The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Ex-Marine. Freelancing in the security business.’

  ‘And where’s he gone?’

  ‘Zahra says Israel …’ Ross paused. ‘Evidently the man’s a bit of a loner. Only gets in touch when he has something to say. So far we assume he has nothing to say.’

  Sullivan, watching a group of tourists rubber-necking the Lincoln Memorial, frowned. The name McVeigh he’d seen only days ago, a passing reference in one of the digests sent over from ‘F’ Street. At the time, he’d thought nothing of it. But now he began to wonder. He bent to the phone again.

  ‘You say stuff’s gone missing?’

  ‘Yes. Five gallons of nerve gas.’

  ‘How hard are you looking?’

  ‘Hard enough, under the circumstances …’ He paused. ‘The real problem is the threat. Just a rumour would be disastrous. As you may know …’

  ‘Yeah?’ Sullivan grunted again, refusing to take the conversation any further, refusing the implicit invitation to share the news about New York.

  Ross came on again, as persistent as ever. ‘You think I should come over again?’

  ‘No point. Unless you’ve got something to say.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I was wondering whether a briefing might be in order. You to me. It would certainly help my end. Anything you feel you might be able to share.’

  ‘You bet.’

  Sullivan shook his head, scowling. He’d known Ross now for a couple of years, a strictly informal relationship, the product of a Downing Street dinner during one of his frequent trips to Europe. He had no great regard for the man, too ambitious, too eager, too easily impressed, but a presence in Downing Street was a useful asset, certainly a better bet than having to rely on the usual channels. Sharing any kind of information with the Brits had, for years, been tantamount to full disclosure. Their Intelligence services leaked night and day, a steady drip of other people’s secrets, and when he’d bothered to think about it properly, to ask himself why it should be so, he’d had to put it down to something in the national character, a by-product of the class system, yet another sign – if one was ever needed – that the place was utterly fucked. He bent to the phone again, assuring Ross that nothing of importance had happened, that he was better off staying his side of the Atlantic, that he’d doubtless be in touch. Then, without waiting for a reply, he rang off.

  Minutes later, turning into the huge Pentagon car park, he was still thinking about Ross’s news, the missing drum of nerve gas, and he reached for his pad again, scribbling a reminder to himself, the name of the Arab in London, Al Zahra.

  *

  McVeigh awoke late, some formless dream broken by a sudden pain in his right hand. He opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight filtering through the mesh door. His hand had become twisted under the weight of his body. He rolled over and sat up, swinging out of bed, planting his bare feet on the cool tiles.

  Outside the wooden hut, through a wall of shrubs, he could see grass and the long curve of a cindered path. Further away, out of sight, he could hear the regular ticking of a water-sprinkler. He glanced at his watch. Already, barely seven, it was hot.

  He got dressed slowly, standing in front of the mesh door, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his bare flesh. He’d arrived the previous evening, unannounced. The kibbutz had been bigger than he’d expected, dozens of small chalets, windows lit in the darkness, doors open, the sounds of conversation, laughter, music. Shadows trod the paths between the lines of chalets, and he’d walked around for a while, trying to get a feel of the place, before stopping someone, an older man, barrel-chested, hooped T-shirt, ancient shorts. He’d asked the man where a stranger should go, and the man had listened patiently to the question and then, totally incurious, pointed wordlessly to a group of buildings further up the hillside.

  McVeigh, none the wiser, had followed the man’s directions, taking his time, savouring the rich smells, released by the cool of the evening. It reminded him of expeditions years back, Kashmir, Nepal, the first few days or so when you plodded through the foothills and took your reward in the evening, sprawled by the camp fire, blanketed by the smells of yak dung and wild flowers. It was similar here, the warm, pungent breath of the earth, and he felt immediately at home.

  At the top of the kibbutz he’d found a dining-hall and a couple of offices. In one of the offices, a woman in her early-thirties had listened to his story. He was a tourist. He had the name of a friend of a friend. He’d like to stay a couple of days, meet the person he’d come to see, find out a little about how the place worked. The woman had listened to him, impassive, and then reached for a pencil and paper. He wrote down the name for her, Cela Arendt, and she’d looked at it for a moment or two before risking a brief smile of recognition. ‘Cela,’ she’d said finally. ‘Cela Eilath.’

  McVeigh had apologized at this point, saying he’d known her husband, and the woman had looked up again, the smile gone, an unvoiced question on her lips. McVeigh had shrugged and grinned, offering no further information, and the evening had ended with his occupation of an empty hut in a row reserved for students from the city. The kibbutz, the woman said, had no facilities for tourists. If he wanted to stay, then it would be possible for a few days, but he’d have to work, like everybody else. McVeigh, ever-courteous, agreed at once. If everyone worked, then Cela worked. Perhaps he could do whatever she did. That way, they’d have more time together. The woman had shaken her head and said that wouldn’t be possible. Cela helped in the schoolhouse. Newcomers picked apples. Perhaps McVeigh should come to the office again, next morning, when things might be a little clearer.

  Now, fully dressed, McVeigh left the hut and took the path up through the kibbutz towards the dining-hall. In daylight, the place was even bigger than he’d thought, spread over the gentle folds of hillside, each row of chalets bedded into the landscape, gloved in creepers and a spectacular mass of flowers. There was little sign of activity, and when he got to the cluster of buildings that housed the dining-hall and administration, the place was nearly empty, five long tables, set with knives and forks, big metal jugs of iced fruit juice, pearled with condensation, bowls of sliced water melon, the flesh pink and glistening.

  McVeigh was still debating whether to sit down when he heard the growl of diesel trucks in the dirt yard outside. Then there were footsteps, and the big double doors burst open, and the place was suddenly full of people, all ages, dressed for outdoor work. They sat down at once, without ceremony, reaching for the fruit juice, spreading thick pats of butter on the bread, heaping slices of apple and banana on bowls of creamy yoghurt, and McVeigh watched for a moment before joining them at the furthest table, an empty chair near the end. He was still eating when the dining-hall emptied again, some secret signal, noise outside as the engines restarted, then the crunch of tyres on the dirt road, and the grinding of gears, and the slow receding whine of big trucks heading back towards the valley floor.

  An hour later, McVeigh found the woman he’d met the previous evening. She was standing in the shade of a plane tree beside a row of older chalets. She was holding a pen and a clipboard and she was deep in conversation with an older man. Seeing McVeigh, she signalled him over. She nodded at the older man. ‘Cela’s father,’ she said briskly. ‘Avram Eilath.’

  McVeigh smiled at the old man and extended a hand. The old man shook it briefly. He had big hands, weathered and calloused by years in the fields. Evidently he spoke no English, the woman talking to him in Hebrew. After a while he looked at McVeigh and shook his head, and McVeigh felt vaguely uncomfortable, the victim of a conversation he couldn’t understand. He glanced at the woman. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said you were a friend of Yakov. I said you’d come from England. To see Cela.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The woman looked at the older man for a moment, translating the question,
nodding vigorously when the man shrugged and gave her a muttered answer. ‘Ney maas, li …’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Ney maas, li …’

  McVeigh stared at him, recognizing the phrase, the shape of it, through the broken shards of Hebrew. Enders, he thought, the little Jew in the antique shop, the conversation he’d overheard the day Yakov Arendt got shot. Same phrase. Same tone of voice. McVeigh didn’t take his eyes off the old man, who was still shaking his head.

  ‘What did he say?’

  The old woman looked at him sharply. Her English was excellent, barely accented at all. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What did he say?’ McVeigh nodded at the old man. ‘Just then. That phrase he used. What does it mean?’

  The woman frowned. ‘Ney maas, li?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s means he’s had enough. It’s what people say when they want to be left alone. It’s …’ She paused, trying to find exactly the right words. ‘It’s just that he’s had it. It’s become something too much for him.’

  ‘What’s something too much for him?’

  ‘All the people coming to see Cela. All the questions.’

  ‘What people? People like me? From England? English-speaking people?’

  The old man looked up, shaking his head. He knows more English than he admits, thought McVeigh. The old man turned to go, and McVeigh stepped towards him, wanting him to stay, but then he felt the woman’s restraining hand on his arm and thought better of it. The old man walked slowly away, his sandals flap-flapping on the paving-stones. McVeigh watched him disappear into a chalet at the end of the row, making a mental note of the location. Then he turned back to the woman. ‘Cela’s had lots of visitors? Recently? Since Yakov …’ He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished, and the woman looked at him, not answering, the frown back on her face, and McVeigh knew that he’d gone too far. He was a tourist from England. He’d come to see a friend of a friend.

  ‘The place where Cela works,’ he said carefully, ‘the school. Where is it?’

  ‘You can’t see her there. Not until she’s finished.’

  ‘Where does she go afterwards? Where does she live?’

  The woman said nothing, but nodded in the direction the old man had taken, the chalet at the end of the row. There was a child’s tricycle upturned on the lawn. Draped over it, drying in the sun, was a towel and a woman’s one-piece swimming-costume.

  ‘She lives with her father?’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman paused. ‘Whenever she visits.’

  ‘She’s just visiting?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She hasn’t moved back? Come home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she could? If she wanted to?’

  ‘Of course.’ The woman turned away, bringing the conversation to an end, heading back towards the dining-hall, but McVeigh fell into step beside her, glad that one supposition, at least, had proved correct. Cela Arendt was a kibbutznik born and bred. McVeigh strode up the hillside, thinking of Yakov again, his body sprawled in the Kensington street, the photograph in the evening paper. ‘Ney maas …’ he mused aloud.

  The woman kept walking, saying nothing, refusing to help him out by finishing the phrase, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  McVeigh persevered. ‘What kind of phrase is it?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘You’ve told me what it means. I want to know why you’d use it.’

  The woman said nothing for a moment, still walking. The sun was hot now, and McVeigh was beginning to sweat.

  ‘It’s crude,’ she said at last.

  ‘Offensive?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘What else?’

  The woman stopped and looked up at him. She was at least a foot shorter than McVeigh, an indoor face, paler than most he’d seen. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘It’s important, that’s all.’

  ‘Is it to do with Cela?’

  McVeigh hesitated a moment, weighing the value of an honest answer. Then he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is.’ He paused. ‘So why would her father say it?’

  The woman looked away again, down the hillside towards the old man’s chalet. Finally, she shrugged. ‘He loved Yakov like a son,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s why it’s so hard for him. The people who come from Tel Aviv. The questions they ask. How unhappy they make his daughter.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not a world he understands.’

  McVeigh nodded, sympathetic. ‘And the phrase?’ he said. ‘What should that tell me? About someone’s state of mind? About the way you have to feel to use it?’

  The woman gazed at him, a look of frank appraisal, and for a moment McVeigh wondered whether she, too, might be related to Cela. Perhaps she was. Perhaps everyone was related in these strange collectives. If not by blood, then by some other bond. The woman began to walk again, more slowly, her head down.

  ‘It’s not an easy thing to answer,’ she said at last. ‘It’s a phrase people never use. Not here, at least.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But …?’ She stopped again. ‘It means you’re totally exhausted.’ She looked up. ‘It means you’ve reached the end.’

  *

  Emery sat by the bed, his coat carefully folded in his lap. The whole house smelled like a hospital, surfaces scrubbed and bleached, windows curtained against the hot Californian sun. A young Filipino care attendant ghosted from room to room, kind eyes and a permanent smile above the carefully pressed white jacket. Fischer, standing by the window, accepted a third cup of coffee. So far he’d said very little, content to introduce Emery with a deferential wave, the man from Washington, the guy in charge.

  Emery looked down at the face on the pillow. They’d been at the house an hour now, going over the woman’s story. She’d been married to Lennox Gold for twelve years. She’d known very little about his work. First he’d been in regular employment, salaried jobs. Then he’d gone out on his own. She thought he’d done well. Money had never been a problem. Not, at any rate, until the accident.

  Emery hesitated, his finger circling a button on his coat. ‘You were drunk,’ he repeated, ‘when the truck hit you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You remember anything about it?’

  The woman, Lola, gazed up at him. She had a pale, oval face and thick, auburn hair. Her eyes, deep-set, flicked incessantly from Emery to Fischer. She frowned. ‘I think I saw something on the freeway. Just before it happened. An animal or something. I dunno.’

  ‘Is that why you stopped? So suddenly?’

  ‘I dunno. Might have been …’ She grimaced, a small bitter curl of her lower lip. ‘Like I said, I was out of it.’

  Emery nodded. Fischer had shown him the file of cuttings before they’d left the car. The woman had tested positive at the hospital. The truck had hit her car, a dozen other vehicles had piled up behind the truck, and two people had been killed, one of them a child of three. The subsequent trial had made headlines across the State. Lola had pleaded guilty to causing death by drunken driving, a charge that normally resulted in a lengthy driving ban, a heavy fine, and occasionally a year or so in the State penitentiary. In this case, though, the judge had taken a different view. Her neck broken, Lola Gold would be paralysed for life. Furthermore, with her insurance negated by the police evidence, she’d have to look somewhere else for the hundreds of thousands of dollars the rest of her days would require. That, said the judge, was punishment enough for any human being. And so Lola Gold had been wheeled from the courthouse, free to get on with the rest of her life, trapped in a body that wouldn’t work any more.

  The Filipino appeared at the door again. He carried a cordless telephone and murmured a name that Emery didn’t catch. The woman shook her head, dismissing the call.

  Emery bent forward. ‘So we’re talking how much?’ he said. ‘Since the accident? Half a million? More?’

  ‘Less.’

  ‘How much less?’

  ‘Not much less.’ She hesitated, her ey
es on the move again, tallying the costs of this new life of hers. ‘Hospital bills, physiotherapy, care attendants, the van out front, alterations to the house, this little bed of mine …’ Her eyes came to rest on the hi-tech bed in which she lay, with its hoists, and pulleys, and motorized frame. Then she looked up again at Emery, and for a second or two he glimpsed how complicated and helpless her days had become, her every waking need permanently in the gift of other people. Regardless of the circumstances, it was impossible not to feel sorry for the woman.

  ‘This money,’ he began, ‘it came from your husband?’

  ‘All of it. He paid for all of it. Every last cent.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But he was broke …’ Emery paused. ‘Wasn’t he? That last year? Since the accident?’

  The woman’s eyes flicked towards the window. ‘So your friend tells me.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m saying Lennox paid for everything. Dollar bills. Hundreds of thousands. He knew what was needed and he found it. You ask me how, I don’t know. I just know he did it. He was a good man, a good husband. He looked after me here, after I came out of the hospital, and when things were OK for me, he went off and got the money. Where from, I don’t know. How, I don’t know that either.’ She paused for breath, her voice faint with the effort. ‘He was a good man,’ she said again. ‘And I miss him.’

  Emery nodded. ‘You know how he died?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Friend of his. Over in New England.’

  Emery nodded again, saying nothing for a moment, aware of Fischer watching him from the window. He’d asked the same question, out there in the car, genuine curiosity. Emery looked at the woman. ‘So how did he die?’ he said softly.

  ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, for sure. The man never knew when to stop. Never had, never would. He used to go to New York a lot on business. I’d warn him about it but he’d never listen. The man had a real appetite.’