Enders eyed him for a moment, expressionless. ‘Are you a policeman?’
‘No.’
‘A reporter?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you here?’
McVeigh glanced round. He’d already decided on the table. Close to, the piece was beautifully preserved. The craftsmanship was exquisite, and generations of French polishers had given the surface a rare depth. McVeigh stood beside it, running his fingers along the reeded edge. Enders was watching him carefully. He hadn’t moved an inch.
McVeigh glanced up. ‘Chippendale?’
‘Regency.’
McVeigh nodded, musing. There was a long silence.
‘I understand you saw what happened,’ McVeigh said at last. ‘Before the bloke got shot.’
He glanced up. Enders had shuffled forward into the shop. His shoes were like the table, immaculate. He was still watching McVeigh, still waiting for some clue or other, some fragment of information that would explain this tall stranger with his battered leather jacket and his patient eyes. Then, abruptly, he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was here. In the shop.’
‘Was the door open?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there some kind of row?’
‘Yes, there was.’
‘And they weren’t speaking English?’
‘No.’
McVeigh nodded, looking at him, direct, appraising. ‘What were they speaking?’
‘Hebrew.’
McVeigh nodded again, and began to circle the table. A small, discreet card, handwritten, indicated the price. Fourteen thousand pounds. He picked it up and looked at it and then put it down again. Then he pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and laid them carefully beside the card. There were two Yale keys on the big brass ring, sawtoothed on the underside, a statement of intent. Enders walked quickly across the thick Wilton carpet, light, soundless footsteps, no longer shuffling. He reached for the keys, and McVeigh stopped him, his own hand closing over the thin, pale fingers. Enders withdrew, as if he’d been scalded. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’
McVeigh looked at him. ‘The man who died was a friend of mine,’ he said carefully. ‘I want to know what happened.’
‘A friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of friend?’
McVeigh said nothing for a moment. Then he reached for the keys.
Enders watched him for a moment. Then he shrugged, weary. ‘He got shot,’ he said, ‘your friend.’
‘I know that.’
‘The man pulled a gun and—’ he shrugged again ‘—it was such a shock. It was terrible. Here of all places …’ He trailed off, and gestured hopelessly at the street, a tired, resigned movement of the right hand.
McVeigh was still watching him. ‘He was a very close friend,’ he said at last. ‘I need to know whether he said anything before he was shot. Out there. In the street.’
‘He didn’t say anything.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ McVeigh leaned forward across the table, his fingers splayed, aware of his own reflection in the deeply polished surface. ‘So think about it. Think hard. Try and remember what he said …’ He paused, recalling the chronology, the way the guy from Harry’s team had detailed it on the Scenes of Crime report. ‘Two men meet outside your shop. There’s an argument. Voices are raised. Then one of them turns away. My friend. He steps across the street there, way across to the other side, and the other bloke goes after him. You’re in here. The door’s open. You see it all. So …’ He paused, easing back, his fingertips leaving tiny sweat marks on the table. ‘What did my friend say? Before he got shot?’
Enders looked at him for a long moment. Given a choice, McVeigh knew, he’d bring the conversation to an end. He’d phone the police, or try and throw McVeigh out, or simply turn on his heel and disappear up those perfectly carpeted stairs. But just now he didn’t have the choice, and both men knew it. Enders closed his eyes for a moment. The keys lay between them, mirrored on the table. McVeigh was watching his hands. They were shaking.
‘Your friend,’ he began. ‘What was his name?’
‘Yakov. Yakov Arendt.’
Enders nodded, some private question answered, some fear stilled. His eyes were open now, looking at the keys. ‘He said it would make no difference,’ he said slowly.
‘What would make no difference?’
‘I don’t know. He just said that and then …’ He stared out at the road, the line of parked cars, gleaming in the sun.
McVeigh nodded, patient now, his voice softer, more intimate. ‘OK. You heard what he said across the road. So now tell me the rest.’
Enders was still gazing out of the window. ‘The rest?’ he said vaguely.
‘Yes. The argument. Here. On this side of the road. Outside your shop. Hear one, you’d have heard the other.’ He paused. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
Enders looked at him for a moment. ‘I didn’t tell the police,’ he began, ‘but they said that wouldn’t matter.’
‘Who?’
‘Your people. The Embassy people.’
‘Oh.’
Enders looked at him, frowning, wanting confirmation.
McVeigh obliged. ‘They won’t come back,’ he said. ‘The police.’
‘OK.’ Enders nodded. ‘They were arguing about the case. The brief-case. Your friend’s case. The other man said it didn’t belong to him. He said it wasn’t his. He wanted your friend to give it back.’
‘And?’
‘Your friend wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘He just wouldn’t. “Ney maas, li … ney maas, li …” That was the phrase he used.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means—’ He frowned, breaking off, looking McVeigh full in the eyes for the first time. ‘“Ney maas, li …” You don’t know what it means?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not from the Embassy?’
‘No.’
‘But—’ Enders shook his head, hopelessly confused ‘—you said he was your friend.’
‘He was. But I’m still not from the Embassy.’ He paused. ‘Does that matter?’
Enders, ashen-faced, began to back slowly away, his eyes still on McVeigh’s face, oblivious now of the keys, and the table, and the five-figure price-tag.
‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Of course it matters.’
*
Emery drove Telemann to Dulles International with an hour and a half to spare for the Sabena overnight to Brussels.
They’d spent most of the day in the office on ‘F’ Street, reviewing the hard data, ever-mindful of Sullivan’s brisk mid-morning admonition on the dedicated point-to-point phone link with his White House office. ‘I ain’t into micro-managing,’ he’d barked, ‘but for Chrissakes keep it out of the hands of the Feds.’
Emery and Telemann had exchanged glances at this. Counter-terrorism within the USA was the responsibility of the FBI. Their beat. Their call. Yet here was Sullivan saying they had no right to a single fucking square inch of the picture. In one respect, of course, it made perfect sense. The FBI leaked worse than a sieve, always had, and if word of the Tabun threat got out, then the public order consequences would be awesome. But keeping it really tight, a handful of guys in an office on ‘F’ Street, had its downside. Whenever they needed back-up – Intelligence, analyses, technical information, simple footwork – then they had to acquire it piecemeal, covering their tracks, camouflaging the real thrust of the mission, turning themselves into the Intelligence equivalent of the stealth fighter. The latter image had been Emery’s, a caustic aside, typically elegant, and Sullivan had loved it. Of course the fucking thing was risky, but risk-taking was an integral part of the job. Indeed, in most respects it was the job. That was the point he wanted to get across. That was why they’d been chosen. They had to give some to get some. There’d be limits, sure. But he’d bought their sense of judgement, and their lo
ve of the flag, and he knew – deep down – that they’d do a fine job. Just now, they owed it to him. Later, if there was such a time, America would owe them.
Afterwards, the line dead, they wondered aloud about how much he’d really told them, how much they really knew. It was perfectly conceivable that Sullivan had set up a number of discrete teams, cells, each one separately tasked, insulated laterally, need-to-know, sworn to secrecy. There might be one up in New York. Another in the Middle East. A third over in Europe. Telemann had tested him on the secure line. He was going to Brussels, he’d said, and Antwerp. Afterwards, he’d fly to Tel Aviv. There were leads to pursue, bases to touch, friendships to renew, debts to call in, arms to bend. He’d left it at that, deliberately vague, bread on the water, listening hard for any sign of wariness or alarm, but Sullivan had simply grunted his approval and wished him luck. Time belongs to the enemy, he’d said. The President had yet to receive a deadline, but doubtless it would come. US troops out of Saudi by such and such a date, or else. That was the whole point of the exercise. That was why the rag-heads were going to so much trouble. So, he’d said, let’s go get the cock-suckers. Let’s crank it up, move it on. Jesus, ride the fucking Concorde if you have to.
Now, twenty minutes out of Dulles, Emery went through it again. The Iraqis had a known nerve gas capability. They’d taken the decision to go chemical back in ’74 when the Israelis refused to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Wary of Israel, wanting parity, lacking the technical know-how to make a bomb of their own, they’d sensibly opted for the poor man’s nuke: poison gas. They’d scoured the world for Arab scientists. They’d recruited engineers. They’d paid millions of dollars to Western firms for site plans and equipment. And by 1988, they were producing tons of the stuff a month, mainly mustard gas and nerve agents. Some of it they dropped on Iranian front-line troops during the eight-year war. More of it fell on the luckless Kurdish town of Halabja, killing thousands of women and children. The West, too late, imposed export bans on key constituent chemicals, but by the end of the decade, the Iraqis had acquired what they needed.
There were now five plants producing poison gas. The biggest, at Samarra, north of Baghdad, was huge. Telemann had seen the black-and-whites from the National Reconnaissance Office that very afternoon, sheaves of photos, perfect resolution, hand-carried across Washington in the big red folder marked TOP SECRET TALENT KEYHOLE. Spread out on the carpet beneath the window, they showed mile after square mile of plant and storage facilities, heavily masked by thick concrete revetments. The Iraqis had given the place a name, the Muthanna State Enterprise for Pesticide Production, but it was nothing more than a blind. Every two-bit country with a chemical capability called the stuff ‘pesticide’. It was simply a code, a convention, the blackest of jokes. Spray this on the bad guys, went the theory, and wipe them out for good.
And there was lots of it. Mustard came out of Samarra at the rate of 60 tons a month, and they’d been stockpiling for years. Of the nerve agents – Tabun and another gas called Sarin – there was admittedly far less, but in terms of strict lethality, that didn’t matter. A dose the size of a cube of sugar would, given the distribution, kill two and a half thousand people.
‘Delivery,’ Telemann muttered, watching a distant 747 riding the glide-path into Dulles. ‘They have to deliver.’
Emery nodded. His consumption of Camel cigarettes was peaking around fifty a day. Telemann had never seen him so fired.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And there’s a body in the Bellevue morgue says they can. That was smart. They knock off a guy who’s been feeding the Israelis. And they send us a message, too.’ He nodded again, approving. ‘Neat.’
Telemann glanced across at him. ‘You get any more on Gold?’
‘Not yet. I’ve got guys on it now. IRS guys. One’s out in LA crawling all over the estate. I told them they’re owed.’ He grinned. ‘Big bucks.’
Telemann nodded. Investigators from the Internal Revenue Service were legendary, the enforcement equivalent of pit bull terriers. They could wreck a man’s career in eight hours. They asked all the right questions for as long as it took, and they viewed sleep or weekends as a form of weakness. Telemann glanced across at Emery. Emery was trying to hide a yawn. Telemann reached forward and turned the air conditioning to cold boost.
‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘where’s the even money? They bring the stuff in? Or they brew it here themselves?’
‘Bring it in. Dime to a dollar.’
‘How?’
Emery shrugged, dipping his head for the last Camel and crushing the empty pack. ‘I’d say seaborne. A gallon or two slipped into a part-load. It wouldn’t be difficult, and you might risk pressurization problems if you tried to air-freight it over. No—’ he shook his head ‘—my guess is Boston, or New York, or one of those dinky little places up in Maine.’ He paused. ‘Department of Commerce are accessing some data, though we might get old waiting for it.’
Telemann nodded, gazing out of the window. He’d been away from the office most of the afternoon. Emery had picked him up at home. ‘Anything new on Antwerp?’
Emery said nothing for a moment. Then he took a long deep pull at the cigarette and held it for a second or two. ‘Yes,’ he said, the car suddenly full of smoke again.
‘What?’
Emery glanced at him. He wasn’t smiling. ‘Langley came through. Operations have some assets over in Brussels. Good local boys. Nicely placed.’
‘And?’
‘I gave them the dates. I asked them to bracket two weeks around the Israeli sign off …’ He paused for a moment, picking a shred of tobacco from his lower lip. ‘They had an odd little incident four days back. The local cops picked up a Greek guy in the middle of the night. Someone had been beating the shit out of him. He’s still in hospital.’
‘So what?’
A trace of a frown ghosted across Emery’s face. He hated being hurried. ‘The guy came off a boat. The Enoxia. Small freighter. She left Antwerp three days ago. I got them to check back. I asked for the manifest.’
‘What was she carrying?’
‘Amongst other stuff—’ he paused ‘—pesticide.’
Telemann nodded. ‘Was the Greek guy replaced?’
‘Yep. They picked up a deckhand through the agent.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know …’ He looked across at Telemann. ‘Yet.’
Telemann eased the seat an inch or two back and closed his eyes. ‘You think I should talk to the agent?’ He opened one eye and looked at Emery. Emery had already produced an envelope from his pocket. He laid it carefully on the dash.
‘His address and phone number,’ he said. ‘And his name.’
‘What do we know about him?’
‘He’s half-Flemish, half-Jewish. Brussels think he’s sayanim.’
Telemann looked at the envelope for a moment, then closed his eyes again. If the shipping agent was a sayan, then he worked for Mossad part-time, one of a network of sympathizers worldwide. These were the guys who did it for Israel, the true believers, greasing the wheels of the Mossad machine. Often they were prominent local figures, trusted in their community. From time to time, on request, they provided funds, cover, safe houses, introductions, the countless favours that good Intelligence depended on. If he was sayan, if it was true, then it was the worst possible news. It meant that Mossad really was involved. It meant taking on the Israelis.
‘Tough call,’ Telemann murmured.
Emery glanced across at him, agreeing. ‘The toughest,’ he said.
Telemann pulled a face, knowing already that it was true. He’d been phoning contacts in Tel Aviv all morning, private numbers as well as the big headquarters switchboard on King Saul Boulevard, but so far no one had returned his calls. Personally, he’d always got on with the Israelis, kindred spirits, but he knew, too, that they had little respect for the CIA. The Americans, they thought, were barely in the game. They regarded them as amateurs, well intentioned, sincer
e, but hamstrung by their own naïvety, by the huge bureaucracies back in Washington, by the ceaseless need to answer to the politicians on the Hill. They pulled their punches. They thought too hard about democracy. They refused to meet like with like. In a wicked world, they behaved like virgins. The sun on his face, his eyes still closed, Telemann shook his head and sighed. Despite his birthright, and his passport, he had to agree. Too damn right, he thought.
Emery eased the big Chrysler off the pike and joined the feeder road that led to the airport. Telemann, upright in his seat again, could see the graceful tent-like shape of the terminal, and the tailplanes of the evening Jumbos waiting on the tarmac beyond. He’d made this journey hundreds of times, flying out, field assignments in Europe and the Middle East. More often than not, the operations had run into the sand, over-managed, over-controlled. For years, he’d chafed at the frustrations, the pages of careful ground-rulers, promising assignments wrecked by the senseless protocols. Now, though, the brakes were off. He had complete freedom, total responsibility. He could do whatever he liked to whoever he liked, just as long as he got a result. He thought of the Israelis again and wondered how he would cope. It wouldn’t be easy. He knew it.
Emery slowed to join the queue for the departures ramp. Telemann felt inside his jacket pocket, checking for his passport and his ticket, automatic gestures, some small comfort. The car rolled up to the terminal building and coasted to a halt beneath the Sabena sign. Emery coughed. He had another envelope in his hand. It was small and white. He passed it across. ‘From Laura,’ he said. ‘She made me promise.’
Telemann gazed at it. He’d seen Laura barely an hour ago. He’d driven over to the little white house in Maryland to pick up his bag. She’d packed it, like she always did. It was lying there on the bed, waiting for him. They’d spent a little time together. They’d talked about an autumn vacation. They’d said goodbye on the stoop, the kids too, little Bree all teeth and giggles.
He blinked, still looking at the envelope. ‘What is it?’ he said blankly.
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