The Mandelbaum Gate (38 page)

‘I’ve
hardly used it,’ Ruth said. She was lifting the transmitter out of her
wardrobe. ‘Where can I hide this?’ She got out a suitcase and started to put
things away in it.

Ruth
had panicked. Suzi was amazed; she had never seen the kindly woman in this mood
before. Presently, Ruth seemed to become aware of Suzi’s bewilderment. She
said, ‘Suzi, if you knew how serious it would be for me if Hamilton got on to
anything….’

‘You
take a cigarette and sit down,’ Suzi said. ‘There’s no need for him to see you
if you keep in this end of the house. Why should he suspect? A matter of fact,
the last place he would suspect espionage would be this place, since I have
brought him here. This throws them off-scent. Now I tell you that Alexandros is
a friend of Freddy, and I do all this for Alexandros. Freddy is not looking for
spies, he’s looking for fun, this trip.’

Ruth
said, ‘You don’t know that type of Englishman as I do.’

She
went to the door, opened it, peered out and closed it again.

Then
she sat down and lit a cigarette. She looked at her watch.

She
said, ‘The messenger should be here between half past one and two. It’s one
now. I wonder if my note’s safe till he comes.’

‘In the
tree?’

‘Yes, I’d
better go and have a look.’

That is
crazy. You lose your nerve.’

‘I’m
going to have a look. I wish we’d never got mixed up in this business. But once
you’re in it, you’re in it. I must send word to my husband that Hamilton’s
here. I’m going to —’

‘Freddy
might see you. Don’t go out.’

‘He can’t
see in the dark. At least, he can’t do that.’

‘Better
you remain indoors,’ Suzi said, ‘as he might bump into you at the door or
something. I’ll go and look. How far up the tree is it?’

‘About
five feet.’ Ruth stopped packing. She said, ‘I can’t leave the house. I’ve got
to wait and meet a contact this week or next at the latest. It’s very
important. What shall I do? That message in the tree — go and see if it’s all
right. It’s not important in itself, but I can’t be too careful. Come back at
once and tell me if it’s still there.’

Suzi
started to go. ‘In fact, bring it back to me — Suzi dear — do you mind?’

Suzi
left, but Ruth was at the door, whispering her back. ‘No — leave it. Don’t
bring it. The man will get it between one-thirty and two. Just make sure it’s
still … Come back and —’Suzi was on her way. Outside she walked softly round
the house. The light was still on in Freddy’s room. She crossed to the tree and
began feeling up the bark. Five feet … no. Up the bark, and all round it,
tuft after tuft, feeling sure she was missing the one small pocket where the
folded paper would be. Up the tree and round it again, as far as she could
reach. It must be higher, too high for her. Ruth was taller than she was, and
probably … No, she couldn’t reach, couldn’t find the thing. The man had
probably been to fetch it.

She
returned to Ruth, earnest about keeping her friendship. ‘It’s there,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry.’

Ruth
produced a new anxiety. ‘What has this sick girl to do with Freddy Hamilton?’

‘Oh,
nothing. She stayed in the same hotel as him in Israel, and she’s on a
pilgrimage. I brought them together in the car. Just tourists. You don’t ask
questions about this woman, Ruth, and we don’t ask questions from you, like I
told you.’

‘Yes, I
know. I understand.’ Ruth looked strained and shaken. ‘I’ll keep my side of the
bargain.’

‘You
have a drink. You go to bed.’ Suzi wanted to see Freddy again before he went to
sleep. She felt jittery, too, and said, ‘I’ll go to keep Freddy company. You
don’t think of him any more. He won’t go near your tree or nothing.’

Ruth
relaxed a little, and said, ‘Goodness, are you having an affair with Freddy
Hamilton?’

‘Of
course,’ said Suzi.

‘Well,
I only wish you’d gone somewhere else to have it.’

‘It’s
my father’s house,’ Suzi said. But she added, like a saleswoman, ‘and it’s the
most discreet house in the kingdom of Jordan.’

‘Good
night,’ Ruth said. ‘And keep your eye on Hamilton, for my sake.’

Suzi
started to make her way back along the dark corridor to her own part of the
house, but turning towards the door that enclosed it, she decided instead to
take another puzzled look at the tree.

This
time she found the note easily. It was tucked firmly into a tuft of bark well
within her reach. She wondered if Freddy was in his room, and if she could be
seen in the moonlight.

He was in his room. He was
scribbling with his pocket pen on a piece of paper. He had in fact just
finished decoding the message which he had copied from the note he had replaced
in the tree-bark; the code had been fairly simple, but he was pleased with
himself, brisk and expert at cracking a code as he had been on H.M.S. Achilles
in the war, when he had cracked many a tough code-signal. He was making a
final, brief note of the formula, now, committing it to memory with the message
it revealed, before destroying the record according to the old routine.

Suzi
had entered without knocking. She said, ‘What are you writing?’

‘A
poem,’ Freddy said.

‘Let me
see.’ She reached for it and tried hard to snatch it from his hand. He caught
her arm playfully, and her gold bracelet became unclasped and fell to the
floor. Freddy got it first, and made game with it, holding it out to her, then
snatching it away and holding it behind his back, in an effort to distract her
attention from the piece of paper in his left hand.

Suzi
sat on the bed. ‘Let me see the poem and you can keep the bracelet,’ she said,
holding out her hand for it.

‘I’ll
read you the poem,’ he said. He sat down some distance away from her, near a
table-lamp which he adjusted to gain the small moment for thought under a good
reading light; the necessity of the occasion forced him to act neatly. The
poem is for you,’ he said, ‘naturally.’ He peered at the paper. He said, ‘It’s
crumpled and —’ Then smoothing the crumpled sheet, he read:

Now is the time for secret
pleasantries

With a girl-friend lurking
in her corner ambush,

The time to steal a token
from

Her arm or unprotesting
finger.

‘Go
on,’ Suzi said. Freddy was aware that she had an impression of the
quantity of writing on the page he held. He said, ‘Well, that’s the last verse,
in fact. I haven’t really worked over the others. I usually finish the last
first. Do you like it?’

‘I’ve
read something like it before, I seem to think,’ said Suzi. ‘But not so good,
and not quite like written for me. But I remember a poem I read like it.’

Freddy
laughed with quite genuine amusement. ‘You cunning little thing,’ he said. ‘Of
course you know it’s a translation from Horace. I have the Latin here, too.
Listen —’

nunc et latentis proditor intimo

gratus puella rasus ab angulo

pignusque dereptum lacertis

aut digito male pertinaci.

She
came towards him for the paper. ‘Let me see.’ But he raised it high, and
getting out his lighter, made a flame, as he had done when burning the
Harrogate letters in order to send them easier down the lavatory drain. He
said, as she caught his right arm, ‘I’m going to follow a custom that we
practised at Cambridge University, my dear, when I was young at Cambridge. When
we wrote a poem to a beautiful lady we read it to her and burned it.’ He set
the paper alight and Suzi drew her hand away from the quick flame. As it
consumed the page, Freddy moved only enough to drop it on the tiled floor
between the rugs where it lay in black, furled ash. ‘We burned the poem,’ said
Freddy, treading the charred flimsy furl to powder, ‘as a symbol of
consummation of our love for the lady. Even a translation — I offer it to you —
it’s something better than I could compose myself.’ She was looking at the
black powder on the floor mingled with tiny remaining shreds of white,
unconsumed paper which could reveal nothing of that message, insignificant in
itself, but really very important for Freddy’s purpose; a mere report of some
pipe-lines on the side of the road in Israel, measuring 185 inches. Quite a
size; they had probably been planted there. However, that wasn’t his business,
the point was that this house was undoubtedly, undoubtedly, that one place in
the whole vast area of possibility through which far more serious stuff from
the office had been leaking to Cairo and beyond. It was Nasser’s Post Office
and Gardnor was the man.

It was
only within a few days that Freddy would be sitting in his hotel, forgetful of
this moment, wearily listening to Rupert Gardnor’s long, insufferable story
about the Israeli pipe-line. Those fake pipe-lines, you see … I think they
were something like 195 inches in diameter, at least —’

The
size of those fake water-pipes is
185
inches, not 195.’

‘How do
you know?’ Yes, how did he know? Gardnor made much of the need for an
Intelligence investigation of Freddy during the two weeks that followed this
conversation, and as it came out later, used that time to cover up or destroy
most of the evidence against himself. But not all. Ruth Gardnor got away to
Cairo. Gardnor alone stood trial in the winter to come.

‘Are
you sure you’ve got Gardnor?’ Freddy said on that day when his memory returned
like a high tide, with an undercurrent ebb and flow of details.

‘Yes,
we’ve got Gardnor.’

‘Got a
statement?’

‘He’s
giving it now. Another day or two, and he’d have got away to Cairo.’

‘Did
they find the house at Jericho all right?’

‘Of
course. You’re not to worry, Freddy. Take a’ rest and give us any more details
when you’re O.K. Just as and when. We’ve got all we need. The Jordan
authorities have cooperated.’

‘Did
you find anything at Jericho?’

‘Oh, a
transmitter, you know, and cameras, the usual stuff in the usual places — the
cellar, the wardrobe. We haven’t got his wife, she’s hiding somewhere. The
Jordan authorities are having a good search. They’ve been very helpful. Very
efficient.’

‘I
wouldn’t count on them getting her,’ said Freddy. They didn’t get Barbara
Vaughan.’

‘Well,
we’ve got Gardnor. That’s the —’

‘That’s
the main thing,’ said Freddy, looking at the unbelievable telegrams and
memoranda of telephone calls between the office in Israel and Harrogate. He
clung to what was believable in those first hours of remembrance. Gardnor was
under arrest.

‘So you
see,’ he said to Suzi when he had burned the paper to fragments, ‘the love poem
is yours for ever.’ He genuinely felt it to be so at that moment, as she looked
at his triumph in black ash on the floor, with a half-smile and a half-frown,
as if puzzled, hesitating to take his word, and yet pleased with his gesture,
and in any case, respecting his victory. Freddy thought she was adorable in
her sudden loss of confidence after being so sure of herself all day, and he
was delighted with his own accomplishment. He decided that the next urgent move
was to get her to bed, then tomorrow he might compose for her some verses of
his own, in chant royal perhaps, or
haiku,
why not?

He
said, ‘It’s bed-time, isn’t it?’

She
sifted the powdered ruins of the paper with the toe of her shoe and looked at
him with becoming admiration. ‘You telling me,’ she said. ‘It’s been a busy
day, Freddy, more or less. ‘Where is that bracelet that you laid plots with
your poem to steal? Did you have busy days at Cambridge University?’ They found
the bracelet.

As it
turned out, it was she, not Freddy, who was uneasy in love-making, for she had
the distracting suspicion that his very confidence in bed with her might derive
from some secret success in counter-espionage. She wanted very much to believe
in the poem that had been deftly and symbolically burnt for her, but an
accurate translation of her Arabic thoughts in reserve would have been that it
was damned unlikely. So she missed half the fun of sleeping with Freddy in his
access of goodwill and ardour, and enjoyed only the other half.

At
about three o’clock, when they had just fallen asleep, Suzi woke quickly from a
sound in the stillness beyond the house and started up, waking Freddy. The
sound became more specific, a car approaching.

‘Listen,’
she said.

Freddy
was less sensitive to the approach of motor-cars outside his accustomed places
of sleep. He said, “What is it?’

Then,
from the direction of Jericho the first of the three-o’clock cries arose,
followed by another high call from another mosque Freddy said, ‘It sounds very
beautiful,’ and moved closer to her.

She
said, ‘It’s a car coming to the house.’ It was now an unmistakable sound. The
car pulled up outside, near the front of the house. Suzi was out of bed,
listening at the window. The night air was flooded with the distant chanting
from many mosques, and presently overflowed with a louder voice from the
courtyard, then the sound of a woman’s grateful tones a shuffle and arrangement
of footsteps outside and the banging of the car door. ‘Latifa!’ shouted the man’s
voice. ‘Latifa!’