by Daniel Silva
She stood up, pulled on her coat, then walked into Isherwood’s office. He was hunched over a ledger book, chewing on the end of a pencil. He looked up as she entered the room and gave her a weak smile. “Leaving so soon, my love?”
“I’m afraid I must.”
“I shall count the hours until I see you again.”
“And I shall do the same.”
As she walked out she realized that she would miss Isherwood when it was all over. He was a decent man. She wondered how he had become entangled with the likes of Ari Shamron and Gabriel. She hurried across Mason’s Yard through windblown rain, then walked up Duke Street toward Piccadilly, thinking about the letter. It depressed her. She could picture the rest of the evening. She would meet Yusef at his flat. They would go to dinner, then return to his flat and make love. Then two hours of Middle East history. The injustices heaped upon the defenseless Palestinians. The crimes of the Jews. The inequity of the two-state solution on the negotiating table. It was getting harder and harder for her to pretend that she was enjoying herself.
Gabriel had promised her a short assignment: seduce him, get into his flat, get his keys and his telephone, and get out again. She had not signed up for a long-term romance. She found the idea of sleeping with Yusef again repulsive. But there was something else. She had agreed to come to London because she thought working with Gabriel would rekindle their romance. If anything it had driven them farther apart. She rarely saw him—he communicated through letters—and the few times they had been together he had been cold and distant. She had been a fool to think things could ever be the way they had been in Tunis.
She entered the Piccadilly Underground station and walked to the crowded platform. She thought of her villa; of cycling through the sun-drenched hillsides around Valbonne. For a moment she imagined Gabriel riding next to her, his legs pumping rhythmically. Then she felt silly for allowing herself to think about such things. When the train came, she squeezed her way into the packed carriage and clung to a metal handhold. As the car lurched forward, she decided this would be the last night. In the morning, she would tell Gabriel she wanted out.
Gabriel paced the carpet of the listening post, casually dribbling a lime-green tennis ball in his stocking feet. It was shortly before midnight. Jacqueline and Yusef had just finished making love. He listened to their mutual declarations of physical pleasure. He listened to Yusef using the toilet. He listened to Jacqueline padding into the kitchen for something to drink. He heard her ask Yusef where he had hidden her cigarettes.
Gabriel lay on the couch and tossed the ball toward the ceiling while he waited for Yusef to begin tonight’s seminar. He wondered what the topic would be. What was it last night?—the myth that only the Jews made the desert bloom. No, that was the night before. Last night had been the betrayal of the Palestinians by the rest of the Arab world. He switched off the lamp and continued tossing the ball and catching it in the dark to test his reflexes and sensory perception.
A door opening, the snap of a light switch.
Yusef said somberly: “We need to talk. I misled you about something. I need to tell you the truth now.”
Gabriel snatched the tennis ball out of the darkness and held it very still in the palm of his hand. He thought of Leah, the night she used those same words before telling him that she had retaliated for his infidelity by taking lovers of her own.
Jacqueline said lightheartedly, “Sounds awfully serious.”
Gabriel sent the ball floating upward through the darkness with a subtle flick of his wrist.
“It’s about the scar on my back.”
Gabriel got to his feet and switched on the lamp. Then he checked his tape decks to make certain they were recording properly.
Jacqueline said, “What about the scar on your back?”
“How it got there.”
Yusef sat down on the end of the bed. “I lied to you about how I got the scar. I need to tell you the truth now.”
He took a deep breath, let the air out slowly, began speaking, slowly and softly.
“Our family stayed in Shatila after the PLO was driven out of Lebanon. Maybe you remember that day, Dominique; the day Arafat and his guerrillas pulled out while the Israelis and the Americans waved good-bye to them from the waterfront. With the PLO gone we had no protection. Lebanon was in shambles. Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, the Druse—everyone was fighting everyone else, and the Palestinians were caught in the middle of it. We lived in fear that something terrible might happen. Do you remember now?”
“I was young, but I think I remember.”
“The situation was a powder keg. It would take just one spark to set off a holocaust. That spark turned out to be the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. He was the leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Christians and the president-elect of the country. He was killed in a car bomb explosion at the headquarters of the Christian Phalange party.
“That night half of Beirut was screaming for vengeance, while the other half was cowering in fear. No one was sure who had planted the bomb. It could have been anyone, but the Phalangists were convinced the Palestinians were to blame. They loathed us. The Christians never wanted us in Lebanon, and now that the PLO was gone, they wanted to eliminate the Palestinian problem from Lebanon once and for all. Before his death Gemayel had said it very clearly: ‘There is one people too many: the Palestinian people.’
“After the assassination the Israelis moved into West Beirut and took up positions overlooking Sabra and Shatila. They wanted to cleanse the camps of the remaining PLO fighters, and in order to prevent Israeli casualties they sent in the Phalange militiamen to do the job for them. Everyone knew what would happen once the militiamen were let loose on the camps. Gemayel was dead, and we were the ones who were going to pay the price. It would be a bloodbath, but the Israeli army let them in anyway.
“The Israelis let the first Phalangists into Shatila at sunset, one hundred and fifty of them. They had guns, of course, but most of them had knives and axes as well. The slaughter lasted forty-eight hours. The lucky ones were shot. Those who weren’t so lucky died more gruesome deaths. They chopped people to bits. They disemboweled people and left them to die. They skinned people alive. They gouged out eyes and left people to wander the carnage blindly until they were shot. They tied people to trucks and dragged them through the streets until they were dead.
“Children weren’t spared. A child could grow up to be a terrorist, according to the Phalangists, so they killed all the children. Women weren’t spared, because a woman could give birth to a terrorist. They made a point of ritualistically slicing off the breasts of the Palestinian women. Breasts give milk. Breasts nourish a people that the Phalangists wanted to exterminate. All through the night they broke into homes and slaughtered everyone inside. When darkness fell, the Israelis lit up the sky with flares so the Phalangists could go about their work more easily.”
Jacqueline made a steeple of her fingers and pressed them against her lips. Yusef continued with his account.
“The Israelis knew exactly what was going on. Their headquarters were located just two hundred yards from the edge of Shatila. From the rooftop they could see directly into the camp. They could overhear the Phalangists talking on their radios. But they didn’t lift a finger to stop it. And why did they stand by and do nothing? Because it was exactly what they wanted to happen.
“I was just seven at the time. My father was dead. He was killed that summer when the Israelis shelled the camps during the Battle of Beirut. I lived in Shatila with my mother and my sister. She was just a year and a half old at the time. We hid beneath our bed, listening to the screaming and the gunfire, watching the shadows of the flares dancing on the walls. We prayed that the Phalangists would somehow miss our house. Sometimes we could hear them outside our window. They were laughing. They were slaughtering everyone in sight, but they were laughing. My mother covered our mouths whenever they came near to keep us quiet. She nearly smothered my sister.
“Final
ly they broke down our door. I wriggled out of my mother’s grasp and went to them. They asked where my family was, and I told them everyone was dead. They laughed and told me that I would soon be with them. One of the Phalangists had a knife. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me outside. He stripped off my shirt and sliced away the skin on the center of my back. Then they tied me to a truck and dragged me through the streets. At some point I went unconscious, but before I blacked out I remember the Phalangists shooting at me. They were using me for target practice.
“Somehow, I survived. Maybe they thought I was dead, I don’t know. When I regained consciousness the rope they had used for the dragging was still wrapped around my right ankle. I crawled beneath a pile of rubble and waited. I stayed there for a day and a half. Finally, the massacre was over, and the Phalangists withdrew from the camps. I came out of my hiding place and found my way back to our family’s house. I found my mother’s body in our bed. She was naked, and she had been raped. Her breasts had been sliced off. I looked for my sister. I found her on the kitchen table. They had cut her into pieces and laid her out in a circle with her head in the center.”
Jacqueline tumbled out of bed, crawled into the bathroom, and was violently sick. Yusef knelt beside her and placed a hand on her back as her body wretched.
When she finished he said, “You ask me why I hate the Israelis so much. I hate them because they sent the Phalangists to massacre us. I hate them because they stood by and did nothing while Christians, their great friends in Lebanon, raped and killed my mother and chopped my sister to bits and laid her body out in a circle. Now you know why I’m a rejectionist when it comes to this so-called peace process. How can I trust these people?”
“I understand.”
“Do you really understand, Dominique? Is it possible?”
“I suppose not.”
“Now, I’ve been completely honest with you about everything. Is there anything you wish to tell me about yourself? Any secrets you’ve been keeping from me?”
“Nothing of any consequence.”
“You’re telling me the truth, Dominique?”
“Yes.”
The call came at four-fifteen that morning. It woke Yusef, though not Gabriel. He had been sitting up all morning, listening to Yusef’s account of Sabra and Shatila over and over again. It rang just once. Yusef, his voice heavy with sleep, said, “Hello.”
“Lancaster Gate, tomorrow, two o’clock.”
Click.
Jacqueline said, “What was that?”
“A wrong number. Go back to sleep.”
Maida Vale in the morning. A gang of schoolboys teasing a pretty girl. Jacqueline imagined they were Phalangist militiamen armed with knives and axes. A lorry roared past, belching diesel fumes. Jacqueline saw a man tied to the bumper being dragged to death. Her block of flats loomed in front of her. She looked up and imagined Israeli soldiers standing on the roof, watching the slaughter below through binoculars, firing flares so the killers could better see their victims. She entered the building, climbed the stairs, and slipped into the flat. Gabriel was sitting on the couch.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he had survived Shatila? Why didn’t you tell me his family had been butchered like that?”
“What difference would it have made?”
“I just wish I had known!” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Is it true? Are the things he told me true?”
“Which part?”
“All of it, Gabriel! Don’t play fucking games with me.”
“Yes, it’s true! His family died at Shatila. He’s suffered. So what? We’ve all suffered. It doesn’t give him the right to murder innocent people because history didn’t go his way!”
“He was an innocent, Gabriel! He was just a boy!”
“We’re in the middle of an operation, Jacqueline. Now is not the time for a debate on moral equivalence and the ethics of counterterrorism.”
“I apologize for permitting the question of morality to enter my thoughts. I forgot you and Shamron never get tripped up over something so trivial.”
“Don’t lump me in with Shamron.”
“Why not? Because he gives orders, and you follow them?”
“What about Tunis?” Gabriel asked. “You knew Tunis was an assassination job, but you willingly took part in it. You even volunteered to go back the night of the killing.”
“That’s because the target was Abu Jihad. He had the blood of hundreds of Israelis and Jews on his hands.”
“This one has blood on his hands too. Don’t forget that.”
“He’s just a boy, a boy whose family was butchered while the Israeli army looked on and did nothing.”
“He’s not a boy. He’s a twenty-five-year-old man who helps Tariq kill people.”
“And you’re going to use him to get to Tariq, because of what Tariq did to you? When does it end? When there’s no more blood to shed? When, Gabriel?”
He stood up and pulled on his jacket.
Jacqueline said, “I want out.”
“You can’t leave now.”
“Yes, I can. I don’t want to sleep with Yusef anymore.”
“Why?”
“Why? You have the nerve to ask me why?”
“I’m sorry, Jacqueline. That didn’t come out—”
“You think of me as a whore, don’t you, Gabriel! You think it doesn’t bother me to sleep with a man I don’t care for.”
“That’s not true.”
“Is that what I was to you in Tunis? Just a whore?”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Then tell me what I was.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going back to France? Back to your villa in Valbonne? Back to your Parisian parties and your photo shoots and your fashion shows, where the most difficult question is deciding what shade of lipstick to wear?”
She slapped him across the left side of his face. He stared back at her, eyes cold, color rising in the skin over his cheekbone. She drew back her hand to slap him again, but he casually lifted his left hand and deflected her blow.
“Can’t you hear what’s going on?” Gabriel said. “He told you the story of what happened to him at Shatila for a reason. He’s testing you. He wants you for something.”
“I don’t care.”
“I thought you were someone I could depend on. Not someone who was going to fall apart in the middle of the game.”
“Shut up, Gabriel!”
“I’ll contact Shamron—tell him we’re out of business.”
He reached out for the door. She grabbed his hand. “Killing Tariq won’t make it right. That’s just an illusion. You think it will be like fixing a painting: you find the damage, retouch it, and everything is fine again. But it’s not like that for a human being. In fact it’s not even like that for a painting. If you look carefully you can always see where it’s been retouched. The scars never go away. The restorer doesn’t heal a painting. He just hides the wounds.”
“I need to know if you’re willing to continue.”
“And I want to know if I was just your whore in Tunis.”
Gabriel reached out and touched her cheek. “You were my lover in Tunis.” His hand fell to his side. “And my family was destroyed because of it.”
“I can’t change the past.”
“I know.”
“Did you care for me?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes, very much.”
“Do you care for me now?”
He closed his eyes. “I need to know whether you can go on.”
30
HYDE PARK, LONDON
Karp said, “Your friend picked a damned lousy place for a meeting.”
They were sitting in the back of a white Ford van on the Bayswater Road a few yards from Lancaster Gate, Karp hunched over a console of audio equipment, adjusting his levels. Gabriel could scarcely hear himself think over the
riotous din of cars, taxis, lorries, and double-decker buses. Overhead, the trees lining the northern edge of the park writhed in the wind. Through Karp’s microphones the air rushing through the branches sounded like white water. Beyond Lancaster Gate the fountains of the Italian Gardens splashed and danced. Through the microphones it sounded like a monsoonal downpour.
Gabriel said, “How many listeners do you have out there?”
“Three,” Karp said. “The guy on the bench who looks like a banker, the pretty girl tossing bread to the ducks, and the guy selling ice cream just inside the gate.”
“Not bad,” Gabriel said.
“Under these conditions don’t expect any miracles.”
Gabriel looked at his wristwatch: three minutes past two. He thought: He’s not going to show. They’ve spotted Karp’s team, and they’re aborting. He said, “Where the fuck is he?”
“Be patient, Gabe.”
A moment later Gabriel saw Yusef emerge from Westbourne Street and dart across the road in front of a charging delivery truck. Karp snapped a couple of photographs as Yusef entered the park and strolled around the fountains. During the middle of his second circuit, he was joined by a man wearing a gray woolen overcoat, face obscured by sunglasses and a felt hat. Karp switched to a longer lens, took several more photographs.
They circled the fountains once in silence, then during the second circuit began to speak softly in English. Because of the noise from the wind and the fountains, Gabriel could make out only every third or fourth word.