Snap Shot

by A. J. Quinnell

  One day, she thought, I’m going to kill a man like that. Instead of his chin it will be his throat. She had read somewhere that when a man died in the act of sex he gets an enormous erection which remains after death. That would be something to see - and feel.

  Sami lay panting on top of her and, after a decent pause and several whispered endearments, she rolled him onto his side and left the bed. He lay watching as she padded towards the bathroom. She was long and lithe and curved, her hair swinging behind her like a blonde cape .

  Who was it, Sami thought, who all those years ago described her as being built like a racing snake?

  He heard the water running into the bidet and the sound conjured up an association with prostitution. His first experience with a woman had taken place in Paris and afterwards she had douched herself vigorously; he had been embarrassed and a little angry, thinking that she must have thought him unclean.

  He supposed that in a way Janine was prostituting herself. He had no illusions that she loved him and he guessed that once the operation was complete she would nicely but positively drop him. No matter. That was at least two years away and in the meantime he would have constant access to her body. A body which he could not get enough of. It was amazing how in only one month she had discovered exactly his sexual preferences. At the same time he realised he was spending too much time in Beirut on these so-called liaison missions. He had justified them to himself and his director by pointing to the fact that the Mossad threat would originate in the Lebanon and it was vital for the Mukhabarat to strengthen its own network there. But he knew it was the taut body of Janine Lesage and not duty that brought him constantly to the city.

  Janine came out of the bathroom, moved to the window and stood looking out. She wore only a towel knotted at her waist. They were in her apartment situated on the top floor of a building in Ras Beirut. It commanded spectacular views of the city and the on-going civil war. Even at that moment he could hear the distant crackle of small arms fire from the direction of the Nabaa district.

  Sami glanced at his watch and then sat up and reached for his clothes which had been discarded an hour before in a flood of rising passion. There was a Press Conference at PLO headquarters in half an hour and, as he still maintained his cover as a correspondent for the Middle East News Bureau, he should be there.

  Janine turned and watched as he pulled his socks, then said in her harsh contralto:

  ‘Duff Paget.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I want you to kill him.’

  Sami looked up in shock.

  ‘He’s CIA,’ Janine continued before he could say anything. ‘And he’s starting to meddle in our affairs.’

  Sami’s look of surprise was comical. ‘Duff - CIA?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, Sami. Don’t look so shocked. He’s been an agent for at least eight years. Ever since Vietnam.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Sami was disconcerted. He was not unused to hearing that acquaintances or even colleagues worked in intelligence but it usually did not take so long for him to find out. Only yesterday he had been having a drink with a group of correspondents in the Commodore Hotel; Duff Paget had been among them and they had spent half an hour chatting about old times.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said impatiently. ‘He works for a special section codenamed “Equine”. We cracked it a few months ago. We also discovered that one of its primary missions is to counter the threat of nuclear proliferation.’ She said it easily. Skilfully blending truth with half-truth. Sami’s face showed uncertainty, then she saw a hard look come into his eyes.

  ‘You’re not making it up? You always hated him - ever since that auction.’

  She shook her head, her long hair swinging behind her. ‘Don’t be stupid Sami. Yes, I hate him, but I wouldn’t let that influence me.’

  She started to walk slowly towards the bed.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t matter if your plans for the reactor are what you say they are. But if not, and if Paget finds out anything, then my Government is going to come under enormous pressure. We can handle the Israelis but the United States are something else. Giscard d’Estaing may decide to cancel the deal - oil sanctions or not.’

  She had reached the bed and Sami looked up at her.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of the CIA prying,’ he said. ‘Even though we have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Of course,’ she answered with a narrow smile. ‘Anyway, Paget is a threat. You’ll be doing less than your duty if you leave him alive.’

  Sami sighed. He liked Duff Paget.

  ‘It’s a big decision,’ he said. ‘Killing a CIA agent can set off a whole string of fireworks.’

  She shrugged. ‘Sami, be realistic. How many journalists and cameraman have been killed in Beirut during the last two years? A dozen? Maybe more. Besides, your people won’t do it. Talk to your friends in the PLO. Matter of fact, Paget’s present assignment is to spy on them. I have all the details. He’s working right under their noses.’

  There was a long silence, then Sami said ‘I’ll think about it.’

  She smiled, knowing she had won. Her arms reached out and she pulled his head against her breasts, rubbing them against his face.

  ‘When it happens,’ she murmured, ‘I want to be there. I want to see it.’

  Walter Blum and Professor Chaim Nardi walked leisurely across the broad campus of Tel Aviv University. Walter was dressed in a beige suit and a pink tie. The Professor, a small, birdlike man, wore slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt. He was comfortable. Walter was sweating.

  Nardi was intrigued by his visitor. A week earlier he had received a phone call from General Hofti, whom he knew to be the head of Mossad. Hofti informed him that he was sending, by special messenger, a top secret dossier. It contained very complete details of a man. It would be appreciated if the Professor would study the dossier carefully and then discuss it with a certain Walter Blum. The name was familiar to Nardi, but before he could pin it down in his memory Hofti said that it was the same Walter Blum who had been a generous financial benefactor to the University and to Israel in general.

  So Nardi had studied the dossier with diligence and interest and, after obtaining clearance from Hofti, had even discussed it with two of his colleagues in the psychiatric department of the faculty.

  Walter had duly arrived, and after consuming a prodigious lunch hosted by the Dean, he and Nardi took a stroll.

  ‘It’s a fascinating case,’ Nardi said. ‘You have read my report. What else can I add?’

  Walter looked down at him, thinking that he resembled a sparrow rather than the foremost brain in Israel in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

  ‘I want to know how to manipulate him.’

  The Professor winced. He had, of course, realised that Walter was not merely a very successful businessman;

  ‘“Manipulate” is an unpleasant word in such a context,’ he remarked primly.

  ‘I’m in an unpleasant situation,’ Walter retorted. ‘This man could be important. I need him. So does Israel.’

  The Professor thought for a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious that he’s in a trauma. I won’t bother you with technical terminology. To be of any use to you or anyone else he has to be brought out of that trauma. He would have to talk about it and, from what I understand, that seems unlikely. It’s a great pity that you couldn’t find out what happened on that last patrol.’

  Walter grimaced. ‘We’re still trying. But it doesn’t look encouraging. It was a mixed patrol of US Special Forces men and mercenaries. We can’t find anyone still alive. Also, all records and any reports that were filed at the time have been destroyed.’

  Nardi spread his hands in a negative gesture. ‘So we remain in the dark.’

  Walter stopped walking and the Professor turned to look at him. ‘You’re saying that he’ll be useless unless he’s completely cured of the trauma?’

  ‘Not exactly. I don�
��t know what you want him for. Obviously he has all his faculties. He’s not insane, it’s just that whatever happened has turned him completely in on himself. He’s dropped out, so to speak. The only encouraging aspect is that he might be preparing to re-emerge. It’s taken a long time, but the mind, like the body, has enormous powers of self-healing. You would have to be careful, though, in anything you attempt-it could have the opposite effect to what you desire.’

  Walter started walking again and the Professor trotted along beside him.

  ‘How would you go about it?’ Walter asked.

  The Professor’s voice assumed a slightly lecturing tone. ‘Let’s examine his history. He was born in April 1941. His father was a minor official in the British War Office. He had failed to qualify for active service due to a weak heart. He was an undistinguished man from a moderately wealthy northern family. The report indicates that he was somewhat boring. Munger’s mother, on the other hand, was not. In an age long before the partial liberation of women she had, by her own efforts, won a scholarship to university and gone on to become a doctor. It appears that she may have married partly to finance her continuing studies. She was a vivacious, attractive, strong-willed woman - and she was Jewish, although she didn’t proclaim it or practise the faith. She had no apparent interest in Zionism.’

  He glanced at Walter either to see his reaction to a Jew who had no interest in Zionism or merely to check that he was being attentive. He was.

  ‘The child adored her,’ Nardi continued. ‘You could say she was the centre of his life. Apart from his mother he was a lonely boy - as many were during the war. Because his parents worked in London he spent most of his time with his paternal grandparents in Bradford. They were a dour couple and incapable of showing him affection. Hence the weekly visits from his mother were truly the high points in his life. By the time the war ended he was a very introverted child.’

  Nardi shrugged. ‘Of course, I am having to base this diagnosis on hearsay. However, the dossier was very detailed.’

  ‘It was,’ Walter grunted. ‘A dozen agents spent weeks compiling it. Go on, Professor.’

  ‘Well, under normal circumstances the end of the war should have brought the end of Munger’s mental isolation. He was reunited with his parents and I assume the flower of his mind was opening under his mother’s sunlight. Then came the first of two events which were to shape his life. His mother had specialised in treatment for malnutrition. There was a surprising amount of it in Britain during the war, particularly between 1942 and ‘43. Only two months after the war, and two months after being reunited with her son, she was asked to go to Germany to help with the survivors of the concentration camps.’

  ‘I know all this,’ Walter interjected. ‘I’ve read the damn dossier.’

  The Professor was not used to having his lectures interrupted and he gave Walter a severe look before continuing.

  ‘She was supposed to stay only one month, but what she saw affected her deeply. One can imagine the difference between a survivor of Auschwitz and an English schoolboy who has been deprived of certain vitamins for a couple of years. Anyway, she spent a year on the job. A year during which she only saw her son about once a month. In the meantime her husband had returned to Bradford with the boy and was working in the family business and living in the family home. During that year the boy started going to junior school which he hated. He was a complete loner and hence disliked by the other boys. After his mother returned from Germany there were two years of relative calm. Again under the influence of his mother’s love and personality the boy began to come out of his shell. Then came the final event which was to shape his character for the rest of his life.’

  ‘The 1948 war which established Israel as a state,’ Walter said impatiently.

  ‘Exactly.’ The Professor’s voice took on a musing tone. ‘Such is destiny. The future character traits of a seven-year-old child can be moulded in an instant by an event of which he had no knowledge and which took place thousands of miles away.’ He took note of Walter’s expression and his voice quickened.

  ‘All right, you know all that. His mother gave up her way of life, her practice, her husband - and her son. She came to Israel to fight. She was Jewish, she accepted it, embraced it. Nothing would divert her. Not even the son she loved. She abandoned him.’

  ‘She may have gone back.’

  Nardi shook his head, ‘I doubt it, Mr Blum. It was a conscious rejection of her past. Anyway, let’s assume that the boy realised that she would not come back. Certainly his father would have encouraged that. After all, only a month after she left he sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion.’ He shook his head again.

  ‘No, the boy would have understood and the effect was profound. It is well documented in the dossier. His school days, his lack of friends, his introspection - above all his lack of emotion when told that she was dead.’

  Walter nodded, his face pensive. ‘She died for Israel, abused and killed in the battle for Jerusalem. She was a heroine.’

  Nardi spread his hands eloquently.

  ‘For him she was nothing - like everything else he cut her out of his mind. She had deserted him. From that moment a chain-link fence went up around his emotions. He refused either to give or accept affection. Oh yes, when he grew up he became a great womaniser; held a fascinating attraction for them. It’s not unusual: women are often drawn to such men. Anyway, he appears to have felt nothing for anyone. When his father’s heart finally gave out and he died, the boy showed no emotion. He was ten years old and he didn’t shed a tear at the funeral.’

  ‘But his photographs - how could a man without emotion, without feelings - take such photographs?’

  Now the Professor stopped walking and as Walter turned he saw that the small man had a look of intense interest on his face. He said: ‘I’ve analysed that, Mr Blum. Studied them, and I will tell you something fascinating. Out of the thousands you sent me only a few, no more than a hundred, were of subjects other than war. They hold the key. There was a series he took while on holiday in Bali. He was with a woman and maybe she bored him, so he took pictures of the scenery and the people. Bali is one of the most exquisite places on earth, Mr Blum. I’ve been there, have you?’

  Walter nodded.

  ‘Well, then you know of its beauty. Yet when I looked at Munger’s photographs I saw a different place than I remembered. He photographed the masks of the dancers, managed to isolate them, make them more forbidding or grotesque than they really were. He photographed a tree. A tall, lush, tropical tree, but in his picture there was a thunderstorm behind it, the branches enlarged and made looming by the black clouds. He photographed the surf. I saw it was beautiful and symmetric as it rolled in across the coral reef. He captured it as menacing white spray pounding the still water. Did you see it, Mr Blum? Did you see what I saw or what he saw?’

  Walter looked at him quizzically then took his arm and started walking again. This time towards his distant, waiting car.

  ‘What you’re saying is that Munger is incapable of photographing anything but a war.’

  ‘More than that. What I’m saying is that the war is inside him. The camera is his eyes. Do you read poetry?’

  ‘Rarely,’ Walter answered, a little disconcerted. ‘I’ve read a bit of Shakespeare though.’

  ‘Well, the poet Wordsworth talked of something called “The vision splendid”. It allowed him to see what other mortals were unaware of. A particular light falling on a leaf. The colour of a flower. The hue of green on a distant hill. Some poets have it, and they can translate it into words. Munger has the opposite. His eyes are his camera and it translates what he sees onto paper and, Mr Blum, it’s all black and grey and just a little white.’

  They had reached the door. The driver was holding open the rear door.

  ‘It’s why he worked so hard at it,’ the Professor said. ‘Why he taught himself and trained himself. Just like a poet must learn how to assemble and articulate his “vision splendid�
��. It’s all he had-that dark vision of his own.’

  Walter nodded, his face sombre. ‘It’s what made him such a superb combat photographer.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the Professor. ‘And it’s what made him only half a man.’

  Walter sighed, then held out his hand. ‘Thank you, Professor Nardi. You have made it plain that the key to Munger lies in his dead mother. Perhaps shock treatment is the best way. I must think on it.’

  Nardi took the proffered hand and shook it, then he said with severity in his voice: ‘I know your work is important, but half a man or not, he is a human being. In the wrong hands psychology can be very dangerous and destructive. Is there any further way that I or my colleagues can help?’

  Walter shook his head. ‘No. Under the circumstances I’ll have to work alone.’ His voice took on an edge.

  ‘Besides, a lot of people got destroyed in this business. They have no option. The fact is that whether he wants to acknowledge it or not, Munger had a Jewish mother. She died for Israel. He might not relish the idea but he’s going to be given the same opportunity.’

  Walter climbed into the car, but before it pulled away Nardi said:

  ‘That last patrol.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘After he came back he was impotent - or so the dossier said.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s probably a sexual ingredient to his trauma. You should bear it in mind.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Walter answered. He signalled the driver and the car moved away.

  Chapter 6

  They were framed in the viewfinder: four of them - even their facial features were clear - brought close by the telescopic lens.

  ‘The usual bunch,’ Duff Paget said and straightened up, rubbing his back. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘They’ll be going for lunch. We may as well do the same. There won’t be any action now for at least a couple of hours.’

  Jerry Kimber nodded. He was looking through the window at the entrance of the building diagonally across the road. He saw the four men climbing into a black Ford. On each side of the doorway men stood holding Skorpion sub-machine guns at the ready, their eyes scanning the street and the sparse traffic.