The Sun Chemist (27 page)

Twenty-five hundred participants of an earlier debacle had found themselves on hands and knees here; the Roman conqueror Titus had brought them, prisoners of war from Jerusalem,
after destroying it, and matched them against lions in a lively season of sporting events.

The place had been built by Herod three generations earlier and dedicated to his patron, the Caesar Augustus, in 13
B.C.
It had been the most magnificent town on the East Mediterranean, with a huge and splendid port and a colonnaded jetty for V.I.P. arrivals from Rome. There’d been no economy out of Herod in the matter of local materials; his marble, prime stuff, had come from Italy, and I could see bits of it still strewn about the cliff top beyond the amphitheatre: broken columns, busts, sarcophagi.

This area was only a small part of Herod’s town; to the north a kibbutz now sat on another section, and to the south, where we’d left the car, the Crusaders had built their town on another bit. It had even extended beyond that. Twinkling lights in the distance marked the country villas of Foka Hirsch and his
affluent
neighbors, and somewhere behind me Lord Rothschild had laid out a golf course on another of Herod’s suburbs. In the years after the Arab conquest, Bedouin had come to squat in the tumbled magnificence. I could see the rough fishing jetty that had been cobbled out of one arm of the Crusader harbor. The tiny figures of tourists were ambling up and down it now, between the floodlit mosque and the fish restaurants and art galleries that were the most recent contributions to the scene.

As Beethoven thundered on below, I thought hard. Patel had evidently realized that I’d recognized him; must have, to have approached me so directly, this man who’d been staying away. ‘Most urgent. Do nothing until then.’ Why? Because he wanted to do something first. Explanation, entreaty, bribery – or
something
of a more active antipersonnel type?

I leaned forward slightly and looked along the row. His eyes reflected glassily in the lighting from below; there was greenish pallor about the face, which was glistening, mouth a bit slack. Something would be going on in the upper story. Whatever it was, it boded no good. Definitely, Meyer first.

As the long work came to an end, to tumultuous and emotive applause, Marie-Louise said she had to spend a penny. The same emotional response seemed to be wrung from other ladies, some hundreds of whom sprang up on all sides. This was fortunate.
Almost trampled underfoot by urgent matrons, going both down and up, I was immediately engulfed, but managed to shuffle sideways down. I didn’t see what happened to Patel. When I looked back, only Ham and Michael Sassoon seemed to be left in the row.

Coffee bars were operating in the intermission in various parts, and Meyer was stretching his legs on his way to one. He was chatting to the American Ambassador, Keating. I kept my eyes on both white thatches and struggled through to them. He saw the look on my face and excused himself to Keating.

‘Meyer, I’ve got to talk to you. Patel –’

‘Okay, we’ll talk about it later.’

‘What do you mean, later? I –’

‘How did
you
find out?’ he said.

It took a moment to sort out this tangle. He’d had a phone call when on the point of leaving. The security guard on the Wix had come upon Patel rather peculiarly circling the building. He’d asked him what he wanted. Patel said he was looking for
somebody
. The man had told him the place was closed and that
nobody
was about. He’d phoned Meyer about it.

‘Damn it, that isn’t anything,’ I said. I told him what was.

‘He’s here?’ he said.

‘Of course he is.’ I looked frantically around in the mob. ‘He’s trying to find me.’

‘So stay away from him. Is he going on to this party?’

‘Well, he came
here
,’ I said.

‘So he’ll find us both. I’ll look in there.’

‘But what shall I –’

‘Nothing. Do nothing until then. What can he do now? We can’t talk here. I’m sorry,’ he said to Keating, who was drumming his heels, and turned away.

‘Do nothing until then’ from both of them. Definitely a fluid situation here. What was the matter with everybody? Couldn’t they understand the terrible, the absolutely grotesque things that had happened to me this evening? Ham’s principal concern had been that I shouldn’t alarm Marie-Louise; Meyer’s not to offend Keating. I had a look at my watch. Still not nine o’clock: barely a couple of hours since the nightmare had begun. It showed no
signs of abating. It had become that bit worse, in fact; was
insidiously
transforming itself into that more hideous type in which the awful things happened in a jolly carnival atmosphere with
nobody
apparently noticing, or caring if they did.
What could Patel do now?
He could do a lot. There were such things as knives, or needles. There were such things as huddled figures discovered after the throng had passed.

My mouth was dry and I needed a cup of coffee myself, but by the time I struggled to the bar, bells had begun to ring and the crowd to disperse. It seemed safest to disperse with them. I kept my eyes open on returning to the auditorium. I felt like a lost soul, an exceedingly panicky one, in this sea of drifting faces. The aisles were crowded, people shuffling back into place along the clifflike stone tiers. I saw him, miles up. He was coming
down
, with Marta and Connie; had evidently been to a coffee bar on top. He was looking about him. His eyes seemed to fix on Meyer, who was settling convivially back in place.

I shuttled swiftly back into the entry arch again and thought this out. Obvious enough that Meyer had been to a bar below; better if I hadn’t been. I pattered rapidly back through the bar, found the steps to the upper level and re-emerged into the
amphitheatre
with the last of the crowd from above. He was still looking all about, screwing round in his seat – except that he had changed his seat. He’d swapped with Felicia, was now sitting next to Ham, one nearer to me. He saw me coming down and his eyes hung rather sickly on mine. I dropped into my seat just as the choir all stood up and, after a trill-up or two from the
orchestra
, broke into the most tremendous hosanna.

The already good acoustics of Herod’s amphitheatre had been rendered near perfect by a massive honeycomb-design baffle that deadened the slight hiss of the sea beyond. The sound level was quite extraordinary. My mind flooded instantly with climactic scenes from old movies in which mayhem had taken place under cover of similar blasts of cutural uproar. As Mehta wound up the orchestra to add to it, I felt myself shaking like a leaf.

But what could he do here, after all – blow a dart tipped with fatal curare? Yes, easily. He could do any damned thing he wanted, probably. He wasn’t only fast in the upper section, but
everywhere else – exceptionally nippy and dexterous in all
directions
. I recalled the unnerving speed with which he’d practically caught up with me after my flying start – only seconds in it, really. I’d won those seconds by leaving through one door as he entered another. The trick was to make every second count.

As the bellowing continued, I tried to do this. It was a question of identifying a critical situation ahead, of bringing some large magnification to bear on it; if only the pandemonium would let up below.

It did, mercifully. A brief cantata or two followed, and then the masters of keyboard and string took over, and Vivaldi
began
delicately to unravel. Much easier on the ears, and I leaned over and whispered, ‘Marie-Louise, change places with Ham after this.’

Her eyes were moist and she seemed to come back from some distance, but she nodded, and I nodded, and gave more of an ear to Vivaldi. They were delicately unpicking him below. I began to unpick the next hour, looking for the vital seconds where the action was. In the busy brain along the row, the options would be under review. He’d missed me in the interval. Something funny could have happened in the interval. He wouldn’t like anything funny to happen again. He’d stick like a leech; wouldn’t want to delay whatever he’d got in mind till we got to the party. The difficult moments would come between here and the party; in practice between here and the car. These were the moments that called for the magnification.

Vivaldi ran out, and in the delighted applause Marie-Louise shuffled about with Ham, who presently shuffled down beside me.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Stick tight when we leave here. Meyer wants me to keep away from Patel till we get to Hirsch’s.’

‘Well, that is going to be embarrassingly bloody difficult,’ Ham said. Patel had already spoken to him; he’d changed seats to ask if he could come in the car. He had met friends of the Sassoons’ in the coffee bar, who had come by bus, and who were also going to the party. His offer to give up his seat in the Sassoons’ car had been gladly accepted.

I began to sweat very slightly. I was on to him, was reading him pretty clearly now. But his reactions were coming altogether too fast. I looked along the row at him, and found he was looking at me, face still glistening. I felt mine glistening more, with the sheer strain of trying to outthink him.

Barenboim, Menuhin, and Stern had taken their homage
below
, and with great good humor now embarked on something of a fugal nature. So did I. I had the glimmering of something as the piece ended and the orchestra limbered up for the last item (also well chosen, a final salute to the ship of state on its twenty-sixth year: Mendelssohn’s
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
), and was on my feet applauding with the rest of them as the concert ended.

‘Let the air out of a tire,’ I said to Ham.

‘Goddam it, I can’t do that.’

‘I’m not going in that car with him.’

‘But–’

‘Do it, Ham. Please do it.’

Marie-Louise passed; then Patel. He took my arm urgently as he stood in the aisle. ‘I must talk with you, Igor.’

‘Of course,’ I said, and opened my arms to Felicia and gave her a tremendous hug. I gave Marta one, too, and then Connie. Patel got himself bundled down the steps during this. He called, ‘Igor!’ His face was quite greenish. ‘We will meet below?’

‘Of course we will.’

No help for it; but I saw that I had an arm round both
Connie
and Marta as we did so. There was still a considerable scrum of people, but as we got into the lane numbers of them streamed off to the buses. In the lane, Ham didn’t seem to know what was for the best. He started off in front with Marie-Louise, but then dropped uncertainly behind as he saw what Patel was doing. Patel was very weirdly running about there, unable to decide which end of the threesome to attach himself to.

‘Igor, we must talk,’ Patel said.

‘All right.’

‘Alone, please.’

‘Ram, what is the big secret?’ Connie said.

‘Ah, men’s talk!’ Patel said, with a gruesome attempt at gaiety.

‘But we’re going in the same car,’ I said.

‘Ah, I had forgotten,’ Patel said. He said it at about the moment that Ham, dropping behind, came into earshot.

Several hundred people were moving along the road to the car park, and we stood around in a loose cluster when we got there. Ham stood around, too, until I gave him a look and he wandered off.

He was away for what seemed a long time, which Connie fortunately filled in with illuminating comments on the Crusader town for the benefit of a couple of Americans in her party. We were standing just outside it, the massive walls floodlit from the dry moat below. Connie gave all the facts about Richard
Lionheart
and Saladin, and also about Louis IX, who had rebuilt the walls, and then Sultan Baybars I, who had finally stormed them in the Arab conquest of 1265. Not much had happened since until the Israelis had excavated and found it all still there, and had put it back in position again, together with a box office to greet tourists at the business end of Louis IX’s moat.

Ham returned toward the end of the dissertation, and he was smiling. ‘Aren’t we going to a party?’ he said.

The group split up, and I reluctantly let Connie and Marta go, and placed a protective arm round Marie-Louise instead as we went to the car.

‘Well, goddam it!’ Ham said as we neared it.

‘What is it?’

‘Have I got a flat?’

‘A flat?’ I studiously examined the car. He had got it flat as a pancake.’ I do believe you have,’ I said.

‘Oh, no!’ Marie-Louise said.

‘Oh, yes.’ He was down on his haunches. ‘That’s very flat.’

‘You can’t mend a flat,’ Marie-Louise said.

‘You don’t have to mend the goddam thing. You just change the wheel.’

‘When did you change a wheel?’

‘I can change a wheel,’ I said.

‘We’ll both change it. You two go on with the others.’

‘I will help,’ Patel said.

‘No, no. Hey, Connie!’ Ham yelled.

The argy-bargy had gone on considerably too long; the
Sassoons
had already cruised by. Connie came slowly up, headlights on. ‘Are you in trouble?’ she said.

‘A flat. Can Marie-Louise and Ram squeeze in?’

‘Of course.’

‘I will stay,’ Patel said. His face had a drenched look in the headlights.

‘We’d get in each other’s way. Carry on.’

Connie and Marie-Louise saw that this happened, and Patel left with a rather despairing look; he was on somebody’s knee as the car pulled out.

‘You certainly have some cute ideas,’ Ham said. ‘Can you change a wheel?’

‘Well, bugger the wheel!’ I said. An enormous wave of relief was sweeping over me as I realized the strain I’d been under. I’d been under it for hours, with nobody apparently understanding. Ham still didn’t seem to understand. In the massive silence, the floodlit walls exuded a healing calm. ‘Ham, this is the most incredible thing,’ I said.

‘Well, it is. I didn’t like to say it.’

I looked at him. ‘You didn’t believe me?’

‘Well –
something
obviously happened. But –’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I told him of Meyer and the incident at the Wix.