The Little Drummer Girl

eighteen

The swift young man who called at the Israeli Embassy in London wore a long leather coat and granny glasses, and said his name was Meadows. The car was a spotless green Rover with extra pace. Kurtz sat in the front in order to keep Meadows company. Litvak smouldered in the back. Kurtz's manner was diffident and a little shabby, as became him in the presence of colonial superiors.

"Just flown in, have we, sir?" Meadows asked airily.

"Yesterday as ever is," said Kurtz, who had been in London a week.

"Pity you didn't let us know, sir. The Commander could have smoothed things over for you at the airport."

"Oh now, we didn't have that much to declare, Mr. Meadows!" Kurtz protested, and they both laughed because liaison was so good. From the back, Litvak laughed too, but without conviction.

They drove fast to Aylesbury, then fast through pretty lanes. They reached a sandstone gateway mastered by stone cockerels. A blue-and-red sign proclaimed "No. 3 TLSU," a white boom blocked their path. Meadows left Kurtz and Litvak to themselves while he went into the gatehouse. Dark eyes surveyed them from its windows. No cars passed, no distant tractor chattered. There seemed little around that was alive.

"Looks like a fine place," said Kurtz, in Hebrew, while they waited.

"Beautiful," Litvak agreed for the microphone, if there was one. "Nice people, too."

"First rate," said Kurtz. "Top of the profession, no question."

Meadows returned, the boom lifted, and for a surprisingly long time they wove through the uneasy parkland of paramilitary England. In place of sweetly gazing thoroughbreds, blue-uniformed sentries in Wellington boots. Low-backed brick buildings with no windows lay half buried in the earth. They passed an assault course and a private landing strip laid out with orange cones. Rope bridges were strung across a troutstream.

"A dream," said Kurtz politely. "Just beautiful, Mr. Meadows. We should have all this at home, but how can we?"

"Well, thanks," said Meadows.

The house had once been old but its facade was vandalised with ministerial paint of battleship blue, and the red flowers in the window-boxes were dressed strictly by the left. A second young man was waiting at the entrance and led them quickly up a glistening staircase of polished pine.

"I'm Lawson," he explained breathlessly, as if they were already late; and rapped bravely with his knuckles on a double door. A voice inside barked "Come!"

"Mr. Raphael, sir," Lawson announced. "From Jerusalem. Bit of bother with the traffic, I'm afraid, sir."

For as long as it takes to be rude, Deputy Commander Picton stayed seated at his desk. He took up a pen and, with a frown, signed his name on a letter. He looked up, and fixed Kurtz with a yellow-eyed stare. Then he leaned his head right forward as though he were about to butt someone, and lifted himself slowly to his feet, all the way, until he was standing to attention.

"And good day to you, Mr. Raphael," he said. And he smiled sparsely, as if smiles were out of season.

He was big and Aryan, with waved fair hair parted like a razor slash. He was broad and thick-faced and violent, with pressed-together lips and a bully's straight gaze. He had the senior policeman's fastidious bad grammar and the borrowed good manners of a gentleman, and both were returnable without notice any time he damn well felt like it. He had a spotted handkerchief stuffed in his left sleeve and a tie with flat gold crowns to tell you he played his games in better company than you. He was a self-made counter-terrorist, "part soldier, part copper, part villain," as he liked to say, and he belonged to the fabled generation of his trade. He had hunted Communists in Malaya and Mau Mau in Kenya, Jews in Palestine, Arabs in Aden, and the Irish everywhere. He had blown people up with the Trucial Oman Scouts; in Cyprus he had missed Grivas by a whisker and when he was drunk he talked of it with regret-but let anybody dare to pity him! He had been second man in several places, first man rarely, for there were other shadows too.

"Misha Gavron in good shape?" he enquired, selecting a button on his telephone and pushing it so hard it might never come up again.

"Commander, Misha is just fine!" said Kurtz enthusiastically, and started to ask after Picton's superior in return, but Picton was not interested in what Kurtz might have to say, least of all about his Chief.

A highly polished silver cigarette box lay prominently on his desk with the signatures of brother officers engraved on the lid. Picton opened it and held it out, if only for Kurtz to admire its shine. Kurtz said he did not smoke. Picton returned the box to its correct position, an exhibit disposed of. There was a knock at the door and two men were admitted, one grey, one tweed. The grey was a forty-year-old Welsh bantamweight with claw marks on the lower jaw. Picton described him as "my Chief Inspector."

"Never ever been to Jerusalem, I'm afraid, sir," the Chief Inspector announced, rising on his toes and pulling down the skirts of his jacket at the same time, as if he were trying to stretch himself an inch or two. "The wife's all for spending Christmas in Bethlehem, but Cardiff was always good enough for me, oh yes!"

The tweeded one was Captain Malcolm, who possessed the class that Picton sometimes longed for and always hated. Malcolm had a soft-toned courtesy that was its own aggression.

"Honour, sir, actually," he confided to Kurtz very sincerely, and gave his hand before Kurtz needed it.

But when Litvak's turn came, Captain Malcolm appeared not quite to grasp his name: "Say again, old boy?" he said.

"Levene," Litvak repeated, not quite so softly. "I have the good fortune to work with Mr. Raphael here."

A long table was laid for a conference. There were no pictures-no framed photograph of a wife, not even of the Queen in Kodachrome. The sash windows gave on to an empty yard. The one surprise was the lingering smell of warm oil, as if a submarine had just passed by.

"Well, why don't you simply shoot straight off then, Mr."-the pause was really much too long-"Raphael, isn't it?" said Picton.

The phrase at least had a curious aptness. As Kurtz unlocked his briefcase and started handing round the dossiers, the room was shaken by the long thud of an explosive charge detonated in controlled circumstances.

"I knew a Raphael once," said Picton as he lifted the top cover of his dossier and peered inside, like a first peek at a menu. "We made him mayor for a while. Young chap. Forget the town. Wasn't you, was it?"

With a sad smile, Kurtz regretted that he was not that lucky person.

"No relation? Raphael-like the painter chap?" Picton turned a couple of pages. "Still, you never know, do you?"

The forbearance in Kurtz was unearthly. Not even Litvak, who had seen him through a hundred different shades of his identity, could have predicted such a saintly muzzling of his demons. His roistering energy had disappeared entirely, to be replaced by the servile smile of the underdog. Even his voice, at least to start with, had a diffident, apologetic ring.

" 'Mesterbine,' " the Chief Inspector read out. "Is that the way we pronounce it?"

Captain Malcolm, anxious to show his languages, intercepted the question. " 'Mesterbine' it is, Jack."

"Personal particulars in the left pocket, gentlemen," Kurtz said indulgently, and paused to let them plunder their dossiers for a little longer. "Commander, we have to have your formal undertaking regarding use and distribution."

Picton slowly lifted his fair head. "In writing?" he asked.

Kurtz gave a deprecating grin."A British officer's word will surely be enough for Misha Gavron," he said, still waiting.

"Agreed then," said Picton, with an unmistakable flush of anger; and Kurtz passed quickly to the less contentious person of Anton Mesterbein.

"The father a conservative Swiss gentleman with a nice villa on the lakeside, Commander, no known interests beyond making money. The mother a free-thinking lady of the radical left, spends half the year in Paris, keeps a salon there, very popular among the Arab community-

"Ring a bell, Malcolm?" Picton interrupted.

"A faint tinkle, sir."

"Young Anton, the son, is a lawyer of substance," Kurtz continued. "Studied political science in Paris, philosophy in Berlin. Attended Berkeley for a year, law and politics. Rome a semester, four years in Zurich, graduated magna cum laude."

"An intellectual," said Picton. He might as well have said "leper."

Kurtz acknowledged the description. "Politically, we would say that Mr. Mesterbein leans the mother's way-financially, he favours the father."

Picton let out the huge laugh of a humourless man. Kurtz paused long enough to share the joke with him.

"The photograph before you was taken in Paris, but Mr. Mesterbein's legal practice is in Geneva, effectively a downtown law shop for radical students, Third Worlders, and guest-workers. A variety of progressive organisations short of money are also clients." He turned a page, inviting his audience to keep pace with him. He was wearing heavy spectacles on the tip of his nose and they gave him the mousiness of a bank clerk.

"Got him, Jack?" Picton asked of the Chief Inspector.

"Not a tremor, sir."

"Who's the blonde lady drinking with him, sir?" asked Captain Malcolm.

But Kurtz had his own march route and, for all his docile manners, Malcolm was not going to deflect him.

"Last November," Kurtz continued, "Mr. Mesterbein attended a conference of so-called Lawyers for Justice in East Berlin, at which the Palestine delegation got a somewhat over-lengthy hearing. However, that may be a partial view," he added, with meek joviality, but no one laughed. "In April, responding to an invitation extended to him on that occasion, Mr. Mesterbein made his first recorded visit to Beirut. Paid his respects to a couple of the more militant rejectionist organisations there."

"Touting for business, was he?" Picton enquired.

As Picton said this, he clenched his right fist and punched the air. Having thus freed his hand, he scribbled something on the pad before him. Then he tore off the sheet and passed it to the suave Malcolm, who, with a smile to everybody, quietly left the room.

"Returning from that same visit to Beirut," Kurtz continued, "Mr. Mesterbein stopped over in Istanbul, in which city he held dialogues with certain underground Turkish activists committed, among other goals, to the elimination of Zionism."

"Ambitious chaps, then," said Picton.

And this time, because it was Picton's joke, everybody laughed loudly, except for Litvak.

With surprising speed, Malcolm had returned from his errand. "Not a lot of joy, I'm afraid," he murmured silkily and, having passed the slip of paper back to Picton, smiled at Litvak and resumed his seat. But Litvak seemed to have gone to sleep. He had rested his chin in his long hands and tipped his head forward over his unopened dossier. His expression, thanks to his hands, was not defined.

"Told the Swiss any of this, have you?" Picton enquired, tossing Malcolm's bit of paper aside.

"Commander, we have not yet informed the Swiss," Kurtz confessed, in a tone that suggested that this raised a problem.

"I thought you chaps were pretty close to the Swiss," Picton objected.

"We surely are close to the Swiss. However, Mr. Mesterbein has a number of clients who are wholly or partly domiciled in the Federal Republic of Germany, a fact which places us in a fairly embarrassing position."

"Don't follow you," said Picton stubbornly. "Thought you and the Huns had kissed and made up long ago."

Kurtz's smile might have been starched into his skin, but his answer was a model of bland evasion. "Commander, that is so, but nevertheless Jerusalem still feels-given the sensitivity of our sources and the complexity of German political sympathy at this present time-that we cannot advise our Swiss friends without also advising their German counterparts. To do so would be to impose an unfair burden of silence upon the Swiss in their dealings with Wiesbaden."

Picton had a good way with silence himself. In its day, his liverish stare of disbelief had done wonders with men of lesser breed who were worrying about what might happen to them next.

"I suppose you heard they put that twerp Alexis back in the hot seat, did you?" Picton asked, out of the blue. Something about Kurtz was beginning to hold him: a recognition, if not of the person, then of the species.

Kurtz had heard the news, naturally, he said. But it did not appear to have affected him, for he moved firmly to the next exhibit.

"Hang on," said Picton quietly. He was staring into his dossier, exhibit 2. "I know that beauty. He's the genius who scored an own goal on the Munich autobahn a month back. Took his piece of Dutch crumpet with him too, didn't he?"

Neglecting his mantle of assumed humility for a moment, Kurtz stepped in fast. "Commander, that is so, and it is our information that both the vehicle and the explosives in that unfortunate accident were supplied by Mr. Mesterbein's contacts in Istanbul and ferried northward through Yugoslavia into Austria."

Picking up the scrap of paper that Malcolm had restored to him, Picton began moving it back and forth in front of him as if he were short-sighted, which he was not. "I am advised that our magic box downstairs contains not a single Mesterbein," he announced with feigned carelessness. "Not white-listed, not black-listed, not bugger all."

Kurtz seemed pleased rather than the reverse: "Commander, this reflects no inefficiency on the part of your fine records department. Until a matter of days ago, I would say, Mr. Mesterbein has also been regarded by Jerusalem as innocuous. The same goes for his accomplices."

"Including Blondie?" Captain Malcolm asked, harking back to Mesterbein's lady companion.

But Kurtz only smiled, and tugged a little at his spectacles as a way of calling the attention of his audience to the next photograph. It was one of many that the Munich surveillance team had taken from across the street, and it showed Yanuka by night about to enter the street door to his own apartment. It was fuzzed, as infra-red pictures on slow speed tend to be, but it showed him clearly enough for identification purposes. He was in the company of a tall blonde woman in quarter profile. She was standing back while he put a house key into the front door, and she was the same woman who had already caught Captain Malcolm's fancy from the earlier photograph.

"Where are we now?" said Picton. "Not Paris any more. Buildings are wrong."

"Munich," said Kurtz, and gave the address.

"And the when!" Picton demanded, so brusquely that one might have imagined he had momentarily mistaken Kurtz for one of his own staff.

But Kurtz again chose to mishear the question. "The name of the lady is Astrid Berger," he said, and once again Picton's yellowed gaze settled on him with an air of informed suspicion.

Deprived for too long of major speeches, meanwhile, the Welsh policeman had chosen to read Miss Berger's particulars aloud from the dossier: " 'Berger, Astrid, alias Edda alias Helga' -alias you name it… 'born Bremen '54, daughter of a wealthy shipping owner.' You do move in fine circles, I will say, Mr. Raphael. 'Educated universities of Bremen and Frankfurt, graduated politics and philosophy 1978. Sometime contributor West German radical and satirical journals, last known address 1979, Paris, frequent visitor Middle East-' "

Picton cut him short. "Another bloody intellectual. Get her, Malcolm."

As Malcolm again slipped from the room, Kurtz deftly took back the initiative.

"If you will kindly compare the dates there a little, Commander, you will find that Miss Berger's most recent visit to Beirut occurred in April this year, thus coinciding with Mr. Mesterbein's own tour. She was also in Istanbul during Mr. Mesterbein's stopover there. They flew different flights but stayed in the same hotel. Yes, Mike. Please."

Litvak's offering was a couple of photocopied hotel registration forms for Mr. Anton Mesterbein and Miss Astrid Berger, dated April i8th. Beside them, much reduced by reproduction, was a receipted bill, paid by Mesterbein. The hotel was the Hilton, Istanbul. While Picton and the Chief Inspector studied them, the door once more opened and closed.

"NRA on Astrid Berger too, sir. Can you believe it?" said Malcolm, with the most forlorn of smiles.

"Is that Nothing Recorded Against, please?" Kurtz enquired swiftly.

Taking up his silver propelling pencil with the tips of both hands, Picton revolved it before his dyspeptic gaze.

"It is," he said thoughtfully. "It is. Go to the top of the class, Mr. Raphael."

Kurtz's third photograph-or, as Litvak later irreverently called it, his third card in the trick-had been so beautifully forged that even the best guess of Tel Aviv's aerial reconnaissance experts had failed to pick it out from the bunch that they had been invited to inspect. It showed Charlie and Becker approaching the Mercedes in the forecourt of the Delphi hotel on the morning of their departure. Becker was carrying Charlie's shoulder bag and his own black grip. Charlie was in her Greek finery and carrying her guitar. Becker was wearing the red blazer, silk shirt, and Gucci shoes. He had his gloved hand stretched towards the driving door of the Mercedes. He was also wearing Michel's head.

"Commander, this picture was taken by a lucky chance just two weeks before the bomb incident outside Munich, in which, as you rightly say, a certain pair of terrorists had the misfortune to destroy themselves with their own explosives. The red-headed girl in the foreground is a British subject. Her escort addressed her as 'Joan.' She called him in return 'Michel,' which was not, however, the name on his passport."

The change in atmosphere was like a sudden drop in temperature. The Chief Inspector smirked at Malcolm, Malcolm seemed to smile in return; but then Malcolm's smile, it was becoming slowly clear, had little to do with what commonly passes for humour. But it was Picton's massive immobility that held the centre stage-his refusal, as it seemed, to take his information from anywhere but the photograph before him. For Kurtz, by his reference to a British subject, had ventured as if unawares upon Picton's holy territory, and men did that at their peril.

"A lucky chance," Picton echoed through tight lips while he went on staring at the photograph. "A good friend who just happened to have his camera ready, I suppose-that sort of lucky bloody chance."

Kurtz grinned shyly but said nothing.

"Banged off a couple of frames-sent 'em to Jerusalem on the off-chance. Terrorist he happened to spot on holiday-thought he'd be helpful."

Kurtz's grin broadened; and to his surprise, he saw Picton grinning in return, if not very nicely.

"Yes, well, I think I do remember friends like that. You people have friends everywhere, now I come to think of it. High places, low places, rich places-" For an unfortunate moment, it appeared that certain old frustrations of Picton's days in Palestine had unexpectedly revived themselves and were threatening to spill out of him in a gush of temper. But he contained himself. He tamed his features, he brought his voice down. He relaxed his smile until it could have passed for friendly. But Kurtz's smile was an all-weather thing, and Litvak's face was so twisted by his hand that for all anybody knew he could as well have been laughing his head off or nursing a raging toothache.

Clearing his throat, the grey Chief Inspector, with Welsh bonhomie, ventured another timely intervention. "Well now, even given she was English, sir, which seems to me on the face of it something of a hypothetical long shot, there's still no law, is there, not in this country, against sleeping with Palestinians? We can't mount a nationwide hunt for a lady, just on account of than My goodness, if we-"

"He's got more," said Picton, returning his gaze to Kurtz. "Much more."

But his tone went further. They always do have, he was saying.

His courteous good humour undimmed, Kurtz invited his audience to study the Mercedes to the right of the photograph. Forgive him for not knowing too much about cars, but his people assured him this was a saloon model, wine red, with the radio aerial forward on the offside wing, two wing mirrors, central locking, and seat belts in the front only. In all of these details, and many others not visible, he said, the Mercedes in the picture corresponded to the Mercedes that had been accidentally blown up outside Munich, and of which most of the front had miraculously survived.

Malcolm had a sudden solution. "But surely, sir-all this about her being English-isn't she the Dutch girl? Red hair, blonde hair-that doesn't mean a thing. English in this case just means their common language."

"Quiet," Picton ordered, and lit himself a cigarette without offering them to anyone. "Let him go on," he said. And drank in a huge amount of smoke without expelling it.

Kurtz's voice meanwhile had thickened, and so, for a moment at least, had his shoulders. He had placed both fists on the table either side of the dossier.

"It is also our information by a different source, Commander," Kurtz announced, with greater force, "that on its northward journey from Greece through Yugoslavia, the same Mercedes was driven by a young woman with a British passport. Her lover did not accompany her, but flew ahead to Salzburg with Austrian Airlines. The same airline was privileged to reserve prestige accommodation for him in Salzburg, at the hotel Osterreichischer Hof, where our enquiries show that the couple called themselves Monsieur and Madame Laserre, though the lady in question spoke no French, only English. This lady is remembered for her striking looks, her red hair, the absence of a wedding ring, for her guitar, which caused a certain merriment, also for the fact that though she left the hotel early in the morning with her husband, she returned later in the day to make use of its facilities. The head porter recalls summoning a taxi for Madame Laserre to take her to Salzburg Airport and he remembers the time of day he ordered it-2 p.m., just before he went off duty. He offered to confirm her flight reservation and establish that her plane's departure was not delayed, but Madame Laserre would not permit him to do this, presumably because she was not travelling under that name. Three flights out of Salzburg fit the timing, one of them Austrian to London.

The lady at the Austrian Airlines sales desk distinctly recalls a red-headed English girl who had an unused charter ticket Thessalonika to London, and wished to have it rewritten, which was not possible. In the event, she was obliged to buy a full-fare one-way ticket, which she paid for in U.S. dollars, mostly twenty bills."

"Don't be so damn coy," Picton growled. "What's her name?" And he stubbed out his cigarette very violently, holding it down long after it had ceased to struggle.

In answer to his question, Litvak was already passing round photocopies of a passenger list. He looked pale and might have been in pain. When he had gone all the way round the table, he helped himself to a little water from the carafe, though he had barely breathed a word all morning.

"To our initial consternation, Commander, there was no Joan," Kurtz confessed as they all settled to the passenger list. "The best we could come up with was a Charmian. Her surname you have before you. The Austrian Airlines lady confirms our identification-number thirty-eight on the list. The lady even remembers her guitar. By a happy chance, she is herself a devotee of the great Manilas de Plata; the guitar therefore left a deep impression on her memory."

"Another bloody friend," said Picton coarsely, and Litvak coughed.

Kurtz's last exhibit also came from Litvak's briefcase. Kurtz held out both hands for it, Litvak placed it into them: a wad of photographs still tacky from the printing pan. He dealt them out summarily. They showed Mesterbein and Helga in an airport departure lounge, Mesterbein staring despondently into the middle air. Helga, behind him, was buying a half-litre bottle of duty-free whisky. Mesterbein was carrying a bunch of orchids wrapped in tissue paper.

"Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, thirty-six hours ago," Kurtz said cryptically. "Berger and Mesterbein, about to fly Paris-Exeter via Gatwick. Mesterbein ordered a self-drive Hertz car to be available to him on arrival at Exeter Airport. They returned to Paris yesterday, minus the orchids, by the same route. Berger was travelling under the name of Maria Brinkhausen, Swiss, a new alias we may add to her many others. Her passport, one of a bunch prepared by the East Germans for Palestinian use."

Malcolm had not waited for the order. He was already through the door.

"Pity you haven't got a shot of them arriving in Exeter too," said Picton with innuendo, while they waited.

"Commander, as you well know, we could not do that," said Kurtz piously.

"Do I?" said Picton. "Oh."

"Our masters have a reciprocal trading deal, sir. No fishing in one another's waters without prior consent in writing."

"Oh that," said Picton.

The Welsh policeman once more applied his diplomatic unction. "Exeter her home town, is it, sir?" he asked Kurtz. "Devon girl? You wouldn't think a country girl would take to terror, not in the normal way of things, I suppose?"

But Kurtz's information seemed to have stopped dead at the English coast. They heard footsteps mounting the big staircase, and the squeak of Malcolm's suede boots. The Welshman, never daunted, tried again.

"I never think of red-heads as Devon, somehow, I will say," he lamented. "Nor Charmian, truthfully, to be honest. Bess, Rose, I suppose-I can see a Rose. But no Charmian, not Devon. Up country, I'd say Charmian was. London, more likely."

Malcolm came in warily, one soft tread following cautiously upon the other. He was carrying a heap of files: the fruit of Charlie's forays into the militant left. Those at the bottom were tattered with age and use. Press cuttings and cyclostyled pamphlets poked from the edges.

"Well I must say, sir," said Malcolm, with a grunt of relief as he set his burden on the table, "if she's not our girl, she jolly well ought to be!"

"Lunch," Picton snapped, and, having muttered a quite furious stream of orders to his two subordinates, marched his guests to a vast dining-room smelling of cabbage and furniture polish.

A pineapple chandelier hung over the thirty-foot table, two candles burned, two stewards in shining white coats attended their every need. Picton ate woodenly; Litvak, deathly pale, picked at his food like an invalid. But Kurtz was oblivious to everybody's tantrums. He chatted, though nothing in the way of business, naturally: he doubted whether the Commander would recognise Jerusalem, if ever he had the fortune to go back there; he really appreciated his first meal in an English officers' mess. Even then, Picton did not stay the meal through. Twice, Captain Malcolm summoned him to the door for a murmured conversation; once he was required on the telephone by his superior. And when the pudding came, he suddenly stood up as if he had been stung, handed his damask napkin to the servant, and strode off, ostensibly to make some phone calls of his own, but perhaps also to consult the locked cupboard in his office where he kept a private store.

The park, apart from the ever-present sentries, was as empty as a school playing field on the first day of holidays, and Picton strolled in it with the faddish restlessness of a landowner, grumpily eyeing the fences, stabbing with his walking stick at anything he didn't like the look of. Nine inches below him, Kurtz bobbed cheerfully at his side. From a distance, they might have resembled a prisoner and his captor, though it would not have been quite certain which was which. Behind them trailed Shimon Litvak holding both briefcases, and, behind Litvak, Mrs. O'Flaherty, Picton's fabled Alsatian bitch.

"Mr. Levene likes to listen, does he?" Picton burst out, quite loud enough for Litvak to hear. "Good listener, good memory? I like that."

"Mike is close, Commander," Kurtz replied with a dutiful smile. "Mike comes everywhere."

"Sulky chap, he strikes me as. My Chief said a one-to-one, if it's all the same to you."

Kurtz turned and said something to Litvak in Hebrew. Litvak dropped back until he was out of earshot. And it was a strange thing, which neither Kurtz nor Picton could quite have explained, even if they had admitted to it, that an indefinable sense of comradeship settled over them as soon as they were left alone.

The afternoon was grey and blustery. Picton had lent Kurtz a duffle coat, which gave him a sea-dog look. Picton himself wore a British Warm, and his face had darkened instantly with the fresh air.

"Decent of you to come all this way really, just to tell us about her," said Picton, like a challenge. "My Chief's going to drop old Misha a line, the devil."

"Misha will surely appreciate that," said Kurtz without enquiring which devil Picton was referring to.

"Funny, really, all the same. You chaps tipping us off about our own terrorists. In my day the traffic tended to go the other way."

Kurtz said something soothing about the wheel of history, but Picton was no poet.

"Your operation, of course," said Picton. "Your sources, your shout. My Chief is adamant about it. Our job is to sit tight and do what we're bloody told," he added, with a sideways glance.

Kurtz said cooperation was what it was all about these days, and for a second Picton looked as though he might blow up. His yellowed eyes widened, and his chin shot into his neck and stuck there. But instead, perhaps to calm himself, he lit a cigarette, turning his back on the wind and cupping his huge catcher's hands to shield the flame.

"Meanwhile, you'll be amazed to hear your information is confirmed," Picton said, with the heaviest sarcasm, as he flicked away the match. "Berger and Mesterbein flew Paris-Exeter return, took a Hertz car on arrival Exeter Airport, notched up four hundred and twenty miles. Mesterbein paid by American Express credit card in his own name. Don't know where they spent the night, but no doubt you'll advise us in due course."

Kurtz preserved a virtuous silence.

"As to the lady in the case," Picton went on, with the same forced levity, "you will be equally astonished to hear that she is currently doing a spot of acting in deepest Cornwall. She's with a classical drama group, name of the Heretics, which I like, but you wouldn't know that either, would you? Her hotel says a man answering Mesterbein's description picked her up after the show and she didn't get home till morning. Proper little bed hopper by the sound of her, your lady." He allowed a monu mental pause, which Kurtz affected to ignore. "Meanwhile, I am to advise you that my Chief is an officer and a gentleman and will provide you with every assistance. He's grateful, my Chief is. Grateful and touched. He's soft on Jews and he thinks it's very handsome of you to take the trouble to come over here and put us on to her." He shot Kurtz a malevolent glance. "My Chief is young, you see. He's a great fan of your fine new country, barring accidents, and not disposed to listen to any nasty suspicions / might have."

Stopping before a big green shed, Picton thumped his stick on the iron door. A boy in running shoes and a blue tracksuit admitted them to an empty gymnasium. "Saturday," Picton said, presumably to explain the atmosphere of desertion, and launched himself upon an angry tour of the premises, now eyeing the state of the changing-rooms, now running an enormous finger along the parallel bars to check for dust.

"I hear you've been bombing those camps again," Picton said accusingly. "That Misha's idea, is it? Misha never did like a rapier when a blunderbuss would do."

Kurtz began to confess quite truthfully that the processes of decision-taking in the upper levels of Israeli society had always been something of a mystery to him; but Picton had no time for that type of answer.

"Well, he won't get away with it. You tell him that from me., Those Pallies will come back to haunt you lot for the rest of time."

This time Kurtz only smiled and shook his head in wonder at the world's ways.

"Misha Gavron was Irgun, wasn't he?" Picton said, in merest curiosity.

"Haganah," Kurtz corrected him.

"Which was your lot then?" said Picton.

Kurtz affected the loser's shy regret. "Fortunately or not, Commander, we Raphaels arrived in Israel too late to be of any inconvenience to the British," he said.

"Don't bullshit me," said Picton. "I know where Misha gets his friends from. I gave him his bloody job."

"So he told me, Commander," Kurtz said, with his waterproof smile.

The athletic boy was holding open a door. They passed through. In a long glass case lay a display of homemade weapons for silent killing: a knobkerrie with nails driven into the head, a hat-pin, very rusty, with a wooden handle added, homemade syringes, an improvised garrote.

"Labels fading," Picton snapped at the boy when he had regarded these instruments nostalgically for a moment. "New labels by ten hundred hours Monday, hear me, or I'll have you."

He stepped back into the fresh air, Kurtz plodding agreeably at his side. Mrs. O'Flaherty, who had waited for them, fell in at her master's heels.

"All right, what do you want?" said Picton, like a man driven against his will to settle. "Don't tell me you came here to bring me a love-letter from my old mate Misha the Rook, because I won't believe you. I doubt whether I'll believe you anyway, as a matter of fact. I'm hard to convince, where your lot's concerned."

Kurtz smiled and shook his head in appreciation of Picton's English wit.

"Well, sir, Misha the Rook feels that a simple arrest in this case is just out of the question. Owing to the delicacy of our sources, naturally," he explained, in the tone of a mere messenger.

"I thought your sources were all just good friends," Picton put in nastily.

"And even if Misha were to consent to a formal arrest," Kurtz continued, still smiling, "he asks himself what charges could be filed against the lady and in what court. Who is to prove the explosive was aboard that car when she drove it? The explosive was put aboard afterwards, she will say. Which leaves us, I believe, with the somewhat minor infringement of driving a car through Yugoslavia on false papers. And where are those papers? Who is to prove they ever existed? It's very flimsy."

"Very," Picton agreed. "Misha become a lawyer, has he, in his old age?" he enquired, with a sideways look. "Christ, that would be a case of poacher turned gamekeeper if ever I heard one."

"There is also-Misha argues-the matter of her value. Her value to us, and to yourselves, as she stands at present. In what we might call her state of near innocence. What does she know finally? What can she reveal? Take the case of Miss Larsen."

"Larsen?"

"The Dutch lady who was involved in the unfortunate accident outside of Munich."

"What of her?" Stopping in his tracks, Picton turned to Kurtz and glowered down on him with growing suspicion.

"Miss Larsen also drove cars and ran errands for her Palestinian boyfriend. The same boyfriend, as a matter of fact. Miss Larsen even placed bombs for him. Two. Maybe three. On paper, Miss Larsen was a very implicated lady." Kurtz shook his head. "But in terms of usable intelligence, Commander, she was an empty vessel." Unaffected by Picton's menacing proximity, Kurtz lifted his hands and opened them to show how empty the vessel was. "Just a little groupie kid who liked the scene, who liked the danger and the boys, and liked to please. And they told her nothing. No addresses, no names, no plans."

"How do you know that?" said Picton accusingly.

"We had a little talk with her."

"When?"

"A while ago. Quite some while. A little sell-and-tell deal, before we threw her back into the pool. You know the way it goes."

"Like five minutes before you blew her up, I suppose," Picton suggested, as his yellowed eyes continued to hold Kurtz in their stare.

But Kurtz's smile was wonderfully unruffled. "If it were only so easy, Commander," he said, with a sigh.

"I asked what you wanted, Mr. Raphael."

"We'd like her set in motion, Commander."

"I thought you might."

"We'd like her smoked out a little, but not arrested. We'd like her running scared-so scared maybe that she is obliged to make further contact with her people, or they with her. We'd like to take her all the way through. What we call an unconscious agent. Naturally, we would share the product with you, and when the operation is over, you are welcome to both the lady and the credit."

"She's made contact already," Picton objected. "They came and saw her in Cornwall, brought her a bunch of bloody flowers, didn't they?"

"Commander, our reading of that meeting suggests to us that it was a somewhat exploratory exercise. Left to itself, we fear that the meeting is unlikely to bear further fruit."

"How the hell do you know that!" Picton's voice filled with a marvelling wrath. "/'// tell you how you know. You had your ear pressed up to the bloody keyhole! What do you think I am, Mr. Raphael? Some kind of jungle nignog? That girl belongs to you, Mr. Raphael, I know she does! I know you Izzies, I know that poison dwarf Misha, and I'm beginning to know you\" His voice had risen alarmingly. Striding out ahead of Kurtz, he waited until he had brought it under control. Then waited again till Kurtz fell in beside him. "I have a very nice scenario in my mind at this moment, Mr. Raphael, and I'd like to share it with you. May I do that?"

"It will be a privilege, Commander," said Kurtz pleasantly.

"Thank you. The trick is normally done with dead meat. You find a nice corpse, you dress him up and leave him somewhere where the enemy will stumble on him. 'Hullo,' says the enemy, 'what's this? A dead body carrying a briefcase? Let's look inside.' They look, and they find a little message. 'Hullo,' they say, 'he must have been a courier! Let's read the message and fall into the trap.' So they do. And we all get medals. 'Disinformation,' we used to call it, designed to misguide the enemy's eye, and very nice too." Picton's sarcasm was as awesome as his wrath. "But that's too simple for you and Misha. Being a bunch of over-educated fanatics, you've gone one further. 'No dead meat for us, oh no! We'll use live meat. Arab meat. Dutch meat.' So you did. And you blew it up in a nice Mercedes motorcar. Theirs. What I don't know, of course-and I never will, because you and Misha will deny the whole thing on your deathbeds, won't you?-is where you've planted that disinformation. But planted it you have, and now they've bitten. Or they'd never have brought her those nice flowers, would they?"

Ruefully shaking his head in admiration of Picton's amusing fantasy, Kurtz started to move away from him, but Picton with a policeman's unerring touch lightly held him where he was.

"You tell this to Master bloody Gavron. If I'm right and you lot have recruited one of our nationals without our consent, I'll personally come over to his nasty little country and take his balls off. Got it?" But suddenly, as if against his wish, Picton's face relaxed into an almost tender smile of recollection. "What was it the old devil used to say?" he asked. "Tigers, was it? You'd know."

Kurtz said it too. Often. Grinning his pirate's grin, he said it now. "You want to catch the lion, first you tether the goat."

The moment of adversarial kinship past, Picton's features once more set to stone. "And at the formal level, Mr., Raphael, compliments of my Chief, your service has got itself a deal," he snapped. Swinging on his heel, he marched briskly back towards the house, leaving Kurtz and Mrs. O'Flaherty to plod after him. "And tell him this too," Picton added, pointing his stick at Kurtz in a final assertion of his colonial authority. "He will please to stop using our bloody passports. If other people can manage without them, so can the Rook, damn him."

For the return journey to London, Kurtz sat Litvak in the front seat of the car to teach him English manners. Meadows, who had grown a voice, wanted to discuss the problem of the West Bank: how could one solve the thing, actually, sir, while giving the Arabs a fair deal, of course, do you think? Cutting himself off from the«futile conversation, Kurtz abandoned himself to memories he had held at bay till now.

There is a working gallows in Jerusalem where nobody is hanged any more. Kurtz knew it well: close to the old Russian compound, on the left-hand side as you drive down a half-made road and stop before a pair of aged gates that lead to what was once Jerusalem's central prison. The signs say "to the museum" but also "hall of heroism" and there is a rather cracked old man who loiters outside and bows you in, sweeping his shallow black hat in the dust. The entrance fee is fifteen shekels but rising. It is where the British hanged the Jews during the Mandate time, from a noose with a leather lining to it. Only a handful, actually, and they hanged Arabs galore; but this was where they hanged two of Kurtz's friends, in the years when he was in the Haganah with Misha Gavron. Kurtz might well have joined them. They had imprisoned him twice and interrogated him four times, and the occasional troubles he had with his teeth were still ascribed by his dentist to the beatings he had received at the hand of an amiable young field security officer, now dead, whose manner, though not his looks, reminded him a little of Picton's.

But a nice man, that Picton, all the same, thought Kurtz, with an inward smile, as he contemplated yet another successful step along the road. A little rough maybe; a little heavy with the mouth and hand; and sad about his taste for alcohol-a waste as always. But in the end as fair as most men. A fine practitioner too. A fine mind inside the violence. Misha Gavron always said he'd learned a lot from him.