The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 24

“I hope you didn’t take it personally,” said Baruch Tikva as he helped the young redhead get her hand luggage down from the overhead compartment. She was twentysomething and petite, yet athletic. But he wasn’t supposed to notice that. When she had first taken up her window seat next to him, he had objected to the airline staff, explaining that he was an orthodox Jew and that he couldn’t sit next to a woman. She had pointed out that she was modestly dressed but he insisted that either she or he be moved so that he could sit next to a man instead.

She agreed to move in principle, but explained that her bag was already in the overhead compartment and that as the plane had now more or less filled up, she might not be able to find room for it elsewhere. The flight attendant said that she could leave the bag there and collect it at the end of the flight. She agreed to this but insisted that if she needed anything from it during the flight she must be free to get it. The flight attendant diplomatically extracted a promise from Baruch Tikva that this would be no problem.

Baruch realized that he had probably come over as rather pushy, but he believed in standing up for his principles and he knew that airline staff tend to try to be accommodating. In the event the girl hadn’t come back during the flight and he actually felt grateful that she had agreed to be the one to move. Without giving way to the feelings of lust from his loins, he actually warmed to this girl somewhat, perhaps because she was clearly not Jewish. If her morals were loose, that was of no consequence, because she was a stranger. This meant that she wasn’t a traitor in the way that fallen Jewish women were.

So when she returned for the bag at the end of the flight, he realized that it made sense for him to take advantage of his considerable height to help her get it down. And she, for her part, seemed grateful. He had already picked up on the girl’s Irish accent and as he took the bag down, he noticed the name Siobhan Stewart on the baggage tag. Clearly Irish! But she didn’t look like a nun or even a convent girl. He suspected that she was simply a returning tourist who had just visited the Holy Land and that she either lived in London or was going to get a connecting flight to Ireland.

At passport control he was surprised to see that she was ahead of him in the non-EU passport queue. He assumed that Ireland was part of the EU. But again he dismissed it from his mind as he cleared Passport Control. Paradoxically, the queue for EU passports was longer than for non-EU — because border control staff had been re-assigned to customs in accordance with the government philosophy that catching smugglers was more important than facilitating the fast through-flow of passengers.

He didn’t have any stowed luggage of his own, only hand baggage, and so he went directly to the green channel with his small suitcase, passing through unimpeded, until he spotted a powerful man bearing a sign with the name “Tikva”. Baruch Tikva was a big man himself, but he sensed that the driver was a fighter who would be a formidable opponent. He suspected that this man was not merely the driver of the person he was going to see, but also the bodyguard. And he knew well why a bodyguard was needed.

The driver took his bag and led him to the short-term car park, where a white Rolls Royce was waiting. The driver opened a rear passenger door deferentially for Tikva, who stepped into a white leather-upholstered interior while the driver placed the bag in the boot. The half hour drive took them to Chesham Place in Belgravia.

Tikva was not a worldly man, having only rarely set foot outside of Israel and then usually only to Jewish areas of major metropolises like London’s Stamford Hill. But the townhouse in Belgravia lived up to his expectations. He had once seen an episode of a British television series set against the background of the British aristocracy in Edwardian times and this place reminded him of that.

After a five minute wait in an anteroom, Tikva was led into a rosewood-panelled drawing room where he found himself facing an elegant lady in her sixties, remarkably attractive for her age. He remembered that she had once been a model in TV adverts. She was dressed in an beige evening dress, but he was relieved that it was suitably modest.

“Good evening,” she said in the most upper class English accent he had ever heard. “I am Lady Lefou. But you may call me Chienmer.”

He looked at her blankly.

“My first name.”

She held out her hand. But he hesitated. As an orthodox Jewish man he was not supposed to shake hands with a woman. But it would seem impolite if he spurned the hand of his hostess. It would feed all the prejudices against the Jews that this woman was known for. On the other hand she would surely understand. She had criticized western women — or at least the younger ones — for the immodesty of their dress. And she had praised the Muslims for their standards of modesty, in contrast.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he replied, keeping his hands by his sides but bowing from the waist, like an old-fashioned English gentleman.

Bowing from the waist was acceptable, he told himself, as long as he didn’t bend the knee.

Orthodox Jews only bend the knee before God.

Lefou lowered her hand, as if realizing Baruch Tikva’s dilemma.

“Well sit down.”

She pointed to an armchair that bore an embroidered design of pink and purple on a fabric of pale gold. He sat, but realized afterwards that he had committed a faux pas and should have waited for her to sit first. She smiled at his obvious embarrassment, as she took her seat opposite him.

“First of all,” she said, “I want you to know that I don’t see you as tainted by the same brush as the Zionists.”

He remembered that although she had positioned herself as anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, she had also declared herself to be against Judaism, as a religion, claiming that it was “dishonest, inhumane, supremacist, hate-fuelled, predatory, treacherous and does not deserve to be called a religion at all.” She claimed, however, that she was not hostile to people of Jewish descent per se. But that did not prevent her from accusing them of being part of a conspiracy with the Freemasons, from whom, she asserted, they were indistinguishable. A self-styled “atheist”, she also professed to be an admirer of Iranian Shi’ite Islam, which she claimed was similar to Hellenism!

However, although Shomrei Ha’ir believed, like other orthodox Jews, in the same Talmud that Lefou had lambasted, she had already made it clear, in their online communications, that she was ready to make an exception for them in the name of expediency. He nodded his acceptance of her “graciousness”, thinking that now was not the time to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“So Mr Tikva, I understand you want me to use my contacts to make certain arrangements for you.”

He coughed nervously and spoke in an uncharacteristically awkward tone.

“Yes. Both personnel and equipment.”

“Specifically?”

“I need a driver — a good one. Also a couple of men with guns who know how to use them.”

Chienmer Lefou didn’t flinch.

“That’s it?”

“Oh and one other thing. Three L-109 hand grenades.”