The Run Around

Chapter Twenty-one

With his habitual and trained caution, Vasili Zenin arrived in Geneva early and by train, as the first rehearsal for what would be necessary later. During its final approaches to Geneva, through the outskirts of the city, the Russian gazed from the carriage windows to the streets outside and occasionally below, watching the rush hour traffic and confirming his earlier impression of the uselessness of a car for his escape. The dossier of complaint against the Soviet embassy in general and Yuri Ivanovich Lyudin in particular was going to be very extensive.

From the Cornavin terminal, Zenin walked in the direction against the clogged traffic along the one-way Rue des Terreaux du Temple and on the side furthest from the café he had specified in the unsigned note to Sulafeh Nabulsi. It was just opening, black-aproned waiters re-arranging stacked chairs around freshly washed pavement tables: three were pulling from its sprung housing the striped canvas canopy to form a protective roof over the outside area. It had started a bright day, despite being autumn, and Zenin hoped the weather would hold so they could later sit at a kerbside table: it would be easier to run, if he had to run, from somewhere already out in the open rather than from inside the more easily sealed café interior.

In the Rue Bautte there was a much smaller place, more a bar and tabac than a café, already open for early morning workers. On the pavement there were three minute tables, each bordered by plastic-ribbed chairs, but Zenin went inside, wanting concealment now. He ordered coffee and from a bench directly against the fronting window looked across at the designated meeting place, studying everything with proper professional alertness. If the note to the woman had been intercepted or found – or if she were not the committed zealot she was supposed to be but some sort of bait – then that afternoon he would be walking into a trap, a trap at this moment being primed and set.

He watched the waiters individually, intent upon establishing that each moved about the café and the tables with accustomed familiarity, with none showing an awkwardness to hint at hurriedly drafted-in counterintelligence officers. Satisfied all the waiters were genuine, Zenin extended the examination, looking for any buildup of loitering groups of Watchers. Or maintenance tents or vans in which they might have been hidden. When he failed to locate any he sought out parked but enclosed vehicles which could have disguised mobile communication centres from which his encirclement could have been co-ordinated once he got to the café. Again there was nothing.

Finally reassured, Zenin left the bar but did not rejoin the Rue des Terreaux du Temple, unwilling to risk association a second time with a street upon which he was later to return for a third. Instead he left the area along the Rue de Mandement, picking up a tramcar at the first available stop to take him to the quais, instinctively checking for pursuit and finding none.

With time to spare before the woman’s stipulated departure from the hotel, Zenin strolled along the Bergues, enjoying the unexpected sunshine and lunched overlooking the island in the middle of the river. None of the training, no matter how realistic, could properly have prepared him for an actual assignment and almost illogically now he was involved in one Zenin was experiencing a sensation of anti-climax. The problem, he recognized, was that the training had been too intense, every hour of every day at Kuchino and Balashikha forced to a degree of tension calculated to take him to within a millimetre of his limit. But the reality – this reality – of the situation was nothing like that. Of course there was no relaxation: what he’d done by arriving in Geneva today as early as he had and by carrying out the checks that he had was unnecessary assurance to himself that he was leaving nothing to chance or trusting anything to be as he imagined – rather than knew – it to be. But the reality still lacked the … the what? Frenzy was the word that came at once to his mind, momentarily confusing him, but then he accepted it. Frenzied was a fitting description of the training: sabotage instruction at nine, unarmed killing at ten, draining physical exercise at eleven, thirty-minute meal-break (but not a moment longer) at twelve. And everything resuming precisely at twelve-thirty, murder by untraceable poisons, communication security at fourteen hundred, and … Zenin did not bother to recall the next session. What he could remember was the physically exhausting, sagging effect of it, of crawling every night into bed sapped of all strength and all adrenalin. This reality was not like that. There had been moments of tension but not many and nothing like the training stress. This had been like … no, holiday was not the right word, not like frenzy had so perfectly fitted into his mind, but it was the only description that presented itself. Between the limited highs of the tension there had been too many and too long extended troughs of inactivity. How easy was it, he wondered, to become complacent? Not to check someone else’s preparation which was supposed to be impeccable or improvise for personal protection upon the rigid patterns choreographed by Moscow? Easy for some, Zenin decided: for most. But never for him. He determined never – ever – to be lulled into dangerous relaxation. He would create his own tensions, his own adrenalin-pumping strains, maintaining the constant nerve-stretched expectation that something was always about to go wrong, if not this minute then the next minute, always suspicious, always distrustful. And most importantly always safe.

With that determination in mind Zenin pushed himself up from his table, the bill carefully checked and the required fifteen per cent added to the precise centime, and retraced his steps back down the quai to cross the Pont de l’Ile on foot before catching another pursuit-checking tram not to but near the Rue Barthelemy-Menn. From the drop-off point, once more on foot, he zigzagged through the streets and roads at times directly away from his destination, finally reaching it by narrowing his perambulations in gradually tightening circles.

Zenin was in place but completely concealed in the Avenue de la Croisette thirty minutes before the time he had given Sulafeh Nabulsi to leave her hotel, early again for the same reason he had been early in the Rue des Terreaux du Temple, one professional searching for another professional hint of surveillance. And as before found nothing. The day had built up to be surprisingly warm, somnolent almost, and the streets were practically deserted under the weight of the sun: insects, confused, actually milled about the tree against which he waited, so that he had to swish them away with his hand. Zenin realized, abruptly, that the affect of any strong sunlight in his eyes had been something for which no allowance had been made during the Balashikha training, because the Bern embassy insistence had been that there would be none, at this time of the year. Something further to check when he installed the rifle in the corner apartment off the Colombettes road.

Immediately she left the hotel, exactly at the time given, Zenin recognized Sulafeh Nabulsi, from the many photographs he had memorized. The temptation was to study her physically but he refused it, security uppermost in his mind. He let her stride past the junction near which he stood, concentrating for any indication of pursuit upon the hotel exit from which she emerged. There was none, so he transferred his attention to the street itself, for a car pick-up, but again no vehicle moved. Zenin eased on to the Rue Barthelemy-Menn, picking her up about two hundred yards ahead. Almost at the moment he isolated her, she jerked suddenly sideways and to the left into the Boulevard de la Cluse, so by cutting left himself into the Rue de Peupliers and hurrying he was already on the Rue de l’Aubepine when she came out on to it, continuously glancing behind her. The check for pursuit was pitifully amateurish but at least she was making an effort, Zenin recognized. The woman hurried northwards towards the lake and the Russian frowned, unable to believe she intended trying to cover the entire distance on foot because he knew she would never be able to make the café on the Rue des Terreaux du Temple in the time he had set out. She was still darting backward glances and he realized she was seeking something more than surveillance so when she hailed the taxi he was on the look-out too, managing to stop one almost at once. Sure of her destination but not wishing to make any ridiculous ‘follow that taxi’ demand upon his driver Zenin asked for the Quai du Seujet, at its connection with the Coulouvreniere bridge. He still had the woman’s vehicle in sight when it stopped short of the bridge. Zenin let his own taxi continue over and then waited and within minutes she appeared, hurrying over the foot crossing.

He let her get ahead and fell into step but on the far side of the road and a long way behind, so that any surveillance would visibly intrude between them and show up to him. And at last allowed himself the indulgence of some physical impression. The black, shoulder-touching hair bobbed as she hurried and on her frequent, backward-checking half turns, which she made without pause, he was aware of her breasts bouncing with her movement. She wore a khaki-coloured dress, belted, so that it was difficult to know whether it actually was a dress or a matching skirt and top and carried a large handbag, more a briefcase, supported from her shoulder by a strap. Always, as she walked, she kept her hand securely over it. Fuller figured than he had imagined from the photographs, Zenin decided: most certainly heavier busted. And not as tall, although that was a reflection at which he was surprised because he knew her height precisely from the already provided description.

She slowed when she reached the Rue des Terreaux du Temple, obviously seeking out the café, and then picked up pace when she identified it. When she reached it she hesitated again, looking around as if she were expecting a greeting from among the people who thronged the outside area. When nothing came she went forward and Zenin smiled, pleased, when she chose one of the few vacant outside tables. It was far back, close to the café, and well positioned to see anyone approaching. Which Zenin did not attempt. Instead he continued on to the corner of the Rue Bautte from which he had watched earlier that day, to ensure no surveillance had been established in the intervening period. While he watched he saw Sulafeh Nabulsi take a cosmetic compact from the large case and spend a long time examining her face and putting into place the hair that had become disarranged during her evasive approach from the Rue Barthelemy-Menn.

Zenin allowed ten minutes, alert now not so much upon her but upon anyone or any group getting into position around her: she had almost completed the mineral water she had ordered and was actually looking nervously about her before the Russian moved.

He crossed the street and threaded his way through the outer tables, smiling as he approached her table.

‘Hello,’ he said, still testing. He spoke English.

‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s me.’

‘Go away.’

‘Why so hostile?’

‘If you don’t go away I shall call a waiter. Or the management.’

‘We can talk, can’t we?’

There was a waiter three tables away and Sulafeh looked towards the man and made as if to raise her hand in a summons.

‘Why be so difficult?’ said Zenin, pleased at her reaction. ‘Why give me the run around?’

She dropped her hand at the code phrase. At first she stared at him quite without expression and then, slowly, she smiled. She gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the table and said: ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

Zenin did, smiling back at her. Close up she was very attractive, almost beautiful. The olive skin of her face was perfect and unblemished and despite the compact she wore little make-up, only a suggestion of lip colouring. There was nothing at all around her eyes which were deep brown, open in apparent innocence and which were studying him with the interest matching that with which he was looking at her. He let his own eyes drop, briefly, to her body, particularly those full rounded breasts and she knew what he was doing and wasn’t offended. The nearby waiter came up and Zenin remembered to order mineral water although he could have explained alcohol away by telling her he was a Christian Palestinian. Sulafeh accepted another drink and when the waiter left looked at him expectantly. He said: ‘Would you have called someone to throw me out?’

‘Of course,’ she said, at once. ‘I’ve every reason to be here: we can’t risk anyone getting in the way, can we?’

Zenin nodded, believing her. ‘Very good,’ he said.

She swallowed, dipping her head at the praise. She said: ‘I’m being very careful.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’ she demanded at once.

‘I followed you here, all the way from your hotel.’ He jerked his head to the Rue Bautte. ‘And then watched for a while, from over there.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you were alone,’ said Zenin. ‘I’m being careful, too.’

‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ said Sulafeh. ‘Now, I mean.’

‘And?’

‘I still don’t know.’ She was immediately drawn to him, but was unsure if that were because of his obvious attractiveness or because of what she knew him to be.

‘I’m not sure either,’ said Zenin, which was a lie but he was content to let her make what she wanted from the ambiguity.

She looked directly at him for several moments and Zenin held her eyes and a heaviness grew between them. To break the mood, Sulafeh patted the briefcase-type bag she had trapped between her leg and the chair leg and said: ‘I’ve got everything here.’

‘What’s everything?’

‘Complete plan of the conference area, with all the rooms and chambers marked and identified. The most up-to-date schedule of the sessions—’

‘Which could be changed, of course?’ Zenin interrupted.

‘I believe they frequently are,’ she agreed.

‘How much warning do you get, as interpreter?’

‘Overnight.’

‘So we’ll need to meet every day.’

She did not reply at once, looking directly at him again. Then she said: ‘Yes, we’ll have to meet every day.’

Zenin smiled at her and she smiled back. He said: ‘Will that be difficult for you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Beneath the atmosphere growing between them Zenin was instantly aware of her doubt. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not a problem with the conference arrangements,’ she qualified. ‘Until the sessions start there’s very little for me to do.’

‘What then?’

‘A man called Dajani, the other interpreter. He’s becoming a nuisance.’

‘Sexually?’ insisted Zenin, openly.

Sulafeh nodded. ‘He’s made a play from the beginning. Hung around the conference area and the hotel …’ She shuddered. ‘He’s repulsive,’ she said.

‘I can’t kill him,’ said Zenin, reflectively, ‘it would draw attention and we obviously can’t risk that.’

Although she knew what he was – or believed she knew what he was – the casualness with which he spoke of killing astonished her. At once there was a further, wonderful sensation: the eroticism of it erupted through her and she felt the sexual wetness between her legs. ‘No,’ she accepted, her voice uneven, ‘you can’t kill him.’

Zenin was conscious of the change in her tone and wondered at it. He said: ‘Have you slept with him yet?’

‘No,’ said Sulafeh. Her excitement continued to grow at the equally casual and detached way he was now talking of sex, and she wondered if it showed.

‘You might have to, if it’s the only way.’

Stop it! she thought, as a fresh surge swept through her. She said: ‘I suppose so.’

‘Could you do it, if you had to?’

‘I can do anything to ensure that we don’t fail,’ insisted the woman, striving for control and for the professionalism she was supposed to have. ‘I just don’t want to: like I said, he’s repulsive.’

‘Like you also said, it’s a nuisance,’ agreed Zenin, reflective again. ‘I don’t like the risk of anything unforeseen.’

‘There was no way I could have known.’

‘I wasn’t criticizing you.’ He thought she was flushed and said: ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘There’s no change in the schedule, for the commemorative photograph?’

‘No,’ she said.

Zenin gestured towards the bag and said: ‘Is the site marked there?’

‘Yes.’

He would have to visit the unseen apartment soon, to ensure the sightline was as he needed it to be. For his own enjoyment he reached across the café table, taking her hand. She reached forward to help him, enjoying his feel. ‘Such a small hand!’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Have you ever fired a Browning automatic?’

It had not been necessary for him to touch her, to ask a question like that. ‘I thought you were trained in the Libyan camps, like I was?’ she said. Throughout the planning Sulafeh had been told, by cut-outs she believed to be Arab but who were, in fact, KGB agents like Zenin, that he was a fanatical member of a breakaway faction of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal group.

‘I know the weapons I was trained on,’ said Zenin, the escape easy and still holding her hand. ‘Not how women were instructed.’

‘Usually it was Kalashnikov, Chinese as well as Russian,’ said Sulafeh. ‘But there were others – including Brownings.’

‘It’s a parabellum: heavy,’ said Zenin, freeing her hand at last. ‘You will need to be very close: the recoil could make you fire wide. Soft-nosed bullets, of course. Guaranteed to kill.’

Sulafeh felt the sensation growing again, at the return to casual talk about killing, and thought, please no! She did not think she could sustain much more. She said: ‘Interpreters have to get close; that’s their job.’

‘What about conference security: getting the gun in that day?’

Sulafeh snorted a dismissive laugh. ‘Ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I’ve completed the accreditation and got all my passes and I’ve made a particular point of becoming known to the security personnel, so that they recognize me.’ She touched the bag. ‘I’ve carried that all the time, so that it has become accepted without question, like I am. Not once has anyone demanded to look inside.’

‘What about metal-detecting devices?’

‘They have the hand-held sort, to run over the body. Again, I’ve never been checked.’

‘There aren’t any electronically governed doors you have to pass through?’

‘No.’

‘Careless,’ judged Zenin.

‘To our advantage,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll get you out, you know,’ said Zenin, in sudden promise. ‘We’ll need to go through everything very thoroughly, to make sure you understand, but I’ve already planned it. It’ll work.’

‘I was told you would,’ she said. ‘Look after me,’ she added.

‘Trust me.’

‘I can, very easily,’ she said, holding him with another of her direct looks.

There was the need to examine the apartment off the Colombettes road, thought Zenin. But alone. To consider – wildly imagine – taking her there would be madness, contravening all the training: that too intense, too action-packed training he’d earlier thought of so critically. It was part of the tension to want a woman, Zenin knew: excitement heightening all the senses and all the needs. He’d actually been warned about – and against – it during that training. But hadn’t believed it, until now. He said: ‘Have you got to go to the conference centre any more today?’

Sulafeh shook her head. ‘I went this morning, to collect the up-to-date schedules.’

‘What else do you have to do?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I left everything open.’ Sulafeh allowed the pause and then added: ‘I did not know what you would want.’

It would be safer for her to hand over the schedules somewhere less open, he thought. And then he thought it was a very weak excuse. He said: ‘There is somewhere I have to go. To an apartment.’

‘Yes,’ she said, expectantly. Ask me, she thought: please ask me!

‘Would you come?’

‘You know I will.’

‘I want you.’

‘I want you, too. Very much.’

‘It’s not far.’

‘When we leave would you walk close behind me?’

‘Why?’

‘There might be a mark on my skirt.’

They sat apart in the taxi, savouring a pleasure by denying it to themselves. They did not talk, either. He took her arm after paying the cab off in the Rue du Vidollet and he felt her shiver and they were hurrying when they reached the apartment block, off Colombettes. The vestibule was deserted and so was the elevator – where again they stood apart – and Zenin was sure they entered the apartment unobserved by anyone. Inside neither could wait. He snatched at her and she grabbed back at him, pulling off his clothes as fast as he tried to undress her and they made love the first time on the floor just inside the entrance, Zenin still half wearing his shirt. They climaxed almost at once and together and he left her lying there while he hurriedly explored the apartment to find a bedroom. He led her there and they made love again, twice, but more calmly now, exploring one another, finding the secret, private spots, each wanting to please the other.

‘Wonderful,’ Sulafeh gasped, the last time. ‘You’re wonderful.’

‘So are you: fantastic,’ said Zenin. He wanted to make love to her again, immediately, and knew he would be able to. He wondered if his excitement were hardened by realizing that in a few days’ time he was going to kill her.

Charlie missed it the first time, picking out the significance only on the second, comparable study of the logs. Determined to be sure of everything, he caught the afternoon train to Bern and walked several times around the streets bordering the Soviet Embassy on Brunnadernain, expertly studying all the overlooking buildings to isolate the observation points from which the Swiss Watchers would maintain their surveillance. Although official checks were still necessary, Charlie was sure he knew what the answers would be, and that he was not mistaken.

‘Fuck it!’ he said, to himself. ‘Too fucking late again!’

Back in Geneva he telephoned David Levy in advance of the Swiss counter-intelligence chief, curious to know if the Israeli had spotted the same inconsistency as he had. As a test, Charlie let Levy lead the conversation. The Mossad chief mentioned it at once.

‘Have you told Blom yet?’ asked Charlie.

‘No. Have you?’

‘I want to make absolutely sure, from the service people first.’

‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘It’s still got to be done,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Has there been any independent contact from the others?’

‘Giles called. Said he thinks it’s ridiculous to exclude you: he’s told Blom, apparently.’

Loved at last, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Did Giles see anything in the logs?’

‘If he did he hasn’t told me.’

‘Do you think they’ll accept this as positive evidence that the bastard is here somewhere?’

‘No,’ said Levy, at once. ‘And neither do I. It’s proof of something, perhaps. But not that he’s our man.’

‘You know what you’re all going to do!’ demanded Charlie, exasperated. ‘You’re all going to be pissing about trying to convince yourselves nothing’s wrong when the shooting starts!’

‘I do think we should meet tonight, instead of waiting until tomorrow, though,’ conceded the Israeli.

Charlie had been marked by two squads of the specially drafted Soviet Watchers when he walked past the embassy on Brunnadernain the second time and positively targeted on the third occasion by both. Between them the two groups managed five exposures and the photographs were included in that night’s diplomatic despatch from Bern to Moscow, under a priority designation so that instead of remaining overnight in Dzerzhinsky Square they were taken at once by special courier to Berenkov’s apartment in Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

The courier meant it was official and normally Valentina would have said nothing but she was abruptly conscious of her husband’s startled reaction.

‘Alexei Aleksandrovich!’ she exclaimed, alarmed. ‘What is it!’

‘Someone from the past,’ said Berenkov. He remembered his wife had met Charlie Muffin, during the Moscow episode, but decided against mentioning the name.

The special meeting in Geneva was already under way when Berenkov summoned his emergency session in Moscow.