The Run Around

Chapter Seventeen

Sulafeh Nabulsi had been included in the Palestinian support staff because of her outstanding ability as a linguist, not just because of her willingness to sleep with whoever was necessary to achieve the appointment. She spoke fluent Hebrew, Arabic and English and each better than the other language expert in the party, Mohammed Dajani. Their function, like that of linguists accompanying every other delegation, was to listen to the simultaneous translation during the conference to ensure the official version was absolutely accurate. They were also required to attend private sessions and gatherings, to act more obviously as translators. It meant they would frequently be closer to the leading participants of the conference than their bodyguards, which was why Sulafeh was of such importance to the KGB.

The Palestinian secretariat was accommodated a long way from the international complex, on two floors of a small hotel off the Rue Barthelemy-Menn, and were bussed across the city for the first day accreditation.

Sulafeh thrust on to the coach ahead of everyone else, to get a window seat so that she could see as much as possible. She did not know fully what would be asked of her by the unknown man she was to meet but was determined to be able to answer any query, not to fail him in anything.

She was aware of Dajani sitting beside her and of his thigh pressed against hers but did not turn to him, trying at once to orientate herself by identifying the streets and avenues, using the lake and the Rhône as markers.

‘A pretty city,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, still not looking at him. She moved her leg away.

‘After the formalities of today there won’t be a lot for us to do until the conference starts,’ reminded Dajani.

Maybe not for you, thought Sulafeh. Disinterested in his attempted conversation, she said: ‘There’ll be enough.’

‘I thought we might explore the city, you and L’

Sulafeh guessed that with his convoluted Arab chauvinism, Dajani resented a woman having matching importance to himself but still wanted to get her into bed. She said: ‘This seat seems too small for you. There are empty benches at the back.’

The pressure of his thigh diminished, slightly. He said: ‘What about it?’ She’d slept with everyone else, so why not him?

She shook her head, turning back to the window, and said: ‘I’ve got other things to do.’ If he wanted sex he could buy it.

‘Like what?’

Sulafeh hoped the man was not going to be a nuisance. Not wanting overly to antagonize him into becoming an unwanted distraction either, she said: ‘Maybe I’ll think about it.’

The pressure resumed against her leg. ‘I’m sure there are many enjoyable things we could do,’ he said, heavily.

‘Like buying a present for your wife?’ she said.

Dajani remained smiling, undeterred. ‘That,’ he said. ‘And other things.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Sulafeh, as dismissively as possible. The coach crossed a roadbridge over a skein of railway lines and she saw the huge terminal, to her left. Almost at once the bus made a right turn, following one of the routes that Vasili Zenin had paced during his earlier reconnaissance, and shortly afterwards she saw the entrance to the conference area. She concentrated absolutely, the man beside her forgotten. There were security barriers with uniformed and armed officials checking the documentation and authority of people arriving on foot or in private cars. But the coach was acknowledged as an official vehicle and gestured through. An important oversight, the girl thought.

In the secretariat building they formed lines at the registration desks, slowly edging forward to identify themselves against their already provided names and photographs. Sulafeh was accepted after a brief comparison with her picture and handed a plastic accreditation wallet equipped with a clip for it to be worn on a lapel or breast pocket. Her photograph was already inside, her authority authenticated by the conference secretary. She was also handed a bulging envelope, plastic again, containing maps and explanations of all the facilities and a provisional timetable of the conference sessions. Sulafeh clamped the identification at once on to her shirt-front and hurried out, wanting to distance herself from the persistent Dajani and study everything about the main building where the delegates would be assembling in a few days time.

The entrance was large and pillared and she halted, looking not directly at it but at the surrounding grassed area, consulting one of the maps that had been provided to establish where the commemorative photograph would be taken. To the right, she recognized, on a lawn landscaped in a gentle gradient to guarantee that everyone would be clearly visible: according to the schedule, it was timed for 11 a.m. on the opening day. Sulafeh smiled briefly to herself, at her own personal joke: there was going to be more recorded for posterity than any of them could possibly guess.

Still following the guide, Sulafeh located the conference chamber at the end of a corridor that appeared practically the width of the building itself, but wasn’t, not quite. Off it ran the committee rooms and offices allocated to each delegation: the Palestinian quarters were to the right, a honeycomb of boxed areas. Her desk was already designated by a nameplate. Dajani’s was on the far side of the office, for which she was grateful: it might spare her at least the groping pressure the man seemed to imagine was seductive.

As she passed down the corridor, Sulafeh mentally ticked off the offices of the Syrian, Jordanian, American and Israeli secretariats. Diplomatically the Israeli rooms had been separated from the Arab section by the Americans being placed in between and inside the conference chamber the diplomacy was continued, by the arrangement of the table at which they would sit. The room was vast, with high, corniced ceilings picked out in gold leaf, with the gold colouring continuing in the floor-to-ceiling curtaining in front of the enormous French windows, which opened on to gardens. The room was lighted by a series of glittering chandeliers which hung over a central but empty space. Around it, in a huge rectangle, was arranged the table, two long sides running the length of the room, with two shorter links at the top and bottom. The initial impression was that the entire rectangle was one continuous table but Sulafeh saw there was a separating gap of about a foot keeping apart the top and bottom seating arrangement from those on either side. She smiled again, contemptuously this time, sneering at the stupidity of it all. It meant that it was possible for Jew to meet Arab, with America as the mediator, but that both sides could claim with diplomatic pedantry that neither had sat at the same table. She supposed it was in this same room that a dispute over table arrangement had delayed the start of talks to end the Vietnamese war and cost an extra 2,000 lives in the two months it took to resolve.

Behind the chairs at which the delegates would sit were arranged the accommodation for the support staff, serried rows of small tables already set out with notepads and blotters and a tub of pencils. The Palestinian negotiators were placed at the further end of the chamber, at one of the smaller cross-tables, and the Israelis as far away as possible, along the shorter section at the top of the room.

Sulafeh walked down to their area and again found a place already assigned to her. It was on the second bank of tables, directly behind the secretaries at the delegates’ shoulder, positioned for immediate consultation. Sulafeh found the device upon which the translation would be made, a plastic cone fashioned actually to fit over her ear. Experimentally she tried it, surprised at its comfort, and twisted the selector dial clearly marked in the various languages. None, of course, was operating. She looked about and located the translation booth, a smoked-glass box impossible to see into, deciding it would be wise to make herself known in the translator’s section.

In fact, it was important to make herself known to a lot of people, she realized. She went back out into the corridor, at once encountering a group of Swiss security men: two, she thought, had been on duty at the entrance that morning but she was not absolutely sure.

She said hello in English and they replied in English, too. She stopped and so did they and she said she was a member of the Palestinian delegation, needlessly indicating her identification wallet. She said she guessed security was always a problem and one of the men, blond and apparently in charge, agreed it was but of particular concern for this specific gathering.

‘Nothing can be allowed to cause any difficulty, now that negotiations have progressed this far,’ insisted Sulafeh, enjoying the sound of her apparent sincerity.

‘We don’t intend it to,’ said the man, furthering her amusement.

He asked if this were her first visit to Geneva and she admitted it was and flirtatiously the man said it was an interesting city with a lot to see and Sulafeh responded just as flirtatiously, saying she hoped to do just that and maybe find someone to show her. Dajani appeared from the door of their offices, further up the corridor, beckoning her forward and Sulafeh walked away, satisfied she had established herself in their minds just as she intended establishing recognition among as many security staff and permanent officials as possible in the lead-up to the conference, to reduce the risk of any spot-check challenge.

Dajani’s summons had been for her to attend the first briefing session from the secretariat Director, a man named Zeidan who had been with Arafat from the halcyon days of the PLO presence in Jordan. It was a pointless lecture, delivered only to bolster Zeidan’s self-importance. He told them to orientate themselves completely with the conference facilities and to minimize contact with the secretariat of any of the other delegations, to avoid the slightest risk of indiscretion or compromise. He concluded by assuring them that they were present at an important moment in Palestinian history and there was a mumble of agreement from the people assembled in offices which proved to be cramped when they were all together at the same time. Sulafeh’s lack of response was undetected in the murmur of general acceptance.

‘I guess we’d better discover where everything is,’ said Dajani.

‘I’ve already done that,’ refused Sulafeh.

‘Why not show me then?’

‘I’ve other things to do.’ From now on she slept with whom she wanted, not with whom she had to.

She’d noticed the kiosk in the secretariat building and returned to it, studying the available street maps of Geneva and finally buying the most detailed. She ignored the waiting delegation bus, walking by it in the car park and twice made a point of engaging in passing conversation with groups of security guards, to extend her automatic acceptance. At the check-point exit she went to the main guardhouse and pretended to need help understanding her map to ensure that the people on duty there would remember her.

Sulafeh used the pedestrian underpass of the Ferney highway which Vasili Zenin had already isolated as a barrier to his advantage and walked back into the city along the Rue de Montbrilliant which the Russian had also explored, earlier. She located the post office she was seeking on the obviously named Quai de la Poste, just across the Coulouvreniere bridge, but did not go into it because the planning decreed there were still three more days before she could expect the instructions to be delivered at the poste restante facility and it would have been wrong to present herself prematurely, remote though the risk was of her later being remembered by any of the counter staff. Instead she found a pavement café and ordered coffee, sitting relaxed with her legs stretched out before her, staring over the lake. Was the man with whom she was going to work already here in Switzerland? Or still to arrive? And what would he be like, physically? Different, she hoped, from Dajani, with his sagging belly and sour, uncleaned breath. Would it ultimately be necessary to sleep with Dajani, to placate the man? She did not want to but she would if it were necessary: she could always close her mind and her sensations to the act, like she had so often in the past.

Barbara Giles chose for a lawyer a man named Henry Harris because they’d attended high school together and even dated once or twice but halfway through the meeting she wished she had gone instead to a stranger to handle the divorce because although she supposed it was unavoidable she found the probing questioning embarrassing. Hot with difficulty she said her sex life with Roger was satisfactory and that she did not believe he had a mistress and that financially he provided everything she asked for, did not drink excessively and had never, ever, hit her. They rarely even rowed.

Harris, a ginger-haired, freckle-faced man whose college muscle had turned into indulged fat looked up finally and said: ‘So what the hell’s the problem!’

‘I wish I knew,’ said the woman, inadequately.

‘Barbara,’ said the lawyer, encouragingly. ‘You’ve got to do better than this. So far I haven’t got grounds for a divorce petition: I’ve got a nomination for marriage of the year!’

‘We’re just not interested in each other any more.’

‘You sure that’s true?’

‘Roger doesn’t appear to be, at least.’

‘You didn’t tell me his job.’

‘He works for the government,’ said the woman, producing the familiar cliché.

‘The CIA?’ recognized Harris, at once.

‘I guess that’s the problem,’ she said. ‘We’ve lived in all sorts of exciting places and now we’re back here and he’s got a senior grading and it should all be wonderful and it isn’t. We can never talk about anything, like all the other husbands and wives in the country talk about things. It’s actually like he does have a mistress.’

‘Thought about getting guidance?’

‘What can a counsellor tell me that I haven’t already told myself?’

‘I would have thought it was worth a try: it’s certainly a better idea than thinking of a divorce,’ said the lawyer. ‘Like I said, there aren’t proper grounds at the moment.’

‘What about disinterest?’

‘From what you’ve said, Roger isn’t disinterested,’ disputed Harris. ‘What exactly does he say about dissolving the marriage.’

‘That he’s willing to do whatever will make me happy.’

‘And will a divorce make you happy?’

Barbara Giles looked down into her lap, lower lip between her teeth. ‘No,’ she admitted.

‘You’ve got to work it out between the two of you and at the moment I’m not the one to help,’ decided Harris, positively.

‘You know what I find it impossible to understand?’

‘What?’

‘That people – ordinary people – actually believe working in intelligence is some sort of exciting job.’

As she spoke her husband was in the code room at the American embassy at Bern, translating the series of messages coming in from the CIA headquarters at Langley. The unnecessarily repeated theme through most was the high presidential authority attached to the conference, which had to be protected at all costs. The last said: ‘Distrust all offered British help. Consider their representative, Charles Muffin, as hostile to be treated as such at all times.’

Five streets from the US embassy, Vasili Zenin despatched the meeting instructions to Sulafeh Nabulsi at the poste restante section of the Geneva post office she had already isolated.

And in Geneva itself the hotel check by Swiss counterintelligence finally reached the small, breakfast-only auberge off the Boulevard de la Tour.

‘Yes,’ said the clerk, ‘I think I recognize him.’