The Age of Exodus

by Gavin Scott

  “Presumably there are other guests?”

  “Certainly. And you are one of them. With some difficulty, and at some expense, we were able to secure you a room from tomorrow.”

  “When will the final vote be taken?”

  “In the next few days, in time for the General Assembly to be given the committee’s report by the middle of next month.”

  “So if anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen during the coming week,” said Forrester.

  “Correct,” said Eban. “Can we rely on you to do everything in your power to keep the members of the committee safe until the vote?”

  Forrester looked thoughtfully into Eban’s plump, bespectacled face, designed by nature, he had always felt, to reflect the smooth, unruffled dignity of a diplomat, and saw a sheen of sweat on the man’s brow.

  “I will do what I can,” he said. “Whether that will be enough, God only knows.”

  22

  JET PROPELLED

  The cathedral was still almost empty as Forrester was saying goodbye to Eban, and when he saw the newcomer slip in by the main doors, he knew that his pursuer had found him. “Slip away, old chap,” he said quietly. “I need to deal with something.”

  As Eban vanished into the gloom, Forrester stood up so that he could easily be seen and gazed around the building thoughtfully, as if appreciating its beauties for the first time. Then, seeing a side chapel whose golden light, filtered through stained-glass windows, was in vivid contrast to the surrounding dimness, he walked towards it, paused to make sure his entrance was obvious, and went in.

  The Chapel of the Maccabees, unlike the rest of the building, was full of frescoes and flamboyant Gothic architecture, and Forrester wondered how it had survived the puritan zeal of the Calvinists. As he stood contemplating a stained-glass depiction of St. Andrew and his distinctive Scottish cross, the man in the tan jacket materialised beside him and spoke softly.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Enjoying the Chapel of the Maccabees,” said Forrester. “And wondering why the Swiss would particularly want to commemorate a two-thousand-year-old conflict between Orthodox and Hellenistic Jews in an elaborate stained-glass window. Have you any thoughts?”

  “Yes, I’m wondering whether to shove your bloody head through it,” said the man.

  “Even before we’ve been introduced?” said Forrester.

  “I know exactly who you are, Forrester,” said the man. “And as for who I am—”

  He stopped, as a pastor came into the chapel and knelt down to pray.

  “And as for who you are?” said Forrester, encouragingly.

  The man lowered his voice. “I’m one of the people you really pissed off in the south of France,” he said.

  “Really?” said Forrester. “You mean one of the people I saved from being caught with an MI6 transmitter by the French police?”

  “I know what really happened,” said the man.

  “Do you?” said Forrester. “You’ve heard the whole story from all concerned? You haven’t just listened to a couple of lunkheads who bungled an operation and nearly exposed the British government to serious embarrassment?”

  The man looked at Forrester with angry eyes, but Forrester knew he had scored a point: his opponent was suddenly less sure of his ground.

  “One more time,” said the man. “Why are you here?”

  “It’s the university vacation,” said Forrester. “Dons are supposed to refresh their minds with visits to important cultural sites.”

  “Your tickets were booked through a Jewish travel agency,” said the man. “Your hotel was booked through a Jewish travel agency. You’re working for the fucking Yids.”

  “Do you check the religious beliefs of your travel agent before you go on holiday, old man?” said Forrester, inwardly cursing Eban’s carelessness, and then acknowledging to himself that the man had enough to think about without worrying about MI6 checking who booked Forrester’s ticket.

  “It’s the same damn travel agency that’s up to its neck in ferrying DPs all over Europe,” said the man. “So we know the bloody Jews brought you over here and we don’t want you interfering again.”

  “Interfering in what?”

  “You know damn well what.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Forrester firmly. “And I’m very interested to know what MI6 is doing here. I hope you don’t have any scatterbrained ideas about messing with UNSCOP?”

  “Listen, you bastard,” said the man, “I’m not going to do anything in a church, but if you’re not out of Geneva on tomorrow morning’s plane, something might just happen to you. In fact, to be a bit clearer, something will happen to you, and you might find yourself limping for quite a long time afterwards, if not for the rest of your bloody life.”

  “I take it that’s a direct threat from Broadway?” said Forrester. “One you wouldn’t mind me passing on to the Foreign Secretary? The Foreign Secretary who recently asked for my assistance with his personal security in America?”

  “You heard what I said,” replied the man, but Forrester detected the note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “And you’d better hear what I’m telling you,” said Forrester. “I’m reporting this conversation direct to Toby Lanchester in FO Security. If anything happens to me, he’ll know where to look. And by the way, sonny boy, I really don’t like people threatening me. Especially in church.” And he smashed his forehead down on the man’s nose, brought his knee sharply up into his groin, and walked calmly out of the chapel.

  The praying pastor did not look up as Forrester left.

  * * *

  As he walked away Forrester felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. He was always reluctant to resort to violence and he wasn’t absolutely sure he had needed to on this occasion. His rationale was that he needed this man off his back, and this was the best way to make him think twice about getting in Forrester’s way a second time. But the truth was he had needed to hit back at somebody, had needed to express his fury at what his countrymen had been doing to the survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and the man in the tan jacket, with his sneering remarks about “bloody Jews”, had been the perfect target.

  Which did not, he knew, remotely justify what he had done. He had probably stored up much more trouble for himself in the future. And yet, as he walked rapidly away down the quiet streets of Old Geneva, he felt a sense of genuine satisfaction: he had hit back at the men with the rubber truncheons.

  He strolled out of the old town, down to the river and over the first bridge he came to. He stopped in the middle, looking down on Rousseau’s Island, and thought again about what had happened in the Chapel of the Maccabees. Was Broadway really planning to take direct action against the United Nations Committee? He found it very hard to believe, and it occurred to him that though his threat to report the encounter had been made on the spur of the moment, it actually would be a good idea to let Toby Lanchester know that MI6 operatives were roaming about in Geneva, because however Ernest Bevin personally felt about the Jews, a botched MI6 operation here was the last thing the Foreign Office would want at this stage of the game.

  But what would the FO think about a successful Broadway operation? Instinctively, Forrester doubted they were planning for this either. He had personally witnessed the anger in King Charles Street at events in Sète, and it was hard to imagine anyone there sanctioning anything so crude and potentially counterproductive as a move against UNSCOP as it went into its final deliberations.

  On the other hand, he knew Eban had been right about the sheer amount of opposition to a Jewish homeland in the British establishment, and the determination of so many officials to stay on the right side of the Arabs. Might some faction within MI6, believing they were acting in the nation’s best interests, be planning some action of its own? He was still turning this over in his mind when he reached the far bank of the Rhône, crossed Square du Mont-Blanc, and ducked into the Hotel de la Paix to find out where he
could send his telegram to Lanchester. As he glanced into the bar, therefore, it was something of a shock to see Sir Jack Casement at a table with Angela Shearer.

  The industrialist glanced up before Forrester could avoid being seen. For a moment his face darkened, and then he waved Forrester over to join them.

  Angela Shearer lifted her cheek to be kissed as he reached their table, and a waiter began filling a glass from the bottle of the Dom Pérignon in the ice bucket. Casement’s smile as he shook hands was as cold as the contents of the bucket.

  “What an extraordinary coincidence, Forrester. I assume it is a coincidence?”

  “I think it must be,” said Forrester. “I had no idea either you or Miss Shearer were in Geneva.”

  “Really?” said Casement.

  “Didn’t I tell you Jack was bringing me here?” said Angela Shearer. “When you came to see me last week?”

  “In fact not, Miss Shearer,” said Forrester.

  Casement’s look became icier still. “You’ve been visiting Angela?”

  “She asked to see me in connection with Charles’s death,” said Forrester. “You’ll remember me telling you Templar asked me for help before he was killed.”

  “Of course I remember that claim,” said Casement. “You made it when we met on the day of the murder. And when you turned up aboard the Queen Mary with a young woman, as I recall.”

  “On the occasion when Billy Burke brought up your old business dealings,” said Forrester. “Rather bitterly as I recall. And not long before he went overboard.”

  “Several days before, in fact,” said Casement. “Just before we reached New York. Do you remember our conversation as I gave you a lift into town?”

  “Vividly,” said Forrester, “although the rush of events rather pushed it to the back of my mind. You threatened me, as I recall, and warned me to stay out of your affairs. The next time I saw you was at Flushing Meadows the day poor Loppersum was killed.” He watched Casement’s eyes as he spoke, and saw no reaction whatever. “But before that I’d run into a pal of yours: Al Goldberg.” This time instead of replying Casement took a deep drink of his champagne. “I think he wanted you to help him smuggle war surplus planes out of America,” said Forrester, “for use by the Jews in the event of a war with the Arabs.”

  “Is that what he told you?” said Casement, levelly.

  “In fact, he didn’t,” said Forrester, casting his mind back to the odd conversation in the Automat off Times Square. “It was the FBI who gave me that information. All Goldberg actually said was that he’d flown you from Bristol to Liverpool during the war when one of your factories was hit. And he asked me to mention the concentration camp at Mauthausen to you. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Who the hell are you, Forrester?” said Casement. “Really? Whose side are you on?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” said Forrester. “I want to see justice done to both sides in this. The UN has given that job to this committee. And if you’re thinking of doing anything on behalf of Industrialists International or anyone else to interfere with that, Sir Jack, you and I are not on the same side.” Suddenly he was seething with anger. As he rose to his feet, Casement’s companion looked up at him, white-faced.

  “I still don’t know who killed your husband, Angela,” Forrester told her. “But I’m damn sure he died because of what’s going on in Palestine, and I promise you this – I’m going to find out who did it, and who’s behind the other killings, no matter how many pillars of the establishment and organs of state and knights of the realm stand in the way.” And he pushed back his chair and strode out of the room.

  As he exited he suddenly understood why a single word in his conversation with Aubrey Eban had set off a depth bomb in his mind. The word was “research”. The topic had been the unlikelihood of the deaths of Billy Burke and Jan Loppersum.

  “Research,” Eban had said. “We do our research.” And in the instant Forrester had looked down at Angela’s white, strained face, he knew why the word had begun to reverberate like a small, insistent bell.

  As a result, the telegram he sent to Toby Lanchester, in addition to informing him of the encounter with the MI6 man, reiterated his earlier request to enquire of the FO messengers who had been the intended recipient of a misdirected package of research material which had been accidentally sent to Charles Templar in the weeks before his death.

  Then, as evening fell, he went for a walk beside the lake.

  * * *

  Forrester sat on a park bench in the Jardin Anglais looking out over the great fountain as it shot its absurdly tall plume four hundred feet into the air with very un-Swiss exuberance. Protruding from the water a little way out into the lake were two massive boulders brought here by the glaciers during the last Ice Age, whose sheer stolidity seemed to Forrester a much better symbol of the nation than the Jet d’Eau. Far away, across the great expanse of water, rose the Alps.

  From the beginning he had discounted any link between Jack Casement and the supernatural elements of the story, but he had to acknowledge there was a direct connection, through Industrialists International, with Alexander Samson, who was up to his neck in the occult and had probably been involved with the highly theatrical theft of the Narak effigy in New York. And Angela Shearer had told him that Casement had been present at the party where she had encountered Aleister Crowley for the first time. The party at which Edward St. John Townsend had also been present.

  “My dear chap,” said a voice, “you do look thoughtful.”

  Forrester looked up, startled, to see Richard Thornham flicking the blond lock of hair on his forehead and smiling down at him with his Leslie Howard smile. Crispin Priestley was at Thornham’s side, more Billy Bunterish than ever, as if he had been stuffing himself with cakes since they had last met. As he blinked at Forrester through his thick spectacles Forrester couldn’t help remembering that it was he who had translated the Sumerian curses which had pursued Charles Templar to his death. Again, he asked himself, had he also sent them?

  “You looked so thoughtful,” said Priestley, “I told Thornham we shouldn’t disturb you.”

  “Oh, he wants company,” said Thornham, sitting down beside Forrester. “Am I right, old chap? Why else would you have come to Geneva?”

  “For the waters,” said Forrester. “And you?”

  “UNSCOP,” said Priestley. “We’re here on a watching brief.”

  “Of course,” said Forrester. In the circumstances there was nothing surprising about their presence. On the other hand, the cast was reassembling – the same cast that had been there when Charles Templar, William Burke and Jan Loppersum had met their ends.

  “How do you think it will go?” said Forrester. “With the committee?”

  “Genuinely hard to say,” said Thornham. “I think a lot of them came away from Palestine thinking it was simply too small to split up into two countries.”

  “They also recognised that if we Brits do pull out there’s going to be the most appalling war between the Jews and the Arabs,” said Priestley.

  “On the other hand,” said Thornham, “visiting the camps will have been a very emotional experience. All those wretched DPs yearning for somewhere to go. It’ll definitely encourage some of the delegates to vote for a Jewish homeland.”

  “But not all of them?” said Forrester.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Thornham. “The truth is, the whole thing is very finely balanced. It’s absurd, really: just eleven people with the fate of the whole Middle East in their hands.”

  “The fate of a whole people,” said Priestley.

  “Two whole peoples,” said Thornham. “Let’s not forget the Palestinian Arabs. But the fact is, if there’s a solid majority in UNSCOP for partition, the General Assembly will almost certainly endorse what they say, and we’ll have to accept whatever that is.”

  “Not that we take a view either way,” said Priestley. “Britain has committed itself to hand the mandate back to the Uni
ted Nations as soon as the General Assembly has made its decision, and we’re happy to leave the problem to them.”

  “A lot of people think that’s a pose,” said Forrester. “They think Britain doesn’t really want to let go of Palestine at all, in order to keep in with the Arabs.”

  Thornham shook his head decisively.

  “By ‘a lot of people’ I assume you mean the Jews,” he said. “They overthink things. We want to wash our hands of Palestine, and if these UNSCOP people get to decide what becomes of the place when we’re gone, so be it, as far as His Majesty’s Government is concerned.”

  “Que sera, sera, as they say,” remarked Priestley. Minutes later, they were strolling off into the gloom, and as he watched them go, Forrester wondered when Mrs. Theresa Palmer would appear, because he was quite certain, by now, that she had to be here too, waiting in the wings for her cue. And behind her, somewhere in the shadows, the sinister figure of Mr. Smith.

  That night he ate alone in a quiet, dimly lit restaurant, and as he turned the problem over in his mind, he watched a pretty girl in a nearby booth, eating alone and contentedly reading a book.

  She reminded him, of course, of Gillian Lytton.

  He wondered what Gillian was doing now.

  23

  THE SUMMONS

  The hotel known as the Chateau Bougerac was hidden discreetly behind high stone walls on a tree-lined street on the outskirts of Geneva. The thickly wooded grounds in which it stood had been known to hunters since the end of the last Ice Age, and many a band of Cro-Magnon travellers had bathed weary limbs in the hot water spring at the foot of the hill which lay behind the property.

  Roman legionaries had shucked off their boots to bathe their feet in that spring, and once a party of them had been surprised there by a Teutonic tribe on its way south, and ritually sacrificed to a local forest goddess. In the Middle Ages the chateau had been the fortified home of a robber baron who preyed on merchant ships crossing Lake Geneva, and legend had it that William Tell had once taken refuge from pursuing Austrian troops in the surrounding woods. But since the Enlightenment it had been the elegant domain of the Bougerac family, pillars of Genevan society who had once taken the risk of inviting Jean-Jacques Rousseau to dinner, where his conversational sallies had taken them years to live down. Now the chateau was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city, and home, for the time being, to the eleven members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, together with their alternates and secretariat.