by D A Kent
‘And it will be home, I promise,’ he said, gently. ‘I still miss things about Warsaw, but I really couldn’t call it home now’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘My place, if that’s all right. For tonight, or what’s left of it. I share it with Gunn.’
‘Fine by me.’
Chapter 28
Sara stood downstairs, in the house in Tiberias which Sol and Gunn had rented only the previous week, her bag clasped tightly in her arms, looking round her. It was almost empty.
‘We’ve only just moved in,’ Sol explained. ‘We’ve hardly been here. You have my room; I’ll sleep on the roof.’
Someone had dropped their post round. David, he suspected. There was a letter from his aunt in Paris, which he tucked into his pocket to read later, a note from their landlord and another postcard for Gunn from Sylvia. The line of kisses caught his eye; he didn’t read it. He put it carefully on one side. He really hoped Gunn was safely on his way back.
Having made sure Sara was comfortable, Sol settled down on a mat on the roof with a cigarette and tried to relax. He loved the view over Galilee from up here; it was one of the reasons they had chosen the house. He drifted into an uneasy sleep for a while.
On the other side of the Sea of Galilee, it had been a long, cold night for Gunn, who had stuffed himself and a blanket found in the wreckage of the trucks into a fissure in some rocks and scree. He woke with the first vague glimmerings of dawn after a fitful sleep. Instinctively, he reached for Sylvia. Then he remembered where he was. He lifted his head slightly, and through slitted eyes, watched as the Syrian camp below unfurled into life. From a professional perspective, he was less than impressed by what he saw, but that was moot.
So near and yet so far; he could almost see Tiberias. He grunted in sour amusement and wondered what the chances were of a sinner such as he walking on water. He had to find a way back.
Sol could hear Sara moving around. He found her in the kitchen, in tears.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Come up on the roof,’ he suggested gently, taking her by the hand. ‘It’s cooler up there. We’ll watch the sun come up later.’
‘How could I have left my father?’
‘Your father was a brave and honourable man,’ he said, kissing her tears away. ‘You know he wanted this for you. And I’m going to take care of you. If you want me to, that is. But we should try and get some rest for now,’ he told her, settling her down on the mat. ‘Busy day ahead.’
Not that he had a clue what the day would hold, he thought to himself.
‘Hold me,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
He lay next to her, breathing in the faint scent of lemons from her long dark hair. He felt her relax against him, and she went to sleep. He could feel her heart beating. He thought back to when he had first met her, in Damascus; it seemed a lifetime ago. She would have been eighteen then, just a girl. He had made promises to her father before they left yesterday. He would keep them, although he was not sure how at the moment. For now, he drew Sara closer to him. It had been a long time since he had held a pretty girl in his arms. He kissed her gently and joined her in a deep sleep.
Edward Cumberland was looking out over a different sea. He was in Bandol, one of his favourite spots. He had the day off from flying today, after a particularly action-packed schedule in recent days. He was learning to switch off completely from thinking about his ‘cargo.’ Life was good. Louis had sent him a little money, and he had signed the lease on an apartment near the harbour. He was meeting Bonnard for dinner here this evening. He beckoned the waitress over and ordered a coffee and a croissant. He had been watching the fishing boats manoeuvring in and out of the harbour and had another chapter of Herodotus to read with his breakfast. He stretched luxuriously.
‘Wind, sand and stars,’ he thought happily.
He didn’t notice the ghastly apparition approaching from his left until it was too late, and a bony hand had grabbed him by the ear, with a triumphant hiss of ‘Got you.’
Edward got up, in horror, ready to run, but thought better of it. He would face the old cow down. How dare she appear in his new life? He motioned the waitress over again and ordered his mother the same as him.
‘What are you doing here, Mother?’ he asked, when their breakfast arrived. He noted her grimace at the bitterness of the coffee with childish satisfaction; he had acquired a taste for it. She had always hated black coffee. Winifred noted for her part that she was now ‘Mother,’ not Mummy. She didn’t like that.
‘I want you to face up to your responsibilities,’ Winifred told him. ‘Did you know Mr. and Mrs. Andrews are going to put the baby in a children’s home, when it’s born? Is that what you want for your son?’
Edward had to admit, he did not want that. He had always thought of his sons following in his footsteps to Wellington. But he was never going home and that was that. He told his mother so in no uncertain terms.
‘Have you been seeing that little bitch while you’ve been over here?’ she asked, shocked at his uncouthness. ‘I heard she was in France. Is that where your attitudes are coming from?’
‘Of course not,’ he told her. He had heard Sylvia was in France too but he did not know where. If only, he thought. Perhaps she would find him attractive now that he was a pilot again and had a little flat by the sea. Although from what he had been able to make out, she and Gunn were definitely together. Whatever did she see in him?
‘Anyway, what if it’s a girl?’ he objected, changing the subject.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Winifred countered. ‘There is another way, of course.’
Picking at her croissant, Winifred outlined her plan. Caroline and Edward would marry quietly abroad, to give the baby a name. Caroline would return to England and move in with Winifred until the birth. She would then give the baby to Winifred to bring up and afterwards she would be free.
‘I don’t see how that assists,’ Edward commented, draining his coffee cup. ‘We wouldn’t be able to get divorced for years. She’d follow me out here, and I am absolutely not having that. And how do you think you are going to persuade her to give the baby to you anyway?’
‘Oh, she won’t have much choice, don’t worry,’ Winifred told him, her eyes glittering. ‘But this way, you’re officially the baby’s father, whatever happens. And she doesn’t have any money of her own, so she can’t follow you out here.’
‘Well, I’m not coming back to England or having anything else to do with her,’ Edward said wearily, wondering how he had become embroiled in these distasteful matters. All he wanted to do was fly. ‘So long as that’s abundantly clear, you do what you want.’
‘That’s settled then,’ Winifred said happily. ‘I’ll make the arrangements. Better get her out here as soon as we can; poor girl looks like the back of a bus already.’
‘She always did,’ Edward thought, motioning the waitress to bring the bill.
Far away, in their Bavarian hideaway, Adler finally caught up with Wirth, who was having what he described as an ‘early morning stroll’ around the castle grounds. Not much of a stroll, reflected Adler, more of a route march. He wondered, not for the first time, how old Wirth actually was; he seemed ageless, somehow. It had just started to rain; a soft but persistent drizzle. He unfurled a large black umbrella and held it over his professor, as he still liked to think of him.
‘Matthaus is dead,’ he announced. ‘Otto just called.’
Wirth paused for a moment. Years ago, in more innocent times, he had played with Matthaus and his brother at the little hotel in the mountains owned by an aunt of his, when they used to visit from Egypt, a place which had seemed so exotic and faraway to him then. He shrugged. Matthaus had turned into something else altogether, a traitor. That disgusted him. He had got his come-uppance.
‘There will be plenty more where he came from,’ he observed. ‘And if it keeps the attention of the Israelis away from our little operation, all well and good. T
here is still much to be done.’
He looked across at Adler. Yes, a true believer. Fischer was efficient, hard-working and good at his job, but that was as far as it went. Nobody would suspect what he was involved in. Yet there were certain things he could not and would not share with him. Perhaps he should consider involving young Adler at a deeper level.
In Tiberias, Sol came to with a start. Somebody was at the door downstairs. He peered down. It was David.
‘Be with you in a minute,’ he called.
‘No need,’ David noted. ‘I will come up. Nice car, by the way.’
He climbed the stairs and then the short wooden ladder onto the flat roof. He shook Sara’s hand and then hugged her, whispering a welcome into her ear. He accepted a cigarette from Sol and sat on the low lip of the roof.
‘So, my boy, you get the job done but you leave the Englishman in the dirty stuff.’
‘Gunn got the job done and he got us out.’ Sol’s reply was brittle. ‘We owe him.’
‘No, we don’t. We are grateful.’ David blew a smoke ring across the roof. ‘But he’d better come back. I have a lot more work for the pair of you. Where did you last see him?’
‘At the house in Damascus; we agreed we wouldn’t wait if he was later than half past one. I had to get my foot down, there was an army truck in hot pursuit of us most of the way. It disappeared about forty minutes from the border. I wonder if he had anything to do with it.’
Sol chewed at his finger.
‘I’ll go and make some enquiries,’ David said. ‘Back here in an hour or two. Let you get sorted.’
In Cairo, Alaikum had got up early. He had been to the souk. Having grown up in and around it, he loved shopping there, especially now he had money, always on the lookout for items for the new house. He kicked the door open to the office; his hands were full of his purchases.
Otto had been up for hours. Matthaus’s death was confirmed. He felt genuinely sad about that and had been quite taken aback by Adler’s offhand reaction to the news.
‘Traitor to the Reich. He had it coming to him. Let us know about his killers when you hear anything. They’ll have their hands full now, that’s for sure.’
Scheherezade had been up early too, sending reports of trucks lying beside the King’s Highway and fatalities.
‘Word is that Kalinsky got out, with a girl, and Gunn was in one of the trucks - ran the other one off the road and killed everyone in it. The Syrians are hopping mad. It would be better if he was dead, actually. Because if he isn’t, and they catch him...’
‘Keep me posted,’ Otto told her. ‘Wonder who the girl was. What a morning,’ he said, turning to Alaikum, smiling indulgently at all the shopping. ‘And I haven’t even had breakfast yet.’
As David walked back, he could see Sol and Sara having breakfast on the roof. Sol had been to the little shop around the corner and Sara, anxious to keep busy, had been investigating the contents of the cupboards for crockery and cutlery and chatting to Sol about her studies.
‘I got my medical degree in Damascus. I need to do the practical stage now, in a hospital.’
‘Well, that should be easy to arrange, ‘Sol told her. ‘We need doctors here.’
‘Oh to be young again,’ David thought to himself, amused, hauling himself carefully up the rickety ladder.
‘Not good news, I’m afraid. There are reports of the mangled wreckage of two Syrian army trucks on the Kings Highway. Gunn pushed your pursuer off the road all right but he may have killed himself in the process.’
‘We’ll find out more soon,’ he added, helping himself to a glass of orange juice. Sol and Sara were visibly shaken and upset. ‘There’s not a lot we can do for now. I would suggest you get some rest and come in for a briefing this evening.’
Gunn felt in the pocket of his fatigues. He was down to his last cigarette; it was battered. Still, he would save it. There was no point in giving himself away. He lifted the blanket and let the breeze filter into his hideaway. The trucks would be discovered before too long. Even the most casual of patrols would not miss the wreckage. The sun was coming up. It was time to make a move; keep the red stuff flowing through his veins.
He lifted himself carefully from his billet and crawled slowly back to the far side of the slope, away from the Sea of Galilee. Spurs of rock and clusters of thorns snagged and caught at his fatigues as he went. He reflected, as he inched his way painfully along, that he was not in a good place, and from what he could deduce, a long way from anywhere he could safely lay his head. It was pretty exposed up here. Still, he was alive. That would do for now. He would make the most of the time before him. He had once read a Norse legend to the effect that the skein of a man’s life was woven long before he was born, and the knot would be snapped at the appointed time, no sooner and no later. There was nothing to fear in that, he reflected; the Norsemen had probably been onto something.
His ankle was throbbing and he was dehydrated. He drained the last drops of water from the water flask and threw it away, into a large thorn bush. Making his way slowly along the ridge, he thought about the vivid dream he had just had about France and another night on scrubby high ground, watching the dawn coming up over an army camp. This time, the uniforms were grey, and there was a fearless girl beside him, with tawny hair and high cheekbones, a rifle in her hand.
‘Mark, you need to go now, quickly,’ she had said. ‘Please. I’ve got you covered. Just go.’
He shook his head. Why the hell had he been dreaming about that bitch? Why was there such a sense of urgency in her voice? She had hardly shown him any concern, had she, or the baby for that matter? Well, he agreed with her about one thing anyway. It was time to get out of here.
Epilogue
From the vantage point of his apartment window, Pierre Billet could see the girl – so like her mother - cross the square, clutching the photographs and the piece of squared paper he had given her, her pale blue dress a contrast to the black mushrooms that grew on the surrounding walls, a by-product, as he loved to tell any tourists who would listen, of cognac production.
She was right. There was no time to lose. They’d promised to keep in touch but he had a feeling he would soon be joining Amelie in the vault in the little stone church on the corner. He waved cheerily to the old bat who had stopped outside, to let her minuscule, yappy dog do its business on his front step. She had spat at him in the street last week. Since his return, he had been shunned, appraised with narrowed eyes. Sometimes he found it hard to believe how rapid his fall from grace had been. Perhaps, by his actions just now, he could make amends and at least assuage his guilt.
He watched the girl stop and reach into her handbag, a gesture so reminiscent of her mother that he could have wept, for her car keys, and then observed her driving off, slowly and with care. As she disappeared round the corner, he reached for Amelie’s old address book and took a deep breath; he had a few calls to make.