with in Berlin. Check their finances."

Becker said nothing.

"The news is not too good, it seems. Looks as though we'll have to find you some more money or some more Poles."

Still receiving no answer, Kurtz slowly lifted his head, and saw Becker staring at him from the doorway, and something in the taller man's posture fired his anger quite remarkably.

"You wish to tell me something, Mr. Becker? You have a moral point to make that will ease you into a nice frame of mind?"

Becker apparently had none. Softly closing the door behind him, he was gone.

Kurtz had one last call to make: to Gavron, on the direct line to his home. He reached for the phone, hesitated, then drew back his hand. Let the little Rook wait, he thought as the anger lit in him again. He rang him nevertheless. Beginning gently, everything controlled and sensible. The way they began always. Speaking English. And using the cover names designated for the week. "Nathan, here is Harry. Hi. How is your wife? Great, and give her mine. Nathan, two little goats of our acquaintance just caught a bad cold. That will surely please those people who from time to time require satisfaction."

Listening to Gavron's scratched, non-committal response, Kurtz felt himself begin to shake. But still he contrived to keep his voice on a tight rein. "Nathan, I think that now begins your big moment. It is owed to me that you hold off certain pressures and let this thing mature. Promises have been made and kept, a degree of trust is now in order, a little patience." Of all the men and women of his acquaintance, Gavron alone tempted him to say things he afterwards regretted. Still he kept himself in check. "Like nobody expects a chess game to be won before breakfast, Nathan. I need air, hear me? Air--a little freedom--some territory of my own." His anger welled over: "So tie those crazies down, will you? Go out into the marketplace and buy me some support for a change!"

The line was dead. Whether the explosion was responsible, or Misha Gavron, Kurtz never knew, for he did not try to ring back.

part two

the prize

sixteen

For three interminable weeks, while London slipped from summer to autumn, Charlie lived in a state of half-reality, vacillating from disbelief to impatience, from excited preparation to spasmodic terror.

Sooner or later they will come for you, he kept saying. They must. And he set about preparing her mind for her accordingly.

Yet why must they come? She did not know and he did not tell her, but used his remoteness as a protection. Would Mike and Marty somehow make Michel their man, as they had made Charlie their girl? She had days of imagining that Michel would one day catch up with the fiction they had built for him, and appear before her, ardent for his lover's due. And Joseph gently encouraged her in her schizophrenia, guiding her ever closer to her absent proxy. Michel, my darling own Michel; come to me. Love Joseph, but dream of Michel. At first she hardly dared look at herself in the mirror, she was so convinced her secret showed. Her face was stretched tight by the outrageous information hidden just behind it; her voice and movements had an underwater deliberation that set her miles apart from the rest of humanity: I'm a one-girl show right round the clock; it's all the world, then me.

Then slowly, as the time dragged by, her fear of exposure gave way to an affectionate disrespect for the innocents around her who failed to see what was shoved under their noses every day. They are where I came from, she thought. They are me before I walked through the looking-glass.

Towards Joseph himself, she used the technique she had perfected on her drive through Yugoslavia. He was the familiar to whom she referred her every action and decision; he was the lover she cracked her jokes and put on her make-up for. He was her anchor, her best friend, her best thing altogether. He was the sprite who popped up at all odd places, with quite impossible prescience about her movements--now at a bus-stop, now at the library, now at the launderette, sitting under the neon lights among the dowdy mums, watching his shirts go round.

But she never admitted his existence. He was outside her life completely, out of time and touch--except for their furtive assignations, which sustained her. Except for his proxy, Michel.

For rehearsing As You Like It, the company had rented an old Territorial Army drill hall near Victoria Station and she went there each morning, and each evening she washed the smell of stale military beer from her hair.

She allowed Quilley to lunch her at Bianchi's and found him odd. He seemed to be trying to warn her of something, but when she asked him outright what it was, he clammed up and said that politics were people's own affair, which was what he'd fought the war for, in the Green Jackets. But he got awfully drunk. Having helped him sign the bill, she rejoined the crowds in the street and had the feeling of riding out ahead of herself; of following her own elusive shape as it slipped away from her, through the bobbing people. I am separated from life. I'll never find my way back. But even while she thought this, she felt the brush of a hand against her elbow as Joseph drew momentarily alongside before peeling away into Marks & Sparks. The effect of these sightings upon her was soon extraordinary. They kept her in a constant state of vigilance and, if she was honest with herself, desire. A day without him was a nothing day; one glimpse, and her heart and body thrilled to him like a sixteen-year-old's.

She read the respectable Sunday newspapers and studied the latest amazing revelations about Sackville-West--or was it Sitwell?--and marvelled at the self-regarding irrelevance of the ruling English mind. She looked at the London she had forgotten, and found everywhere support for her identity as the radical committed to the violent path. Society as she knew it was a dead plant; her job was to clear it away and use the soil for something better. The hopeless faces of the shoppers shuffling like manacled slaves through the neon-lit supermarket told her so; so did the despairing old, and the venomous-eyed policemen. So did the lounging black kids watching the Rolls-Royces sweep by, and the shiny banks with their air of secular worship and their righteous martinets of managers. The building societies luring the deluded into their property traps; the booze shops, the betting shops, the vomit--with little effort on Charlie's part, the entire London scene presented an unemptied dustbin of discarded hopes and disappointed souls. Thanks to the inspiration of Michel, she constructed her mental bridges between capitalist exploitation in the Third World and here on her doorstep in Camden Town.