Or it chose you, she thought, which is what choice is called when you are born into captivity. And somehow, quite quickly, she fell asleep.
But Gadi Becker, the seasoned warrior, lay patiently awake, staring at the darkness and listening to the uneven breathing of his young recruit. Why had he spoken to her like that? Why had he declared himself to her at the very moment when he was dispatching her on her first mission? Sometimes he no longer trusted himself. He would flex his muscles only to find that the cords of discipline did not tighten against him as they used to. He would set a straight course, only to look back and marvel at his degree of error. What am I dreaming of, he wondered, the fighting or the peace? He was too old for both. Too old to go on, too old to stop. Too old to give himself, yet unable to withhold. Too old not to know the smell of death before he killed. He listened again as her breathing settled to the calmer rhythm of sleep. Holding his wrist Kurtz-style before him in the darkness, he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Then, so quietly that even wide awake she would have been hard-pressed to hear him, he put on his red blazer and stole from the room.
The night concierge was an alert man, and had only to see the well-dressed gentleman approach him to sense at once the proximity of a large tip.
"You have telegram forms?" Becker demanded, in a peremptory tone.
The night concierge dived below his counter.
Becker began writing. Large, careful letters in a black ink. He had the address in his head--care of a lawyer in Geneva; Kurtz had signalled it to him from Munich after confirming with Yanuka, for safety's sake, that it was still in use. He had the text in his head to thirteen. It began "Kindly advise your client" and referred to the maturing of bonds in accordance with our standard contract. It ran to forty-five words, and when he had checked them over he added the stiff self-conscious signature in which Schwili had patiently instructed him. Then he handed the form across the counter, and gave the concierge five hundred drachmas for himself.
"I wish you to send it twice, you understand? The same message, twice. Once now by telephone, again in the morning from the post office. Don't give the job to a boy, do it yourself. Afterwards, you send me a confirmatory copy to my room."
The concierge would do everything exactly as the gentleman ordered. He had heard of Arab tips, he had dreamed of them. Tonight, out of the blue, he had finally landed one. There were many other services he would have wished to perform for the gentleman, but the gentleman, alas, was unreceptive to his suggestions. Forlornly, the concierge watched his prey stride into the street, then cut away towards the waterfront. The communications van stood in a car park. It was time for the great Gadi Becker to file his report and make sure all was clear for the big launch.
thirteen
The monastery lay two kilometres from the border, in a hollow of boulders and yellow sedge. It was a sad, desecrated place of caved-in roofs and a courtyard of broken cells with psychedelic hula girls painted on the stone walls. Some post-Christian had started a discothèque here, but, like the monks, had fled. On the concrete pad intended as a dance floor stood the red Mercedes, like a warhorse being tended for the battle; beside it, the champion who would ride it, with Joseph the administrator supervising at her elbow. This is where Michel brought you to change the number plates and see you off, Charlie; this is where he handed you the false papers and the keys. Rose, wipe down that door panel again, please. Rachel, what's that scrap of paper on the floor? He was Joseph the perfectionist once more, ordering every tiny detail. The communications van stood against the outer wall, its aerial gently nodding in the hot breeze.
The Munich number plates were already bolted in position. A dusty German "D" had replaced the diplomatic sticker. Unwanted rubbish had been removed. With meticulous care, Becker now began introducing eloquent souvenirs to replace it: a thumbed guidebook to the Acropolis shoved into a door pocket and forgotten; grape pips for the ashtray, fragments of orange-peel for the floor; Greek ice-cream sticks, scraps of chocolate paper. Next, two cancelled tickets to the ancient sites of Delphi, followed by an Esso road map of Greece with the route between Delphi and Thessalonika marked in fibre-tip pen, with a couple of Michel's scribbled marginal annotations in Arabic close to the point in the hills where Charlie had fired the gun one-handed, and missed. A comb with a few black hairs in it, the teeth smeared with Michel's pungent German hair lotion. A pair of leather driving gloves, lightly sprayed with Michel's body-mist. A spectacles case by Frey of Munich, the one that went with the sunglasses which had been inadvertently smashed when their owner tried to pick up Rachel at the border.
And lastly he submitted Charlie herself to an equally searching scrutiny, covering the whole surface of her clothed body, from her shoes to her head and down again by way of her bracelet before he turned--reluctantly, as it seemed to her--to a small trestle table on which were laid out the revised contents of her handbag.
"So now put them in, please," he said finally, when he had made another check; and watched her pack everything in her own way--handkerchief, lipsticks, driver's licence, coins, wallet, keepsakes, keys, and all the meticulously calculated junk that, on examination, would testify to the complex fictions of her several lives.
"What about his letters?" she said. A Joseph pause. "If he wrote me all those hot-breath letters, I'd cart them round with me everywhere, wouldn't I?"
"Michel does not permit that. You have strict instructions to keep his letters in a safe place in your flat and above all never to cross a frontier with them in your possession. However--From the side pocket of his jacket, he had drawn a small diary wrapped in protective cellophane. It was clothbound, with a little pencil in the spine. "Since you do not keep a diary, we decided to keep one for you," he explained. Gingerly, she accepted it and pulled away the cellophane. She took out the pencil. It was lightly dented with teeth marks, which was what she still did with pencils: chewed them. She leafed through half a dozen pages. Schwili's entries were sparse but, with Leon's flair and Miss Bach's electronic memory, all her own. Over the Nottingham period, nothing: Michel had descended on her without warning. For York, a big "M," with a question mark and a ring round it. In the corner of the same day, a long, contemplative doodle, the sort she did when she was daydreaming. Her car was featured:Fiat to Eustace, 9 a.m. Her mother also: 1week to Mum's birthday. Buy present now. So also was Alastair:A to Isle of Wight--Kellogg's commercial?He hadn't gone, she remembered; Kellogg's found a better and more sober star. For her monthly periods, wavy lines, and once or twice the facetious entry off games. Turning forward to the Greek holiday, she found the name Mykonos, printed in large pensive capitals, and beside it the departure and arrival times of the charter. But when she came to the day of her arrival in Athens, the whole double page was illuminated with a flock of soaring birds, in blue and red ballpoint like a sailor's tattoo. She dropped the diary into the handbag and closed the catch with a snap. It was too much. She felt dirty and invaded. She wanted new people she could still surprise--people who could not fake her feelings and her handwriting so that she could no longer distinguish them from the originals. Perhaps Joseph knew that. Perhaps he read it in her brusque manner. She hoped so. With his gloved hand he was holding open the car door for her. She got in quickly.
"Look at the papers once more," he ordered.
"I don't need to," she said, looking straight ahead of her.
"Number of the car?"
She gave it.
"Date of registration?"