The Last Testament

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

J ERUSALEM , T HURSDAY , 6.23 PM

They drove back to the hotel in silence. Uri had turned up the rap music again, so that they could drown out whatever bug was listening, but Maggie couldn’t stand it. She would prefer to say nothing than have her head pounded with noise.

Her head was pounding anyway. She had scribbled down a few notes during the Guttman video-message and she looked at them now.

…somewhere safe, somewhere only you and my brother could know.

What sense did that make if Uri’s father had no brother? There was so much to ask. She yearned just to sit still, in a place where they could speak freely, without shouting over noise or looking over each shoulder. If they were being bugged, they were almost certainly being followed.

Once back at the hotel she led Uri straight to the bar. She ordered a Scotch for each of them and all but forced him to down his before ordering another round. Doubles. She found the early evening gloom of the bar soothing.

‘What about this brother then, Uri?’

‘There is no brother.’

‘You sure? Could your grandfather have had an earlier marriage? A secret family he kept hidden?’

Uri looked over his glass, his eyes reflecting the pale amber of the drink. He managed the faintest smile. ‘After everything else, after Ahmed Nour and the last will of Abraham, it wouldn’t surprise me if my father had a secret brother. Nothing would surprise me now.’

‘So it’s possible?’

Uri looked tired. ‘I suppose it’s possible. If you can keep one secret, maybe you can keep many.’

Without thinking, Maggie placed her hand on his. It felt warm. She let it linger, even after she felt self-conscious, just for a second or two. ‘OK, let’s put the brother thing to one side. We’ll come back to it.’ At the other end of the bar Maggie noticed an orthodox Jewish man munching peanuts and reading the Jerusalem Post, as if waiting for someone. She couldn’t remember if he had been there when they arrived. ‘Come,’ she said, suddenly and loudly. ‘I need to sit on a proper chair.’ She eased herself off the stool, beckoning Uri to follow. Once she had found a spot a good distance away from the bar, and directly behind the peanut-muncher, she placed her drink on the table and sat where she would have a clear line of sight. Now if the man wanted to watch them, or read their lips, he would have to turn around and reveal himself. She looked around again, over both shoulders. No one else but them.

She called over a waiter and ordered some food. They waited and then, on impulse really, with no planning, she began to tell Uri what had happened that morning. She kept it brief and factual, working hard to show no self-pity. She spared some of the anatomical details, but still she saw Uri’s face turn from horror to anger.

‘The bastards-’ he began, rising to his feet.

‘Uri! Sit down.’ She grabbed at his arm and tugged him back into his seat. ‘Listen, I’m angry too. But the only way we’re going to find these people is if we keep calm. Lash out now and they win.’ He paused, looking at her. ‘The people who killed your mother will win.’

Slowly he came back to his seat, just as the waiter brought over two plates of sandwiches. Maggie was glad of the diversion.

‘Look,’ she began, once she was sure Uri would not bolt again. ‘You know what I can’t work out? Why they follow us, but don’t strike. Why they don’t just take us out. They’re killing everyone else.’

Uri chewed for a while, as if trying to swallow his rage. Eventually he spoke, making a clear effort to sound lighter than he felt. ‘Speaking as an ex-intelligence officer of the Israel Defence Forces, I’d say when you follow like this, but don’t strike, it can mean one of two things.’

‘OK.’

‘Either the target is too risky to take out. That would be you. If these are Palestinians who are following us, the last thing they need is to kill an American official. Especially a beautiful, female one.’

Maggie looked downward, unsure how to react. Middle-aged diplomats often flattered her and she would reply with some eyelash-fluttering false modesty. But she couldn’t deploy that kind of manoeuvre now, one on one with Uri. Not least because this compliment, unlike the others, meant something to her.

‘Imagine how the American public would react if your face was shown for twenty-four hours on cable news, how they would feel about the evil Arabs who had killed you.’

‘All right, I get the picture.’ Maggie was still enough of a convent girl to feel superstitious about tempting fate. ‘The same would be true of the Israelis.’

‘Even worse for them in a way,’ said Uri, slowly loosening up, helped along by the Scotch. ‘Spying on the Americans is bad enough and we’ve done that a couple of times. But killing them? Not a good idea. Are you still an Irish citizen too?’

‘Yep. Never gave it up.’

‘Big fight with the Europeans too, then. If they killed you.’

‘What’s the other possibility? You said there were two.’

‘Oh, the other time you stalk but don’t strike is when you want the subject alive. To lead you somewhere.’

Maggie took a swig of the drink, letting an ice cube slip between her lips. She let it roll around her mouth, enjoying its chill on her tongue. So they wanted her to pursue this Guttman trail, whoever ‘they’ were. They would keep away for as long as she was useful. ‘But the people who attacked me today told me to back off, to stay away.’

‘I know,’ said Uri. ‘So maybe they’re in the first category. They’re only not killing you because killing you would bring too much trouble.’

‘Or maybe there’s more than one group following us. Following me. All for different reasons.’

‘Maybe. Like I’ve said a million times, this country, this whole area, is seriously fucked up.’

Maggie put her drink down. Back to business. She pulled out the Post-it note she had scribbled on in Rosen’s office. ‘Your father said something about the “good times”. Some trip you took together for your Bar Mitzvah. He said he hoped you would remember that.’

‘I do remember it.’

‘What happened?’

‘He took me with him on a working trip to Crete. He wanted to check out the excavations at Knossos. Imagine it: I was thirteen years old, and I was looking at dusty old relics.’

‘And?’

‘That was it.’

‘Come on, there has to be something specific. Was there a museum? Was there a particular piece that had special meaning to your father?’

‘It was a long time ago, Maggie. And I was a kid. I wasn’t interested in that stuff. I don’t remember any of it.’

‘Did anything happen?’

‘I remember waiting around a lot. And I liked the plane ride. I remember that.’

‘Think Uri, think. There must be some reason your dad mentioned this in the message. Did something important happen there?’

‘Well, it felt important to me at the time. It was a big treat to be alone, just me and him. It hadn’t happened before.’ He looked up at Maggie, showing her that rueful smile once more. ‘And it didn’t happen again.’

‘Did you talk about something?’

‘I remember him talking about the Minoans, saying they had once been this great civilization. And look at them now, he said. They don’t exist any more. That could happen to us, he said; to the Jews. It nearly has happened, lots of times. Nearly wiped out. That’s why we need Israel, he said. “Uri, after all we’ve been through, we need a place of our own.” That’s what he said.’

Anything specific, Maggie was thinking impatiently, straining to stick to her own rule: she knew that sometimes you just had to let people talk, let the words unspool until the crucial sentence tumbled out.

‘He told me about his parents, how his mother had been killed by Hitler, how his father had survived. That was an amazing story. He hid, my grandfather, with a family of non-Jews, on a farm in Hungary. They kept him and a cousin in the pig sty. Right at the end of the war, he escaped by crawling through two miles of sewers.

‘My father said that the lesson of his father’s life was that the Jews would have to have somewhere where they would never need anyone else’s permission to survive. Where they could fight and defend themselves if they had to. No more cowering in a pig sty.’

The Nazi period…Maggie was seized by a sudden thought. She remembered the rows about the Swiss banks who had kept their hands on long-dormant accounts held by Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis. Could there be a connection? ‘Uri. You know the message mentioned Geneva? Might your family have left-’

‘My family had no money. Nothing. Poor before the Nazis and poor after.’

‘OK, so not money. But what about a safe deposit box in Geneva? Maybe your father hid the tablet in a Swiss bank.’

‘I just don’t see it; that wasn’t his world. A vault in Geneva? That would cost serious money. Besides, when would he have had the time to put it there? He said on the DVD he had only just found the tablet.’

Maggie nodded; Uri was right. Geneva must mean something else.

‘And what about all this stuff at the end? “And if I am gone from this life, then you shall see me in the other life; that is life too.” I was under the impression your father was not a religious man.’

‘It’s a surprise that he talked this way. But maybe this is what happens when you hold the words of Abraham in your hand. And if you fear death. Maybe you start talking like a rabbi.’

‘I’m sorry about all this, Uri.’

‘It’s not your fault. But it’s horrible to realize you hardly knew your own father. All these secrets. What kind of relationship can you have with someone who keeps so much from you?’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘They’re closing up here. We better go.’

But instead of heading for the lifts, Maggie strode over to the front desk at reception. Uri watched as she launched into a long story about allergies and dust and how she simply couldn’t sleep another hour in her room. The night manager put up some resistance but soon surrendered. He took her old key, replacing it with one for room 302 and despatched a porter to move her things. As she turned around, she gave Uri a wink: ‘No bugs in room 302.’

He insisted on walking her to her room. Once they got to the door, she asked where he was going to sleep. He looked as if he hadn’t thought about it till that moment.

‘Well, my apartment is being watched. And so is my parents’ house.’

‘Seems like the only reason they’re not killing you is because you’re with me,’ said Maggie, smiling up at him.

‘Well, I’d better stay with you then.’