Betrayals

by Brian Freemantle

  “What do you think you can achieve by coming here?” demanded the man, trying to escape sideways from the attack.

  “I don’t know,” answered Janet honestly. “I haven’t been here a day yet.”

  “It’s John’s life you’re playing with.”

  “It’s John’s life you’re playing with,” Janet said. “Tell me … convince me by telling me of something positive you’ve done to get him out … that you’ve made the right contacts and that there’s a chance of his being released … that you know where he is!”

  “Lady, you’re a pain in the ass.”

  “That’s exactly what I am, “agreed Janet. “And I’m going to remain a pain in your ass and everyone else’s ass until I get some fucking action!”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed because you know bad words?”

  The offended Southerner, Janet thought. Furiously she said: “I don’t give a fuck whether you’re offended or not! There’s only one person I want to impress. His name’s John Sheridan.”

  The man brought his hands lightly together, in mocking applause. “So you’re going to poke around Larnaca marina and the dives of Zenon Square and Kitieus Street and find out something we don’t know and show us all how to do it!”

  “I’m going to do whatever it takes, however it takes to get him back,” said Janet.

  “In a body bag.”

  Janet swallowed against the threat. Hopefully she said: “What’s the point in our fighting? It’s not going to achieve anything.”

  “Nor is your being here, getting in the way.”

  “Help me!” said Janet, hopeful still.

  The American shook his head. He said: “Langley guessed you’d do something like this, when you suddenly left Washington: that’s why we set up the arrival check, here at the airport. There was just one simple message, if you did come: for me to tell you to get out and stay out. Which I’ve done. Regard that as help: it’s all you’re going to get.”

  Janet straightened, irritated at herself now for pleading. “So you get out!” she said. “You’ve delivered your message.”

  The man was slow in standing, not wanting the departure to appear to be on her terms. “Remember what I’ve said, lady: remember what I’ve said.”

  “Get out, messenger boy!”

  He left the room as slowly as he’d stood, but with his face burning. Janet almost slammed the door behind him, but instead she closed it as quietly as possible. She remained with her back pressed against it, staring into the room. She was shaking again, worse than she had after the encounter with the policeman. She hadn’t known what to expect but certainly she hadn’t considered this, a procession of men with a procession of threats. Why not? she demanded of herself. Wasn’t that how Willsher had behaved in Washington and McDermott in London and Partington, earlier that day? Not so openly or so brutally, perhaps, but there wasn’t any real difference. Damn them, she thought: damn them all.

  She stared at the telephone when it rang, not at first moving to answer it. When she did, she instantly recognized Partington’s voice.

  “I’m most awfully sorry,” the diplomat said. “Tomorrow isn’t as convenient as I thought it might be. Could we leave it that I’ll call you again?”

  “Of course,” Janet agreed, actually relieved. She had Larnaca marina to visit. And the dives of Zenon Square and Kitieus Street, as well. The repetitious American hadn’t been as smart as he obviously thought he was.

  As she replaced the receiver Janet realized, unhappily, that her period had started. A woman, she thought, bitterly.

  13

  It was raining, the storm hurling itself against her window and making black what should have been the squinting brightness of early morning. Something else—that this was not a place of perpetual sunshine—that she had forgotten. Oddly, the awareness upset her more than the previous day’s confrontations: she’d imagined, at least, she’d remember the weather in an area where she’d spent so much time growing up. Her room overlooked the junction of Achaeans with Metokhi Street and Janet stood at the drip-splashed and trickling glass, gazing beyond towards the Turkish occupation in the center of Nicosia. On a clear day she supposed she could have actually seen the mountains separating Nicosia from Kyrenia but now everything was cloaked in bulge-bellied clouds, anxious to relieve themselves. Male or female clouds? she wondered. Female: they were squatting. At least, she thought, the heat would not be so bad today. And at once contradicted herself. If the rain didn’t let up it could be positively worse: steamy and monsoon-like. What would a day such as this be like for John, wherever he was? No air conditioning: probably no window or vent, to provide even air, steamy or monsoon-like. Maybe not a hole in the ground or a bucket to pee into.

  “Poor darling!” said Janet, aloud. “My poor darling!” She was talking to a different ghost, she realized, abruptly. No! Hank was the ghost: Hank was dead. John wasn’t dead: she was sure he wasn’t dead. Knew he wasn’t dead. John was alive: alive and waiting to be rescued. “I’m here,” she said, unashamedly, no longer seeing the darkened, rain-lashed view beyond the window. “I’m trying: please believe that I’m trying.” John would believe her, she knew: would trust her. Not like everyone else.

  Janet squeezed her eyes shut, against the rain and the imagery, not opening them until she turned back into the room. The weather didn’t matter: nothing mattered more than finding the way—the link or the thread or whatever—to John. And she would find it. No threatening policeman with absurd moustaches or threatening American with no name or patronizing diplomat was going to frighten her away. “Beat you!” she said to them now, louder than the first time she’d talked to herself but still unashamed. “I’m going to beat the lot of you bastards!”

  Around her the hotel stayed eerily quiet. The rain splattered noisily and insistently against the window. “Beat you,” repeated Janet, quieter now and more to herself than before, a personal encouragement.

  She put on jeans and a baggy workshirt and loafers. In the hotel coffee shop, where she ordered coffee with rolls, Janet tried to study everyone around her. Was she under surveillance, from Zarpas’s people or from the Americans? Several times other customers answered her stare—two men hopefully—and very quickly Janet stopped trying. She was, she acknowledged, the amateur that she was constantly accused of being; so what chance did she have, if everyone else was professional? None, she answered herself: another fantasy exercise. Preposterous to attempt, then.

  Unsure how the Cypriot policeman intended to monitor her movements—but knowing that hotel cab drivers would be an obvious source—Janet disdained a taxi, deciding instead to rent an Avis car. She drove towards Larnaca. Twice she stopped at lean-to souvenir stalls, to let traffic pass, and staged another more protracted halt, at Kosi, for more coffee that she did not want. By that time the clouds had pulled back to the mountains where they belonged and everywhere was drying out, the roads and the houses steaming under the displaced and disgruntled sun. Janet chose a table outside the cafe, which the waiter had to wipe dry, as he did the seat, and she sat at once and tried to memorize the cars that went by directly after her. There were so many that quickly she became confused. A feeling of impotence started to rise, but she refused to let it grip her. What was the point of becoming upset at an inability to do something for which she wasn’t trained?

  She entered Larnaca on Grivas Digenis Avenue and kept driving eastwards and by the time she passed the Zeno stadium she was getting snatches of the sea, silvered now by a white sun from an unclouded, uncluttered sky. She spotted one of the faded and bent direction signs to the Beirut ferries at Karaolis and Demetriou so she went to the left. There was a dog’s-leg she was forced to follow and when Janet reached the T-junction she looked for some other marker and almost at once smiled at the sign for Kitieus Street. At last, she thought, something was becoming easy: it had taken long enough. She turned left because she could tell it to be the route into the center of the town, seeking somewhere to park the car and agai
n, practically immediately, saw the Othello Cinema.

  She drove into its car park and despite her previous resolution remained in the car after stopping it, alert for any car following her in. None did.

  The asphalt was already baked hot underfoot when Janet stepped from the car. She hurried away from the vehicle and the cinema, apprehensive of some challenge against her parking there, but none came. On Kitieus Street she hesitated, unsure which direction to take until she saw a sign to the marina. Following it, she realized the street led directly into the square that the crew-cut, unnamed American of the previous afternoon had identified and, illogically, she felt further encouraged. She went down one side of Zenon Square to emerge on Athens Street and stopped, gazing out over the sea.

  Beirut was in a direct line, she knew. Just over a hundred miles: only a hundred miles between her and John. Dear God, how she wished it were as easy as that, simply measured in distance! I’m trying, she thought, echoing in her mind her empty bedroom conversation of that morning: I’m trying, my darling.

  The marina and pier were very obvious, behind the harbor groin. Janet walked unhurriedly past the hotel and apartment blocks, glancing up to the balconies and loggias where oiled people were already spreadeagled and relaxed, grilling themselves. No worries beyond diarrhea, incorrect camera exposure and forgetting to send holiday postcards to their mothers, thought Janet, enviously.

  The bent arm of the pier and the furthest barrier of the marina created an almost enclosed square for the yachts and motorcraft to be moored, against the spread-apart fingers of the floating pontoons. Janet hesitated near the bar named appropriately the Marina Pub, gazing down at the assembly. She’d found the marina and she’d found Zenon Square and she’d found Kitieus Street. And what the hell was she going to do now? How, from among all the innocent yachtsmen and holidaymakers in the bars and restaurants, was she supposed to isolate someone with links to religious fanatics or gangsters in Beirut? Janet fought against this new despair, forcing herself forward into the marina, just needing the movement.

  All around the boats’ fittings tinkled and chimed, like chattering birds, and the floating dock pontoons shifted just slightly but disconcertingly beneath her feet. Remembering, suddenly, John’s fat-bellied boat in which they’d spent so much time the previous summer, Janet stared about her, looking for something like it. She took her time before giving up, resigned, unable to find anything even vaguely resembling it. But this was hardly John’s sort of place; this was designer deckwear and remembering the ice for the drinks before casting off and getting back in time for cocktails. Janet continued slowly up and down the docks, gradually discerning a pattern. The crafts were graded, the smaller boats assigned the area near the pier but increasing in size finally to the large, oceangoing vessels against the far edge of the marina, where the offices and chandlers appeared to be.

  Janet hesitated, trying to encompass the entire area. She supposed the small boats to her right were capable of reaching the Lebanon, those with sails certainly, but it would be an uncertain crossing. From her limited sailing experience Janet guessed the middle pontoon, which she had not yet reached, was where the yachts began which could comfortably make the journey. She went to it and strolled casually seawards, head moving from side to side as she studied each mooring. The yachts seemed roughly divided equally, half open, either occupied or preparing to sail, half secured and battened. Near the pontoon’s end a yacht was open but with its sails reefed and its fenders out. Journey’s End, Janet read, from the stern markings: registered at Falmouth. In the stern a woman lay prostrate on an air-mattress, a bikini wisped over her nipples and crotch, twice as much material employed in the hardscarf protecting her blonde hair from bleaching further in the sun.

  “Wonderful day,” said Janet.

  The woman’s eyes opened, in apparent surprise. She remained lying as she was.

  “Wonderful day,” repeated Janet.

  The woman moved, but slowly, easing up on to her elbow and using her other hand to shield her eyes while she squinted up at the pontoon. “What?”

  “You sail all the way here from England?” asked Janet, unwilling to repeat her fatuous opening for a third time.

  “Two years ago,” said the sunbather. “We leave it here now. You have a boat here on the marina?”

  Janet squatted to take the sun from the other woman’s eyes, shaking her head. “Just looking around and admiring,” she said. “How often do you get out?”

  The woman shifted, bringing her legs up in front of her and wrapping her arms around them. “Not as much as we should, unfortunately.”

  Janet hesitated, not knowing how to continue. “Ever get across there?” she said, clumsily, jerking her head seawards.

  The woman actually looked beyond the marina and then back again, frowning. “Where?” she demanded.

  “Lebanon,” said Janet. She was handling it all very badly, she thought. But how could she handle it!

  The woman snorted a laugh, incredulous. “Are you serious?” she demanded.

  “I just wondered,” said Janet, retreating.

  “You’d have to be out of your mind to go anywhere near that coastline!” insisted the woman.

  Maybe I am, thought Janet. She said: “Some people must.”

  The woman cocked her head curiously to one side and did not respond immediately. When she did the words came slowly. “Mad people, like I said.”

  Janet desperately searched for another way to phrase the question but could not find one. Directly she said: “Know any?”

  The woman pulled herself tighter together on the mattress and stared at Janet. Janet guessed the woman was trying to memorize her features and thought, Oh shit! Abruptly the woman said: “What’s going on!”

  “Nothing’s going on,” insisted Janet. “Just chatting.”

  “Who are you?”

  “English,” tried Janet

  “That wasn’t what I asked. I can tell you’re English.”

  “Stone,” she said, trapped. “Janet Stone.”

  “Why so much interest in the Lebanon?”

  “No reason,” shrugged Janet, deciding against telling the woman anything. “Just chatting, like I said.” She straightened, to relieve the cramp from her legs.

  “I don’t know anyone who’s mad enough to sail to Beirut,” insisted the woman. “And if I did, I’d be suspicious of them, because there’s only one reason to go there and that’s to smuggle. And my husband and I are not smugglers.”

  A defense against an unvoiced accusation? wondered Janet. Or did the woman suspect her of being an agent provocateur? It was immaterial, either way. She said: “It was nice talking to you.”

  The woman did not reply but remained gazing at her intently.

  Janet started to walk away, realizing at once she was going in the wrong direction, further along the pontoon towards the open sea. There appeared to be no more occupied boats—and if there had been Janet realized she could not have attempted another conversation of the sort she’d just had with the woman, whom she guessed would have hurried along immediately to inquire after she’d finished—and to retrace her steps meant passing directly in front of her. Janet guessed the woman would be staring at her and saw that she was, when she turned at the pontoon head to walk back.

  At the yacht Janet hesitated and said: “Bye now.”

  The woman nodded, but didn’t speak.

  Janet continued on, tensed against a sensation going beyond helplessness, to hopelessness. Stop it! she demanded of herself. Stop it! stop it! stop it! She’d only just started … hadn’t started … so it was infantile to become depressed because the first person to whom she’d tried to speak (and spoken to like some mental defective, at that) hadn’t been the premier hostage-freeing tour operator of the Middle East. Worse than infantile: stupidly infantile. At the larger, linking pontoon Janet turned and looked back in the direction from which she’d just come: the bikini-clad woman on Journey’s End was standing now, gazing towards her
. For her own satisfaction—and not even sure what that satisfaction was—Janet slightly raised her hand and jiggled her fingers in the smallest of farewell waves before going consciously out of sight towards—and behind—the larger boats.

  It was right that she should not become depressed so soon but just as important not to continue in the gauche manner in which she had just behaved. One more episode like that, coupled with the sort of gossip Janet guessed to be the glue that kept a marina like this bonded together, and her next encounter with the disbelieving Chief Inspector Zarpas would probably be in a police cell.

  But how! Janet halted at the next out-thrust leg towards the sea, looking up along the larger boats but not making towards them yet. Journey’s End, registered in Falmouth, she remembered: mistake upon mistake! It was always possible, of course, that an English-registered vessel with English-speaking occupants could have the sort of links she sought, but other registrations and other nationalities were far more likely. Such as? Cyprus, obviously. The Lebanon itself. Or Syrian. Or Greek. Turkish, too, although those would not be moored on this part of the island. Still too wide a spread, she thought, gazing generally over the marina: there had to be over a hundred yachts moored here at least. Janet tried to think of a way to narrow her search down to the most obvious choices, smiling when the idea came to her. Language, she decided. So what were the most likely languages? French had been the tongue of the Lebanon before the outbreak of the troubles, in the early 70s. But since then the country had been awash with Syrians and Iranians and Palestinians. Arabic, then, as a second choice: maybe no longer second, but equal. Janet felt a brief pop of encouraging relief: French and Arabic, and she spoke both of them.

  Unwilling to be seen by the Englishwoman, Janet ignored the immediate pontoon, going on until the second before setting out along it behind the protective hedge of two sets of anchored and tethered vessels. As before she walked slowly, intent upon names and registrations. Up one side and down the other she walked, never once seeing a registration to fit her idea. Twice she heard French being spoken, both times from yachts identified from French ports, and Janet realized she had not reduced her search as effectively as she had imagined. Both vessels were crowded, with bathing-costumed groups already drunk, and she decided it was pointless attempting any sort of conversation.