The rapid fire French dialogue which followed baffled him, and it was two or three minutes before he understood the question being put to him.
"Of course they're lead batteries," he said, thoroughly bewildered but less worried as he sensed a slackening of tension amongst the officials. "What other sort are there for Christ's sake?"
"Lead!" For a moment his questioners looked stunned, then they burst out laughing. Mick tried to follow the excited chatter, but it was too much for him. One of the men was holding one of the portable instrument panels and he tapped it excitedly, as if trying to make it work. The cubbyhole erupted into another peal of laughter, but a moment later Mick's passport was stamped and his travel documents were replaced inside the leather folder, and he was being escorted back to his cab. It was all over - he was on his way - still free - and only half an hour down on his travel schedule to Germany.
Noon - Local Maltese Time - Sunday
I sat on the edge of my bed. All in all I felt pretty good. My hands had stopped shaking and I wasn't sweating any more, and the room no longer changed shape every five minutes. "Don't try to stand up," Max said from his end of the bed.
But I wanted cigarettes from the dressing table and might have reached them if my legs had held out.
"Knucklehead," he picked me up as if I was a rag doll with half its stuffing missing. "Listen to Uncle Max, will you."
It must have been the day they played hospital at the Health Farm, because when I told him about the cigarettes he vetoed the idea.
"Food first," he wheeled the trolley across to the bed. "Soup, you'll enjoy it."
"What's in it - Pentothal?"
"Aw Harry, don't get sore now."
"Who's sore? My skin's like a pin cushion from those damn needles, but I'm not sore."
"That's good Harry."
So was the soup. Afterward I was allowed half a cigarette, which made my head spin, then he helped me to dress. "You've got a visitor waiting to see you."
"That's nice - Nikki Orlov's brought some grapes."
"It ain't Orlov," Max was playing Rastus again, he even rolled his eyes. "It's Suzy Katoul."
At least I was sitting on the bed. The news made my head spin faster than the cigarette, but the first thing I did was to reach for the packet again. Max poured orange juice into a tumbler and passed it to me - whiskey might have been better, but he was still playing doctor, because he wouldn't hear of it. As it was, he sat there telling me to take my time while he explained it all. When he said that Ross had brought her in a few hours ago I thought he meant Ross had captured her - like an old-time sheriff. But Suzy had arrived by herself— flown into Malta and demanded to see Ross. Arrived for talks, like a summit meeting. When I said that to Max he looked startled, as if it was a strange way of putting it, but that's the way it looked to me. Especially when he said she had delivered some sort of ultimatum.
"The wires have been humming, man. Really humming. I can tell you."
"About what?"
"Reckon the Old Man wants to tell you that himself. He just sent me up to ask that you join the party."
"Real old style family retainer, aren't you Max?"
He gave me his Rastus grin again and rolled his eyes a couple of times, but underneath all the play-acting Max was nervous. He knew exactly what was going on, but was leaving the job of breaking the bad news to somebody else. And I was quite sure that it was bad news. I took my time finishing the orange juice, made a test flight round the bedroom, and then Max took me downstairs to meet the family.
They watched me as I came in like a jury watching a prisoner up from the cells at the Old Bailey. Nobody said a word. Max led me to the foot of the conference table and pushed a chair under me before I collapsed. I sat there for a moment taking my bearings. Suzy sat on the right, alone on that side of the table, smoking furiously and rearranging papers in front of her in a fussy way which betrayed her nervousness. She could hardly hold her hands still, and she was twisting the cigarette round and round in her fingers like a baton-twirler rehearsing moves. Dark shadows below her eyes aged her by ten years and the ugly habit she had of chewing her bottom lip had coarsened the line of her mouth on one side. The doctor and Elizabeth stared at her from across the table, while Ross presided like a chairman of a company about to go into liquidation. It had that kind of atmosphere - not just tense but laden with gloom and shot through with fear.
"Hello Suzy." Seeing her mixed me up. I was relieved in one way - relieved to see her still in one piece and to be at hand to help her if she would let me. But the relief was tinged with heartache. Her looks were beginning to go and her nerves jangled like a doorbell. She looked ill and strained - and all I could think of was that she was my child and I had let her down.
Her eyes lashed me like a whip. "They said you were here. Negib always knew you were against us - said you'd betray us someday. It took you long enough, didn't it? To show whose side you're on."
"Suzy, I'm here to help—"
"Help them! They're the ones who need it."
I reached for her hand, but she pulled away. "Don't touch me. Stay away, you hear? I don't want your mealy-mouthed help!" She whirled on Ross, "Damn you to hell - does he have to be here?"
Ross seemed older and smaller than a few days ago. "I want Harry to know the threats you've been making—"
"Tell him to read the papers - they'll have headlines a foot high." Her laughter had the same hysterical ring to it as Negib's used to have and it could have been his sneer she turned on me. "The Deir Yassin Memorial wages war on Western hypocrisy. How's that Newsman? Not bad, eh? Not bad for the daughter of an Arab whore and a Jewish terrorist—"
"You're my daughter."
"Goddaughter! Goddaughter - that's what you used to call me. You, a man who doesn't believe in—"
"That's enough," Ross snapped angrily.
She trembled violently in a fit of agitation, watching Ross and at the same time clasping and unclasping her hands as if trying to keep control of them. Then she reached for another cigarette, but she was shaking so much that she could hardly light it. She managed eventually, but only by jamming both elbows on the table and holding her wrist with her free hand to keep the lighter still. Ross started to say something, but Suzy was twitching so badly that he lapsed into silence and just stared at her. I felt too sick to do anything to divert attention, so I just stared as well. We all did, as if hypnotised. I think the trembling spasm only lasted for a couple of minutes, but it seemed longer. Gradually she regained control of herself and after taking a few deep breaths she glared around the table: "Well? Are we going to sit here all day?"
Nobody answered immediately. The doctor scribbled a note, pushed it along the table to Ross and then asked her: "Can I get you anything?"
Her head jerked at me. "Yes - get him out of here!"
Ross looked up from the note. "Harry stays - at least for the time being." He screwed the paper into a ball and said to me: "Miss Katoul has come to us with an ultimatum.
I waited, wondering what the doctor had written and thinking Ross was being remarkably polite for somebody who usually referred to Suzy as a "screwed-up bitch."
He said: "She demands that Israel hand over certain territories to a newly-formed Palestinian—"
"Independent Arab Marxist State!" Suzy interrupted.
Ross was too tired to argue. "Broadly speaking she's claiming the whole of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a fifty-mile-wide interconnecting corridor—"
"It's our land!" she screamed at him. "It's no more than rightfully ours —"
"Guaranteed by the Western powers," Ross struggled to finish. "Israel is to be compelled to cooperate by joint action from the US, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Japan." The shadow of a smile which appeared on his lips never reached his eyes. "As you know there's a summit conference in Bonn this week and they've—"
"Got twenty-four hours to sort it out," Suzy gloated triumphantly.
"Otherwise," Ross finished quie
tly, "the Deir Yassin Memorial will explode its nuclear device."
For an instant I felt an insane urge to laugh. All blackmail is preposterous to begin with. The crew of the first hi-jacked airplane probably wanted to laugh - even when they had guns poked in their faces. If something has never been done before the natural instinct is to ridicule the whole idea.
I said, "You'll never get away with it."
She jeered at me exactly as Negib would have done. "You'd better pray we do Newsman. Because if not that bomb goes off."
"Twenty-four hours," I said in a voice no louder than a whisper.
"They've had thirty years!" she screamed.
"But twenty-four hours is no time at all. I mean people will want—"
"It's enough time for the first step," she snapped. "A signed statement from the summit telling Israel that unless she agrees the West will break off all economic support. A televised press conference tomorrow night - it's enough time for that."
"But even supposing the summit agrees," Ross said. "That's no guarantee that Israel will—"
"Israel can't exist without American dollars!"
"They said that about Rhodesia," I said.
"Oh Christ, will you shut up!" she spat at me. "There's no bloody comparison and you know it."
I suppose I did in a way and I was trying to think of a suitable answer when Ross slid two sheets of A4 copy paper down the table. One glance was enough to recognise a press release. Suzy must have brought half a dozen copies with her, and I was reading the opening words when she said: "Copies of that will be circulated to the entire press corps in Bonn at nine o'clock in the morning. The summit will be given exactly twelve hours to endorse it."
I concentrated on the typescript. It was all there - twenty clauses of it - but only the main ones registered. Israel was given a month to formally transfer the designated territories. The Western powers were to guarantee the security of all frontiers. And Russia was to be warned off. Other clauses defined the compensation which Israel would pay to the new state, including the costs of resettling the Palestinians, and there was a lot of fine print stuff which would have needed an international lawyer to understand. An international lawyer like Suzy Katoul.
"This nuclear device," Ross began. "Which you claim - “
"Don't waste time!" she stormed. "You saw what we did off Scotland. That was one Kiloton, Major - the next one's ten megaton!"
"Even the IRA give advance warning of an explosion." "The IRA are poets," she said enigmatically. "Anyway what could you do? Clear an entire city? Clear London of twelve million people?"
"Is it London?"
Her lips set in a line as thin as a razor blade. "No, and that's all I'm saying."
My head was spinning but I risked another cigarette. I wondered what Ross would do? Previously when I had speculated on a confrontation between them, I had imagined my sympathies being with Suzy. After all, despite everything, she was still family, she would need my help, she would be vulnerable to the terrible pressures Ross would apply. But now it was happening and she neither needed nor wanted me. And if anyone was being threatened it was Ross. The whole world had been stood on its ear.
Ross might have read my mind because he said to her, "You realise that you've placed yourself in our hands as far as interrogation is concerned?"
"People know where I am," she said defiantly.
His eyebrows rose. "But do they care? You've been thrown to the wolves, Miss Katoul. You're the one who has risked her safety, you're—"
"They said you'd try that," she cut him short. "Intimidation and torture. Like the rest of the pigs. Well go ahead, but unless I'm produced at the news conference tomorrow night—"
"Nobody said anything about torture," he said coldly.
"Neither did the Popo in Germany, but they murdered Andreas."
"Baader committed suicide."
"In Stammhein? The top security jail in Germany? Shot in the head? Shot in the back of the head." She erupted with sudden fury and her voice crackled with hysteria. "And Gudrun and Ulrike were hanged in Stammhein - with electrical cord. Come off it Major, just who the hell d'you think you're kidding? You're like the rest of the pigs - just like - just like—"
But she couldn't go on. Her breath came in gasps and the sudden trembling spasm which engulfed her was even more violent than the earlier one. She grabbed her handbag from the chair next to her and rummaged furiously, using both hands so that the cigarette parked in her mouth wisped smoke into her eyes and made the lashes wet with tears. Whatever she was looking for eluded her, and after spilling papers all over the place she upended the bag on to the table in front of her in final desperation. Her hands scrambled through the mess, fumbling and discarding and hunting and trembling - and all the while she made these half whimpering noises interspersed with bouts of swearing. It was awful watching her - I felt dirty, wanting to turn my eyes away yet trapped by some compulsion which held me rigid in my seat. At one point the cigarette fell from her lips to roll across the table and it took three grabbed attempts of her trembling fingers to retrieve it. Nobody said anything - nobody offered to help - we just sat there entranced. Finally she found a small bottle and fumbled desperately to open it. Eventually she undid the cap and managed to spill two pills into her hands before tossing them hurriedly into her mouth.
I think Ross wanted to stop her from taking the pills but the doctor waved a hand, as if to say let her go ahead, and Ross sat down again. God knows what the pills were, but they seemed to take effect quite quickly. Within a couple of minutes her breathing became more measured and the twitching gradually subsided. She scooped everything back into her handbag, throwing it in, the pill bottle along with the rest in no particular order. Then she cast sly, furtive glances around the table, as if she had hoped that all of us had missed the entire episode.
Ross cleared his throat, but just then Smithers came in clutching a telex sheet in one hand like a rolled up newspaper. It was so long that it took Ross two or three minutes to read it. Finally he sent Smithers away to fetch Max. Then he looked at Suzy. "You're big business, lady. Too big for a country boy from Kansas. We're taking her into the big city for the top brass to look at."
She had quite recovered from the shaking fit by now. She looked at him without trembling and with a poisonous look on her face - a vicious expression which was some mixture of spiteful satisfaction and triumph. I think I began to hate her then. It shocked me - sickened me to realise that any man could live to hate his own daughter, but that's how I felt.
"Where are we going, Pig?" she asked.
"Bonn. We're to be there by the morning."
Startled exclamations arose around the table and all heads turned to Ross. All except mine. I was still watching Suzy and struggling with my emotions as I watched the expression on her face.
Max stood in the doorway, looking to Ross for instructions.
"Take Miss Katoul to the other room, will you Max - make her comfortable and give her whatever she needs. We'll be leaving in a few hours."
Max nodded and advanced across the room. He removed Suzy's chair and held her elbow, while she clutched her bag and walked slightly ahead of him, the triumphant sneer still on her face and her eyes forward to avoid ours.
1300 Sunday
Mick was beyond Calais by noon and well on.his way to Dunkirk and Malo-les-Baines by half past. The N40 highway carried a fair share of heavy vehicles even on a Sunday, but the traffic was moving briskly and the skies above had lightened, so his spirits had lifted after the initial fright at Boulogne. Now he laughed whenever he thought of it. Batteries - what in God's name was so funny about lead batteries that half the customs officials in France split their sides just at the mention of them? He puzzled on it for awhile before dismissing it.
Whatever it was, it was his good luck he decided. Bonne chance for the rest of the trip.
He whistled as he drove, a thin reedy sound that was mostly drowned by the drone of the engine. And as he whistled he thought
of Molly. Twenty years they had been married. Twenty years with more bleak times than bright ones, but it was a good marriage for all that. Even the blackest day had been faced without mutual reproach. They'd not grown old and crotchety the way some did, forever at each other's throats and with never a good word to say for each other. He grinned wryly. For the past few days he had resigned himself to them not growing old together at all. Until yesterday. Now there was even a chance of that!
He stopped whistling to grin about the five thousand pounds she would receive in the morning. He wondered what she'd make of it. He tried to imagine her - in the kitchen after the postman had called - opening a letter from a bank. That would be enough to send her into a spin, all typewritten and official. And then there would be the money itself. More money than she had seen in a lifetime. What would she do? With him there it would be predictable - she'd rush upstairs to fetch her coat and hurry round to the yard to show it to him as fast as her legs would carry her. But with him being away? He thought about it. Go to her sister's probably. And the two of them would read the letter a dozen times over and count the noughts on the check until they made a million pounds of it. She wouldn't cry - not Molly - not at first anyway, because she wouldn't believe it. She would know it was a mistake. The smile froze on his face. What would she do then? Not take the money - that's for sure - not if she thought there was anything wrong with it. She'd be too afraid to spend a penny in case somebody asked for it back. So what would she do?
He no longer felt like whistling, and a frown replaced his grin as he worried about it. Molly's sister would tell half the neighbourhood, that's for sure, and half the neighbourhood would tell the other half, so that within a day or two the police would know. Would that matter? Big Reilly had said the plan was foolproof. But tomorrow he would reach Cologne and Reilly would notify the bank to send another check. And after Cologne God knows where, but it couldn't be far to the check for ten thousand. And then what would Molly do?
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 27