She hammered off a quick note to her daughter: Hey, lovely Lizzie, welcome to the summer holidays. How’s life? Send Mum in the desert a word.
Love you, see you Sunday. Brunch somewhere delicious? Looking forward to it. Mum xxx
Paris, November 2015
Not one atom in Kurtiz’s entire being had alerted her to the fact that the sentiments and intentions typed in that late-night email to Lizzie, her Jerusalem missive, would never come to pass, that the Sunday brunch she had proposed to her daughter would never take place. Her maternal instinct, premonition, dark foreboding, name it whatever you will, had evidently been switched off, along with her phone. Long-distance vibes, the presentiment that all was not well? Not operating. Aside from regular teenage dilemmas, in the doldrums about her weight, her body image, school results, it had not crossed Kurtiz’s mind that Lizzie was undergoing a monumental shift, a crisis of a proportion so dramatic it had caused to her behave in the way she had. Kurtiz had been elsewhere, seduced by her personal and professional preoccupations.
For that negligence she had never forgiven herself.
And Oliver had never let her off the hook, never allowed her to forget it.
‘You took away our daughter’s sense of security,’ was Oliver’s allegation. ‘By not being here, you, not me, you splintered this family.’
Alex had not been the trigger. He had never been a part of that scenario, her London life. After the loss of Lizzie, she quit working with him, broke off communication with him, even though it pained her and perhaps she needed his wisdom more back then than ever before. She had moved into a small pad of her own, a generous-sized studio nestled in a back-street in Covent Garden, leaving Oliver to sweat it out alone in their family home.
Another lack of percipience on her part?
Kurtiz was as pale as egg white when Marguerite picked her way across from one pavement’s edge to the other. The surface beneath her feet was treacherous, slippery with runnels of burgundy blood, spurting water nozzles. Heaped in a desultory pile, like shifting sand, Kurtiz’s bags were on an outdoor café table. Only the camera hung from her neck. Her face was damp, caked with perspiration, rigid with shock, her trousers besmirched with dust and the blood of strangers she had helped lift. Her breath exhaled as clouds.
‘Apologies for the disturbance. I wanted to know you were safe,’ she murmured, as Marguerite drew near. ‘I saw you walking home along the street, passing by the bar, and then the next moment, this. You were lucky.’ She gestured with her head, heavy as a boulder, towards the shot-up restaurant. ‘There are several dead. No one’s quite sure how many. The police have been interviewing everyone here, attempting to build a clearer picture, doing what they know to do. I got some coverage on camera. The number plate …’ She was babbling, babbling for the sake of it, mentally recording the information for journalistic purposes, as Alex had taught her: Make a note of everything you see. No matter how irrelevant the detail, it could make the difference of life or death to some poor victim.
How many poor victims here?
An ache deep within her for Alex took her by the throat. She forced the ghost of him to one side. Not now. Tonight, soon, very soon, if all went according to Oliver’s predictions, she would be holding Lizzie tight … She would beg her forgiveness … Were there words enough to express her broken heart?
White SAMU de Paris vans were screeching to a halt or departing. A merry-go-round, the musical chairs of emergency services. Her head was heavy, yet light with spinning illuminations. She staggered backwards.
‘I think you need a whisky. Let me get you one.’
Somewhere in the background, on a TV screen within a bar, empty because everyone was outside on the street or had fled the scene, a chorus had broken into ‘La Marseillaise’. In the neighbouring arrondissement, spectators at the football stadium were finally being evacuated in an orderly fashion. The anthem was picked up by one or two present in rue de Charonne. One or two were humming softly, humming for sanity, singing and weeping. Soldiers were approaching. Marching boots, rifles, helmets, fatigues. Newspapers, takeaway cartons were blowing down the street. The temperature was dropping.
Kurtiz shook her head. ‘No, no, merci, Marguerite, no whisky.’ She needed to rendezvous with Oliver or make her way to the Bataclan. This monstrous devastation would not have reached his ears yet. Or had it? The interval must have come and gone at the concert hall. Surely he would have switched his phone on during the break, checked to see that she had arrived in Paris. She had still had no feedback from him. Why not? If he had even glanced at his messages, he would know where she was by now. And he would know that the street had been hit … Wait …
She glanced up and down the road. No film crews. No reporters. She frowned, swung about her to confirm the fact. Why not? Had this decimation failed to draw the attention of the media? Was every journalist and TV station at the Stade de France?
‘There appears to be a hostage situation at the Bataclan concert hall,’ she heard a voice shout. Her heart lurched. Dear God, no. NO. Her innards tightened, bunching to a ball.
‘The Bataclan? Did somebody say the Bataclan? Where did you hear this?’ She spun about, yelling to no one in particular, to everyone present.
‘There’s a TV screen playing in the bar. The theatre’s been infiltrated. Three or four men in black forced their way in, carrying weapons. They’ve taken every spectator as hostage.’
‘Jesus Christ! Lizzie!’
‘A handful have escaped.’
The radios carried by security and police burst into life all around her, broke into overtime. Messages being transmitted across Paris.
‘Christ, oh, fucking – I have to go.’ She was hauling her bags off the table. Packing away her camera, swinging about her. ‘I need a taxi.’
‘The city’s started a lock-down, Madame. Streets cordoned off. The Métro’s been closed already, most certainly the stations around here, and you won’t find a taxi.’
She glanced at her watch. Just past 11.10 p.m. It was a twenty-, twenty-five-minute hike. She should have left this street more than half an hour ago, but how could she have walked away, turning her back on the dead and wounded?
‘They’re reporting fusillades at the Bataclan. Possible deaths.’
Kurtiz swung in a circle. Lizzie. The bags slapped hard against her body. Which way to go?
‘I’ll take you,’ chipped in Marguerite.
Kurtiz was confused. ‘What?’
‘I have a car in the parking under that block of flats on the right. I don’t drive it all that frequently. One has no need to in Paris, but it’s reliable and I still remember how.’ She smiled. ‘Come up with me. I’ll fetch my purse and the keys.’
‘You won’t get through,’ a bystander warned, his voice almost inaudible beneath the roar of motors, the screech of sirens.
Radios were hissing, patrol cars wailing. People standing, insensible, waiting, gazing blindly at tablets and smartphones, scrolling internet sites, coughing, talking or silenced. ‘Three attacks,’ someone muttered.
She couldn’t simply stay here and do nothing, Kurtiz thought. Voices were shouting information. Relaying in a numbed and robotic fashion their city’s crisis situation to anyone listening.
‘They’ve closed off the roads round the theatre.’
‘I’ll drive you as far as I can until we’re blocked and you can walk the rest of the way.’
‘Let’s go.’
Settled in the ancient car – a powder-blue tank of a Mercedes with leather upholstery, a model from the seventies, Kurtiz guessed, which reeked of mould and high-octane gasoline – they set off on the short journey. At every street, a roadblock. Marguerite reversed, switched direction, turned the car on a sixpence, a centime, even though it pre-dated power-assisted steering. She was determined, zigzagging back and forth, intimate with the streets. Still, they barely drew an inch closer to their destination.
Kurtiz had just witnessed cold-blooded murder. Armed men w
ith at least two Kalashnikovs. Was a gun being pointed at Lizzie right now, at Oliver? What were they up against?
What are we up against here? Always one of Alex’s first questions when they infiltrated dangerous territories. He had to measure the odds before he made tactical decisions, weighing up his crew’s safety. Innocent lives at stake.
Oh, Alex, you would know what we’re up against here. Should she call him?
‘This is impossible. We’re getting nowhere,’ she wailed aloud. ‘I have to get through.’ She banged her fists against the dashboard. ‘I have to talk to Lizzie. I have to tell her …’
Don’t panic. First rule, keep your head.
‘Is this radio functioning?’
They were limping forward a metre at a time, crawling slower than a pedestrian’s pace.
Kurtiz began twirling a dial, then pressing and prodding at it. She broke her nail with the force. Static crackled into life – a woman’s voice – then died away. Bursts of interference hissed at her, like a sleeping cat disturbed and on the defensive. She pulled out her iPhone, scrolling for an update, news. Hostages? Confirmed.
‘Hostages at the Bataclan.’
‘How many? Any deaths?’ Marguerite was leaning forward, peering through the windscreen, dwarfed by the Mercedes.
Kurtiz directed Safari to Twitter. ‘Jesus!’
Tweets were flashing up, photos being posted, hundreds, from all across the city. Other eateries, bars, had been hit. ‘Three attacks,’ she was reading. Nothing reported in the eleventh. Other nightlife spots in the tenth. At the Bataclan: ‘CARNAGE’ were the seven letters that chilled her blood.
‘They’re shooting people. Concert-goers. They have them locked inside the theatre. Some have escaped. I have to get out. Stop the car, please, let me out.’ They were moving at a snail’s pace. Marguerite attempted to pull over. Kurtiz couldn’t wait. She was scrabbling her possessions together, readying to leap.
‘Leave your bags with me,’ the old woman advised. ‘I’ll keep them safe for you at my flat.’
Kurtiz abandoned everything – passport, purse, everything – except the camera and her phone, and she began to run, stumbling, gathering herself back to her feet, pelting forward.
‘I’m at number seventy-one, remember. I’ll be waiting for you,’ called the actress.
Kurtiz neither heard nor responded. Heart pounding, punching against her ribcage. Feet torpedoing faster than she ever remembered such speed before. Saliva congealed like metal in her mouth. A stitch clawed at her side. A dull thudding in her temples. It squeezed a tight belt around her head. She ran through the boundaries of exhaustion, adrenalin and fear cranking up, jackhammering her limits, crashing through her speed barriers. Her booted feet battered the pavements. A rhythmic war beat. Cold air slapped her cheeks. Tears sprang from her eyes. ‘Lizzie!’ A lioness’s roar into the night. ‘Oliver! Lizzie! Be safe. Be safe.’
A savage, she hared the length of boulevard Voltaire, thrusting her body onwards.
If she could get there. If she could only … She must get there. She must reach the site before it was too late. She must find Lizzie, explain to her, apologize, beg her forgiveness. Before it was too late …
Kurtiz, West Bank, July 2011
Alex and Kurtiz travelled together, riding in the same vehicle. The hire car was booked in both names; both driving licences had been cleared. It was a precaution Alex always insisted upon. In case of an emergency, he had explained. ‘In case one of us gets injured, or kidnapped.’ Equally, his minimal crew of two travelled in another 4x4, which transported the principal cinematography camera, separate sound mikes, recorder, mixer and two monitors. Alex kept the other camera with him. If one was seized, there was always a reserve. Material was downloaded onto a hard drive and a second back-up was copied before anyone got to eat dinner each evening. Whenever possible, the rushes, the unedited shot material, were uploaded to cyberspace via WeTransfer and sent to Alex’s editorial dock back home in Boston, where his post-production manager and editor went to work on a rough cut, following instructions Alex sent to them by email. He preferred to work with the same crew and if, for an unanticipated reason, one was not available, it did not please him. His demand on the loyalty and commitment of his team was unrelenting, unforgiving.
Kurtiz, as stills photographer, was the only female on board. She had a great deal to learn about working in zones where conflict was a daily reality and she was hungry for the education. Alex taught her everything he knew, taught her to look out for herself, taught her new approaches to her lens, when to shoot pictures and when not. Encouraged her to use a hefty sum of her earnings to invest in better camera equipment, hence the Leica and the Fuji. ‘You’ll earn the investment back in image sales.’ He had also linked her up with the London office of Getty Images, one of the most active agencies in the business, featuring some of the greatest photographers of their generation. She was in good hands, selling worldwide now and slowly building a modest but international reputation for herself. She was more than grateful to Alex and determined that she wouldn’t blow this unique opportunity by sleeping with him.
It could only end in tears.
Alex had no qualms about using her sex, her femaleness, her open nature, her charm, to gain access to homes, families, to women, to record their personal and frequently intimate stories, and to those who did not trust Westerners but were more likely to hedge their bets, unburden their hearts and share their experiences and truths with an unknown female than a man. ‘Over here, though,’ he joshed, ‘it helps that I’m black. They have more confidence in me than in a white American.’
When she was home in the UK and not working with Alex, the job offers she was receiving were from TV stations and some of the high-quality periodicals, such as Time, Le Point. She had a great deal to be grateful to him for.
Falling in love with him would be foolish.
Their early-morning run up through the West Bank was calculated to take them no more than a couple of hours. After collecting Kurtiz at her hotel, Alex doubled back on himself, passing the American Colony before crossing Meinertzhagen junction. They were leaving the city. Moving north, they would be negotiating road works, cement blocks, earth mounds, and crossing bridges. Dawn was breaking as they sped by the walls of the ancient city of Jerusalem with its biblical gate names, where only the Muslim bagel sellers were visible on the streets, backs bent, hauling their laden carts.
Palestinian men, pinioned and bumped tight together in a long queue that tailed back for more than half a kilometre, were waiting submissively to be cleared through the Qalandia checkpoint, queuing to gain entry to the capital for their day’s employment. It was cold, no sun yet to warm the embittered land. They shuffled forward in their slow march, steps foreshortened by the mass of human bodies pressing in on them, heads and faces muffled in black-and-white or red-and-white keffiyehs. Others, the younger ones, had pulled their cheap jackets up around their heads to keep at bay the dust and chill wind. In the iris light, they looked like herds of bobbing seals. Pillars of cigarette smoke rose towards the awakening sky. Beyond the witching hour – when the day has not yet unpeeled itself from the throes of night but is slowly developing its own tone – the heavens were changing hue. Orange and reds were breaking open.
Few of the Palestinian men glanced in the direction of Alex’s 4x4 as he and Kurtiz inched slowly by, heading in the opposite direction. Rarely were he and she pulled over by one of the IDF crews, the Israeli Defence Force, laden with combat gear, although Alex’s black skin occasionally provoked a passport check.
‘American? Welcome to Israel, man. What’s your trade?’
‘I buy fruit,’ he’d lie boldly.
‘Cool, man, we have great fruit farms here in Israel. Enjoy your day.’
Alex had warned Kurtiz to make no protests, don’t argue with the soldiers – allow them to be right, then move on out of their radar – and never take photographs at the checkpoints. ‘Don’t even lift your camera into vi
ew.’
If discovered, they risked the confiscation of not only the cameras: any exhaustive car search would relieve them of all their material. Cameras, memory cards and anything else the IDF soldiers, barely more than teenagers, judged worthy of requisitioning.
Once out on the open highway, which progressed through villages shaded by fruiting mulberry trees and farmland where olive groves abounded to left and right, they took a break for coffee. Alex continued at the wheel because Kurtiz was now free to take landscape, scenic or human-interest photographs. As they proceeded along the highway, they passed through Palestinian villages. Dark eyes glanced warily in their direction. They made a detour into a settlement town, enclosed within barbed-wire fences, with security gates and patrol. Kurtiz grabbed a few discreet, not well-aligned pictures and Alex sped them back out. A cultural desert, judged Kurtiz. Alex made no comment. Too wise, long in the tooth, to waste his breath.
They had a prearranged rendezvous at a gas station two exits further along where Darryl and Tim were awaiting them. Alex usually took the precaution not to travel in convoy but at an exit eight kilometres further they were cutting off the Israeli-built highway 60. Israelis knew it as ‘Way of the Patriarchs’ because it passed through ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria’. From there, they’d be climbing into ancient Palestinian agricultural territories. Many of these farmlands had been encircled by settlements of red-roofed houses and little else.
The two black hire cars, both caked with grit and sand from two weeks on the road, wound their way through villages bordered by ancient olive groves, or newly planted orchards, with runnels and tributaries hewn out of the red earth to ease the irrigation process. They stopped at occasional traffic lights and spotted barefoot kids playing in the street, piggybacking, jumping and hopping through squares marked with chalk, or dribbling scuffed old footballs. No electronic gadgets or PlayStations here. Outside the villages they encountered goatherds or shepherds on mule-back, heads wrapped in the ubiquitous keffiyehs to protect against the dust. Sometimes the herders were children, again barefoot or in rubber shoes made of discarded tyres. These youths were moving with their stock from one feeding ground to another, climbing further upland, to summer pasturing. As the beasts crossed the fields, the heavy oblong, folded-iron bells hanging from their necks clanged and reverberated. Rural music.
The Lost Girl Page 9