The hotel was a pantiled ranch on the Helford Estuary, with an indoor pool and a sauna and a nine-hole golf course and guests who looked like hoteliers themselves. She had been to the other hotels, but not, till now, to this one. He had signed in as a German publisher, bringing a stack of unreadable books with him to prove it. He had tipped the switchboard ladies lavishly, explaining that he had international correspondents who were no respecters of his sleep. The waiters and porters knew him as a good touch who sat up all hours of the night. He had lived that way under different names and pretexts for the last two weeks, as he stalked Charlie's progress down the peninsula on his solitary safari. He had lain on beds and stared at ceilings as Charlie had. He had talked to Kurtz on the telephone, and kept himself abreast of Litvak's field operations hour by hour. He had talked to Charlie sparingly, fed her little meals, and taught her more tricks of secret writing and communications. He had been as much a prisoner to her as she to him.
He opened the door to her and she walked past him with a distracted frown, not knowing what to feel. Murderer. Bully. Cheat. But she had no appetite for the obligatory scenes; she had played them all, she was a burnt-out mourner. He was already standing as she entered, and she expected him to come forward and embrace her, but he stood his ground. She had never seen him so grave, so held back. Deep shadows of worry ringed his eyes. He was wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows--cotton, not silk. She stared at it, aware after all of what she felt. No cuff-links. No medallion at the neck. No Gucci shoes.
"You're on your own then," she said.
He did not follow her meaning.
"You can forget the red blazer, can't you? You're you and no one else. You've killed your own bodyguard. No one left to hide behind."
Opening her handbag, she handed him her little clock radio. From the table, he picked up her original model and dropped it into the handbag for her. "Oh indeed," he said with a laugh, closing her bag. "Our relationship is henceforth unmediated, I would say."
"How did I sound?" said Charlie. She sat down. "I thought I was the best thing since Bernhardt."
"Better, In Marty's view, the best thing since Moses came down the mountain. Maybe before he went up. If you wished, you could stop now with honour. They owe you enough. More than enough."
They,she thought. Never we "And in Joseph's view?"
"Those are big people, Charlie. Big little people from the centre. The real thing."
"Did I fool them?"
He came and sat beside her. To be near but not to touch.
"Since you are still alive, we must assume that so far you fooled them," he said.
"Let's go," she said. A smart little tape recorder lay ready on the table. Reaching past him, she switched it on. With no more preamble, they passed to the debriefing, like the old married couple they had become. For though Litvak's audio van had listened to every word of last night's conversation as it was transmitted by the cunningly adapted little radio in Charlie's handbag, the pure gold of her own perceptions had still to be mined and sifted.
eighteen
The swift young man who called at the Israeli Embassy in London wore a long leather coat and granny glasses, and said his name was Meadows. The car was a spotless green Rover with extra pace. Kurtz sat in the front in order to keep Meadows company. Litvak smouldered in the back. Kurtz's manner was diffident and a little shabby, as became him in the presence of colonial superiors.
"Just flown in, have we, sir?" Meadows asked airily.
"Yesterday as ever is," said Kurtz, who had been in London a week.
"Pity you didn't let us know, sir. The Commander could have smoothed things over for you at the airport."
"Oh now, we didn't have that much to declare, Mr. Meadows!" Kurtz protested, and they both laughed because liaison was so good. From the back, Litvak laughed too, but without conviction.
They drove fast to Aylesbury, then fast through pretty lanes. They reached a sandstone gateway mastered by stone cockerels. A blue-and-red sign proclaimed "No. 3 TLSU," a white boom blocked their path. Meadows left Kurtz and Litvak to themselves while he went into the gatehouse. Dark eyes surveyed them from its windows. No cars passed, no distant tractor chattered. There seemed little around that was alive.
"Looks like a fine place," said Kurtz, in Hebrew, while they waited.
"Beautiful," Litvak agreed for the microphone, if there was one. "Nice people, too."
"First rate," said Kurtz. "Top of the profession, no question."
Meadows returned, the boom lifted, and for a surprisingly long time they wove through the uneasy parkland of paramilitary England. In place of sweetly gazing thoroughbreds, blue-uniformed sentries in Wellington boots. Low-backed brick buildings with no windows lay half buried in the earth. They passed an assault course and a private landing strip laid out with orange cones. Rope bridges were strung across a trout stream
"A dream," said Kurtz politely. "Just beautiful, Mr. Meadows. We should have all this at home, but how can we?"
"Well, thanks," said Meadows.
The house had once been old but its fa?ade was vandalised with ministerial paint of battleship blue, and the red flowers in the window-boxes were dressed strictly by the left. A second young man was waiting at the entrance and led them quickly up a glistening staircase of polished pine.
"I'm Lawson," he explained breathlessly, as if they were already late; and rapped bravely with his knuckles on a double door. A voice inside barked "Come!"
"Mr. Raphael, sir," Lawson announced. "From Jerusalem. Bit of bother with the traffic, I'm afraid, sir."
For as long as it takes to be rude, Deputy Commander Picton stayed seated at his desk. He took up a pen and, with a frown, signed his name on a letter. He looked up, and fixed Kurtz with a yellow-eyed stare. Then he leaned his head right forward as though he were about to butt someone, and lifted himself slowly to his feet, all the way, until he was standing to attention.
"And good day to you, Mr. Raphael," he said. And he smiled sparsely, as if smiles were out of season.
He was big and Aryan, with waved fair hair parted like a razor slash. He was broad and thick-faced and violent, with pressed-together lips and a bully's straight gaze. He had the senior policeman's fastidious bad grammar and the borrowed good manners of a gentleman, and both were returnable without notice any time he damn well felt like it. He had a spotted handkerchief stuffed in his left sleeve and a tie with flat gold crowns to tell you he played his games in better company than you. He was a self-made counter-terrorist, "part soldier, part copper, part villain," as he liked to say, and he belonged to the fabled generation of his trade. He had hunted Communists in Malaya and Mau Mauin Kenya, Jews in Palestine, Arabs in Aden, and the Irish everywhere. He had blown people up with the Trucial Oman Scouts; in Cyprus he had missed Grivas by a whisker and when he was drunk he talked of it with regret--but let anybody dare to pity him! He had been second man in several places, first man rarely, for there were other shadows too.
"Misha Gavron in good shape?" he enquired, selecting a button on his telephone and pushing it so hard it might never come up again.
"Commander, Misha is just fine!" said Kurtz enthusiastically, and started to ask after Picton's superior in return, but Picton was not interested in what Kurtz might have to say, least of all about his Chief.
A highly polished silver cigarette box lay prominently on his desk with the signatures of brother officers engraved on the lid. Picton opened it and held it out, if only for Kurtz to admire its shine. Kurtz said he did not smoke. Picton returned the box to its correct position, an exhibit disposed of. There was a knock at the door and two men were admitted, one grey, one tweed. The grey was a forty-year-old Welsh bantamweight with claw marks on the lower jaw. Picton described him as "my Chief Inspector."
"Never ever been to Jerusalem, I'm afraid, sir," the Chief Inspector announced, rising on his toes and pulling down the skirts of his jacket at the same time, as if he were trying to stretch himself an inch or two. "The wife's all for spending Christmas in Bethlehem, but Cardiff was always good enough for me, oh yes!"
The tweeded one was Captain Malcolm, who possessed the class that Picton sometimes longed for and always hated. Malcolm had a soft-toned courtesy that was its own aggression.
"Honour, sir, actually," he confided to Kurtz very sincerely, and gave his hand before Kurtz needed it.
But when Litvak's turn came, Captain Malcolm appeared not quite to grasp his name: "Say again, old boy?" he said.