"Misha will surely appreciate that," said Kurtz without enquiring which devil Picton was referring to.
"Funny, really, all the same. You chaps tipping us off about our own terrorists. In my day the traffic tended to go the other way."
Kurtz said something soothing about the wheel of history, but Picton was no poet.
"Your operation, of course," said Picton. "Your sources, your shout. My Chief is adamant about it. Our job is to sit tight and do what we're bloody told," he added, with a sideways glance.
Kurtz said cooperation was what it was all about these days, and for a second Picton looked as though he might blow up. His yellowed eyes widened, and his chin shot into his neck and stuck there. But instead, perhaps to calm himself, he lit a cigarette, turning his back on the wind and cupping his huge catcher's hands to shield the flame.
"Meanwhile, you'll be amazed to hear your information is confirmed," Picton said, with the heaviest sarcasm, as he flicked away the match."Berger and Mesterbein flew Paris-Exeter return, took a Hertz car on arrival Exeter Airport, notched up four hundred and twenty miles. Mesterbein paid by American Express credit card in his own name. Don't know where they spent the night, but no doubt you'll advise us in due course."
Kurtz preserved a virtuous silence.
"As to the lady in the case," Picton went on, with the same forced levity, "you will be equally astonished to hear that she is currently doing a spot of acting in deepest Cornwall. She's with a classical drama group, name of the Heretics, which I like, but you wouldn't know that either, would you? Her hotel says a man answering Mesterbein's description picked her up after the show and she didn't get home till morning. Proper little bed hopper by the sound of her, your lady." He allowed a monumental pause,which Kurtz affected to ignore. "Meanwhile, I am to advise you that my Chief is an officer and a gentleman and will provide you with every assistance. He's grateful, my Chief is. Grateful and touched. He's soft on Jews and he thinks it's very handsome of you to take the trouble to come over here and put us on to her." He shot Kurtz a malevolent glance. "My Chief is young, you see. He's a great fan of your fine new country, barring accidents, and not disposed to listen to any nasty suspicions / might have."
Stopping before a big green shed, Picton thumped his stick on the iron door. A boy in running shoes and a blue tracksuit admitted them to an empty gymnasium. "Saturday," Picton said, presumably to explain the atmosphere of desertion, and launched himself upon an angry tour of the premises, now eyeing the state of the changing-rooms, now running an enormous finger along the parallel bars to check for dust.
"I hear you've been bombing those camps again," Picton said accusingly. "That Misha's idea, is it? Misha never did like a rapier when a blunderbuss would do."
Kurtz began to confess quite truthfully that the processes of decision-taking in the upper levels of Israeli society had always been something of a mystery to him; but Picton had no time for that type of answer.
"Well, he won't get away with it. You tell him that from me., Those Pallies will come back to haunt you lot for the rest of time."
This time Kurtz only smiled and shook his head in wonder at the world's ways.
"Misha Gavron was Irgun, wasn't he?" Picton said, in merest curiosity.
"Haganah," Kurtz corrected him.
"Which was your lot then?" said Picton.
Kurtz affected the loser's shy regret. "Fortunately or not, Commander, we Raphaels arrived in Israel too late to be of any inconvenience to the British," he said.
"Don't bullshit me," said Picton. "I know where Misha gets his friends from. I gave him his bloody job."
"So he told me, Commander," Kurtz said, with his waterproof smile.
The athletic boy was holding open a door. They passed through. In a long glass case lay a display of homemade weapons for silent killing: a knobkerrie with nails driven into the head, a hat-pin, very rusty, with a wooden handle added, homemade syringes, an improvised garrotte.
"Labels fading," Picton snapped at the boy when he had regarded these instruments nostalgically for a moment. "New labels by ten hundred hours Monday, hear me, or I'll have you."
He stepped back into the fresh air, Kurtz plodding agreeably at his side. Mrs. O'Flaherty, who had waited for them, fell in at her master's heels.
"All right, what do you want?" said Picton, like a man driven against his will to settle. "Don't tell me you came here to bring me a love-letter from my old mate Misha the Rook, because I won't believe you. I doubt whether I'll believe you anyway, as a matter of fact. I'm hard to convince, where your lot's concerned."
Kurtz smiled and shook his head in appreciation of Picton's English wit.
"Well, sir, Misha the Rook feels that a simple arrest in this case is just out of the question. Owing to the delicacy of our sources, naturally," he explained, in the tone of a mere messenger.
"I thought your sources were all just good friends," Picton put in nastily.
"And even if Misha were to consent to a formal arrest," Kurtz continued, still smiling, "he asks himself what charges could be filed against the lady and in what court. Who is to prove the explosive was aboard that car when she drove it? The explosive was put aboard afterwards, she will say. Which leaves us, I believe, with the somewhat minor infringement of driving a car through Yugoslavia on false papers. And where are those papers? Who is to prove they ever existed? It's very flimsy."
"Very," Picton agreed. "Misha become a lawyer, has he, in his old age?" he enquired, with a sideways look. "Christ, that would be a case of poacher turned gamekeeper if ever I heard one."
"There is also--Misha argues--the matter of her value. Her value to us, and to yourselves, as she stands at present. In what we might call her state of near innocence. What does she know finally? What can she reveal? Take the case of Miss Larsen."
"Larsen?"
"The Dutch lady who was involved in the unfortunate accident outside of Munich."
"What of her?" Stopping in his tracks, Picton turned to Kurtz and glowered down on him with growing suspicion.
"Miss Larsen also drove cars and ran errands for her Palestinian boyfriend. The same boyfriend, as a matter of fact. Miss Larsen even placed bombs for him. Two. Maybe three. On paper, Miss Larsen was a very implicated lady." Kurtz shook his head. "But in terms of usable intelligence, Commander, she was an empty vessel." Unaffected by Picton's menacing proximity, Kurtz lifted his hands and opened them to show how empty the vessel was. "Just a little groupie kid who liked the scene, who liked the danger and the boys, and liked to please. And they told her nothing. No addresses, no names, no plans."
"How do you know that?" said Picton accusingly.
"We had a little talk with her."
"When?"
"A while ago. Quite some while. A little sell-and-tell deal, before we threw her back into the pool. You know the way it goes."
"Like five minutes before you blew her up, I suppose," Picton suggested, as his yellowed eyes continued to hold Kurtz in their stare.
But Kurtz's smile was wonderfully unruffled. "If it were only so easy, Commander," he said, with a sigh.
"I asked what you wanted, Mr. Raphael."
"We'd like her set in motion, Commander."
"I thought you might."
"We'd like her smoked out a little, but not arrested. We'd like her running scared--so scared maybe that she is obliged to make further contact with her people, or they with her. We'd like to take her all the way through. What we call an unconscious agent. Naturally, we would share the product with you, and when the operation is over, you are welcome to both the lady and the credit."
"She's made contact already," Picton objected. "They came and saw her in Cornwall, brought her a bunch of bloody flowers, didn't they?"