Bamboo and blood

6

When I regained consciousness, I was sitting in a dimly lit room, at the head of a large table. The other people were eating. "Forgive us, Inspector, but if lamb gets cold, it loses its flavor," said the man nearest me after taking a sip of wine. "We decided not to wait. Ahmet has been keeping yours warm."

"Actually, I'm not hungry." I had drooled on the tablecloth and had a slight headache.

"Have a bite, Inspector. Don't worry, we won't start dessert until you've caught up. Perhaps you'd better clean your palate first. Try some wine." He didn't offer to pour for me.

"Is this some sort of joke? You take me here"-I looked around for Jeno, but he was nowhere to be seen-"and then you knock me out. When I finally come to, you pretend I'm a welcome dinner guest." I put the napkin to my lip, which had stopped bleeding but still hurt. Pain annoys me, especially my own. "Someone has a lot of explaining to do. I don't even know who you are."

At that, the five people around the table put down their silverware. Ahmet appeared and cleared the plates, including mine.

The man nearest me sighed. "You wouldn't care for a brandy, would you?" I shook my head, which I instantly regretted. "No," he said, "I didn't suppose you would. Well, to business."

Just then there was a lot of ringing of bells from upstairs. Ahmet moved quickly to close what appeared to be a heavy wooden door-oak, probably, but I didn't think they would be happy if I went over to check. No one spoke. It occurred to me to shout to whoever was upstairs that I needed help, but on second thought it seemed hopeless, and not a sure thing that I would be any better off in all the commotion that would result. After the bells stopped, we all remained quiet for another five minutes or so. The man next to me got up and had a low conversation with Ahmet, who opened the heavy door and disappeared.

"You probably are wondering what is going on, Inspector." A man at the far end folded his napkin in a triangle and set it on the table. "You don't recognize us?"

"Should I?"

"We were on an airplane together."

I looked at each of them carefully. "You must have been in first class."

"A few of us were, actually. We are from Mossad. Does that worry you?

"Of course not. My job description calls for me to have regular meetings with Mossad. Every Thursday night over lamb. We take turns getting knocked out."

"It was not exactly according to the script-that was Ahmet's doing. He thinks you are making eyes at his daughter. You're not, of course. She's much too young."

"Much."

The man with the triangle napkin rearranged it into a rabbit with floppy ears. "We understand that you came to Geneva on Mr. Sohn's orders. We have been trying to contact him, without success, I might add. Out of desperation, we decided to invite you to dinner."

Two lights went on in my head. I almost thought I was seeing double. "Dilara was part of the invitation. Sort of like bait?"

"She helped."

"There was never any idea of dancing with me at the disco."

"Never."

"Then why was Ahmet so upset?"

"Ahmet deals with possibilities. He likes to forestall things, especially when it comes to his virgin daughter. We don't approve of everything he does in that regard; we also don't control him."

"Getting back to Sohn." I looked at my wineglass, which was still empty. No one moved to fill it, and I was in no mood to pour for myself. This was the second light that had clicked on. They knew Sohn. That meant Sohn probably knew them, though these things are not always so symmetrical. But if he did know them, it meant the reason he picked me to come out here was welded to my bad luck in having to play host for Jeno. Unless, of course, it wasn't just bad luck. Maybe Sohn had engineered my playing host. The idea had crossed my mind before, but I had dropped it as far-fetched. I should trust my instincts, the ones that didn't touch on Turkish virgins.

"Getting back to Sohn," said the man to my right. "We have been discussing a few ideas with him over the past many months, as you no doubt know." No, I did not no doubt know. I had only entertained a bad premonition that Sohn had been working with the Israelis. Knowing and entertaining were not the same thing. "It turns out, much as he kept telling us, we do have some common ground, though as he constantly warned us, that is not a perception universally shared in your leadership."

"Or in ours," one of the other men muttered and left the table. The others did not watch him go.

The napkin man moved his chair closer to the table. "That's good, now we are only five-an excellent number for a conversation. Six is too many, don't you think?"

Ahmet walked in with a bowl of fruit and put it on the table.

"Please, Inspector, eat, have a piece of fruit." The man with the napkin took a banana and began to peel it. Ahmet found a chair next to the fireplace and sat down. His radars were turning. I tried not to think about Dilara.

"Here's what I know," I said. "First, I have a diplomatic passport; second, and in contradiction to point one, I am being held against my will in a basement somewhere in France by people who have no authority to do so."

"No, Inspector, we're not in France at all. We're in Italy. We were in France, but your M. Beret seems to know a lot of people in the French service. He doesn't like the Italians, however, and they don't like him. While you were resting we all drove here. Excuse my interruption-do you have a third point?"

"What about Jeno?" There was apparently a great deal of lamb going around this corner of Europe, French lamb, Italian lamb.

"He's probably sitting with M. Beret at this moment. They have a lot to talk about. As do we, Inspector. We have a message for you to give to Mr. Sohn. It is an important message, and we had quite a discussion among ourselves as to whether we could trust you with it. In the end, there wasn't much choice. Someone suggested that we pass it to your brother, but we have reason to believe that he and Sohn don't get along." A broad smile.

"And?" No question about it, they had good sources.

"And so you got the lamb dinner."

"I'm not authorized to pass messages to Sohn from you, and having disappeared for I don't know how long, I doubt if anyone in my mission will listen to anything I have to say once I get back. In fact, they probably already think I've defected." I stopped to give a short laugh, but it came out more like a bark. I should have gone to dinner with the wolves.

"Amazing, you sound just like Sohn, Inspector," said the man with the napkin. By now he had fashioned it into a hand puppet, though I didn't recognize the shape. "It's a dog," he said when he saw my questioning look, "though it appears to have lost a leg. You've never seen a three-legged dog? They seem to adapt rather well, though they can be painful to watch." I glanced around the table, but none of the others gave anything away.

"Adaptation has never been my best quality," I said. "If you want me to pass a message to Sohn, you'd damn well better have a convincing explanation for why I disappeared." I didn't need authorization to carry a message to Sohn. They knew that perfectly well.

"So, you agree to pass the message?"

"I imagine that is the only way I'll get out of here."

"Goodness, no, Inspector. We're not going to carry you away wrapped in a rug." The man to my left snorted.

"Let's get on with it." A short, bald man walked in and sat down. The others nodded at him. "I ask only that you listen closely, Inspector." He turned his full attention to me. "When I'm finished, if you have any questions about what I have said, you should ask them then. Understood?"

It wasn't an order or a threat, nothing peremptory about it. He seemed like a man under a lot of pressure and in need of a good night's sleep. "I'm listening," I said.

"Good. Sohn must have told you we have been meeting with him, or with people attached to him, for quite a while. We've been dancing around each other, but there isn't time to dance anymore." I put aside the mental picture of Sohn's little ears dancing in the desert at dusk. "Let me be blunt. We don't want our neighbors buying missiles from you." I assumed he didn't mean me personally. "You, of course, don't care what the buyers do with the missiles, as long as you are paid. You need the money from those sales, and if the sales stop, Sohn has made it very clear to us, you must have something to fill the vacuum. It's not a difficult equation to solve. We do our part, you do yours." He poured me a glass of wine, and then one for himself. "There is a little complication, however-the negotiations you are currently holding in Geneva." He took an orange from the fruit bowl, examined it closely, then put it back. "A decent orange cannot be such a difficult thing to find in this country," he said to the others in English. "Or am I wrong?" Nobody said a word.

"So far," I said when it seemed that if I didn't break the silence, we would be sitting all night contemplating fruit, "I haven't heard a message."

"That's because I'm not quite there, Inspector." The bald man rummaged through the bowl and emerged with a plum. He polished it. He held it up to the light. "Do you like plums, Inspector? Do you know what happens to a plum when it is dried? It becomes a prune. Same thing happens with countries. When they dry up, they are only good for shit."

Ahmet smiled absently into the fireplace. The others watched me with interest. I may have flushed, but I was determined not to let him win the point. "Maybe that sort of thing works with Arabs," I said evenly, "or with what's left of the Ottoman Empire. Don't try it with me." Ahmet's smile dimmed slightly, but I could tell it didn't break his concentration on which of my body parts to add to next week's lamb sausage.

The bald man bit into the plum. He said something to the others in a language that came from the back of his throat, and they nodded. "Very well, Inspector. We get down to business." The plum had dripped onto his chin. He ignored it. "The talks you are holding. I'll be blunt. They are a problem for us if they make progress."

"I don't think there's much danger of that."

"You may not think so. We do not think so. But things sometimes take an odd bounce in these talks. Do you play soccer?"

"Too much running around," I said.

"Then you know what I mean. An odd bounce in a game that seems to be going nowhere, and suddenly someone makes a goal. If your talks should suddenly make a goal, that would be a problem." He finally reached up and wiped away the drop of plum juice. "Like watching dirt on another man's face."

Sohn had sent me out to talk to the Americans in Geneva; instead I was somewhere in France-or Italy, if they were to be trusted-sharing a fruit bowl with Mossad. Sohn didn't make mistakes. I was here because he wanted me to end up here. When he played soccer, I had a feeling, the ball only bounced where he wanted it to. "If the talks succeed," I said, "it will stop our missile sales to your neighbors. I take it that isn't what you really want, even though you say that it is."

"To the contrary, it is very much what we want. And as you know, we are prepared to invest quite a bit in your country if we can be sure we are getting what we need. We want those missile transfers to stop, not slow down, not be rerouted. We want them to stop. But if the talks succeed, that will not happen. Why? Because you don't trust the Americans, your side will probe for the seams in an agreement."

Ahmet hissed through his false teeth.

"The deal will fall through sooner or later; and we will end up losing a lot of precious time on the problem. If the talks succeed, by which is commonly understood you sign something and drink a glass of champagne, we will be put on the sidelines and told not to interfere. Meanwhile, and this is our estimate, so please contradict me if you think we are wrong, your own situation will not improve. You will gain nothing from the negotiated deal, and the money you earn from sales elsewhere, even from your old customers, will become a pittance because no one will trust you anymore as a supplier. How can anyone sign a contract with someone who takes their money and then negotiates away the deal, tears it up for diplomatic gain? They barely trust you as it is. You see my point." He didn't wait for me to respond. "So it comes down to this: Would your side rather deal with someone who can deliver, or someone who can't? That's the choice. That's the message that we want you to pass to Sohn." He threw the plum pit into the fireplace and walked out of the room without saying good night.