by Merle Nygate
‘Crate?’ Rafi said.
‘Where to?’ Yuval said. ‘Home? We can’t crate him up and put him in prison back home, at least not without a ton of paperwork and getting Shabak on our case. I have a much simpler idea.’
‘Go on,’ Eli noted the gleam in Yuval’s eyes.
‘I think we’re overcomplicating the situation. The boy still believes that this is a Hamas operation; he’s still whining about wanting to see his sister. Okay, what would happen if he did?’
‘What?’ Eli said. ‘You’re saying we engineer a meeting between the two of them?’
‘I’m just thinking about it,’ Yuval said. ‘If the girl tells Wasim to go back to America, he might just do it. Honour satisfied. He’s done his head of the family, man of authority, duty. His beloved sister has blessed him and he can go on his way. And more importantly, he can get out of our way.’
There was silence in the room. It was an inspired idea, audacious but inspired.
Eli spoke slowly, ‘It’s possible.’
‘Think about it,’ Yuval said. ‘Think about how to make it work. We’ll talk tomorrow but sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.’
Both men nodded. Yuval stood up, ‘Anything else? How’s Red Cap and his crazy wife?’
‘I’m just going to see him now,’ Eli stood up and tapped his jacket pocket where he kept his Moleskine notebook. ‘I’ve got the detox clinic and a shrink lined up. Best in the UK. Hopefully we’ll have the wife in there by tomorrow; the next day, latest.’
‘Is there anything else we need to know? Eli? Rafi?’
The two men shook their heads like schoolboys before the headmaster.
Yuval said, ‘Good. No more fuck-ups, please.’
36
The Six Horseshoes Pub, Cheltenham – The Next Day
This certainly counted as a fuck-up, Eli thought as he sat in the Cheltenham pub where he was supposed to meet Red Cap. But please God, only a minor one. Agents missed meetings all the time. That’s why there were fall-back arrangements, sometimes two or three with different times and locations. It was only because Red Cap was unfailingly precise and had always turned up at the right place, at the right time, that Eli had been lulled into a false sense of security.
Eli nursed his lager shandy and watched the stand-up comedian set up. As the man positioned his box of props, Eli almost had the sense that no time had passed in the pub since he’d last been there. Everything was the same; the scarred table, the ring spots, even down to the same stand-up comedian. He hadn’t changed either. He still looked grizzled and lachrymose with untidy hair and scurfy beard. What sort of a life must it be standing up in front of drunk and uninterested people, trying to make them laugh? Mind you, what sort of a life was it sitting in a pub waiting for an agent to turn up?
Yet, it was good, Eli told himself. He had something concrete and positive to do. Something to stop him worrying about Sweetbait and whether or not he was losing his edge and was on the one-way trip to the benches and then the stands. Just some altekakha who talked about the good times, the glory days, and watched hungrier, clearer eyes glaze over when he told the same old story one more time.
But it was more than a game that he might have lost. London station and the chance to make a difference – that’s what hurt the most. The bigger failure of a career in public service that achieved nothing except a pension.
Eli wished Red Cap would hurry up and they could get on with it. Eli felt his own beard. The bristles were itchy. He was letting it grow, and wondered what Gal would say when she saw it because it was now entirely grey. He glanced at his watch – again. Another fifteen minutes and he would make his way to the fall-back location, the café in Morrisons supermarket. He’d be tailed by the second team of watchers, fresh off the El Al flight.
Moving his hand from beard to ear, Eli felt for the small speaker. It was irritating especially as he was sure he could hear someone eating too near the mic. He’d have to find out who was doing that; if he had that noise going on all through the meeting he’d be the one who needed psychiatric help, not Red Cap’s wife.
Now the stand-up comedian was walking around on the makeshift stage, he seemed to be doing some stretching exercises. Eli watched him take a swig from a glass of what might have been whisky and gargle before swallowing. Maybe Eli should do that. Maybe the bastard sitting in a car fressing on a Big Mac would start gargling also.
One more check of the watch and Eli would go, drive to Morrisons and take up position in the café. As he got up, the comedian caught his eye and gave Eli a sad smile as if to ask why he was going; why Eli, the only man in the audience, was abandoning the comic to the empty stage.
Morrisons café, with its bright lights, coffee choices and bank of doughnuts was similarly disappointing. No Red Cap. It was inconvenient but not necessarily a fuck-up. Eli sipped a bitter black coffee and felt it tussle with the lemonade shandy in his stomach. Watching the shoppers around him, he amused himself by memorising their features, and then recalled some of the spectacularly long waits he’d experienced in his career as an intelligence officer. And before that, in the army.
Waiting. You were no good as any type of intelligence officer if you couldn’t wait and it was better to be sitting in a café with refreshments on tap than on street corners, station platforms, bus stops and car parks, in broiling sun and driving rain. While checking his watch he speculated, wondering whether he’d spent the same amount of time waiting as he had sleeping. Yet it could be worse. Somehow the watchers made an entire career out of waiting. For Eli there were, at least, breaks in the monotony.
When the thirty minutes were up and the coffee was too cold to drink Eli made his way to the car park where he knew that Segev, the lead watcher would be waiting for him. With his cropped hair and clear skin, the kid looked too young for the job but he seemed competent and it hadn’t been him who’d been chomping on a sandwich that was for sure. The VW smelt of pine car freshener, not chips.
‘I want you to drive me back to London,’ Eli said.
Eli slipped into the seat beside Segev and admired his expert handling of the hire car. Hands at ten to two; negotiation of the traffic; checking mirrors; blind spots; it was all so precise that either he had just completed the training course or he thought that Eli had some clout that could further his career. The only conversation the kid had was with the other car.
It was unusual for Red Cap to miss a meeting without warning; it had never happened, but there were a hundred entirely logical reasons why the agent had been unable to meet Eli or leave a message. There was absolutely nothing for Eli to worry about.
37
M40 Motorway – One Hour Later
In the car on the way back to London Eli caught up with some of the peripheral business which included phoning the psychiatrist who was supervising Red Cap’s wife into rehab. It was the first time the Office had used the Devonshire Street shrink who was supposed to be a leading light in substance abuse. She may have been an authority in her field but Eli hadn’t warmed to her when they’d met. The stringy middle-aged woman was spikey, brittle and keen to talk about her academic achievements and standing in the psychiatric community. And she created obstacles. Although she readily agreed to make the referral to the specialist unit, she was hesitant about giving them all the medical records because of protocol and patient confidentiality. That was a big problem, because if Red Cap’s wife continued to claim that her husband was a traitor during therapy suggestions, then the Office needed to know. But the shrink had been obdurate; it was like arguing with a child who didn’t understand why something needed to be a certain way. The best Eli could get out of the woman was an agreement that she would think about giving them the medical records and they would speak.
She answered the phone on the second ring and after Eli announced himself the tone of her voice dramatically changed.
‘I wondered when you were going to call,’ she said, her voice high, accusing, as if he was an errant son ma
king the weekly duty phone call.
‘I’m sorry, if it’s late, and if I’m disturbing you. Would there be a better time for me to call, say tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow? This can’t possibly wait until tomorrow. I’m beside myself. I’ve been walking up and down waiting for you to call. And before you say another word, let me just tell you that this has put me in a very awkward position.’
‘Doctor, we wouldn’t be asking you to assist us in this way unless it was of the utmost importance. And let me just say that we are immensely grateful for your help,’ Eli put his all into soothing the woman and keeping the irritation out of his voice. What did the woman think was going to happen when she was approached by an Israeli commercial attaché at a drinks party and asked if at some point she might assist the State of Israel in some undefined way? Maybe she thought she’d be going to more cocktail parties to meet dashing agents. Maybe she thought there’d be rendezvous in casinos in Caribbean resorts. Maybe she thought the phone would never ring and she could live with her fantasies. That was the most likely.
‘All I agreed to do was write a referral to the clinic copying the woman’s GP. But, now... this has implications for my professional integrity.’
‘I’m very sorry, doctor, that you’ve been put in this position and please be assured I will pass on your thoughts but in the meantime, doctor...’
They were on the outskirts of London and had slowed at a traffic light. A gas station was on the corner and Eli had wanted to fill his body with junk. What was her problem? All she had to do was pass on the medical records. If he would have had her sitting opposite him in some coffee shop he would have laid on the noble cause she was serving, reference the Holocaust, Masada and if push came to shove the destruction of the second temple and exile to Babylon. But he had neither the time nor the patience. What’s more he’d been on the phone long enough and comms signals to landlines needed to be in short bursts to avoid being picked up.
Eli’s voice changed, ‘Doctor, it’s not enough to give the patient a referral; we need the patient’s medical records.’
‘There is no patient.’
‘What?’
‘Let me repeat, there is no patient,’ she said. ‘She was dead before admission to A&E and was taken to the mortuary.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Eli said. ‘Did she have an accident, car crash or something? What’s happened to her husband?’
‘Please do not make this appalling situation any worse.’
‘I need to know what happened,’ Eli said.
‘Her husband found her, in the bath, dead. Wrist laceration and signs of substance abuse. There’ll be a post-mortem but given her medical history and the input from her GP, cause looks to be suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.’
‘Oh my God,’ Eli said.
‘Is that what you wanted to hear? That the police think it’s suicide? That it doesn’t look like foul play?’ Her voice was shrill. She was frightened. Eli frowned and then the penny dropped. The stupid woman thought it was murder; she thought she was embroiled in an assassination.
Eli sighed, ‘No. The patient’s suicide is certainly not what I wanted to hear at all. It’s a tragedy we were all too late to help her.’
‘Oh,’ the shrink said.
‘I need to ask you,’ Eli said, while she was on the back foot. ‘Do you happen to know if a suicide note was found or have any way of finding out?’
‘That’s two questions and my answer is no to both. Please don’t contact me again.’
She hung up.
Eli told Segev to pull in at the next fast food outlet or service station. He said he needed to take a piss and get a coffee and something to eat before they got to London. Truth was that he wanted to sit in a toilet stall with the door shut and compose himself.
Maybe Red Cap’s wife wouldn’t have killed herself if her husband hadn’t betrayed his country. Maybe.
38
The Israeli Embassy, Palace Gardens, London – Three Hours Later
It was 2am and they were all tired and bad-tempered. Except for Rafi. He looked as if he could keep going till the sun came up and then do a run around the park. Perhaps, after all, there was something in those energy drinks he swallowed. The table in front of Eli was a mess of laptops and papers. Every half an hour, Yuval had been up and down the stairs, running in and out of the safe room; the reason was that Yuval didn’t trust the kids in signals to bring up every message from home the second it arrived.
‘The situation is that we are trying to make a decision with incomplete information,’ Yuval said. ‘Eli, are you sure you can’t get the shrink to do any more for us?’
‘If somebody else wants to try, fine, but she’s fair-weather local help. She’s not going to stick her neck out or do anything that might affect her fancy Devonshire Street practice. And that includes finding out if Red Cap’s wife left a suicide note.’
‘Have we got no one in the police or connected to the police in any way?’ Yuval said.
‘Not at the moment,’ Rafi said looking at the laptop in front of him. ‘There used to be someone who had access to the NPC, but he retired two years ago.’
Rafi pushed the swivel chair back and stood up. He paced the length of the room, ‘Maybe the retired cop’s still got some connections. They never let the job go, at least not at home they don’t.’
‘Retired cop or no retired cop, if she left a suicide note implicating us...’ Eli said. ‘It’s daylight isn't it? We need to close everything down, and I mean everything, and go home before the knock on the door. And that won’t go down well with the prime minister’s office.’
‘Would anyone believe her?’ Yuval tapped his fingers on the table, beating out a roll of impatience. ‘She’s diagnosed as being crazy; for all anybody knows she could be paranoid and delusional. What if we’re over-reacting? The hat burns on the thief’s head.’
‘Yes, and sometimes there’s a reason, Yuval. The woman is lying in a hospital morgue. How long before HR at GCHQ talk to Red Cap? Don't you think it's hoping for too much luck to think that Red Cap will cope? He was unstable before, what's he going to be like now?’
‘What about Sweetbait?’ Rafi said. ‘We’re so close. We’re days away from completing the operation. How can we walk away now? If Sweetbait works out – and it will – then no one’s going to give a damn what some insane woman says in a suicide note. It won’t matter. I think in the light of not having all the information we should take a chance. Come on. We’ve got everything else under control. Thanks to Eli, Sweetbait’s ready to go, I’ve got Trainer under control, and for us to run away when there may be nothing to run away from is stupid.’
‘Eli?’ Yuval said.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.
‘Eli?’ Yuval repeated.
Eli cleared his throat, as if he was clearing his mind, physically pushing aside the emotion that was stopping oxygen reaching his lungs. There was nothing he could do for Red Cap or Red Cap’s wife. Not at the moment. There might come a time when Eli could comfort his friend – there would come a time. But it wasn’t now. If they turned tail and ran, for Heathrow and the El Al cargo flight home – the shame plane – then Eli would find himself straight back to the UK desk in Tel Aviv at best. He’d certainly be at the back of the queue for an overseas posting. In other words, his career would be over.
Eli took a deep breath. ‘I can see both sides, but overall, I’m with Rafi. I think we try to get a bit more intel. We speak to the shrink again and Rafi can contact the retired cop. We prepare and then we move.’
39
Marylebone High Street, London – The Next Day
Rafi and Eli worked the shrink meeting together in a tapas bar. To his chagrin Eli couldn’t fault Rafi. He pitched it perfectly. Showing the right level of respect for the woman’s professional accreditation – something she referred to in every other sentence – combined with a subdued but oleaginous charm that made Eli
’s stomach churn. Whatever the schmaltz did to Eli’s digestive tract, it seemed to have the right effect on the spiky, nervous shrink. Under Rafi’s overdone admiration the woman’s shoulders dropped, the lines around her mouth softened and she agreed to make a phone call to Red Cap’s wife’s GP.
The shrink was briefed to check on the progress of the post-mortem and ask about the presence of a suicide note explaining that it might help with diagnosis of the suicide’s mental health if the coroner were to ask. The shrink even agreed to make the call outside on the street while they waited for her in the tapas bar. From their seat by the window, they watched her walk up and down as she talked into the phone and when she came back inside her eyes were shining.
‘Sit,’ Rafi said. ‘Let me get you something else, perhaps a glass of champagne.’ He’d stood up and was holding the chair for her to sit down. He certainly hadn’t picked up that trick on the kibbutz.
‘By the look of you, it went well,’ Rafi said. ‘Benny, see if you can find a waiter to get Jane a glass of champagne.’
‘No, no, but thank you,’ the doctor said. ‘Very kind but I am delivering a paper a little later as part of The Tavistock’s Weekend Seminar Series. It wouldn’t be at all appropriate to arrive smelling of alcohol. Not when the subject is the psychopathology of alcohol abuse disorders.’ She tittered as if she’d said something amusing.
‘Then some other time,’ Rafi said. ‘I hope.’
‘If you are due somewhere else, we certainly wouldn’t want to delay you,’ Eli said, wishing he’d left Rafi to do this on his own. ‘After everything you’ve done for us that wouldn’t be fair at all.’
She showed no sign of wanting to move.
‘So, did you find out if there actually was a note?’ Eli said.