Minutes later, he was in position, the old man coming towards him, head still down, the trees in deep shadow now. McVeigh waited a moment longer, then began to walk, whistling to himself, plenty of noise. He saw the old man stop and look up. His face had changed since the photograph. He looked thinner, older, more gaunt. McVeigh kept going, stopping three or four yards away. The two men looked at each other. McVeigh could see the fear in the old man’s eyes. He held out his hand. ‘My name’s McVeigh,’ he said. ‘I’ve come from Amer Tahoul.’
The old man studied him for a moment longer. ‘Salaam,’ he said. ‘Amer promised you’d be here.’
They went back to the house. The old man made coffee. They sat together in the big lounge, the lights on, the curtains drawn, and McVeigh told him everything he knew, bits of the story stitched together, some from Cela, some from Amer. He told him how the Israelis had built the hatred in his heart, taking his son, selling his life to the moharebbin; how an Israeli had appeared at his door, pretending to be an Arab, pretending to recruit him for the cause, sending him overseas, giving him the key role in a plot to poison the streets of Manhattan. Whether or not the strike would ever have taken place, whether the threat was real or not, McVeigh didn’t know. Far more likely, the Israelis would themselves have unmasked it, earning the gratitude of the Americans, saddling Iraq with the blame, stiffening Washington’s resolve, exposing Saddam for what he really was.
McVeigh did his best to simplify the plan but he could tell from the old man’s face that the depth of the treachery was too much for him. He didn’t understand power politics. He couldn’t fathom the subtlety of the play the Israelis had tried to make. He kept shaking his head, looking away, his hands knotting and unknotting, the mug of coffee untouched. ‘My wife,’ he said at the end. ‘Hala.’
McVeigh nodded, reaching for the haversack, looking for the square of cloth Cela had given him by the river. Finding it, he laid it carefully on the table between them. The old man stared at it, uncomprehending.
McVeigh took his hand. ‘She’s dead,’ he said.
The old man looked up. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’ McVeigh nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
The old man got up and left the room. When he came back, minutes later, McVeigh knew he’d been weeping. It was there in his face. He stood by the table, looking down at the tasselled square of cotton, roughly cut from his wife’s scarf. He made no attempt to touch it. ‘I hate them,’ he said. ‘I hate the Israelis.’
McVeigh nodded, reaching in the bag again, producing the bottle of water. He put it on the table beside the cloth, uncertain what to say, how to put it. Finally, he looked up at the old man.
‘This comes from an Israeli,’ he said. ‘Her name is Cela. She was the wife of one of the men behind the—’ he shrugged ‘— plan. He gave the plan away. He betrayed it to his wife. The Israelis killed him for that.’ He paused. ‘His wife asked me to give you this. She took it from the the River Jordan. She hoped you’d understand.’
He offered the old man the bottle of water. The old man shook his head, ignoring it, his eyes wet again, the talk of death, the talk of bereavement. ‘What about you?’ he said at last. ‘Are you Israeli?’
‘No, I’m British.’
‘Then why …’ He shrugged, nodding at the water.
McVeigh thought about the question, the bottle still in his hand. He remembered the darkness by the river, how cold it was. He looked away.
‘Because of her,’ he said simply. ‘Because of Cela.’
*
Emery, stepping out of the cab from Washington’s National Airport, recognized Sullivan’s limo, still parked by the kerb outside the ‘F’ Street office. Personal visits were becoming a habit, he thought, crossing the sidewalk and heading for the door.
Juanita met him in the tiny reception area on the fourth floor. ‘He’s been here nearly an hour,’ she said. ‘He’s still on the computer.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Getting into NID.’
‘You give him the pass codes?’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘In the end I did.’
Emery looked at her for a moment. NID was the National Intelligence Databank. It held details on a huge range of Intelligence contacts worldwide. Unlimited access depended on a set of pass codes, issued to no more than a couple of hundred people in the Washington area. Despite his position at the White House, Sullivan probably wasn’t one of them. Ordinarily, he’d have gone through someone like Emery for hands-on Intelligence. Emery shrugged and gave Juanita the envelope he’d taken from Weill. ‘This is the German stuff,’ he said. ‘Absolute priority.’
Emery walked into his office. Sullivan was sitting at his desk, bent over the computer. The blinds were down on the window and the room was in semi-darkness. Even from the door, Emery could read the name on top of the computer file. ‘McVeigh,’ he said aloud.
‘Sullivan looked up. He’d spilled coffee on his shirt-front. The empty styrofoam cup lay on the desk. ‘English guy,’ he said. Ex-Marine. Seems to do a lot of work for the Arabs. London-based.’ He paused. ‘You wanna read the rest for yourself?’
Emery shook his head. He circled the desk and pulled up a chair on the other side. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just tell me why you’re interested.’
‘You know why I’m interested.’
‘I know that Al Zahra passed on the name.’ He paused. ‘Zahra’s not a source we can trust.’
‘Who says?’
‘Ten years of dealing with him says. He fabricates. He lies. Guy lives in fairyland. Should work for Disney.’ He leaned forward across the desk. ‘Plus I checked with London. No one’s heard of any missing nerve gas.’
‘Who did you talk to?’
‘MI5.’ He paused. ‘And they should know.’
Sullivan shrugged and bent to the computer again, scrolling out another line of text. The entry on McVeigh ran to a bare three lines. Emery could see Sullivan struggling to control his temper.
‘McVeigh went to Israel,’ Sullivan said finally.
‘How do you know?’
‘Guy in London told me.’
‘Who?’
Sullivan looked up. The smile was icy. ‘Guy I happen to know. Well placed. Someone I trust.’
‘Not Zahra? Not the Intelligence people?’
‘No.’
‘Who, then?’
Sullivan shook his head, refusing to impart the name, and Emery shrugged, peering at the screen again. ‘So where is he now? This McVeigh?’
‘He’s here. In the States.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘I don’t know. Yet.’ Sullivan frowned. ‘But he’s in touch with our friend with the gas. Word is, he’ll deliver.’
‘Deliver?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you hear this?’
‘Last night. Late.’
Emery sank back in the chair. There was a long silence. ‘Ever think of sharing the news?’ he said drily.
Sullivan removed his glasses for a moment, then ran a hand over his face. ‘You were too fucking busy,’ he said, ‘not listening to me.’
The two men looked at each other for a moment over the computer. Then Emery shrugged. ‘Might have been easier, that’s all.’
‘Sure, buddy.’ Sullivan reached for the empty styrofoam cup, lifting it in a mock toast. ‘And here’s to Mr Assali.’
Emery looked at Sullivan for a moment longer. Then he got up and went to the window. The blinds up, daylight transformed the room. He turned round. Sullivan had switched off the computer. Emery walked back to the desk. ‘The Israelis killed Assali,’ he said quietly. ‘And Ron was part of that. Another guy’s dead, too. Otto Wulf.’
‘Heart attack. It was on the wires.’
Emery shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He died of poison gas. Nerve gas. Either murder or suicide. The evidence isn’t clear.’
Sullivan blinked, leaning forward. ‘How do you know?’ he said. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Shit.’ Sullivan shook his head. ‘Who gave it to him?’
‘Wulf’s mistress.’ The smile faded. ‘An Israeli.’
‘Why?’
‘Two reasons. One, he’d been supplying gas to the rag-heads. Not the final product, but constituent chemicals. Once you’ve got that, the rest is simple.’ He paused. ‘In fact I suspect Wulf supplied the stuff that came here. It was either ready-mixed or synthesized at a place near Hamburg. Out in the country. Then shipped through Antwerp.’
Sullivan nodded. ‘And two?’
Emery looked down at the desk, wondering whether he should wait for confirmation, the transcript of the German material he’d hand-carried back from Cape Cod. Finally he decided against it, looking up, smiling again. ‘Wulf was a broker,’ he said. ‘He had connections everywhere. He traded favours for influence.’ He paused. ‘One of the items on Saddam’s list was data on Israeli ECM. The frequencies they use. What he’d need to know to knock the IAF out of the sky.’
‘And Wulf?’
‘Found him the data. Guy on the West Coast. Avionics guy. You might remember the name. Lennox Gold.’
‘Guy in the hotel? Guy that got gassed?’
‘Right. Gold needed the money. The Iraqis had the money. And Wulf was the go-between.’ He shrugged. ‘The Israelis settled both debts. Wulf’s and Gold’s.’
Sullivan was frowning now, following the smoke upwind, trying to find the bonfire.
‘You’re saying the Israelis killed Gold?’
‘Yes.’
‘With poison gas?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the rest of it?’ He paused. ‘The horses up in the Catskills?’
‘Same message.’
‘From the Israelis?’
‘Sure.’
‘Why?’
Emery sat down at last, the smile quite gone, spelling it out, explaining the motive, describing the plan, Sullivan leaning forward across the desk, following it all, word for word.
‘You’re saying it’s a scam?’ he said finally. ‘The fucking Jews leading us to water?’
‘Leading us to war,’ Emery suggested drily. ‘In case we were under-motivated.’
Sullivan sat back, nodding, going over the analysis. At length he permitted himself a broad grin, infinitely benign. ‘I need proof,’ he said. ‘Evidence. Then the rest is just beautiful.’
‘Beautiful?’
‘Sure.’ He reached for a cigar. ‘We get the evidence. We give it to the Israelis—’ he shrugged ‘—and our problems are over.’
‘Whose problems?’
‘The President’s—’ he lit a cigar ‘—and mine.’
Emery nodded, fingering the intercom, checking with Juanita. The German material was en route to a translator, security cleared. It should be back by midnight. He thanked her and sat back again. Sullivan was still waiting, the cigar clamped between his teeth. He reached for the empty coffee cup and began to crush it in one hand, then another.
‘We have some of the evidence already,’ he said. ‘Wulf is rock-solid. Even the Germans know it. That’s why they’ve been trying to bury the truth.’
‘And the rest of it?’
Emery hesitated for a moment. Then he nodded at the computer.
‘Your friend McVeigh,’ he said lightly. ‘Who else?’
16
Three days later, McVeigh picked up the telephone in the lounge of the rented house on the slopes of the Sugarloaf Mountain. The old man, Abu Yussuf, was in the garage, repairing a broken bracket on the car. After seventy-two hours together, they had a plan. The plan was simple. With a couple of maps and a tankful of Tabun GA, they were going to avenge two deaths: the murder of Hala and the murder of Yakov. The old man had shown him the car, the way it could be done. At his insistent invitation, McVeigh had lain on the cold concrete in the garage and admired the pipework, how neat it was. He’d seen the pump, the fake exhaust. He’d fingered the switch on the dashboard. He had absolutely no doubt that the system would work, and when he checked the distances on the map he concluded that two nights of steady driving were all that separated Manhattan from 5 gallons of Tabun GA.
Now McVeigh began to punch in the digits for a London number. Beside the phone was the letter from Amer Tahoul. The letter was in Arabic, the old man had read it once, grunted, and put it down. He’d never discussed it, never shared its contents, never looked at it again. Whatever it said, however hard Amer had tried, the old man had put himself beyond reach. His grief had turned to rage, and his rage had consumed him, like a fever. Nothing would touch it.
McVeigh sank into a chair, waiting for the number to connect. In three hours, once darkness had come, they were moving south, he and Abu Yussuf, sharing the Oldsmobile. The London number began to ring, then a voice came on. It sounded sleepy.
McVeigh glanced over his shoulder, checking the path to the front door. He’d wrenched the exhaust bracket out of shape. It would take a while to fix.
‘Mr Friedland?’
‘Yes?’
‘Pat McVeigh.’
‘Ah …’ McVeigh heard the click of a recording-machine. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in the US.’ He paused. ‘Is that thing recording OK? You want to check it?’
He heard Friedland laugh, the sleepiness gone. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘It’s Japanese. It’s foolproof.’
McVeigh smiled, glad of the joke. The role he’d been playing for the last three days hadn’t left much room for laughter.
‘Listen,’ he said briskly, ‘this is the plan. This is what’s going to happen. But I need one guarantee.’ He paused. ‘OK?’
‘Where are you?’ Friedland said again.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Do you have the gas?’
‘Yes. And the bloke that goes with it.’
‘OK.’ Friedland paused. ‘So what’s the condition?’
McVeigh bent to the phone, speaking slowly, no ambiguities, nothing left to chance. He’d spell out every detail of the plan as long as Abu Yussuf was left unharmed. There was to be no violence, and no legal proceedings.
‘You got that?’
‘Yes.’ Friedland paused again. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah. He gets citizenship. If he wants to stay in the States. Otherwise he gets enough to settle somewhere else. With me?’
‘Yes. I’ll have to check all this. Phone me again.’
‘Sure.’
There was a long silence. McVeigh could hear the old man hammering at the bracket outside in the garage.
Then Friedland came back. ‘So what’s the plan?’ he said.
McVeigh laughed. ‘You get the guarantee,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you the plan.’
‘Otherwise?’
‘The deal’s off.’
‘Meaning?’
McVeigh shrugged. Across the room, on the television, CNN were showing yet more pictures of the American build-up in the Gulf, Navy F-14s, blasting into a pale blue sky. The set had been on for three days solid and McVeigh was sick of it. American muscle. Arab despots. No mention of the kids he’d left in Ramallah, the broken bodies en route to the mortuary fridge.
He bent to the phone again. ‘Meaning I leave him to it,’ he said, ‘my friend with the nerve gas.’
*
Emery phoned Telemann the same afternoon. He’d deliberately left him alone for three days, knowing that the homecoming would be difficult enough without interruptions from the office. Now, sitting at his desk, he heard the phone answer. It was Laura.
‘Hi. Me.’
Laura said nothing for a moment. Emery heard a door close in the background. Then she was back. She said she was glad he’d called.
‘How is he?’
‘Quiet.’
‘Has he seen the doctor?’
‘Yes. We went Monday.’
‘How was tha
t?’
‘I don’t know. He won’t talk about it. He didn’t want me there. Said he preferred it one on one.’
‘But what about afterwards? How was he afterwards?’
‘I told you. Quiet. He doesn’t talk too much. Not about that.’ She paused. ‘Not about anything, actually.’
Emery nodded, wondering what he could do, wondering what to say, relieved when Laura came on the phone again, breaking the silence.
‘There’s one thing, Pete …’
‘Yeah?’
‘I don’t know whether it’s possible, but …’
‘What? Say it. Go ahead.’
‘He just … I guess … wants to be on the end of this thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘Whatever it is … you and Ron …’
‘Yeah.’ Emery nodded, non-committal. ‘Sure.’
‘I don’t know whether …’
‘Is he there now?’
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Asleep?’ Emery looked at his watch. ‘Shit.’
There was another silence. Emery reached for a cigarette. The material from Weill, sourced from one of Wulf’s companies, had turned out to be a detailed specification for the required Israeli ECM data. The invoices from the Hamburg flat had checked out as genuine. The German connection could now meet any standard of legal proof. But quite where the thing would end was still a mystery.
‘I dunno,’ Emery muttered down the phone. ‘It’s not too easy just now.’
‘Sure. I understand.’
‘But if there’s any way …’ He shrugged. ‘No question. I promise.’
‘Yeah … well … whatever …’ Laura trailed off.
There was another long silence. Emery lit the cigarette, pulling it deep into his lungs, letting it rest there, then expelling a long plume of blue smoke. ‘You sound really miserable,’ he said quietly.
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