The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  Amongst trees, they stopped, Moshe killing the engine. In the silence, McVeigh could hear the splash of water falling on to rocks. Cela glanced around. She’d produced a small bottle from a bag at her feet. The bottle had a screw-top. McVeigh could see it in the light from Moshe’s torch. Cela motioned for him to get out of the jeep. He did so, joining her in a small clearing beneath the trees.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Come with me.’

  She led the way down a path through the trees, sweeping left and right with the beam of Moshe’s torch. McVeigh could hear Moshe turning the jeep round behind them. He wondered for a moment whether they’d arrived at the border, whether it was Cela’s job to pick a route through the mine-fields. Then, suddenly, they were out of the trees and standing on the edge of a narrow gorge. Cela angled the torch down. Water was bubbling over a series of ledges. McVeigh could see it tumbling over a longer drop downstream. He shivered. For the first time in Israel, he felt a sense of physical chill.

  Cela handed him the torch, telling him to shine it on the water. He did so, pooling the beam on a spot a metre or two in front of her. Cela squatted at the water’s edge, filling the bottle, sealing it tight, putting it to one side. Watching her, McVeigh knew she’d been here before, doing this very same thing. Her movements had an element of ritual, of something semi-religious. She hesitated for a moment, gazing upstream, then she cupped both hands, filling them with water, raising them to her mouth, drinking. She did it again, retrieving the bottle, standing up, rejoining McVeigh. She gave him the bottle.

  ‘Here,’ she said.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘No. For Yussuf.’

  McVeigh nodded, feeling how cold the water was through the glass. ‘Yussuf?’ he said. ‘You want me to give this to Yussuf?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at him, then nodded back at the stream, invisible now in the darkness. ‘That’s the River Jordan. Where it begins. Every time Yakov went abroad, I came up here. To give him the water too.’ She hesitated, touching McVeigh lightly on the hand. ‘Please. For Yussuf. Tell him what it is. Tell him it comes from me.’

  ‘Will he understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he know Yakov?’

  ‘No.’ She paused. ‘Tell him it comes from an Israeli wife. An Israeli widow.’ She paused again. ‘And tell him that some of us are ashamed. We shoot and we cry.’ She reached for his hand and pressed something else into it, a small square of cloth, edged with tassles. ‘And give him this, too.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I cut it from Hala’s scarf. It’s his wife’s. It’s for him.’

  McVeigh nodded, pocketing the material, turning away from the river. Cela had the torch now, the beam probing the path back. As she began to move away, he caught her arm, the gentlest touch. ‘What about me?’ he said.

  Cela stopped and looked up at him, her face just visible in the spill from the torch. ‘You?’ She smiled. ‘You’ll come back. I know you will.’

  ‘You want that? You’d like that to happen?’

  Cela looked at him for a moment longer, still smiling. Then she leaned up for him with both hands, her eyes closing, the beam of the torch spearing wildly into the trees. Her lips were still wet, with the sweet, chill taste of the Jordan.

  ‘You know what we say,’ she whispered, ‘here, in Israel?’

  McVeigh shook his head, holding her. She opened her eyes, looking at him.

  ‘We say shalom,’ she said. ‘It means Peace.’

  *

  It took Telemann less than a minute to get into Inge’s apartment. He did it with a tempered-steel pick, Emery’s credit card, and a final kick from his one good leg. For a moment, the two men stood in the open doorway, listening. Four rings on the doorbell had produced no response, but Telemann had been caught like this before. The favourite trick had you inside too quickly, anxious to avoid enquiries from the neighbours. Off-guard, unbalanced, that was when they took you. Telemann waited for a moment longer, his leg beginning to throb again. Then he stepped inside, gesturing for Emery to follow.

  The apartment was empty. They moved quickly from room to room, confirming the obvious, that Inge and Blum had decamped, leaving behind them nothing but soiled bedding, cupboards of food, and a small saucepan on the stove, stone-cold, the milk covered with a thin film of whey.

  Telemann returned to the bedroom. The wardrobe was empty, the drawers too. On the dressing-table were a couple of discarded hairclips and an old brush. Telemann lifted the brush, inspecting it closely, recognizing the long blond hairs. He sniffed it once, eyeing the bed in the mirror, then he circled the room, remembering the photographs, the angles they’d captured, looking for the hidden cameras. According to Inge there’d been four, and he found them one by one, neat, effective installations, the cavities masked by hanging pictures, or curtain drapes, or one or other of the huge mirrors. The cameras themselves had gone, but Telemann was able to trace the tiny cable runs which had linked them together, the cables forming a junction at floor level, another cable laid beneath the carpet, emerging on the inside of one of the legs of the bed. Telemann lay full-length on the bed for a moment, reaching down, his fingers finding the button at once. He smiled, the simplicity of it. This was how she’d triggered the cameras, either shot for shot, or – more likely – a single pulse initiating a sequence of shots, carefully timed, offering her a chance to choreograph the action, the circus ringmaster with her mask and her whip and her repertoire of animal tricks. He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering again whether she’d bothered to waste any film on his own brief appearance, realizing for the first time that he didn’t care.

  He opened his eyes again to find Emery in the doorway, watching him.

  ‘Stay here long?’

  Telemann nodded, rueful. ‘Three days.’

  ‘Worth it?’

  Telemann considered the question for a moment longer than he should have. Then he shook his head. ‘An education,’ he said quietly, ‘like you wouldn’t believe.’

  They went back into the living-room, searching carefully, on hands and knees, every square inch of carpet, every ashtray, every book on the shelf beside the kitchen hatch. They took the back off the television, peering inside. They took the pictures off the walls, dismantled the telephone, emptied the fruit bowl, tipped out the waste-bin, eliminating all the obvious places, one by one, finding nothing.

  They repeated the procedure in the kitchen, going through the cupboards, piling up sachets of soup, removing crockery, emptying the refrigerator, wrestling the washing-machine into the middle of the floor, examining the alcove behind, knowing all the time that the effort was probably worthless, that no graduate of the Mossad Academy would leave anything of any value.

  Finally, empty-handed, they shut the internal doors and made their way out of the apartment. Twenty-four hours after the event, the German media were at last reporting the death of Otto Wulf, and Telemann paused in the hallway, picking up the name in the blur of sound from the television in the next-door apartment. So far the reports had made no mention of foul play or police involvement. On the contrary, a terse statement from the administration at the Dusseldorf Hospital had blamed a long-standing coronary condition. The man had been over-wrought and under stress. He’d suffered a major heart attack. The funeral, in a church in Berlin, would be in a week’s time. End of story.

  Now, reaching for the front door, Telemann saw the package on the floor. It was wrapped in brown paper, neatly taped, with his name stencilled across it in large black letters. Coming into the flat, the kick perhaps over-eager, the package must have disappeared behind the door. Telemann bent to the carpet and retrieved it. It wasn’t heavy. Back in the living-room, he put it on the table. Emery was beside him.

  ‘What do you think? We open it? You wanna take the risk?’

  Emery shook his head. ‘The Consulate,’ he said briefly. ‘Put it through the analyser.’

  They left the apartment and drove to the Consulate. The duty
officer, recognizing Telemann, signed them in. It was late for the mail-room, but the duty officer had the key and knew how to work the analyser. The analyser was at the end of the mail-room. It was the size of a rabbit hutch, matt grey metal, the technology adapted from similar machines in use in US airports. The duty officer switched it on, lifting the swing-lid on top and putting the parcel carefully inside. The three men stood around the small TV screen. In various shades of grey, it showed the outlines of the parcel. Inside was something folded. Telemann could see buttons. He frowned.

  ‘It’s a jacket,’ the duty officer said. ‘Someone’s jacket.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. Some kind of envelope. Here.’ He indicated a shape in the middle of the parcel.

  Telemann peered at it. It didn’t look very big. ‘Any hazard?’ he said.

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  Telemann glanced at Emery, who shrugged. Telemann lifted the parcel out and began to open it. Inside he found his jacket, the one he’d been wearing the day he’d collapsed at the gas station. He lifted it, sniffing it, remembering his own bemusement, utterly helpless as the gas splashed all over him.

  ‘Dry-cleaned,’ he muttered. ‘She must have dry-cleaned it.’

  The duty officer was looking at him. He was black, and faintly laconic. ‘You got a problem there?’

  Telemann glanced up at him, acknowledging the comment with a terse grunt. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘since you mention it.’

  ‘Jacket doesn’t smell too good?’

  ‘Jacket smells great.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  Telemann looked at him, wondering how long it would take for the full speech, what the disease was called, where it might lead, what it might mean after a lifetime of taking his body for granted.

  The duty officer was still gazing at the jacket. ‘Looks great to me,’ he said.

  Telemann smiled. ‘You want it?’

  ‘Sure.’ He looked up. ‘You serious?’

  Telemann gave him the jacket. The duty officer shook out the creases, and an envelope dropped out, falling on the floor between them. The duty officer bent to retrieve it. ‘You wanna smell this, too?’

  The duty officer gave him the envelope, then held the jacket up against himself, trying it for size. It looked a little small against his chest. He shrugged. ‘Man gets older,’ he said, ‘man shrinks.’

  Telemann nodded, thoughtful. ‘Maybe,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe not.’

  Back outside in the BMW, Telemann opened the envelope. Inside he found a photograph and two folded sheets of paper. Telemann extracted the photo and examined it in the overhead light. It showed two men standing together, their faces clearly visible. They were both wearing heavy coats. One of the men dwarfed the other. He had his arm around the smaller man and he was beaming down at him. In the background, half a kilometre away, black dots were trudging up a line of sand-dunes. Some of them, on closer inspection, appeared to be carrying rifles.

  Telemann returned to the two men in the foreground. He recognized both of them, faces from the recent past. ‘Otto Wulf,’ he said quietly, ‘and Mahmood Assali.’

  ‘Where? When?’

  Telemann frowned, looking at the two men, shaking his head, turning the photograph over. On the back, in careful blue script, he found the answer to both questions.

  ‘Rugen,’ he said. ‘June. This year.’

  ‘Whose word do we have for that?’

  ‘Theirs. Hers.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘The Israeli girl. Inge.’ He nodded at the back of the photo. ‘That’s her writing. I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘So where did she get it?’

  ‘Maybe the woman I met in Halle. The one she said was her mother.’

  ‘The woman who worked for Wulf?’

  ‘Yes.’ Telemann paused. ‘She said she’d been to Rugen. She may even have taken the photo.’

  Emery nodded slowly, looking out at the darkened street. The commercial area had long emptied, the windows of the offices barred and shuttered.

  ‘So Wulf did know Assali,’ Emery mused.

  ‘For sure.’

  Emery nodded again, reaching for the photo, examining it closely. Anything, Stauckel had said. The man will do anything for power, anything for influence. That’s what fuels him. That’s what’s taken him to the top. He has this image of himself, wheeling and dealing and solving the world’s problems. That’s why he’s moving into the media. That’s why he’s buying up radio stations, television channels, even newspapers. The guy can’t get enough of himself. He wants to coat the world with mirrors. He wants to show us how big he is, how important he is, the ultimate power-junkie, the man who can’t get enough.

  ‘Kadenza,’ he said quietly.

  Telemann frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the name of the conglomerate he was setting up. Kadenza Verlag. Print. Electronic. You name it.’

  Telemann nodded, remembering the pile of documents on the floor in Wulf’s apartment, the name embossed on the backs of the files. ‘So?’ he said. ‘Where does that take us?’

  Emery glanced across at him. ‘Wulf,’ he mused, ‘here’s a guy needs recognition, fame, glory, all that stuff. So what’s the way you make sure you get your name in the papers?’

  ‘Buy your own.’

  ‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘But then you need something to sell, something to boast about. So what do you do? You get up there on the world-stage and you look around. You want the big one. The one that no one else can solve …’ He paused, looking at Telemann.

  Telemann nodded. ‘The Mid East,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Sure. The Israeli problem. The Arab problem. Whichever way you cut it. So—’ he put the photograph on the dashboard between them ‘—supposing in the end there’s a deal? Supposing there has to be a deal? What kind of prize … what kind of headlines … go to the guy that brokers that deal? And what kind of guy would want it?’

  Telemann looked away. ‘Wulf?’ he said. ‘That kind of guy?’

  ‘Right. Wulf. So what happens? It’s the mid-eighties. He’s big in West Germany. He’s big in East Germany. He sees what’s going to happen. Honecker, Gorbachev. Reunification. And he sees where he can fit in to all this. He can be the bridge between the two worlds, the East and the West. Lots of Deutschmarks there, lots of geld …’ He paused, choosing his words carefully. ‘But here’s a guy with even bigger ideas. Geld’s not enough. He wants glory, too.’

  Telemann nodded, remembering the photos in Wulf’s apartment, a parade of world statesmen framed and hung, set dressing for Wulf’s wilder fantasies.

  ‘Gorbachev was there,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Wulf’s place. A photo. Him and Gorby. Old pals.’

  ‘Who else?’ He paused. ‘Shamir?’

  Telemann frowned, thinking. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘In the lobby.’

  ‘So OK. He knows Shamir.’ He paused again, tapping the photo. ‘And he knows Assali, too. He puts the two together in his head, a concept, a plan. He works on the Palestinian a little, gives the guy what he wants.’

  ‘For what? In return for what?’

  ‘In return for a gesture. A public gesture. The guy has to renounce violence. The guy has to turn his back on all that. The guy has to recognize Israel.’ He smiled. ‘It’s called peace. The guy has to talk peace.’

  Telemann nodded, following the logic. ‘And he did that?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what all the grief’s about. Assali approached the State Department. They were working him up nicely. He was exactly what they wanted. He was the guy gonna put the Israelis on the spot.’

  ‘Which is why they had him killed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Telemann said nothing, his eyes returning to the photo. The man in the gutter outside the Hotel Dreisen had been wearing exactly the same coat, a close-weave herringbone, expensive, fashionable.

  ‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘So what did Wulf
offer him? Why did he do it? What was in it for the Arabs?’

  Emery leaned back behind the wheel and took off his glasses for a moment, running a tired hand over his face. Then he smiled. ‘Look in the envelope,’ he said quietly, ‘and we’ll find out.’

  Telemann looked at him for a moment, marvelling at how the relationship always acquired the same shape, Emery the conjuror, himself the stooge. Just once, he thought, it would have been nice to have produced the white rabbit for himself, no tricks, no fancy analysis, just good fieldwork and honest graft. He shrugged, reaching for the envelope, pulling out the two sheets of paper. He unfolded them, holding the first up against the light. It was a photocopy of an invoice. The company name on the top of the invoice was Littmann Chemie. The date was 6 June 1987. The invoice was made out to a firm in Zurich. Under ‘Goods Supplied’ there was a typed list of chemicals. They included dimethylaminophosphoryl dichloride and sodium cyanide. A note on the bottom of the invoice indicated compliance with an international export protocol. The chemicals, the note concluded, were designated for use as a pesticide. Telemann frowned, noting the sum billed on the invoice. In all, Littmann was asking DM 95,000.

  Telemann hesitated for a moment, then passed the invoice to Emery. He scanned it quickly, then nodded, putting it to one side. Telemann unfolded the second piece of paper. It was another photocopy, this time of a cheque. Dated nine months later, it was for an identical sum, DM 95,000. Telemann gave the cheque to Emery. He glanced at it, then nodded, picking up the invoice again.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Number one, Littmann is under-quoting. Ninety-five thousand is bottom dollar. Even in 1987. Two, these guys in Zurich are a front organization. It’s a procurement outfit, run from Baghdad.’