"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.