‘I’m just a tourist,’Abed said, standing up. He knew immediately that the older man in civilian clothes had to be Israeli police or military intelligence. ‘I was in a shop just down there when the explosion happened and I came to see if this man—’
‘Your name is Abed Abu Omar,’ Raz interrupted. ‘You’re from Gaza, and you are a terrorist.’
Abed could hardly believe what the man had said. His dreams of freedom immediately evaporated and were replaced by the image of a prison cell, with him inside, rotting in a corner.
The urge to run, no matter what the danger, took a grip of him.
Raz had been several streets away when he heard the shooting and had little doubt it was something to do with Stratton and his urgent dash into the city. As he hurried to where the sound had come from, the explosion was a shock that filled his mind with visions from so many bomb blasts he had been to in his city. As he broke into a run, in his mind he could already see the blood, severed limbs and struggling wounded. He arrived on the scene to see Stratton lying in the dust, and, again, he felt a mixture of anger and concern at the Englishman’s presence in his country which had somehow led to the explosion. But when he saw the man who was talking to him, every other thought left his head, brushed aside by the incredible possibility that it was Abed, his son. Only when Abed turned to look at him was he certain. His gun was already in his hand from when he first heard the shooting, and a part of him was thrown into confusion when Abed saw it aimed at him. Raz wanted to lower it, but he took a firm grip on himself and checked his resolve, knowing what he had to do.
‘Your presence here would suggest you have something to do with this,’ Raz said, accusingly.
Denying his involvement in the explosion was pointless. Abed was a wanted man anyway, and that was that. He could feel the walls closing in on him and hear the door to his cell clanging shut, filling him with dread.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Abed said. ‘You will have to shoot me.’
‘If that’s what you want, I will oblige you,’ Raz said, hearing the words come from his mouth, but not believing he had said them. He had already accepted Abed’s untimely death since learning of his connection with the Islamic Jihad, he just never dreamed he would be the one to pull the trigger. His son had become an enemy of the worst possible kind, and the need to eradicate him was greater than any bond of blood between them. Alive in a prison was better than death, but Abed was not going to accept that, and Raz knew he would be haunted for the rest of his life if he killed him. He had brought Abed into this world and then left him to live a vile existence in a shanty town, short of food and basic amenities, like an animal. And yet he had grown into a handsome, intelligent and good man, until he was given no choice but to turn against his own sense of right and become a terrorist. Everything about him was Raz’s creation and responsibility, and every pain and hardship Abed had endured was because of him. This was the final injustice, for both of them.
‘Why don’t you pull the trigger?’ Abed said, arrogantly. ‘Don’t you believe I would rather die than let you take me? After so many of us have killed ourselves? Death is not just a weapon for us, it is our only escape from you. I supposed it would ease your conscience if I went to jail instead. Well, I have lived in one of your jails all my life, surrounded by a wall of hate and death in every direction, and always in fear of my jailers’ visits to beat and torment me. Even if you threatened to send me back to Gaza, I would rather die. So pull the trigger. Please.’
Raz could only stare at him. He wanted to tell the young man that he not only believed him, he also understood. For in many ways, he had lived the pain with his son.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Abed asked, raising his voice. ‘Are you afraid? Let me make it easy for you.’
Abed took a step towards Raz who tightened his grip on the gun.
‘Wait,’ Stratton said. ‘Wait,’ he repeated, then broke into a painful cough.
Abed paused to look down at Stratton who was raising a hand as if asking them to hold on while he got through his choking session.
‘He . . . he works for us,’ Stratton finally said after taking a deep breath.
Raz was initially thrown by the revelation, but then it explained some recent events. The two of them being here together did certainly raise a question, and Stratton was no doubt a member of MI6. He would certainly not be trying to save Abed’s life otherwise, who was now obviously the man seen running from the hotel with Stratton.
‘He works for British intelligence?’ Raz asked.
‘Yes. We need him,’ Stratton said.
Raz suspected the last comment, but then why else was Stratton trying to help Abed? He could not have known him for very long. In fact, if it was Abed who Stratton had met in Ramallah the night before, it would have been for the first time. That was also why there was no report of Stratton leaving the town, because he never went through any of the checkpoints. He couldn’t because he was with Abed who could not take the risk. No doubt they went through the old quarry. Shin Bet deliberately left that area unguarded for the times when they needed to monitor specific characters moving through it so that they could mount surveillance operations from a solid start point inside Ramallah, or entering Jerusalem. The only reason Stratton could possibly be helping Abed was loyalty. It was that warped British sense of fair play; even though Abed was a wanted terrorist, he was in the old city helping Stratton and therefore did not deserve to be captured. He would be fair game only when he was off and running again.
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ Abed said to Stratton. ‘You don’t know his kind. He wants to take me away and interrogate me, for weeks if necessary, until they have every piece of information they can get out of me, and then, if I survive, they’ll toss me into a stone room and leave me there until I can find a way to kill myself. He will kill me. He just needs a little help.’
Abed took another step towards Raz.
‘Stand still,’ Raz commanded. But Abed did not obey him.
Raz stepped back. ‘Stand still, I said,’ he shouted, but Abed ignored him, his expression calm, his hands moving out from his side ready for the shot that he hoped would kill him.
‘I’ve saved your life too many times to want to kill you now,’ Raz said, standing firm, the gun levelled at Abed’s heart.
Abed did not understand, and although the comment slowed him, he took another step closer to Raz, who was now within reach of him.
‘I am your father,’ Raz said.
Abed froze.
Stratton was equally stunned.
Raz stared at Abed, shaking with the effort to control his finger on the trigger, desperate not to have to pull it. ‘Do you remember the time you were hit by a car leaving your university?’ Raz said. ‘You thought you had damaged your hip so badly you would have a limp. Did you ever wonder why you received better care than all the other patients in your ward?’
Abed remembered it well, but he never thought he had a mysterious benefactor.
‘And during the many incursions into Rafah, the times you were released while others were taken away. You were on a list of people not to be harmed. Did your mother ever tell you where the money came from each month while you were growing up? And do you remember that day in your metal shop, when you were shot at by the soldier who had threatened one day to kill you? The last shot you heard came from the building beside you. That shot killed the soldier, fired by me.’
Abed was rocked to his very foundations, even more so than the night his mother revealed his father was an Israeli. The shock was tenfold now that he was facing the man he had thought about all his life and never believed he would ever see.
Raz was no longer looking at Abed but at the ground in front of him, his eyes seeing only his own youth and remembering Abed as a baby in his arms in a derelict building in Rafah camp. He lowered the gun and his arm hung limply by his side.
Raz finally looked up and the two men stared at each other, unable to do or say any
thing.
Abed had heard the anguish and sincerity in Raz’s voice and it had touched something inside of him. The man he had hated with all his heart only seconds ago had disappeared but he could not understand who had been left in his place. Abed could not reach out and touch him, nor could he back away. He could not hate him, nor could he embrace him. He did not feel love of any kind, but neither did he feel fear any more. Time and space had momentarily stopped for both men.
The sound of running snapped them out of their trances and Raz glanced over his shoulder to see several troops approaching. He took his identification badge from his pocket, raised it for them to see and shouted something in Hebrew.
The soldiers stopped and did not come any further.
Raz looked at his son, then over at Stratton.
‘What happened here today?’ Raz asked Stratton.
Stratton could not tell Raz the whole truth, not about the atom bomb, but if Raz was going to let Abed go he needed to be able to tell his bosses why. Abed was on videotape, and there were witnesses to Raz conversing with a young Arab at the scene that would need explaining if the Arab was suddenly gone.
‘This man,’ Stratton said, indicating the dead Russian. ‘His name is Zhilev. He’s former Russian Spetsnaz. Stockton’s in there . . . what’s left of him. If Zhilev had succeeded with his plan, you, me and a lot of other people, we would all be dead. Abed played a major role in preventing that.’
Raz could only guess at what Stratton was trying to tell him and it did not sound encouraging, but that was not the point of the Englishman’s revelation. He was offering Raz information that would help him let Abed go.
Raz put his gun into his pocket. ‘Since you work for MI6, you are a guest in this country. It sounds like I must thank you,’ he said to Abed. ‘One word of advice before you go . . . Never come back.’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, then Abed slowly stepped towards Raz to move past him.
‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Raz said softly.
Abed paused alongside his father.
‘I was by her side yesterday,’ Raz said. ‘She went peacefully. I told her I was sorry and that I always loved her.’
Abed could feel a lifetime of emotion churn inside of him, all too much for him to digest. This man had represented everything that was vile, but he could see none of that now. He was his father. He had given him his life, and had now done so again. He must have felt something for his mother to have been by her side when she died. He was saying sorry to Abed and to his mother in the only way he could, and Abed could not hate him any more.
The tension eased from Abed’s eyes and as he walked away, Raz turned to watch him go, past the soldiers and down the walkway until he rounded the corner out of sight.
Raz looked back at Stratton, who was watching him, and wondered what the man was thinking.
‘Will you report this?’ Raz asked, without making it sound like a plea or request.
‘Report what?’
Raz believed him. He turned and shouted something to the soldiers and they started to move in.
‘We’d better get you to a hospital,’ Raz said. ‘You don’t look so good.’
‘To tell you the truth, I feel like shit,’ Stratton said.
‘And then we’ll talk and maybe you can tell me what happened on my patch.’
‘Absolutely,’ Stratton said.
Raz knew Stratton would fabricate enough of a story to explain Abed’s release, but perhaps they could also do some dealing. That was the true fun of the intelligence world. It was like a marketplace where things were bought and sold and exchanged like anything else.
Raz looked back to see if Abed was perhaps still there, but he was not, and he knew he would never see or hear from his son again.
Sumners sat behind a desk in his tiny office on the tenth floor of MI6 headquarters on the south side of the Thames, a stone’s throw from Vauxhall Bridge.The one window overlooked the river and was some consolation for the size of the room, which was, in fact, not exceptionally small for the building. His boss’s office, on the floor above, was only marginally larger and did not have a view.The room was clean, tidy and as lacklustre as one might expect for a civil servant’s office.
Chalmers walked in without knocking, placed a file on Sumners’ desk and left without either men saying anything, which was quite normal. On the surface, life in the firm hadn’t changed for Sumners. From a psychological point of view, he had dealt with his situation back in Israel and succeeded in putting it behind him. Two months had passed since that horrible day on board the C130 on the tarmac of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport but, as time went by, he thought about it less and less. Even the presence of Chalmers and his boss evoked few memories of that day, other than perhaps the slightest of fleeting images. It was simple enough for a man like Sumners to put it out of his mind. He had taken the logical approach and reasoned that he was never going to get another crack at running a field operation, and it was wise to believe so for the healing process to take effect. To that end he re-accepted his long-time role as a desk officer - and a damned good one at that - and continued to exert the confidence and authority he had enjoyed before the incident, which was considerable. A handful of people in the building might have had an inkling of what had taken place, but the majority would not. If it had been a major scene and Sumners had lost control and thrown a wobbly then perhaps that much of the story might have got out. But since it was a top-secret operation, explaining Sumners’ little moment would require far more detail than would be deemed acceptable. Sumners was as aware of that as anyone and it aided his rehabilitation.
There was a knock and Sumners asked the caller in without looking up from his computer monitor until the door opened, whereupon he instantly stopped what he was doing and stared at his visitor. There was, of course, one person who would always remind Sumners of his folly, and as he walked into the room the memory of that day, as well as the intense embarrassment and implications of his character flaws, came flooding back.
Stratton looked remarkably well, which was not a surprise since he had not been involved with work since Jerusalem save for a couple of debriefs where the debriefers came to him. After two days in Israel he flew home, and a week later was walking around looking normal. In less than a month he went on his first long jog and a week after that his first workout in the gym. A Navy surgeon had told him that he could expect to be barred from diving but that would depend on how well his lung healed, and in the same sentence he suggested an operational necessity might supersede such a barring unless he was drastically impaired. He had spent much of his time off kicking back in the South of France, enjoying the quiet off-season, eating well, exercising and catching up on his reading. He should have been feeling depressed considering his mindset throughout the operation and the months prior to it, but the explosion and the injury had been a kind of cleansing. For reasons he could not precisely put a finger on, Stratton felt better than he had for a long time and the nearest explanation he could find was that he was more in control. Walking into the MI6 headquarters only confirmed the feeling. No one he passed in the labyrinth of corridors knew him, although there was a glance and a subtle nod from two senior-looking suits as he walked through the high-security entrance that suggested they knew who he was and approved of him. A few months prior, had he walked into Sumners’ office, much as he hated it he would have felt as if he had his cap in his hand. Now he felt strangely superior. He was not, and he didn’t approve of it because it was far too egotistical for his liking, but nevertheless that’s how he felt and he could not help it.
‘Stratton.To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Sumners asked, looking as businesslike as always and masking any animosity he had towards his subaltern.
‘I came by to drop off some things,’ Stratton said as he placed his MI6 ID, credit card and some receipts on Sumners’ desk.
Sumners looked at the ID and then at Stratton, wondering if there was more to this tha
n met the eye. He had wanted to ask for them back but refrained for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he did not want to talk to or even see Stratton again, even though he knew it was unlikely such a wish would be granted, he felt that the longer he could delay such an encounter the better. Another reason was that asking for the return of the ID might have suggested he was cancelling Stratton’s secondment and look like a vengeful act to those in the know, namely his boss, which would have been augmented if Stratton was suddenly required for something and it was discovered he was no longer on the assignment-standby list. Stratton was the one aspect of Sumners’ rehabilitation that he had no control over. He could only pray the man did not recover or lost interest in the job. But that was obviously too much to hope and his sudden presence proved it, for here he was, standing in front of him in his office, his hands in the pockets of his grubby, old leather jacket and looking at him in his usual expressionless, cold manner as if nothing had happened between them. The only positive thing that Sumners could think of regarding the visit was that Stratton had come to quit.
‘How are you feeling?’ Sumners asked, chirpier at the thought that this might well be a farewell visit. It was also possible it was a subtle move by Stratton to announce his fitness, declaring himself ready to return to work, and wanting Sumners to ask him to pick up the ID and await a call. Sumners put that thought aside because it did not give him any pleasure to contemplate.
‘I’m fine. Feeling better than ever. First good rest I’ve had in years.’
Sumners groaned inwardly as Stratton began to sound very much like someone who was looking forward to returning to work. ‘You spoken to anyone else?’ he asked.
‘Chalmers, outside,’ Stratton said, as he went to the window and looked down on to the river. ‘He was surprisingly chatty. I still think he’s a walking computer but he sounded quite human just now.’
Sumners wasn’t sure about Stratton’s mood. He sounded chipper enough all right, but that really meant nothing. ‘You had a post-op report?’ he asked, knowing Stratton had not. Stratton was entitled to a closing summary of the operation but Sumners’ only reason for offering it was a personal interest in one major aspect of it.
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