by Merle Nygate
He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, scrunched it into a ball and tossed it on to his empty plate.
‘Yeah, he’s trying to screw me; trying to get me off the operation. Says he doesn’t like my approach. More likely he doesn’t like my accent. To him I’m chackh chackh.’
‘And I suppose he’s voos voos?’
‘Yeah, the elite. Like you: Anglo Saxon, German, European.’
‘I thought all that was history.’
Rafi rolled his eyes.
‘Where did your family come from?’ Petra said.
‘My father from Greece and my mother from Yemen. My mother’s parents had never seen a flushing toilet. They never got over the magic of modern plumbing. You?’
‘British and Austrian. My father was in a displaced persons camp at the end of the war. That’s where he met Alon who was also orphaned.’
‘Of course. That’s your connection isn’t it?’ Rafi quaffed the pint of lime and soda and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Anyway, Benny is going to get me fired. It’s his life’s work. It’s why he’s been put on this earth. He’s not thinking about the operation; he’s thinking about his career. That’s why I need you watching my back, Petra. So that we can get the job done and make a difference.’
‘Do you think he’s clean?’ Petra said.
‘What do you mean?’
Petra waved to the serving staff and gestured for the bill. She said, ‘He wouldn’t be the first intelligence officer in the world to go wrong.’
‘Not Benny. He’s too much of an asshole to break the rules.’
31
West London – The Same Evening
Wasim was at that age where he talked before he thought and acted without any restraint. Like a pinball he bounced off the arguments and then flipped up around the board again and again and again.
‘I hear you, commander, but I still want to see my sister.’
‘I understand and I am sorry, but it would endanger the mission and everything we are going to achieve, inshallah,’ Eli leaned across the table between them and poured out another cup of coffee from the jug. Irritation. Yes, that’s what Eli was feeling and it was an entirely inappropriate emotion for any agent runner. Worse, Eli realised he was more irritated with himself than the kid.
Maybe he was too old to get into the head of an 18-year-old, maybe they should have brought in one of the new guys in Mossad to connect with the boy. Or maybe it was just this particular target and it was only a question of finding the right angle and he’d be able to work his way in. Keep going. Keep repeating and maybe it would sink in. The boy hadn’t touched his coffee; the pinball flipped around the board and pinged again.
‘If I can just see her then I will feel that I have done my duty as her guardian and head of the family. Is that so difficult for you to understand? You know where she is and what she is doing, but I don’t. It’s a matter of honour – of doing the right thing.’
‘Oh yes, habibti, we are all of the same belief and want to do what is right. I am aware of your responsibility but in this case you must pass it to me; I am her guide, I am now responsible for her.’
Across the table Wasim folded his arms. Eli smiled and ploughed on, ‘Tell me about Kansas and your studies? It must be very interesting to be studying engineering now with all the new technology, new materials and there will be many opportunities when you qualify. We’ll need qualified engineers, people like you, to rebuild our country after the occupation is over.’
No reply. Given Wasim’s intractability, the notion of slipping in any questions about who his Hamas contacts in the Occupied Territories might be was about as likely as Elvis being alive and in Tel Aviv. That meant no brownie points with Shabak who wanted some payback for their role in Sweetbait. It was bad enough dealing with the complexities of the operation itself without having to service another client at the same time. Meanwhile, the boy sulked. Instead of meeting Eli’s gaze, Wasim tugged at the wispy hair on his chin and looked towards the window.
They were using a safe house in Ladbroke Grove; it was on the first floor of a Victorian conversion and in the next-door flat a couple were monitoring and acting as remote babysitters. The situation was far from ideal and the fiction that Wasim had been rescued by a secret Hamas cell could unravel at any moment but there were no other options – at least none that wouldn’t lead to an internal inquiry which was why the boy had to be convinced and he had to co-operate.
Eli stood and walked towards the small kitchen where he ran some water just for something to do. ‘Wasim, you must trust us, you have seen what we have done; we saved you from being arrested by the British. Did that mean nothing; did it not show you that we want to help you and your family? It is a hard truth but if you’d been arrested you would not be able to go back to Kansas, even if you were in the house because they were just friends of friends. The Americans won’t let you back in and your career will be over. Please, let us help you, Wasim. Go back to America and do what’s right.’
Eli was talking to the taps, washing up the coffee cups, drying them, rinsing the sink of the grounds from the pot and wiping down the surfaces.
A noise from the room made him turn. The kid was at the window, his long leg halfway out and then the other leg shifted and he disappeared from the first floor window.
‘Daylight,’ Eli said running to the window. ‘DAYLIGHT,’ he repeated hoping that the listeners next door weren’t on a break or distracted for any reason. ‘Kid’s jumped out the window.’
Reaching the window, Eli looked down; Wasim was on the ground five metres down, he was dragging himself up using a wheelie bin but even from above Eli could see that the boy had hurt himself. His arm was hanging at an odd angle.
‘WASIM!’ Eli shouted. But the kid was already limping out of the service area. Eli headed to the front door of the flat and clattered down the stairs two at a time. Outside he legged it around the corner and was in time to see Wasim stumbling along the main road, trying to thread his way through the traffic. A car swerved around the boy but he got to the other side amid hooting and fist waving from angry drivers. Helplessly Eli waved from the other side before plunging across the road and dodging cars. On the other side Eli picked up speed and the kid was slowing, his legs flailing as if the rubber inside was loose. In one final burst of speed, Eli caught up with Wasim and reaching out grabbed him, aiming for the arm that he guessed was broken. Wasim’s scream of pain was heartrending and conspicuous, but at least the bastard stopped.
32
Westbourne Grove, London – The Next Day
Eli was on his third coffee of the day; one more and he would get jittery. Even though the botz coffee he’d brought from the embassy commissary had less caffeine than arabica, there was still enough to wire him up like a beachside café at Purim. He was sitting in the safe house waiting for Red Cap to come out of the toilet and from the sound of the concealed microphone that fed into Eli’s earpiece, the agent had been retching.
The last twenty-four hours had been no picnic. On the upside, Eli had stopped Wasim from running into the arms of the nearest British cop; the kid was now back in a new safe house tucked up in bed and sedated. Getting him there had been exhausting to say the least. Since they could hardly take the boy to A&E they’d had to get the embassy doctor to reset the arm and check the boy over. However, Menachem, the embassy doctor was more used to issuing sick notes for staff and giving vaccinations than doing anything useful. When they told Menachem what he had to do he looked as if they were asking him to sell the kid’s body parts. In the face of such obstruction Rafi had been all for resetting the arm themselves and on reflection Eli was bitterly sorry that he had disagreed and insisted on doing it properly and using the professional. Some professional.
In contrast the prospect of a meeting with Red Cap seemed like an island of tranquillity after bobbing around in stormy waters.
On the scarred wooden table in front of him Eli had already laid out a platter of smoked t
urkey sandwiches. He looked at them with distaste. Smoked turkey was ersatz bacon and the latest initiative from the apparatchik in logistics. The pen-pushing dweeb had lately got religion and was flexing his devotional muscle; smoked turkey was to be exchanged for bacon in operations that were not false flag. Ridiculous. Yet it was one fight that Eli couldn’t be bothered to tackle; there was no point rolling up his sleeves when some asshole was measuring the skirts of interns in the Knesset to make sure they were modest. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if a genuine bacon sandwich was going to cure Red Cap’s problems anytime soon.
When Red Cap finally came back into the room his white sweating face and damp mouth confirmed the sounds from the toilet.
‘Derek, for God’s sake,’ Eli said. ‘You’ve got to look after yourself. Come on, sit down, what would you like? A coffee, maybe some water with a B-complex, a sandwich? Have you eaten today?’
‘Good heavens, Benny, you’re turning into a Jewish mother before my eyes.’ Red Cap wiped a gob of spittle from the side of his mouth and collapsed into the chair like a bag of bones. ‘How about a drink?’
‘No, not at this time of the morning and not in your state either.’
‘Just kidding, but it might do you some good, Benny. Shake you up a bit, stop you being such a stuffed shirt.’ Red Cap laughed; the laugh turned into a phlegmy cough that crackled and threw up more matter that he struggled to swallow down. To give him a chance to compose himself Eli left the table and busied himself in the tiny kitchen. He put on the kettle and made some black tea in a glass, cutting a slice of lemon and placing some sugar cubes on a saucer. He brought the steaming drink back into the room and placed it in front of Red Cap.
‘Try that,’ Eli said. ‘My grandfather used to drink the tea through the sugar cube.’
Red Cap eyed the amber liquid in the glass, then looked at Eli, eyes still watery from the coughing fit. The agent’s knuckles were dark against the skin of his skeletal hands and they trembled as he dropped the cubes into the hot liquid, stirred and sipped. Once again he cleared his throat but now he looked more at ease; the spark was back in his eyes. ‘I’ll skip the drinking through the sugar cube part,’ he said with his customary languor. ‘A little too Russian for my taste. But presumably that’s your background, the Pale, the greater Russian Republic. Unless you’re trying to tell me in the gentlest possible way that you’re an ancient KGB man and this is all false flag. That would be upsetting to say the least.’
‘How could it be false flag when you walked into the embassy all those years ago?’
‘Benny, my good man, these days who can be sure of anything?’
‘True.’
Red Cap fished in his pocket and pushed the USB stick across the table.
Eli said, ‘We could have done this in a brush past, you know. This does increase the risk.’
‘I know but I wanted to see you,’ Red Cap said.
‘I’m flattered. Any particular reason?’ Eli pocketed the stick.
‘I think I’m being followed.’
‘Where and when?’ Eli concealed his irritation; if a team of watchers couldn’t cover an agent without being made then they should be packed off on the next flight home and chucked straight back into retraining.
‘Just here and there,’ Red Cap said. ‘And on odd days. Not necessarily when I’m travelling into central London. I have spotted your people now and then: the geek with the rucksack, the chain store shoppers, the map-reading tourists. But this seemed different – they had a different rhythm, if you know what I mean.’
Another fucking problem. MI5 checking or FSB scouting.
‘I’ll look into it,’ Eli forced his voice to sound calm, matter of fact, ‘I’ll see if my guys changed any of the team which would account for a different signature.’ If MI5 were doing random checks or the Russians were scouting for talent, it could be another disaster.
Red Cap tugged at his collar as if it was sticking into his flesh, ‘Maybe I’m just being paranoid.’
‘Goes with the territory,’ Eli said.
Red Cap nodded.
Paranoia. Trust issues. Over-the-shoulder glances. That land of shape and shadows, where dear friend might be traitorous enemy and distrusted connection might be true friend. Was Red Cap suffering from agent-paranoia – shpyon-cop as they called it – or had he actually seen something?
On the one hand Red Cap was a professional so his sensate interpretation of events should be heeded. But at the same time, he was a man under stress and paranoia was part of his daily diet. No matter how reasonable Red Cap sounded in his description of a different signature, it was more likely that his overall mental state and compromised health were creating the sense of being watched. That’s what Eli told himself. Because if Red Cap was being followed by MI5 or any other interested party, then protocol demanded contact be stopped until the risk was assessed.
Eli sipped at his coffee and made a show of finding his pen and notebook to give himself more time to think. It was a gamble and Eli didn’t like gambling but Red Cap wouldn’t be the first agent to think that the woman standing behind him in the supermarket queue was a honey trap, the homeless beggar was MI5 street surveillance or a wrong phone number was a home check. If they all jumped at every single bleep, bump and squeak in the night and shut down all active operations – including Sweetbait – then they’d never get anything done.
For the moment, Eli would assuage Red Cap’s fears, order another team of watchers on to him and, most importantly, dampen down his own rising paranoia. A second team of watchers would establish whether or not it was shpyon-cop or a real threat.
‘How’s Carole?’ Eli said.
Red Cap shook his head. ‘That’s the second reason I wanted to see you. I’ve thought about it Benny, and I’d like to take you up on your kind offer to find someone to help her. I don’t know how you’ll do it –’
‘You leave that to us,’ Eli said. ‘We’ll think of something, don’t worry.’
‘She’s worse, much worse, she passes out in the afternoon and then she paces at night. All night. But the new development is that she can’t get up in the morning. Can’t get out of bed. It’s as if she’s actually paralysed. And... she’s threatening me.’
‘Threatening what?’ For all his years of experience handling agents Eli was conscious of his heart rate increasing.
‘Benny, she knows. And now she’s threatening to tell people. That’s the other reason why I wanted to meet with you, to tell you.’
‘Okay...’ Eli stroked the top of his skull. He forced his voice to sound calm. ‘You did right to call the meeting. So when you say threatening to tell people, which people? Is she being specific?’
‘Yes and no, she does it when she’s drunk, it’s a part of her ranting and raging. She says she’ll write to my boss, phone them, tell the neighbours, put a sign outside the house, saying I’m a traitor. Mostly it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Does that mean when she’s sober she does make sense? I think we need to get her into some sort of rehabilitation programme as soon as possible. It sounds as if she’s clinically depressed.’
‘I agree. Part of the rant is about being a failure and the terrible mistake she made marrying me among all the other disasters in her life. Somehow, Benny, I can’t blame her.’
Eli touched the agent on the forearm, ‘Ignore the content of what she is saying. If she’s clinically depressed there’s no logic in it.’
‘Are you married? I’ve never asked you. In all these years I’ve never asked. Do you really know what it’s like, Benny?’
Eli paused: to lie or to tell the truth? To say he is widowed, divorced, gay or single, or to say, yes, I know what it’s like to be married. I am as you are, I share that experience with you; we are alike. We are all alike when it comes to our humanity.
‘Yes, I am married,’ Eli paused. ‘We have one son who is in the army. I fear for both his life and for his soul. Even if he does come home in one piece, I fear that what h
e’s seen and done will destroy his humanity. I fear that he won’t be able to shrug it off, that he might get into drugs, or that he’ll be prey for our religious bigots who seek out the vulnerable, to give them certainties in a way that no one else can. And I fear that if that happens, my wife will never, ever forgive me.’
Eli lowered his eyes to the scarred table. A ring mark on the stained beech showed where his coffee glass had sat. Eli was shocked at himself, yet oddly relieved. And he was grateful that Red Cap was silent.
At last Eli spoke, ‘Sorry, Derek, I don’t know where that came from. My apologies. I must be more stressed than I realised. We’ve got a lot going on at the moment.’
Still Red Cap said nothing and Eli avoided his gaze.
‘Okay, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ Eli said. ‘We’re going to look into this surveillance issue. Meantime, I’ll organise a detox programme for Carole that will include psychiatric help. Today’s Saturday; I’ll get something in place by midweek, okay?’
Now Eli looked up; he met Red Cap’s eyes which were compassionate in his raddled face. ‘Okay, that’s a plan,’ Red Cap said and then added: ‘Looks like we’re both in fucking trouble.’
33
Stall Street, Bath – Two Days Later
‘Okay, people,’ Petra said. ‘You have two hours to do some shopping before meeting back here for the afternoon tour of Regency Bath. Please try to not be late and if you have any problems, call me or text. Please make sure you all have my number in your favourites.’
She was standing outside the Roman Baths with the group around her as well as Deanna, Deanna’s husband Rod and the dog. Today, they were mob-handed because this particular cultural trip, an hour and a half’s coach ride from the school, was fraught with potential. Lost students; accidents; not to mention the opportunities for drug buys and illicit drinking.