Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  He’s going to make me work for it, thought Miles. Every step of the way. ‘I thought maybe you could tell me.’

  ‘Me?’ Now the surprise was even more dramatic. ‘I’m just an intelligence officer six weeks short of retirement, ready to crawl off to my place in a kibbutz. What would I know about this?’

  Miles ignored this: Edmund Whitehouse had told him that Teitelbaum had been proclaiming his imminent retirement for the last ten years. Across the plaza the jeweller had reappeared with another man, and the two of them set to work on the recalcitrant grille.

  Teitelbaum said sharply, ‘Tell me, who discovered this supposed set of connections? You or the British?’

  ‘We’ve been working together on this,’ Miles said stolidly. What did the Brits like to say? Keep a straight bat. Well I’m trying, thought Miles, sensing Teitelbaum would otherwise do his best to drive a wedge between the US and the UK, and through Miles’s argument.

  ‘Ari Block has not mentioned this at all,’ said Teitelbaum. Block was the Mossad station head in London, as Miles well knew.

  ‘We haven’t spoken to Ari Block.’

  ‘I’m surprised. It seems to me that if MI5 imagined that there was an undeclared Mossad officer working in London they would raise the matter with Mr Block right away. Yet instead you’re here, on a confidential mission arranged by Tyrus Oakes himself.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m representing the British as well. I’m here with their blessing.’

  Ah,’ Teitelbaum said with a child-like appreciation that did not conceal his scorn, ‘what an embarrass de richesse, Mr Brookhaven - to have Langley’s authority and a British blessing.’ He closed his eyes, as if transported by the sheer bliss of the scenario. When he opened them, he gave Miles a sceptical look. ‘I would not dream of doubting you, Mr Brookhaven, but I have to say I find your account of this… puzzling. And I don’t see why it should involve my organisation.’

  ‘Oh, that’s simple enough: we don’t believe for a moment that Kollek is just a trade officer. And we’re certain he was running Marcham.’ When Teitelbaum started to interrupt, Miles overrode him.

  ‘But that’s not all, Mr Teitelbaum. In the course of this investigation, someone tried to kill an MI5 case officer who was directing the British side of things. They came very close to succeeding, too.’

  ‘That could have been the Syrians,’ protested Teitelbaum, though he looked taken aback by this news. ‘They’ve never been known for their restraint.’

  Miles was having none of it. Shaking his head sharply, he said, ‘Not in this instance. There was a Syrian presence we were worried about - trained heavies. But they’ve left the UK now and were closely followed while they were there. No, the attempt to murder the case officer had all the hallmarks of an individual effort.’

  ‘And you’re accusing Kollek?’ Teitelbaum demanded stiffly.

  ‘I’m not accusing anyone. But we are concerned. And if Kollek is one of yours, which we believe to be the case, then we wanted you to know about our worries.’

  ‘In the hope that I can somehow provide you with reassurance?’ There was a challenge in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miles. There was no point denying it.

  Teitelbaum was silent for almost a minute. He stretched the fingers on one hand, looking at his nails. Then he said at last, ‘Let us play hypotheticals for a moment, Mr Brookhaven. Let us suppose, for example, that there is something in this idea of yours that Danny Kollek is not simply a trade officer. But that doesn’t explain your concern, now does it? Both of these men you mention have had Middle Eastern ties - it might well be they knew things that would interest someone like Kollek, assuming as I say for the sake of argument, that he had auxiliary interests to his normal embassy duties. And there’s certainly no reason to think he would have anything to gain by trying to kill an MI5 officer; the idea is insane. So just what is it you want to know about Mr Kollek?’

  Miles thought for a moment; he was determined not to be put off by this cunning bruiser. He said carefully, ‘The bizarre thing about this case is that we don’t know whether the person behind it is working to hurt the Syrians, or to hurt other countries, or both. We’re sure the person isn’t Syrian himself, but whatever is motivating him has something to do with the place. So what I’d like to know about Kollek is if he has any kind of connection with Syria. I know it’s a long shot, but there it is.’

  Silence hung between them, and for a moment Miles was convinced Teitelbaum was not going to answer his question. Miles saw the men across the plaza were still struggling to open the shutters. There was something almost farcical about their continuing efforts.

  Teitelbaum seemed to make up his mind. He looked at Miles with dispassionate eyes, and said simply, ‘Let me tell you a story.’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Liz read on, completely absorbed by Miles’s laconic prose. She was there herself, sitting in that Tel Aviv cafe, listening to Teitelbaum’s hoarse voice telling his simple but haunting tale.

  Danny Kollek’s grandfather, Isaac, had been a Syrian Jew. A merchant, who traded in rugs and spice, and almost anything that kept his small shop in the ancient city of Aleppo afloat. He stayed in Syria after the War, and survived the murderous riots against Jews in that city in 1947, when synagogues had been burned down and shops, including Isaac’s, destroyed.

  Life had eventually returned to a semblance of normality. Never prosperous, Isaac nonetheless made a living, and was able to support his wife and sole child, a son named Benjamin.

  But after Suez the climate suddenly changed again. Isaac found himself the object of an unofficial boycott by local residents, both Muslim and Christian, and the object of harassment by the government itself. Becoming increasingly anxious and fearing the worst, he sent his wife and boy to Israel, where they settled in Haifa and waited for Isaac to join them. He stayed behind to try and sell his business, and also, as Teitelbaum now acknowledged, ‘to help us’.

  After six months, just three weeks before he planned to join his family in Israel, Kollek was arrested. Tried on treason charges, he was found guilty, and six days later he was hanged in a public square in front of a silent crowd of Aleppo residents.

  After this, his son Benjamin, Danny Kollek’s father, grew up in Israel, and became a successful retailer of electronic goods in Haifa. Teitelbaum had met him once, not long after young Danny - fresh from university, having served his mandatory years in the army - had been recruited into Mossad. In such a small society, the nature of Danny’s job was hardly secret; certainly Danny’s father knew - he told Teitelbaum it was the proudest day of his life when Danny joined Mossad. Because his son would be defending the imperilled state, home of the Jews? Not at all, replied Benjamin. Because his son would now be in a position to avenge his grandfather’s death.

  When Teitelbaum had finished, Miles sat for a moment in silence. Then he said quietly, ‘I wish we’d known about this sooner.’

  He said this more in sorrow than in anger, but Teitelbaum’s eyes flared. ‘I wish you’d told us some things as well. I think you’ve known far more about Danny Kollek than you’re letting on.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Miles, sensing they were heading into dangerous territory. The one thing Tyrus Oakes’s cable had stressed was that he must avoid explicitly admitting that Kollek had been run by Andy Bokus.

  ‘Chance? Coincidence? I don’t believe in them. Maybe it is a drawback of belonging to our mutual profession. But that’s how I am.’ He was looking at Miles with hostile eyes. ‘So the idea that you and British intelligence have homed in on Danny Kollek through observation of two men said to be a danger to Syria, strikes me, frankly, as utterly preposterous.’

  Miles held his breath, not daring to speak. Teitelbaum gave him a small, sardonic smile, which added to Miles’s tension. Then the Israeli said, ‘I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Mr Brookhaven. And if you don’t, then I think you’ll find your head of station Mr Bokus can illuminate you.’

>   You knew about Kollek, thought Miles, and a fresh wave of agitation swept across him. He had been struggling to keep secret something Teitelbaum had known about for a lot longer than Miles.

  Teitelbaum gave a short squawking laugh, but it was without malice. ‘You look like a rabbit caught in a tractor’s headlights. But cheer up, Mr Brookhaven; I am not feeling so clever myself.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Miles said hopefully.

  ‘Because if Mr Andy Bokus feels he’s been taken for a ride, I have to admit I feel precisely the same way. He thought he was running Danny Kollek; I thought Danny Kollek was running him.’

  ‘What?’ Miles was astonished. So Mossad had thought that Bokus was playing away - Danny Kollek had told them so. Jesus, this was becoming a nightmare, with individuals and entire agencies played masterfully by one twisted puppeteer. It was hard to believe.

  Looking equally perturbed himself, Teitelbaum gazed into his empty cup, as if hoping to find something there to soothe his troubles. Sitting back, he clasped his hands and set them on his ample stomach. He said ruefully, ‘But I see now that I have been as big a fool as - if I may say so -your own head of London station.’

  ‘Why?’

  Teitelbaum sighed rabbinically. Miles had the sudden sense that this man had seen more aspects of the human comedy than he ever would. The Israeli said, ‘Partly because of the things you have told me. But for the clincher, as I think you Americans like to say, you’d have to ask Danny Kollek.’

  ‘Happily,’ said Miles eagerly. ‘Can we call him in?’

  ‘That won’t be possible.’

  Miles’s spirits sank. Had he misgauged the conversation? He had been starting to think Teitelbaum was on his side. Then he noticed the expression on the older man’s face: he seemed to be enjoying some secret.

  Teitelbaum said, ‘I am not being difficult, Mr Brookhaven. You’re more than welcome to talk to Kollek - if you can find him. We certainly can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Simply that Danny Kollek has disappeared.’ He stared at Miles, all amusement gone. ‘It looks as if we have a rogue agent.’ Just then there was a large bang across the plaza, and looking up Miles saw the jeweller looking triumphant, swinging the unlocked grill against the wall.

  As Liz, in her office in London, finished reading Miles’s report, she saw how they had all been fooled. Duped by false attachments, phoney allegiances, clever manipulation of national and Agency rivalries. All carried out and encouraged by one man. Who said the age of the Individual was over? She reached for her mug of tea. It was stone-cold.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The Israeli Embassy was a white stucco mansion at the High Street Kensington end of Kensington Palace Gardens, barely a stone’s throw from the Underground. It took Liz fifteen minutes to get inside. She was asked for identification twice, was hand-searched and scanned, passed through a metal detector arch, had her handbag examined inside and out and only after all that was she allowed into a waiting room.

  When she finally reached a room containing Ari Block, Mossad station head in London, it was both a surprise and a relief to find that he was a gentle-looking little man, with a soft voice and mournful eyes.

  They sat down on each side of a small, square table. Liz was under no illusion that this was his office. It was clearly a meeting room set aside for visitors who did not qualify to be allowed into the Mossad station proper. Ari Block was not a man to indulge in social chit-chat. His voice had a sibilant, almost whispering quality as he said, ‘My colleagues in Tel Aviv have been in touch, so I know why you’re here.’ A pained look came over his gentle face. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘I don’t know where Danny Kollek is.’

  ‘Well, that means that no one does,’ said Liz. ‘But we do need to find him, for everyone’s sake. I’m sure you will have heard from Israel that we have good reason to suspect that he may be planning some disruption of the Gleneagles conference. We don’t know what, but at the worst it could be something very nasty indeed.’

  Ari Block nodded and said, ‘I have been instructed to be very frank with you, Miss Carlyle, but I have to tell you that I do not know Kollek well. He is nominally on my staff and he communicates with me when he sees fit, which I have to tell you is not very often. But unusually, his reporting line is directly back to Tel Aviv. It is not an arrangement I like or approve of. And from what I understand, it appears to have turned out to be disastrous.’

  ‘That arrangement enabled him to play his cards very close to his chest?’

  ‘Yes. Though he gets on well enough with the other members of my team, he does not share information with them and he is not close to anyone. He can be very charming - when he wants to - but there is also something reserved about the man. A sort of coldness, even. To be perfectly honest with you, though I do not like having a member of my team who does not report to me, in one way it is a relief that I don’t have responsibility for him.’

  Liz said, ‘What we’re particularly concerned about is the peace conference next week. Does he have any involvement with the arrangements for your delegation?’

  Block looked at her and his face flushed with anxiety. ‘Involvement? He most certainly does. On behalf of the embassy, he is in charge of all the planning for our delegation and its programme.’

  Liz found her jaw tensing involuntarily. ‘Has he been up to Gleneagles, then?’

  ‘Yes. Last week.’

  ‘Did he go alone?’

  ‘No. One of the embassy staff and one of my staff went with him. Wait a minute,’ Block said, ‘and I’ll try and get hold off them.’ He picked up a phone on the table and spoke urgently in Hebrew.

  While they waited, Liz took the opportunity to ask more about Kollek. ‘Does he socialise with any other members of the station or the embassy?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘In East Dulwich.’ Block had already sent two men to search his flat, but they had found nothing incriminating, and no sign of Kollek.

  There was a knock on the door. A woman came in, big-boned, medium height, a little older than Liz, with a tired, haggard face. She looked nervous as she introduced herself as Naomi Goldstein. Without any explanation, Ari Block told her that they wanted to hear about her visit to Gleneagles. She looked puzzled, but asked no questions and started on a detailed minute-by-minute account of the two days she had spent there.

  They’d had a lot to do, with all the domestic arrangements to confirm, everything from beds to bathrooms. They’d also had to tour the resort so they could brief the delegation on the leisure facilities for their spare time. If they had any, said Ari Block, pointing out that if the conference went well, everyone would be very busy indeed.

  ‘And then, of course,’ Naomi said, almost as an afterthought, ‘there was the dinner to plan.’

  ‘What dinner is that?’ asked Liz.

  ‘Oh,’ said Naomi, as if she had spoken out of turn. She looked at Ari Block.

  ‘It’s all right, Naomi. We’re working with Miss Carlyle,’ he said gently. He turned to Liz. ‘We’ve decided to host a dinner for the Syrian delegation the night before the conference begins. I am going myself. We’re keeping it very quiet, so the press won’t make an issue of it. The thinking is, if you’ve broken bread with someone, it makes it hard to go on wanting to break their bones.’ He added, ‘Doubtless that’s why Judas left before supper.’

  Liz smiled. ‘Did the three of you stay together all the time you were at Gleneagles?’ she asked Naomi.

  Naomi thought for a moment. ‘Not the whole time,’ she said finally. ‘Danny went off on his own to do things a couple of times.’

  ‘Do you know what things?’

  ‘No. And I didn’t think it was my business to ask. Once he said he was going for a walk. The other time he just wasn’t there.’ She was thinking hard and Liz waited. Suddenly Naomi raised a hand, as if to ward off anything that might upset her train of thought. ‘There was something
odd about the second time. It was before we had dinner -we ate in the hotel on the second night. The first night I cooked in the house that we stayed in. Anyway, Danny was late coming back that second night, and I was worried about our table booking in the restaurant - I didn’t want to lose it. Oskar and I set off for the hotel and I guessed we’d run into Danny on our way there. And sure enough we did. He was walking towards us along the road - it was quite dark - but as he got near I saw him combing his hair, which was odd because he’s not the kind of man you see doing that in public. When we all got into the hotel, where it was bright, I could see that his hair was wet. Almost as if he’d had a shower - only he couldn’t have, because he hadn’t come back to the house.’

  ‘Had it been raining?’

  ‘No. The weather had been quite bright.’

  ‘Is there a swimming pool there? He might have gone for a dip.’

  ‘That’s what I thought at first, but he didn’t have swimming trunks or a towel or a bag or anything like that. He was just in his ordinary clothes.’

  There was silence in the room. All three of them seemed to be thinking of the implications of what Naomi had seen.

  Eventually Liz said, ‘Thank you very much,’ though she couldn’t have said exactly what she was thanking her for. At least now she knew what she was going to do next.

  FORTY-NINE

  Liz was dead tired by the time she and Peggy got into the car that was to take them across the Thames to the Battersea Heliport. It was after nine o’clock in the evening and she had spent the time since she got back to her office from the Israeli Embassy in a stream of telephone calls and meetings. But as she slumped into her seat in the car for the short journey, she had the comfort of knowing that an international operation was in place to thwart whatever plans Kollek had made to damage the conference.

  She had started with DG, who had agreed without hesitation that as Liz had seen Kollek, and was best placed to describe him and identify him should he be sighted, she should go up to Gleneagles, taking Peggy with her as backup. In the absence of Charles, an emergency team had been put together to man the Thames House end of things, under the command of Michael Binding, the director of counter terrorism. Not a good choice from Liz’s point of view; she regarded Binding as a pompous chauvinist, though she could hardly tell DG that.