The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Work.’ She paused. ‘And sex.’ The eyes were back on Emery again. ‘Twelve years we were married. Those twelve years we couldn’t get enough of it, of each other. I knew the man, believe me. You think all that comes to an end? Because of this? Because of me?’ She shook her head, answering her own question. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The man needed it.’

  ‘You knew about it?’

  ‘I knew the man he was. I knew we had a pact. Nothing local. No shitting in the tent.’ She looked away. ‘So that pretty much left New York. We called it business. It was easier that way.’

  ‘But that’s why he went. On business.’

  ‘Sure.’ She smiled. ‘Work hard, play hard.’

  Emery nodded, accepting the point. ‘And this friend of his. He told you about …’ He hesitated. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He said Lennox died of a coronary. In bed. In some hotel room. He didn’t go into details. He didn’t need to. Lennox wouldn’t have been reading a book.’

  Emery nodded again. Some of the smoke that Telemann had blown around the events in Room 937 had to do with a heart attack. It was down under ‘Cause of Death’ on the certificate, yet another over-worked executive, struck down at the coalface of American capitalism.

  ‘You know why he went to New York so many times?’

  ‘Business. He had clients there.’

  ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You believed him?’

  The woman didn’t answer for a moment. She looked hurt. Then she nodded. ‘Sure,’ she said again. ‘That and the hookers.’ She paused. ‘He’d buy it. I know he would. He liked to keep things neat and tidy. Emotion bored him. That’s why he was such a good businessman. He never went beyond the figures. Never. That’s what he used to say. He used to say, “Lola, if it ain’t there in the figures, it ain’t there. What don’t add up, ain’t real. The rest is schlock.”’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I was his wife.’ She smiled gently. ‘The one permitted fantasy. I’d do anything for him. And he knew it.’

  There was a long silence. Emery produced a small notebook and opened it. ‘This friend of his,’ he began, ‘the friend in New England …’

  He glanced down at the bed. The woman had closed her eyes. She was breathing a little more heavily, the sheets rising and falling. When she opened her eyes again, they were filled with tears. She tried to cough, a faint rasp in her throat. She nodded left, towards a stainless-steel trolley on the other side of the bed. ‘There’s tissues in the box,’ she said. ‘You get to play mother.’

  Emery reached across for a tissue, mumbling an apology, dabbing gently as the tears rolled down her face and on to the pillow. After a while, he started on the question again, the friend back east, but the woman spared him the trouble. ‘His name’s David,’ she said. ‘David Weill. He works in Massachusetts someplace. I’ve got the address. The rest of the time he’s back home.’

  ‘Where’s home?’

  The woman said nothing for a moment, staring up at him, her mind drifting off again, the eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Weill,’ Emery said again. ‘Where does he come from?’

  The woman blinked, making an effort, offering a small, apologetic smile.

  ‘Israel,’ she said at last, sniffing.

  *

  The old man, Abu Yussuf, sat in the tiny apartment kitchen, waiting for the boy to return. He’d cooked himself a meal earlier but he’d barely touched it. It was still on the table, a congealing mound of boiled rice, caked with minced beef and tomato ketchup. Beside it, half-wrapped in a strip of cotton waste, was a heavy adjustable wrench. The wrench he’d fetched from the garage. With the wrench, he’d beat the truth from the boy.

  The old man heard a cab rattle to a halt in the street outside. He got to his feet, moving across to the window, peering out, taking care not to show himself. From three storeys up, he watched the cab door open. Two black men got out. The cab drove away, and the old man stepped back into the shadows again as the two blacks sauntered across the street and into a tenement building opposite. The old man checked his watch. He’d been waiting for nearly an hour.

  He sat down again, taking another mouthful of warm Coke from the can beside the chair. For two days, he’d brooded on the meaning of the conversation he’d had with Amer Tahoul, his wife’s brother, the voice in the darkness, the neat young bureaucrat he’d phoned from the office on 18th Street. The conversation had lasted longer than he’d planned. It had seemed an age, the old man immobile by the huge desk, scarcely daring to move, whispering his story to Amer Tahoul, checking over his shoulder, peering through the open door, listening for the footsteps that never came.

  He’d told the Palestinian about the letters he’d written to his wife, the letters she’d written back, and then the long period of nothing, the days lengthening into weeks, no letters, no postcards, no phone calls, nothing. He knew in his heart that something had happened, something terrible, and he needed, now, to know what it was. Amer Tahoul had listened to his story, interrupting from time to time, sympathetic, wanting to clarify this point or that, and at the end of it there had been a long silence, so long that the old man’s nerve had nearly cracked, his hand an inch above the receiver, ready to terminate the call, to bend to the vacuum-cleaner and return to his chores, to the aching void that was now his life.

  Then Amer had come back. ‘Hala was arrested,’ he said. ‘Yesterday.’

  The old man nodded, already numb. ‘Arrested,’ he repeated. ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘But before that she had been writing to you.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes. Some of the letters she gave to me. She has no money for the air-mail stamps. I post them through the Municipality.’

  ‘They went? They definitely went?’

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘How many? Tell me how many this month?’

  There was a brief silence. Then Amer came back. He’d never been less than precise. At home. At school. At work. ‘Since the end of August,’ he said, ‘four.’

  ‘To here? To Newark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. I have to keep a record. Hala insisted. She said you’d repay the postage when you got back.’

  The old man shook his head. Four letters, he thought. And maybe more, maybe some that didn’t come through Amer at all but through some other source. He pictured his wife for a moment, back home, sitting at the table, bent over the pad of lined blue paper she always used.

  ‘Where is she? Where have they taken her?’

  ‘We don’t know. We’re still trying to find out.’

  ‘Why? Why have they taken her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve been seeing her? Before yesterday?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How was she?’

  There was another silence, much longer, and the old man knew that he was close to the heart of it, this terrible mystery, the disappearance of his wife.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, his voice suddenly gruff, ‘tell me how she was.’

  ‘She was frightened.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ Amer paused. ‘It’s difficult. A woman had been to see her. An Israeli woman. She was confused. Frightened. She didn’t know what to do. She asked me to …’

  Amer stopped again. In the background, the old man could hear voices, men talking, the sound of a door being slammed. Then Amer was back again, asking the old man for a number, some way they could continue the conversation, and the old man panicked, his hand fumbling with the telephone in the darkness, cutting off the call, rearranging the desk, stooping for the hoover, his mind suddenly quite blank.

  Now, waiting for the boy, he knew what he must do. He’d met the mailman in the street. He’d asked him about the missing letters. The mailman, a friendly Greek his own age, had told him that the letters had come. He’d given th
em to the boy. The boy had always been waiting, eight in the morning, the old man still over in Manhattan. The boy had taken them for the old man. He’d give them to him when he got back. That had been the arrangement.

  At the table, the old man heard the door to the street again. The boy had a distinctive way of announcing his arrival. The old man had watched him sometimes. He gave a little half-turn to the key, then kicked the door hard, always the same place, so the door crashed back, pitting the plaster on the wall inside. The old man heard it now, the door crashing back against the wall, and then the boy’s footsteps along the hall and up the stairs, stamp–stamp, the rhythm echoing upwards.

  There were six flights of steps to the third floor. The old man picked up the wrench, the cotton waste wrapped tightly round the handle. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand. Standing behind the door, in the narrow hall, he just had room for the one swing that would count, the first blow, the edge of the wrench, hard against the boy’s skull.

  The footsteps got louder, accompanied by the high piping whistle the boy knew the old man hated so much. The old man closed his eyes for a moment, a simple prayer, the thought of his wife in some damp cell or other, paraded for hour after hour, question after question. At home, they called it t’azeeb kufif, light torture. Light torture meant they beat you in the places that never bruised. His sons had shown him how it was done. He knew what it felt like, how much it hurt. The Israelis did it all the time. It meant you were lucky. It meant they’d spared you the real thing, t’azeeb t’eel, heavy torture.

  The footsteps stopped for a moment outside the apartment. Then the door burst open, a long oblong of dusty sunshine on the greasy linoleum floor, a shadow stepping in, and then the boy himself. He was short and stocky with a thick neck. He had close-cropped hair, and big thighs inside tight blue jeans, and the light, cocky step of an athlete or a male dancer. The old man watched him for perhaps a second and then, as he turned to kick the door shut, he lunged at him with the wrench. The boy saw it coming, some sixth sense, ducking quickly to the left as the wrench smashed into the base of his neck. Then he was on to the old man, his hands reaching for the wrench, twisting it away, tossing it down the hall, his eyes narrow with rage.

  The old man backed against the wall, trying to beat the boy off, but the boy was far stronger, seizing the old man by the throat, banging his head against the wall, kneeing him in the groin, then bringing his fist up into his face as the old man folded softly on to his knees. Helpless on the floor, trying to protect his head and belly, the old man gasped with pain. He didn’t know there could be so much pain. He didn’t know so much pain existed. Every second, every blow, every kick, brought more pain. The boy was like an animal, kicking and kicking, his body, his head, enjoying it, laughing, and then suddenly he stopped and walked away down the hall and into the kitchen, whistling.

  The old man slowly unfolded himself, limb by limb, until he was sitting against the wall, his knees up to his chin. His mouth, he knew, was wrecked. He fingered it gently, feeling the sharp edges of the broken teeth, tasting the blood. After a while he tried to move, to stand up, but the colours began to drain from the hallway and he knew he was going to pass out. He collapsed back against the wall again, one hand going to his head. What little hair he had was matted with blood, and when he withdrew his hand and looked at it he saw that the fingers were covered with it. He began to cough, bent double, blood and spittle everywhere, and when he looked up again the boy was standing over him. He was smoking a cigarette. In his other hand was a saucepan full of water. He threw the water over the old man and sauntered back to the kitchen, kicking the wrench as he went. The old man watched him go, trying to steady the fear inside him, the terrible anticipation of another beating, more pain. His sons had told him this, too. How the Israelis played with you, shredded your nerves, left you nowhere to hide, made your body betray you. Of the Israelis, though, it was something you expected. From one of your own, from a fellow freedom-fighter, it was doubly painful.

  Minutes later, the boy was back again. He stood above the old man. He offered him the remains of the can of Coke he’d found in the kitchen. The old man nodded, wary, reaching up, putting the can gently to his broken mouth. An hour earlier, it had been simple. He’d beat the boy, cower him into submission, restore a little respect and get to the truth of the letters. It would all have been that simple. Except that here he was, physically pulped, fearful, shamed, hurting everywhere. The boy was looking down at him. From time to time, he rubbed his neck.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ he said at last.

  The old man shook his head. ‘For no reason,’ he said thickly. ‘I thought you were someone else. I thought you were a thief.’

  ‘A thief?’

  The boy bent to him, his face very close. The old man could smell his last meal, the smell of meat and garlic. He knew nothing about the boy. Nothing about his background, his family, where he came from, where he called home. He had a name, Ali, but the way he used it, contemptuous, convinced the old man that it was false. That was the way of it, of course, with the freedom-fighters, but all his life the old man had never met anyone so hostile, so totally devoid of any shred of kindness or humanity. In some senses it was a mystery, something to ponder, but now that mystery had resolved itself into something far darker, simple menace, a quality of violence that made him begin to shake again and turn his head, averting his eyes, taking no more risks.

  ‘A thief,’ he said again. ‘I thought you were a thief.’

  *

  After half an hour on the phone to Emery, Telemann was more determined than ever to snatch the Arab, Mahmood Assali.

  Back at the US Consulate on Alsterufer, a night’s sleep between himself and the incident at the gas station, Telemann had finally renewed contact with Emery at a hotel in Culver City. In Los Angeles, by Telemann’s calculations, it was early afternoon. Yet Emery, when he came to the phone, had plainly been asleep.

  ‘Took the red-eye last night,’ he explained briefly. ‘I’m owed a little rest.’

  Telemann said nothing for a moment, wondering whether Laura was with him, then he plunged into his plans for the Arab, keeping the details brief. Involving the Germans, he said, was plainly crazy. Assali was living in Bad Godesburg with their blessing, a tolerated presence. If they’d wanted him off the board, they’d have done it months ago. The fact that they hadn’t, the fact that he and his private army were left in peace, was ample evidence that Kohl’s Germany, at the very least, had no quarrel with the Palestinians. Add the new Intelligence about Otto Wulf – long-term contacts with Iraq, allegations that he might be supplying ready-made Tabun-GA – and the picture began to look very grim indeed. No, the Germans would never bother Assali with even the briefest list of questions. Nor would they tolerate any interference with Otto Wulf, Greater Germany’s favourite industrialist. So if the US had any serious interest in either man, then the time was right for a little free enterprise. The place to start was the Arab. The man should be lifted at once.

  Emery, listening to the familiar can-do rhetoric, gently mocked the plan. Germany was a US ally, lynch-pin of the new Europe. Snatching Assali from his legitimate address, even if such a thing was possible, would provoke a major diplomatic incident. At best, it was bad manners. At worst, it could prove very messy indeed. Assali, in any case, was an unlikely source for the threat against New York. Ditto Wulf. Intelligence remained the real key to the puzzle, and to date Emery was unpersuaded. Maybe Telemann had been looking in the wrong trash cans. Maybe the thing was a whole lot subtler than either of them had suspected. Either way, Emery counselled him to try a little harder. Time was moving on. Sullivan’s patience was running out. The only currency that now mattered was results, and so far – in Emery’s opinion – Telemann had got fuck-all.

  Telemann, listening, felt a chill steal through him. He and Emery had always shared a rugged belief in home truths. That had been the basis for their relationship, that plus a great deal of mutual respect.
>
  ‘Fuck all …?’ Telemann repeated.

  ‘Yep. What else is there?’

  ‘Wulf.’

  ‘We talked about Wulf. Wulf is an industrialist. Big man. Big guy. The rest of it’s hearsay. Scuttlebutt. He’s got too much to lose.’ He paused. ‘You really believe he’s gonna peddle nerve gas to the rag-heads? Put it all on the line?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ Telemann paused, shaking his head, trying to muster the case again: Wulf’s limitless appetite for power, his brutal calculations about means and ends, his indifference to the outcome. ‘Wulf’s got a son,’ he muttered. ‘Nikki.’

  ‘You think that’s it? Some broad spins you a line about kids and promises, and you think that’s enough to condemn the guy?’

  Telemann closed his eyes. He could see the smile on Emery’s face, sitting in his hotel room, playing God, pushing people’s lives around. ‘Yeah,’ he said thickly. ‘That’s the line. Kids and promises. You got it. Kids and fucking promises …’

  ‘It’s bullshit, Ron. We’re talking evidence here, hard facts, correlations. Not some fairy-tale love affair.’

  Telemann shook his head slowly, lost for words. Bree, he thought, and Laura, and Emery himself, with his sailboat on the bay, and his long pianist’s fingers, and his love of all that fancy music. He looked at the phone for a moment, holding it at arm’s-length, hearing Emery’s voice, droning on and on, some other point about Wulf. Then, shrugging, he put the phone down. He looked at it for a second or two, his face quite blank, then he stood up and reached for the jacket he’d hooked on the back of the chair. The jacket had come from Inge’s wardrobe. It was lemon, with a light blue stripe, louder than Telemann’s normal taste but a perfect fit across the shoulders and around the chest. He left the office quickly, locking it behind him, hearing the phone begin to ring again, knowing it was Emery, not caring. He jogged up the stairs from the basement and tapped twice at the door beside the lobby. The duty officer looked up, and caught the keys that Telemann tossed across the room. Then he reached for the log, making a careful note of the time, asking whether he needed a cab. Telemann shook his head, grinning, thanking him for the facilities, saying he’d prefer to make his own arrangements.