“Glasgow, then London. Back to civilization, as you call it.” After lunch Helen drove on, this time east. She was starting to sag in her seat. We were on main roads now. Rejuvenated by dozing and food, I formulated a plan, a plan based on the constraints I was under. I had burned most of my options back at the cottage, only my Lebanese passport remained, with a student visa that ran out in a couple of weeks. It was true that I had lots of money, and I could hole up somewhere, buy documents, a weapon even. But I was worried about Helen and whether I had exposed her to danger. Then there was the matter of the envelope digging into my ribs. I looked at her, but she was intent on the road, pale with fatigue. On the outskirts of Glasgow I saw a shopping center. I told her to stop there.
We needed new clothes to disguise ourselves. I particularly wanted Helen to look different, as one of the agents had spoken to her up close and they possibly had photos of us. I gave her money and told her to buy things she wouldn’t usually wear. We split up, and I bought new shoes and an expensive suit that I wore out of the shop. In the changing room I took the envelope out of my old jacket and weighed it in my hands. It was frayed and sweat-stained, with one corner worn away. I put it in my new jacket. In a newsagent I bought a Daily Telegraph and an oversized card—it had a drawing of a small bear with a plaster on its forehead, and inside was written in cursive script, “Get well soon!” In the toilets I wrote, in Arabic, “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything,” stuffed twenty $1,000 bills inside the card, then wrote Ramzi’s name and work address at UCH on the front, marking it personal and confidential. Hopefully they would use the money for their medical charity. They would probably realize who it was from, but I hoped they would still accept it for what it was. I posted the card outside, then went to the coffee shop, where I’d agreed to meet Helen.
Over coffee I opened the newspaper (more to hide behind than anything) and inside was a small piece about Abu Leila, although it didn’t mention him by name. It said the reason for the shooting on the Ku’Damm was still unknown and that the man was still unidentified. The German police said they had no leads but were ruling nothing out, including a terrorist link. It was a hundred words of lather, except for a sentence about the old woman who was killed, who turned out not to be so old but just disabled, a professor of physics visiting from Frankfurt. I could see no mention of Mossad or the PLO, or that Abu Leila had had someone with him. Had the murder happened behind closed doors then it probably wouldn’t have reached the press, or would have been suppressed for security reasons. But because it had happened in broad daylight in front of so many people it was difficult to hide. I was in no doubt that the killers wanted it known that they had struck, to send a message to others, perhaps those who were planning to attend the Cambridge meeting.
Helen arrived wearing a knee-length skirt and a fitted top, carrying lots of bags. I’d never seen her in a skirt before. I suggested she do something with her hair.
“Don’t you like my hair then?” she said in mock distress.
“It’s one of the first things that attracted me to you,” I said.
“Really?” She sounded dubious. “So it was nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t wearing anything but a towel?”
“Were you not? I didn’t notice.”
I was rewarded with a punch on the arm. She tied her hair back as best she could and put a baseball cap on, pulling the short tail over the strap at the back. We spent half an hour dithering over sunglasses, then went to buy two small cases.
“Why don’t we just share one suitcase?” she asked.
“It’s just better to have two,” I replied, explaining that we might have to split up to avoid detection.
We transferred our belongings to the new cases in the Renault, which I’d decided we should leave behind; we’d spent more time in it than common sense dictated. It made us, as Jack would have said, stick out like a sore thumb. The competition would have reported it stolen, just so the police could do their work for them: all they would have to do was monitor police radio to determine where it was spotted.
“We’ll get a taxi from here,” I told Helen.
“To the station?”
“No, to the airport.”
In the taxi Helen rummaged in her new handbag and removed a tattered book. She blushed. “It’s for you.” The love poems of Kahlil Gibran, a well-worn edition. “I noticed you had a copy in Tufnell Park. I thought you might like another, since you can’t go back there. It’s not in Arabic, of course, but my mother doesn’t really read Arabic, which is why she has this one, so if you could make do with an English edition until—”
I kissed her for the first time in too long. It lingered and her lips were like warm butter. We held hands until we arrived at the departures building at Glasgow Airport.
I paid the driver and we put on our sunglasses. Inside, the place was busy with holidaymakers.
I took Helen’s hand and led her to a table near a lone public phone box. I went to the phone and memorized the number written under the handset. I sat down opposite Helen and scanned the area as best I could. I wanted to kiss her again but I needed to stay strong, stay cool and professional. Instead of kissing her I took off my sunglasses, then hers. I held her hands, stroking the smooth skin with my thumbs.
“I’m going to check out flights and buy tickets,” I said. “Then I’m going to ring you on the phone box behind me when I’ve sorted everything out. If it’s busy I’ll ring back three minutes later.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
I maintained eye contact and shook my head. “They’ll be looking for us together. It’s safer if we split up and meet on the plane. If anyone comes to talk to you then tell me when I ring.” Strands of her hair had escaped her small ponytail so I tucked them under the cap. “If I don’t phone in the next hour, then I want you to go to a police station, preferably a big one.”
“I thought you said the police would be of no help?” she said.
“You want to ask to speak to a Special Branch officer. Be insistent that it’s someone from Special Branch, tell them you have information about foreign agents on British soil.” Special Branch officers were the eyes and ears of MI5 on the ground. Vasily said that MI5 was filled with university-graduate desk analysts, and that Special Branch were the people who did the legwork. I wrote down the license plate numbers and descriptions of the Golf and the Renault. Under the table I put the piece of paper with the car numbers on it inside the Canadian passport I’d taken from the agent. I then slipped the passport into the middle of the Daily Telegraph, which I told her to put in her bag.
“When you have the attention of a Special Branch officer, tell him you have information relating to Israeli agents who are active in the UK. Give him the piece of paper with the license plate numbers and the Canadian passport. Tell him the truth about everything, about me, everything I’ve told you.”
She nodded. I was hoping MI5 wouldn’t be happy that Mossad agents were running around on their turf. Nor would the Canadians be pleased if they were using forged or stolen Canadian passports. At the very least it would cause logistical problems for them. Maybe, if I was lucky, a minor diplomatic incident.
I fiddled with the big watch on her wrist.
“Helen?” my voice was close to breaking. It leaked out of me, this softness, and I had to plug the leak. I surveyed the area for faces, checked for people standing on their own, talking into their sleeves or collars, listening to headphones, reading newspapers. I started to feel more in control.
“Ma belle?”
I stared at the second hand on her watch then looked up. “You should know that I hate flying,” I said.
She put her hands on my cheeks and squeezed slightly. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand,” she said.
“You’re an angel.”
“Yes I am. Don’t you bloody forget it.”
“I won’t.”
I smiled, picked up my case and got up and walked away without looking bac
k.
Forty-Eight
I was surprised at where you could fly to from Glasgow. Flights left every couple of hours to London. There were flights to Paris, to Athens, to Rome. I could go to Paris, get new documents from my painter-forger woman, then go back to London. But then I remembered that I couldn’t go to Paris as I no longer had my Swiss passport and I’d need a visa. I daydreamed about other destinations on the flight board that I could go to with Helen, all of them inaccessible to me. My options were limited.
I bought two one-way tickets to Heathrow from a Britannia Airways counter, and left one there for Helen to pick up. The flight left in forty minutes and I wanted to leave ringing her until it was called, so I wandered around, bought a Glasgow Herald and some Sellotape, all the while struggling with the longing to go back to Helen. In a toilet cubicle I taped what money I had left into the middle section of the newspaper, then folded it in three. With any luck it would be the last time I’d have to carry money or documents like this. I put the newspaper in my bag and took the worn envelope out of my jacket pocket and held it up, shook it, felt it. Now was not the time to open it. Soon, but not now.
As soon as the first call for the London flight came I rang the phone box next to Helen. My heart was pumping extra hard. She picked up on the third ring.
“Michel?”
“Helen, I’ve booked—”
“Michel, he’s here. The man from the beach, I’ve seen him.”
“Has he seen you?”
“No, I don’t think so. He came through the entrance with a couple of other men and they went straight up to departures.”
“You did well to spot them,” I said. They’re close, I thought, but didn’t look around. I gave Helen the flight number and told her where I’d left her ticket. “I’ll watch you go through passport control and make sure you’re OK.” She didn’t say anything. I could hear the second call for the flight being announced where Helen was as well as around me. It was a strange sensation, as if there was a parallel world on the other side of the line, but I attributed it to codeine withdrawal symptoms.
“Helen?”
“You’re not coming with me, are you, ma belle?” Her voice was flat. She was right, although I had at least hoped to tell her face to face. Now that they were in the airport I couldn’t risk it. “Don’t do this to me, Michel. Don’t be another man who fucks off. Don’t do it.”
I shook my head until I remembered that she couldn’t see me.
“I’m putting you in danger, I can’t stay here, can’t even be seen with you.” I looked out of the kiosk but couldn’t see them.
“Don’t pretend this is about me, that you’re so fucking noble.” Her sobs came down the phone. It had the odd effect of making me feel strong. I needed to be stronger than she was; we couldn’t both fall apart at the same time. I pushed another coin into the slot and waited for her to speak. She blew her nose.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just know I can’t stay in England anymore.” I sounded cold and distant, even to myself. I heard her sniff and blow her nose again.
“You bastard,” she said, less strangled, and I could visualize her face setting into its hard mask. “I knew it when I saw you walk off with your case. All that fucking crap about needing two cases—you planned this all along.”
The truth was I hadn’t, not consciously anyway, but I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll get in touch with you when I’ve sorted myself out,” I said. “I just need to sort all this out.” I waved my hand as if to capture what “all this” was.
“You’ll get in touch with me? Jesus, you sound like I’ve just fucking auditioned and you have to consider whether I was any good.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. A pause, then her voice came over clear and strong.
“OK, listen Michel. Get yourself sorted out. Deal with what happened with your family—I don’t know, maybe you should have a memorial service or something, get a tombstone erected, get it out of your system.” She stopped and let out a long sigh. Her voice softened. “Grieve for them properly.” I looked down at my shoes, brand new this morning, to go with my suit; your shoes should always match your clothes. The shoes had little perforations in the top; I had no idea what they were for. I had a strange awareness of myself, as if I were someone else waiting to use the phone, looking in, and I hated what I saw: my shoes, my suit, even my face.
“Are you still there, Michel?” she asked, exasperated.
“Yes. Yes I am.”
“Have a good life, ma belle.” She slammed the phone down and I was left with a buzzing in my ear. I depressed and released the hook switch and, out of habit, dialed the speaking clock.
From a vantage point I watched Helen pick up her ticket from the Britannia Airways desk. I wanted to see her go through security so I’d know she was safe; I didn’t think they would concern themselves with her once we split up. If I was expecting her to look out for me, I was disappointed. Even at this distance I could see her face was expressionless and her movements mechanical, as if sedated. It didn’t look like anyone was watching her, which was the key thing, the thing I focused on. She walked through the barrier and glanced back once, but she didn’t see me. Then she was gone. Her disappearance from view caused a constriction in my chest and a burning in my eyes.
I didn’t have much time. At a British Airways counter I consulted on flights. After a discussion with the man behind the desk, I paid cash for a one-way ticket, traveling with British Airways to Athens, then, after a couple of hours’ transit, with Olympic Airlines to Beirut. I had an hour before the flight. I looked for the busiest and most public coffee shop and sat down at a small table in the middle.
I took the envelope from inside my jacket and put it on the table. I sipped my coffee. I slit the frayed envelope open at the top with a teaspoon, taking my time. A clammy hand clutched mine. By my side stood the slopey-shouldered man, breathing hard. He sat down opposite, keeping his hand on mine and his grey-blue eyes locked on me. He had two scabbing contusions on his forehead where I’d hit him last night and his pale freckled skin was glossy with sweat. His eyes flicked to the envelope.
“Maybe you’ll regret doing that,” he said. “Although I’m surprised you haven’t already looked.” He sounded well spoken, with a careful enunciation, but with a slight accent, maybe Dutch. I was aware of someone else at my shoulder; I looked round to see a muscular man with a crew cut, his right hand inside his cagoule. A smaller guy, obviously a graduate of the same training school, stood behind him at the entrance to the coffee shop; he could have been the guy who’d spoken to Helen on the beach. These men were not the people who had followed me to Foyles. Sure, they were on the same side, led by the man sitting opposite me, but following people was not their business. I figured they wouldn’t try anything with all these people around us. If they’d wanted to kill me, they would have done it at the house, where they’d missed their chance. I looked at the man opposite, noticing that some of the freckles were actually midge bites.
“I want to see what all the trouble was about,” I said.
He studied my face and made a decision. “OK, you have a right to see it, even if you can’t keep it.” He slowly removed his hand and glanced at the man at my shoulder, who sat down beside me, dragging his chair up against mine.
From the envelope I pulled out three or four pages folded in three. I straightened them out on the table. The first was in Hebrew. A smiling headshot of a young Abu Leila was in the top right-hand corner. It looked like a form of some kind, the spaces filled in by hand. I could at least read a date: 20/11/1945. A date of birth? I looked at the second sheet. Another photocopied form, but in color, and another date, this time December 1982. An older Abu Leila, looking intently at the camera, epaulettes on his shoulders. Epaulettes denoting a major. A major in the Israeli army. I went cold. Know your enemy, he’d said. A large blue diagonal stamp cut across the form, at the top of which was a crest
with a menorah on either side with olive branches meeting at some Hebrew beneath. No, you can’t learn Hebrew, he’d said. I looked up at the pale-faced man who was smiling at me, but the smile wasn’t reflected in his eyes. I looked down at the third sheet: a picture of Abu Leila being pinned with a medal, just one other man in a suit present. I felt sick. I looked at the papers again, but they had blurred.
The pale-faced man snatched the sheets from my hand. Everything beyond the table became indistinct, the sounds muted. I tried to stand up but the big man gripped my forearm with iron fingers. The pale face said, “Where are you going, cockroach?”
“I’m going home,” I said.
“Home?”
“Beirut,” I said.
“OK, cockroach. We can find you there if we need to squash you.” I shook off the grip on my arm, picked up my bag and stood up. The flight to Athens was being called. I brushed past the smaller crew-cut at the café entrance and walked steadily to the departure gate without looking back.
Forty-Nine
The ragtag group of ten- to twelve-year-old students in my weekly French class would probably never have an opportunity to use the language, but I was motivated by the hope that at least one of them might find it helpful in breaking from the confines of the refugee camp that I had left over ten years ago.
One cold and damp November afternoon, a few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, two weeks after Canada publicly asked Israel to explain the fraudulent use of its passports and three months after being back in Beirut, I left the UN-run school and went to the small grocery store nearby, where I bought tinned beans, cheese, eggs and tomatoes, and as I stepped back onto the muddy street a voice beside me said, “It’s not Harrods, for sure.” I turned to see Khalil, the thin balding man I’d met in Harrods. He was in a black coat worn at the elbows and carried an ancient Samsonite briefcase. The scar on his chin looked whiter than I remembered, or maybe the stubble was longer.
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