The Devil's Breath (19 page)

The woman reached for the last of her wine and raised her glass, a toast. ‘It’s Tabun,’ she said. ‘Tabun GA.’

An hour later, back in the car. Telemann settled back into the firm, cool leather. The woman had left the restaurant without waiting for a meal. She and Inge had embraced at the door, an exchange of kisses, a word or two of German, and then she’d gone. Behind her, on the table, she’d left a single sheet of paper with a name and an address. Mahmood Assali. 4/121 Friedrichstrasse, Bad Godesberg. Below it, in large capitals, she’d written the word ‘Wannsee’. ‘Wannsee’, she’d said, was the name they’d used for the file. Mention the word to Mahmood, and he’d know at once what it meant.

Now, in the car, Telemann glanced across at Inge. The meal had been better than he’d expected, and a small celebratory glass of schnapps had mellowed a little of his impatience. What he needed now was access to a secure phone, and that meant returning to Hamburg. He’d go to the US Consulate. He’d talk to Emery, get the story cross-checked and plot the next moves. In the meantime, though, there was still the question of motive. That, in some curious way, still bothered him.

‘This relationship Wulf had. With his mistress. What happened?’

Inge looked across at him in the darkness. She didn’t reply. Telemann pressed the point. ‘He did
have
a mistress?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So what happened?’

Inge shrugged. ‘He had an affair with her. He took what he wanted. He made all the usual promises. And then—’ she shrugged again ‘—he left her.’

‘How long? How long did this take?’

‘Five years.’

‘Five years? And he was serious?’

‘Very.’

‘In love? Bells? Whistles? All that stuff?’

‘He said so.’

‘Any complications?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Children?’

‘Ah …’ She smiled, white teeth in the darkness. ‘Is that what you call them? Complications?’

‘Well?’

There was a long silence. Then she nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘How many?’

‘One. A little boy. Nikki.’

Telemann looked at her for a moment or two, remembering Frau Weissmann in the restaurant, her hands clasped tight, the private life she’d refused to share. At her age, a child would have been a small miracle, all the more cause for the bitterness and the rage.

‘Is that why she told me about Wulf? Because of Nikki? Her child?’

There was another silence. Across the road, two dogs were fighting over a parcel of bones. Inge was watching them, her head turned away.

Telemann leaned forward. ‘Well?’ he said.

A car swept past and the dogs slunk away. Inge looked at him. She was laughing.

Telemann frowned. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

‘You think Frau Weissmann was Wulf’s mistress?’

‘Yes.’

‘Truly?’ She savoured the word. ‘Truly?’

‘Yes.’ Telemann stared at her. ‘She’s not?’

‘No.’

‘Then who is she?’

‘She’s my mother.’

‘Your
mother
?’

‘
Ja. Meine mutti
.’

‘So who was the mistress?’

Inge looked at him for a moment longer, the laughter quite gone. Then she reached for the ignition keys.

‘Me,’ she said softly. ‘I was his mistress.’

7

The old man, Abu Yussuf, sat beside the water-cooler in the semi-darkness, listening to the machine they called the Regulator. Every hour, throughout the night, it buzzed. The buzz was high-pitched and insistent, impossible to ignore. It lasted for exactly a minute, and it meant that the old man must find his plastic card, and get to the machine, and insert the brown strip of oxide into the slot at the side, a single pass, in and out, less than a second. Then the buzzer would stop, and at the end of his shift, with dawn purpling the sky over Queens, the machine would speak to him again, a long white tongue of paper, proof that he’d stayed all night, the ever-faithful janitor. The paper, his attendance log, he’d leave in a wire tray on a desk in the reception area, ready for collection by the duty secretary. That way, they knew he wasn’t cheating them. That way, he kept his job.

Sighing, the old man got up and crossed the corridor. The machine was in a small utility room, beside a drinks dispenser. The old man felt in his dungarees for the card and fed it into the machine. The buzzing stopped. Retrieving the card, he fumbled in his pocket for small change and exchanged a quarter and two dimes for a can of Pepsi. Opening the Pepsi, he crossed the corridor again, a different office this time, one he’d yet to clean. Opening the office with his master key, he reached for the light switch, blinking in the sudden glare of the overhead neon, as awed as ever by the huge expanse of carpet and the crescent of padded leather sofa, and the way that Mr Aramoun had positioned his desk, back to the window, dominating the room.

The old man inched forward, the can of Pepsi still in his hand, his eyes never leaving the desk. There were two phones
on the desk, and one of them, he was sure, would carry him through to Ramallah. He glanced at his watch. It was two minutes past three, the middle of a hot New York night. The offices along the corridor were empty. He knew that because he’d cleaned them all. No one would return until the first secretaries at seven, and even then they had to ring the security phone and wait until he shuffled along to the lobby and let them in. No, if he was to do it, if he was to still the voices in his head, then it had to be now, in the dead of night.

The old man put his can carefully on the edge of Aramoun’s desk, and crossed to the big picture windows. Outside, Manhattan twinkled in the darkness, block after block. He gazed at the view for a moment, still amazed at the scale of the place, this huge city at his feet. Then he reached for the pull on the venetian blinds. The blinds came clattering down, shielding him from the world outside. Now, he thought. Now is the time.

Beginning to sweat a little, he searched in his pocket for the slip of paper. He’d spent the latter half of the afternoon in the public library over in Newark. The girl at the information desk, Turkish or maybe Armenian, had been very kind. She’d found the international directory for him. She’d written down the number he had to dial. First the numbers for Israel. Then the number for Ramallah. Then, last of all, the numbers for Amer Tahoul. Amer Tahoul worked in the Treasurer’s Department in the Municipality Buildings in Ramallah. Amer Tahoul was his wife’s brother. He’d know what had happened. He’d know why the letters had suddenly stopped.

The old man found the slip of paper and flattened it on the desk. He reached for the Pepsi and took a sip, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. His hand, he noticed, was shaking. He looked at the phone for a moment, weighing the odds again, wondering whether they kept some kind of check on the calls, a strip of paper like the Regulator, something they’d confront him with, something that would bring this strange new life of his to an abrupt end.

So far, he knew, he’d done well. Even the boy, in his own way, had been surprised by the job he’d done on the car, the drum installed in the trunk, not a drop of liquid spilled, not a
single trace of leakage around the connections to the pressure-hose. The boy had watched him at work in the garage, bent over the trunk, wrestling the heavy drum into place with spanners and a big hammer. Once, just once, he’d looked up, asking for help, an extra pair of hands, surprised to see the youth standing beside him, staring down at the drum, his face invisible behind a huge rubber gas mask. The old man had laughed at him, a small act of revenge for the weeks of scorn and insult, mocking the boy’s caution, his timidity. Not even women took such precautions against the Israeli gas, he’d said, watching the boy’s eyes, unsmiling, behind the thick discs of ground glass.

Now, standing beside the desk, the old man reached for the phone. He hadn’t had a letter from his wife, Hama, for more than two weeks, not since the beginning of the month. Himself, he’d written every day, sitting at the table in the tiny airless kitchen, page after page, the thin sheets of scribble anchored down beneath the tins of chick-peas he bought each week at the corner store. He wrote about New York, the way it felt, this new life of his. He wrote about the heat and the smell. He wrote about the money, how much he suddenly had, how many things there were to buy. And he wrote about home, too, and his family, the two surviving sons, how much he missed them. He wrote about the horses he sometimes exercised, the property of a relative, the long evening rides out towards the refugee camp at Kalandia. He wrote about the other things he missed – the food, the laughter, the endless conversation – and when his wife began to write back, the tight schoolgirl characters, the little drawings of flowers at the foot of each page, it was a little like their first years together.

She missed him, she said. She missed his good humour and his patience, and the respect he’d always won for the family from friends and neighbours. Gone so suddenly, there were whisperings. She’d heard them, heard the rumours. They were saying that the family was
al dam al wisikh
, dirty, stained by the blood of the collaborator killed by the
moharebbin
. The old man going proved it. He’d turned his back on his family, on the
Intifada
. Like his dead son, he was
ameel
, an agent for the
Israelis, a traitor. But she knew different. She knew he was strong. She knew he was
sharafa
, honest, a supporter of the iron man Saddam, who would drive the Israelis into the sea. This she told her neighbours. One day, she said, my husband will come back, and then you’ll see for yourself. Openly now, the neighbours disbelieved her. When, they taunted her, when will your husband come home?

At first the letters had arrived regularly, at least three a week. Waiting for the mailman in the street, Abu Yussuf would tuck them into the pocket of his working overalls and take them to the garage, reading them during the break he took for lunch. To her question he could give no answer, but that didn’t matter. The letters were a little piece of home. In this strange new city, they reminded him of who he really was. With the letters in his pocket, walking back to the apartment in the hot, dusty evenings, he felt armour-plated, invincible. Without them, he was nothing.

But now, for no reason, the letters had stopped coming, and in his heart, when he was brave enough, Abu Yussuf feared the worst. Hama, like his sons, had been arrested. She was being held without trial in one of the military prisons. The Israelis called it ‘administrative detention’. They’d be questioning her day and night, trying to find out what she knew, trying to trace this missing husband of hers. Probably they’d be rough with her, exasperated by her protestations of ignorance, refusing to believe the truth, that she knew nothing.

The old man shuddered, remembering the way his sons had coped with their own spells of administrative detention, the beatings they’d shrugged aside, the hours on their haunches in freezing cells, the way they’d always brought more pain on themselves by dismissing the Israelis as outsiders, intruders, Zionist thieves who’d arrived in the night and stolen their land. One day, his dead son had said, the Israelis will be forced to leave. One day, the rest of the world will wake up to the scale of the thefts. One day, justice will be done.

Now, the old man watched his hand crabbing over the face of the telephone, the thick fingers tapping out the numbers one by one. The dialling tone in his ear changed, became disembodied,
and the final digits of the number plunged him into a strange electronic void. For a while, nothing happened. He glanced over his shoulder, imagining footsteps in the corridor. In Ramallah, he supposed it would be daytime already. That, at least, was what the girl at the Public Library had told him. Ten hours, she’d said, ten hours in front. The old man waited, bent over the desk. Ten hours ahead meant one o’clock in the afternoon. Amer Tahoul would be at his desk in the Municipality Buildings, back from lunch, consulting his big leather-bound diary of appointments. He knew the man’s hours, knew the way he worked. That was why now was such a good time to phone, a little peace, a little quiet, before the first of the afternoon’s meetings. Soon now, any second, he’d answer.

There was a crackle on the line, and then a voice he recognized, cautious, restrained, educated. The old man smiled, reaching for the Pepsi again, relief surging through him. ‘Amer,’ he said. ‘Amer Tahoul.’

*

Godfrey Friedland met Ross, as ordered, on the steamer pontoon beside the Westminster Embankment. The last of the flood-tide was pushing upriver, collars of creamy brown water around the footings of Westminster Bridge.

Ross was standing on the pontoon, his body braced against the rise and fall of the water. He was wearing a dark suit and carried a folded Burberry. There was a small leather overnight bag at his feet. Friedland nodded a greeting. The last of the Librium was beginning to wear off, and try as he might he couldn’t rid himself of that final image of his daughter, the face chalk-white on the pillow, the eyes deep-set, following his every move. Afterwards, in the corridor outside, the matron had assured him that it would be all right, that she’d survive, realize how silly she’d been, get better. But the matron had said that already. Twice before.

Ross stepped towards him, scowling. ‘You’re late.’

‘I know.’

The two men looked at each other for a moment, Friedland blinking in the fitful sunshine. Then Ross gestured impatiently at the waiting steamer, and Friedland followed him aboard. The
phone call from Downing Street had come through at noon. Ross was due at the City Airport at four. It was already the wrong side of three.

The steamer, half-empty, cast off and edged into the tidal stream. Ross led the way to a small, windswept area at the bow. Two men on the bridge eyed them without comment. Ross lodged his bag carefully against a pile of life-rafts. Since lunch-time, the DTI had confirmed every British order on the list handed into Downing Street. An interesting piece of kite-flying had suddenly become a political nightmare. Five missing gallons of nerve gas had been bad enough, an ample chapter in the Doomsday Brief, but proven complicity in the Iraqi arms buildup made it infinitely worse. Ross had broken the news in a brief series of personal phone calls. The political consensus, at the highest level, was unanimous. The usual Intelligence channels – MI5, MI6, Special Branch, the Military Directorate – were utterly unreliable. Referring the matter to any of them was as sensible as holding a press conference. There had to be a better way.

Ross stood at the rail, pulling on his Burberry and turning up the collar. Friedland stood beside him, waiting. Half an hour ago, for the fourth time, he’d phoned the nursing home. His daughter was asleep again, but her blood pressure was back to normal and the prognosis was good.

Ross glanced across at him. ‘We have a spot of local bother,’ he said. ‘I need your views.’

Friedland said nothing, watching the Ministry of Defence slide past while Ross told him about the missing drum of chemical and the subsequent appearance of a note. They were well past Charing Cross by the time he’d finished. Friedland looked at his watch for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Action Against Armageddon?’

‘That’s what it says.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Quite.’ Ross glanced across at him. ‘So who in God’s name might they be?’

There was a long silence. Friedland said nothing, watching a pair of gulls swooping over a plastic bag. He’d never seen Ross
like this before, so chastened, so fearful. It matched his own mood exactly. ‘Who says they’re not bluffing?’

‘No one. But we can’t afford to take the risk. The chemicals are definitely missing and the DTI list adds up. Every line of it. We’ve been arming the Iraqis for years. Raw materials. Weapons. Ammunition. The lot. God knows, we even help them pay for it. Export credit guarantees. With love from London.’

Friedland permitted himself a smile, musing. ‘Awkward,’ he said quietly.

‘Very.’ Ross pulled a face, hunching a little deeper inside the raincoat. ‘So what do we do? The PM has to keep the country behind her. Has to. It’s absolutely vital. The Americans are depending on us. If we don’t hold the line, God knows what the rest’ll do.’

Friedland nodded, knowing that it was true. Already, the first stirrings of a peace lobby were beginning to surface in the national media. With the PM intent on dragging the country to war, self-interest dressed up as some kind of moral crusade, news of the arms deals would be a real gift. That, of course, plus the nerve gas.

Friedland glanced across at Ross. ‘So why me?’ he said. ‘What do you think I can do?’

Ross said nothing for a while. His bag, Friedland noticed, carried a British Airways Concorde label. It looked recent. Finally he turned away from the rail, his face chilled under the beginnings of a weekend tan. ‘Tell me about McVeigh,’ he said.

‘McVeigh?’ Friedland frowned. The last twenty-four hours had emptied him of everything, including patience. ‘He’s working for Al Zahra. The name came from him, not me.’

‘But what do you know about him?’

‘Not much. Marine Corps background. Low profile. Keeps himself in work, by and large …’ He paused. ‘Why?’

Ross said nothing for a moment, turning away, gazing down at the brown water folding away from the hull. ‘You think he’s any good?’ he said at last.