The barman's concert had ended and he was noisily shutting down the bar as a prelude to going off to bed. At Kurtz's suggestion, they took themselves to the hotel lounge and huddled there head to head like passengers on a windswept deck. Twice during their discussions, Kurtz glanced at his old steel watch and hurriedly excused himself to make a telephone call; and later, when Alexis out of idle curiosity investigated them, he established that he had spoken to a hotel in Delphi, Greece, for twelve minutes, and paid cash, and to a number in Jerusalem, untraceable. At three o'clock or more, several Oriental-looking guest workers appeared in frayed overalls, wheeling a great green vacuum cleaner that resembled a Krupp cannon. But Kurtz and Alexis kept talking over the din. Indeed, it was well after dawn before the two men walked out and shook hands on their bargain. But Kurtz was careful not to thank his latest recruit too lavishly, for Alexis, as Kurtz well knew, was of a type to be alienated by too much gratitude.
The re-born Alexis hurried home, and, having shaved and changed and tarried long enough to impress his bride with the high secrecy of his mission, arrived at his glass-and-concrete office wearing an expression of mysterious contentment such as had not been seen on his face for a long while. Among his staff it was remarked that he joked a lot, and ventured some risqué comment about his colleagues. Quite the old Alexis, they said; he's even showing signs of humour, though humour was never his strong point. He called for blank writing paper and, excluding even his private secretary, set to work penning a long and deliberately obscure report to his masters on an approach he had received from a "highly placed Oriental source known to me in my previous capacity," and including a mass of brand-new information on the Godesberg outrage--though none of it sufficient, as yet, to do more than authenticate the bonafides of the informant and, by extension, of the good Doctor as his controller. He requested certain powers and facilities, and also a non-accountable operational fund to be opened in Switzerland and dispensed at his sole discretion. He was not a grasping man, though it was true his remarriage had been expensive and his divorce ruinous. But he did recognise that, in these materialistic days, people valued most highly what cost them most.
And lastly he made a tantalising prediction, which Kurtz had dictated to him word by word, and had him read back while he listened to it. It was imprecise enough to be virtually useless, precise enough to impress greatly once it was fulfilled. Unconfirmed reports claimed that a large consignment of explosive had recently been supplied by Islamic Turkish extremists in Istanbul for the purpose of anti-Zionist actions in Western Europe. A fresh outrage should be expected in the next few days. Rumours suggested a target in southern Germany. All frontier posts and local police forces to be alerted. No further details available. The same afternoon, Alexis was summoned by his superiors, and the same night he conducted a very long clandestine telephone call with his great friend Schulmann, in order to receive his congratulations and encouragement, as well as fresh instructions.
"They are biting, Marty!" he cried excitedly, in English. "They are sheep. They are completely in our hands!"
Alexis has bitten, Kurtz told Litvak back in Munich, but he's going to need one hell of a lot of shepherding. "Why can't Gadi hurry that girl up?" he muttered, staring moodily at his watch.
"Because he doesn't like the killing any more!" Litvak cried with a jubilation he could not hold back. "You think I can't feel it? You think you can't?"
Kurtz told him to be quiet.
twelve
The hilltop smelt of thyme and was a special place for Joseph. He had looked for it on the map and led Charlie to it with an air of moment, first by car and now on foot, climbing purposefully past rows of wattle beehives, through glades of cypress trees and stony fields of yellow flowers. The sun was still not at its height. Inland lay range after range of brown mountains. Eastward she glimpsed the silver plains of the Aegean until the haze turned them into sky. The air smelt of resin and honey and rang to the din of goat bells. A fresh breeze burned one side of her face and clamped her light dress against her body. She held his arm, but Joseph, deep in concentration, seemed not to notice. Once she thought she saw Dimitri sitting on a gate, but when she exclaimed, he warned her sharply not to greet him. Once she could have sworn she saw the silhouette of Rose, up above them on the skyline, but when she looked again she saw nothing.
Their day till then had had its own choreography and she had let him steer her through it with his customary restlessness. She had woken early to find Rachel standing over her, telling her that she was please to wear the other blue, dear, the one with the long sleeves. She showered quickly and marched back into the bedroom stark naked, but Rachel was gone and it was Joseph who sat perched before a breakfast tray for two, listening to a Greek news bulletin on his little radio, for all the world her companion of the night. She shot back into the bathroom, he handed the dress round the door to her; they ate hurriedly and in near silence. In the foyer he paid cash and pocketed the receipt. At the Mercedes, when they took their luggage to it, she found Raoul the hippy boy lying not six feet from the rear bumper, fiddling with the engine of an overladen motorbike, and Rose reclining on the grass with her hip cocked while she munched a bread roll. Charlie wondered how long they'd been there and why they had to guard the car. Joseph drove the mile down the road to the ancient sites, parked once more, and long before other mortals had started to queue and swelter, he had spirited her through a side gate and treated her to another privately conducted tour of the centre of the universe. He showed her the Temple of Apollo and the Doric wall inscribed with hymns of praise, and the stone that had marked the world's navel. He showed her the Treasuries and the running track and treated her to a commentary on the many wars that had been fought to obtain possession of the Oracle. But there was no lightness to his manner, as there had been on the Acropolis. She had a picture of him with a check-list in his mind, ticking each heading as he hurried her through.
Returning to the car, he handed her the key.
"Me?" she said.
"Why not? I thought fine cars were your weakness."
They headed north over winding empty roads and at first he did little but assess her driving technique, much as if she were taking her Advanced Test again, but he could not make her nervous, nor she him apparently, for quite soon he spread the map over his knees and ignored her. The car handled like a dream, the road changed from tarmac to gravel. With each sharp turn a cloud of dust shot up and, lit by the fresh sunlight, drifted away into the stupendous landscape. Abruptly he folded up the map and returned it to the pocket at his side.
"So, Charlie? You are ready?" he enquired, as brusquely as if she had been keeping him waiting. And resumed his narrative.
At first, they were still in Nottingham, their frenzy at its height. They had spent two nights and one day in the motel, he said, and the register bore this out.
"The staff, if pressed, will recall a loving couple answering our description. Our bedroom was at the western end of the complex, looking on to its own piece of garden. In due course, you will be taken there and see for yourself what it looked like."
Most of their time they had spent in bed, he said, talking politics, exchanging lives, making love. The only interruptions, it seemed, were a couple of flips into the Nottingham countryside, but the lovers' desire soon got the better of them and they hurried back to the motel.
"Why didn't we just have it off in the car?" she enquired, in an effort to draw him from his dark mood. "I like those unscheduled ones."
"I respect your taste, but unfortunately Michel is shy in these matters and prefers the privacy of the bedroom."
She tried again: "So how does he rate in the charts?"
He had the answer to that too. "According to the best-informed reports, he is a little unimaginative, but his enthusiasm is boundless and his virility impressive."
"Thank you," she said gravely.