‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
The President nodded, saying nothing for a moment. Then he glanced down at the paper again. ‘And this other guy? Yussuf?’
Sullivan frowned, shaking his head. ‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Never heard of him?’
‘No, sir.’ He reached for the paper, still frowning.
The President shook his head. ‘I’m pushing it through channels,’ he said. ‘It’s gone to the FBI, the New York State police, every damn agency. Evidently the guy’s dangerous. He has gallons of the stuff. We have a description.’
‘Of what?’
‘The car he’s driving. And the guy himself.’ He paused. ‘Evidently he’s some kind of veteran. Old guy from the West Bank. Fanatic. Been a terrorist all his life. He’s the one got this 7th June group together. One-man band.’ He paused again. ‘The Israelis have files on him. They’ve sent photographs. They came in this morning. They’re recommending we shoot on sight.’ He smiled. ‘The Feds tell me it’ll be hours. A day at the most.’
‘What will?’
‘Getting to this guy. Our West Bank friend. Mr—’ he paused, looking down again, musing on the name ‘—Yussuf … Joseph—’ he shrugged ‘—whatever …’
Sullivan nodded, leaning back against the firm white cushions, abandoning the coffee. He knew a political execution when he met one, the feeling of power slipping away, the eyes turning in his direction, the voices lowered, the quiet invitation to leave the room. It had happened to him once before. It had taken him eight years to repair the damage. Reinstated, his feet under another desk, he’d vowed never to let it happen again. Yet here he was. Well and truly fucked. For the second time.
He mustered a weak smile, still looking at the President. ‘Sir …?’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Going back to the bad news. The Israelis. Saddam …’ He paused. ‘What leverage do we have?’
The President looked up, his hand reaching for a second cup of coffee. He smiled.
‘Right now,’ he said, ‘we have none. Which is why I thought you might have some ideas.’
*
It was late afternoon by the time Telemann and Emery reached the outskirts of Itzehoe. The town lay north-west of Hamburg, an hour’s journey, halfway to the border with Denmark. Still on the autobahn, Emery slowed, easing the rental BMW into the slow lane, eyeing the blue and white indicator boards.
‘Here?’
Telemann, sitting beside him, nodded. By his calculation, they had three hours of daylight left. There was no time for a proper search, quartering the local map they’d bought, exploring the minor roads, one by one. No. If they were to find what he suspected they’d find, if it were to happen before dusk, then he had to trust his instincts.
‘Left,’ he said briefly. ‘To Wilster.’
Emery nodded, turning left, back on to the network of local roads that snaked between the flat, neat parcels of farmland. Telemann glanced across at Emery, his finger on the map. They’d left Laura at the hotel in Bad Godesburg. She’d check out, pay the bills, and head for the big international airport at Frankfurt. There were a dozen overnight flights to the US, at least three to Washington. She’d be back home in time for breakfast, getting ready for Telemann’s return. Thinking about it, Telemann smiled.
‘Crazy,’ he said for the third time. ‘She should leave me.’
‘Bullshit. You were never great at the long words.’ Emery smiled. ‘Like patience.’
‘I never thought.’ Telemann looked at Emery again. ‘Honest to God.’
Emery shrugged. They’d spent the journey north taking stock, Telemann briefing Emery, telling him exactly what had happened in the apartment in Dusseldorf, himself delivering the nerve gas, duped by Mossad for the second time in a week, Wulf convulsing in front of his eyes, the ugliest of deaths. He still had some of Inge’s photos of Wulf, and he’d shown them to Emery in the morning while Laura was taking a shower. Emery had fingered the photos, recognizing Wulf’s bull-neck, his paunch, amused at the poses, knowing that the material was priceless, the best possible way of armouring Sullivan against whatever the Germans might throw at him. The man had been an animal. Far more important, he’d chosen a Mossad plant for a mistress. What kind of judgement was that? What kind of other risks was the man prepared to take? At this point in the conversation Laura had returned, intrigued to see what they were studying, and Telemann had changed the subject, suggesting she order coffee and Danish, three huge helpings, palming the photographs into his pocket, part of a life that was nearly over. He and Laura had spent the night in the single bed, very close, nose to nose, scarcely talking. In the morning she’d bandaged his leg, cleaning it thoroughly, wondering when they’d start talking seriously, planning for the difficult years ahead. Saying goodbye, hours later, Telemann had taken her face in his hands, telling her he’d be home in days, telling her he couldn’t wait, telling her it would all work out.
‘That’s my line,’ she’d said, kissing him. ‘My kind of cliché.’
Now, driving into Wilster, Telemann told Emery to stop, scanning a municipal information board at the roadside, looking for the Fire Department. Finding it, he told Amery where to go. ‘Left,’ he said, ‘then right, and right again.’
They drove into the town. It was compact, old, attractive, streets of half-timbered houses, shops still open in the late afternoon. The Fire Department, by contrast, was a modern building, concrete and glass. Two appliances were parked inside the folding double doors.
Telemann, limping badly, led the way to the office, a door at the side of the building. A uniformed official glanced up as they came in. He was smoking a small cigar and reading an old paperback.
Telemann did the introductions, plucking names from nowhere. ‘Mr Stuart,’ he said, ‘and Mr Wallace. We’re touring.’
The official nodded, getting up, shaking hands, listening courteously while Telemann explained what he wanted. He had friends in the area. They had some kind of cottage. He’d heard there’d been a fire. He wondered whether it was true. The official looked at him for a moment, speculative. His English was excellent.
‘Fire?’
Telemann nodded. ‘Some kind of cottage. Small farm, maybe.’
‘When?’
‘Recently. This week.’
The official nodded slowly, his eyes going to Emery. He said nothing for a moment. Then he beckoned them across the office. On the wall was a large-scale map of the area. The area was bounded in the north by the Kiel Canal, to the south by the Wilster–Itzehoe road. In between was a lattice of fields and smallholdings, houses marked by tiny black squares. Three of the houses, miles apart, were ringed in red, with dates pencilled beneath. Telemann looked at each of them. The dates went back to the beginning of the year. He looked again, selecting the most recent fire.
‘September twenty-first,’ he said. ‘Four days ago.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What kind of place is that?’ He put a finger on the map.
The official peered at the map. ‘It’s a farmhouse,’ he said at last.
‘What happened?’
He shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. We were called by a farmer—’ his finger went to the map ‘—here.’
‘Was it badly damaged?’
‘It was burned down. The house. The buildings attached. Everything.’
‘Nobody knows why?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody suspects?’
The official shrugged again. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But we are firemen. Not the police.’
Telemann nodded, knowing that his instinct had been correct, looking at the map again, memorizing the route, where the farmhouse lay in relation to the town. Then he turned to the official, extending a hand, hearing Emery muffling a polite cough behind him.
Emery stepped forward. ‘Our friends,’ he said, ‘were they badly hurt?’
The official smil
ed, still looking at Telemann. ‘No, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘The house was empty. Nobody has been in touch with us.’ He paused. ‘Strange, don’t you think?’
Telemann found the farmhouse in minutes, bumping down track from the main road, recognizing the distinctive shape of a copse of trees beyond the hedgerow.
‘There,’ he said. ‘The house is through the trees.’
‘This is where you came?’
‘Yes. Look …’ Telemann pointed. Half a mile away across the fields, the top half of an ocean-going freighter was moving slowly across the skyline, smoke bubbling up from the single funnel aft.
Emery nodded, impressed. ‘Kiel Canal,’ he said. ‘You must have been awake.’
They parked in the shadow of the trees, walking the last 100 metres to the farmhouse, the same path Telemann had trodden a week earlier, before Halle, before Bad Godesburg, before his brutal rendezvous with Otto Wulf. The long grass was wet from an earlier rain shower. Telemann could feel his trousers sticking to the bandage on his leg.
They emerged from the trees and paused for a moment. The farmhouse had been razed to the ground, only the walls left, knee-high. Inside, the place was a mess, a black porridge of charred remains, everything either burned by the heat or pulped by the firemen’s hoses. Telemann and Emery stepped through it, looking for something recognizable, finding pieces of cutlery, empty bottles, the metal shell of a refrigerator, display panels from an audio stack. Telemann stood over it, poking it with his foot, remembering the German, Klausmann, sitting in his armchair, pipe in his mouth, listening to Brahms. It was Klausmann who’d first told him about Littmann Chemie, about the Iraqi connection. It was Klausmann who’d talked about chemicals, about nerve gas. It was Klausmann who’d sent him to Halle. He shivered in the autumn wind, walking on through the wreckage, the divisions between the rooms unrecognizable, looking round, knowing that the place must have been torched, that the Israelis had been here, covering their tracks, wiping the record clean.
Telemann glanced round, hearing his name called. Emery was 20 metres away, squatting on his haunches, something in his hand. Telemann joined him, stepping round the puddles. They were in a different area now, outside the main farmhouse, the ground still littered with debris and charred wood. Telemann frowned, recognizing the remains of a pump, the outlet pipe open-mouthed, the rubber hose gone. The night he’d been here, he’d heard a motor running in the darkness. At the time, he’d put the noise down to a generator supplying the electricity, but now, looking down, he began to have second thoughts. The farmhouse, after all, might have been mains-fed. In which case, the noise he’d heard could only have been the pump. He peered at Emery, who had something in his hand. He turned it over. It was steel, the length of a milk bottle, the same kind of size. It was open-mouthed at both ends. Emery lifted it to his nose, smelling it carefully. He looked up, shaking his head.
Telemann bent down. ‘What’s it smell of?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What is it?’
‘God knows.’ Emery looked inside, inserting a finger.
‘What’s that?’
‘Some kind of filter.’ Emery frowned, measuring it by eye. ‘About twenty millimetres.’ He stood up, looking round again, stirring up the debris with his foot. The place stank, a sad, sour smell, a soup of thick, glutinous ash. Emery paused, and bent again, reaching down with his fingers, retrieving a length of pipe, fitting it to the object he’d already found, confirming that it was the same bore. He glanced at Telemann.
‘You come out here at all? When you visited?’
‘No. Only the farmhouse.’ Telemann gestured around him. ‘Not out here.’
Emery nodded, continuing his search, finding more lengths of pipe. He laid them out on the sodden ash, producing a small camera, photographing them from three angles. Then he began to pace the area of damage, up and down, a step at a time, finding another length of pipe. He took more photographs, with Telemann watching. Finally, he pocketed the camera, joining Telemann on the grass beneath the trees. It had started to rain, a thin drizzle, misting the fields. Emery grimaced at Telemann. He’d wrapped the object he’d found in a handkerchief.
Telemann nodded at the pipes, still neatly latticed on the ashes. ‘What would you find in the pipes?’ he said.
Emery shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Fire destroys everything. They’d know that.’
‘And that thing?’ Telemann eyed the filter.
‘I don’t know.’
Telemann nodded, none the wiser, limping after Emery as he walked back through the trees towards the car.
Twenty minutes later, rejoining the autobahn for Hamburg, Telemann glanced across at him. In an hour they’d be outside Inge’s lakeside apartment, another locked door, another neat piece of houseclearing, another dead end.
Telemann thought of Wulf again. ‘She meant to kill him,’ he said quietly. ‘I know she did.’
Emery said nothing for a moment, adjusting the wipers to the rain. Then he glanced across at Telemann. He was smiling.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘That or suicide.’
*
By the time McVeigh awoke, it was dark. The wind had risen, and he could hear the trees stirring near by. There was a draught, too, and how and again he caught a faint tinkling from the hanging chimes by the front door. He struggled upright. Even now he still had the taste of diesel in his mouth, a sour, slightly metallic taste, and he swallowed a couple of times, trying to get rid of it.
He peered round, suddenly aware of a presence in the room, someone else sitting in the low wicker chair by the door, looking at him. He blinked. It was Cela.
‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘I have food for you. Soon we must go.’
They ate together in the tiny kitchen, a salad of eggs and tomatoes and feta cheese. Cela had brought bread from the dining-hall, newly baked, and McVeigh piled the salad between thick slices, surprised at how hungry he was. There was a jug of juice, too, and sluicing down the last of the salad, he could taste plums and apples and pears, windfalls from the orchard, pulped and chilled. Finishing the meal, washing his plate in the sink, McVeigh called to Cela. She was in the next room, laying out fresh clothes for him, a shirt, jeans and a pair of heavy boots.
‘Where are we going?’ he said.
‘Lebanon.’
‘Where?’
‘Lebanon.’ She looked up, squatting on the wooden floor. ‘Moshe will take you to the border. Up in the mountains. He knows the paths through the mine-fields. Amer’s people will meet you there. We must go soon. They have a car. They want you in Beirut by dawn.’
McVeigh nodded, drying the plate, joining Cela in the next room. ‘Moshe do this often?’ he said.
Cela looked away, still folding the shirt, not answering. McVeigh stood beside her. She was wearing shorts and a thin T-shirt. Hardly the clothes for a hike in the mountains.
‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You coming too?’
Cela looked up.
‘Well?’ he said.
Cela shook her head. ‘I’ll come with you part of the way,’ she said. ‘Then you’re on your own.’
McVeigh frowned, not understanding. ‘You’re staying on the kibbutz?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they’re still looking for you?’
‘Yes.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course.’
‘But won’t they come here? Isn’t this the obvious place to look?’
‘Of course,’ she said again, gesturing round. ‘But it’s a big kibbutz. It’s easy to hide. No one talks. And there are other places to go, too. Other friends I can stay with. They can look for ever. They won’t find me.’ She paused, fingering a loose button on the shirt. ‘It’s my home,’ she said. ‘It’s where I belong.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe that’s hard for you to understand?’
‘Yes.’ McVeigh nodded. ‘Just now it is.’ He took the shirt from her, pulling it on, over his head. It smelled newly laundered, a soft, clean smell. He reached for the jeans and put those on too, surp
rised at what a good fit they were. Dressed, he helped Cela to her feet. ‘You can’t hide for ever,’ he said. ‘If they want to find you, they will.’
She looked at him for a moment, inspecting him, very close, and then she licked a finger and touched his face, high on the cheek-bone, a blemish of some kind, something he’d missed in the shower. Then she smiled, her face tilted up, and kissed him lightly on the chin. ‘If you get to America,’ she said softly, ‘they’ll never dare touch me.’
They left the kibbutz half an hour later, Moshe driving a small jeep, a relic from the ’73 war. The jeep was open at the back, and McVeigh sat sideways on the metal floor as it bucketed along. Getting into the jeep, Moshe had produced a gun which he had handed to him with a dark smile. The weapon was an Uzi, an Israeli-made sub-machine-gun. McVeigh had used them before, in and out of uniform, and rated them highly. It was a beautiful gun, perfectly balanced, reliable, accurate, capable of absorbing infinite punishment. Now he had the weapon on his lap, the two spare magazines wedged in his belt. Quite why he’d need it, neither Moshe nor Cela had made clear. Maybe he was expected to fight his way across the border. Maybe the travel arrangements were less than perfect.
Off the mountain, back on the valley floor, they turned right and headed north along a narrow track through mile after mile of orchards. Moshe drove fast, dancing the jeep round the worst of the pot-holes, growling from time to time as one or other of the wheels left the ground. The night air was cool in the valley and McVeigh sucked hungrily at the slipstream, forcing it deep into his lungs, still haunted by the memory of the morning’s journey. That he’d survived at all was a miracle, and he knew it, one hand on Cela’s shoulder, a gesture of gratitude and admiration.
At the head of the valley they turned right again, a bigger road, a dusty white ribbon winding up the mountainside. Moshe dropped through the gear-box, urging the jeep ahead, cursing softly when he misjudged a particularly vicious hairpin, the jeep slewing sideways on the loose gravel, McVeigh bracing himself for the inevitable impact, Cela motionless, unperturbed. The jeep came to a halt in a cloud of dust and they were off again, whining up the mountain, the lights of another kibbutz straddling the hillside above them. They turned off again, plunging down a narrow track, the lights suddenly gone. It was abruptly colder, and lifting his head, peering forward, McVeigh could smell the damp, resinous breath of a forest.
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