As Harland moved towards Immigration at Beirut, acutely conscious that he would benefit from a shave, haircut and a new set of clothes, he noticed a group of three men standing a little way off from the visa counter. One nudged the other two to look in his direction.
Instead of making for the counter, he arrived in front of them and dropped his bag. ‘Hello there,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Tell me, are you Syrian or Lebanese intelligence?’
The men shifted and pretended not to understand.
‘I was hoping one of you could give me a ride into town.’ He searched their faces expectantly. ‘No takers? Oh well. Just in case you’re wondering, I’m with the United Nations. Robert Harland, Special Adviser to Secretary-General Benjamin Jaidi.’ He opened his passport and offered it to them. They looked the other way and began to walk off, one flicking worry beads, the other two finding the need to consult their cell phones.
He moved to the kiosk to pay his twenty-five dollars for the visa, then to the counter where his passport received a little stamp showing a sailing barque. Finally he passed through Immigration and Customs and made for the taxi rank, where a shabby Mercedes waited in the warm summer night.
Both Benjamin Jaidi and Sir Robin Teckman had told him to go to Beirut and, most importantly, it was the only place Eva Rath would agree to meet him when he phoned the number Teckman had given him. The reaction of his vanished partner had been surprising: she offered neither an expression of astonishment about his finding her, nor remorse for her disappearance, but simply forbade him to visit the apartment block in Shabazi Street, Tel Aviv, where she now lived with her mother. She had told him that Hanna Rath was now in her last weeks and she would not stand for Harland disturbing her peaceful end.
As the Mercedes bumped through the vast new developments in the central district that had risen on the ruins of Beirut’s civil war, Harland found he was curiously at ease with the situation. The pain of her rejection of him had in the last week or so miraculously ebbed away. He was now concerned only with getting answers about her behaviour. Of course he now understood she must have left to look after her mother, who as one of the few Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in the Czech Republic, had presumably gone to Israel to die. But there were other aspects of Eva’s departure which Teckman had told him about. SIS was certain that she was working for Mossad in a capacity requiring her to move between London, New York and Tel Aviv, possibly as a courier. Having been trained by StB, the security services in communist Czechoslovakia, then by the KGB spy school, Eva would have interested Mossad high command. Harland imagined she must have done a deal that allowed her mother to live the remainder of her days in Tel Aviv with medical assistance, in exchange for Eva’s talents as a spy. It was unsurprising to him. If he’d been asked to describe the unseen parts of his lover, the first would be her need to deceive, the second was her habit of placing herself beyond control by vanishing, and the third was the unbreakable bond with her mother, Hanna. These were to a very large degree the drives of Eva Rath, although the things that had attracted him when he was barely twenty were her nimble intelligence and startling, intimate beauty.
Why hadn’t she told him? Why not explain? She could never reasonably have doubted his devotion to her. It had spanned nearly three decades and, even in the long period when their son Tomas was growing up and he had no idea of his existence or where she was, he had still nursed his love for her.
But now, as he thought of her, he felt strangely unburdened. He was amused by things, which quite apart from anything else accounted for his twitting the graveyard shift of intelligence officers at the airport, usually an unwise move.
He arrived at the Playlands Hotel – specified by Eva and suggested by Teckman – and checked in. There were no messages for him and he tramped off to his bedroom in the southern wing of the hotel where he poured two miniatures from the fridge into a glass and took it into the shower. Fifteen minutes later he was standing on the balcony letting his hair dry in the sea breeze, when there was a knock at the door. He opened it to Eva, who stood in the corridor with a tight, drained smile. He instinctively bent down, took her by the shoulders and let his lips skate across each of her cheeks.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said.
She circled a finger in the air, which he took to mean that the room was probably bugged, and they walked through to the balcony.
‘Where the hell did you go?’ he said, unable to hide the anger of fifteen months. This was not how he’d planned it.
‘Bobby, don’t start…’
‘Don’t start! I thought you were dead. I searched everywhere. You just walked out with no explanation, no idea of the hurt you caused me or the effort I would put into finding you.’
‘I knew you would eventually.’
‘I didn’t – Teckman did. You remember him?’
‘Of course. I worked for them, like you, Bobby.’
He shook his head, wondering at his own earlier nonchalance about seeing her.
‘Then why not tell me in the first place? You only had to explain about your mother. I’d have understood.’ He examined her in the light from the illuminated swimming pool beneath them. Her hair was much shorter and as yet unflecked with grey. She was using less make-up than before and had put on a pound or two that showed in her cheeks. If anything, it made her look younger. ‘You look good,’ he said quietly. ‘Really, a lot better than you did in New York.’ He stopped, studied her, then exploded. ‘Jesus… are you incapable of understanding what I felt for you?’
‘And you?’ she asked, calmly turning towards the sea. ‘Did it occur to you to ask what I was going through in New York?’
‘But I did. I tried to talk about Tomas with you. You said so little that I thought you… Look, I tried. You know that.’
‘I knew no one. Only you. You were the one person who knew what I had been through. I had no other witness to my life in New York. Do you understand what I mean? No one who knew that I’d lost Tomas and what that meant to me.’ She stopped. ‘It was never going to work, Bobby. Never. We… our love…’
‘Was overwhelmed by circumstances,’ he said.
She grimaced. ‘Yes, if you want to put it that way. But it was also destroyed by you, Bobby. You didn’t know how to talk to me. Maybe that’s because there was an inequality between us. I lost my son; you hardly knew yours. He was an acquaintance for a few weeks. That’s all.’ Her jaw clamped shut and her eyes welled with tears.
He touched her on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said.
‘No it isn’t!’ she hissed, recoiling from him. ‘That’s the point. It’s not okay. I’m not English. I have to be able to talk about this and be with someone who understands what his death means to me now – today. It doesn’t go, you know. It doesn’t just end like that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, moved by the pain flaring in her eyes. ‘I admit this is a failing of mine, but I wasn’t responsible for his death. I did everything to try to save him.’ He paused. ‘And you know if you and your mother had not been so close to Viktor Lipnik, Tomas would never have seen the things he did in Bosnia. He wouldn’t have been a danger to Lipnik. It was Viktor Lipnik – your lover – not I, who killed Tomas…’
‘Don’t!’ she said. A passionate hatred passed across her face. Without looking down, she felt for the arm of the metal chair and sat at the table.
‘I’d like some vodka if you have some.’ This was unlike her. He had only ever seen her drink wine. He went to the minibar, resolving to be calm.
When he returned with the drinks, he laid his hand on the table near hers. ‘Eva, I’d have done anything to keep you with me. Anything. You knew how much I loved you. You should have helped me, shown me how to talk and listen to you.’
‘You can’t tell a man this. Either he knows or he doesn’t know. You don’t, Bobby. That’s why I stopped loving you.’ She paused to consider this. ‘No, that’s not true. I didn’t stop loving you. There are many parts of you that are wonderful; it was just that my love for you was not deep enough to tolerate the way you were ignoring me.’
The self-evident truth of this stung Harland. That was exactly why she had left. She hadn’t told him because she had been hurt and resented him.
‘Christ, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Really, I don’t know how to make it-’
‘It’s no use. You are what you are. I know why you’re like this. You went through a lot when you were tortured, and with your cancer. That’s why you’re so bad at talking. You should have seen someone at the time. It’s gone so deep.’
‘I did. But that wasn’t the reason I was so bad with you. I didn’t know what to say. You erected a pretty impenetrable wall. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her head nodding in agreement. ‘I know.’
They drank in silence, then he asked about her mother.
‘She has cancer. It moves very slowly, but each day she is reduced in some way. The doctors are very good and we have two nurses who stay at the apartment, so I can leave when it’s necessary. They have been good to…’ She stopped when her voice cracked.
‘It’s very distressing – your only living relative.’
‘I find that the strangest part,’ she said, moving her head from side to side so that the sea breeze reached her neck.
Harland nodded. ‘Well, you have my sympathy. I do understand what she means to you.’
She nodded thanks, lit a cigarette and looked at him more softly. ‘Why are you in the Middle East?’
‘Trying to hook up with Jaidi. They were due here yesterday but they aren’t leaving Damascus until tomorrow.’
‘Teckman called me before you. Did you know that?’
‘So you wouldn’t be caught on the hop,’ he said. ‘That was the right thing to do.’
‘But this is not the first time you’ve been in the Middle East this year, is it? We heard that the UN talked to Hamas three months ago. Was that you?’
He shrugged. ‘If I was talking to Hamas, I couldn’t tell you about it, Eva.’
‘I didn’t say talking – present tense. I said talked.’
‘My answer is the same.’
‘I’ll take it as a yes then.’
After that exchange he couldn’t help but press her. ‘They picked you up at Heathrow and followed you to the safe house in Kensington on the day Norquist was killed. They went over the security film for the day and found you.’
She didn’t react to this but said, ‘Look, if we’re going to have this conversation, we should go down to the pool or the beach.’
They went down one floor, slipped through the fire exit and walked towards the beach where they removed their shoes and made for a line of parasols.
‘You were waiting in line with Vice-Admiral Norquist at Immigration,’ he started. ‘He became suspicious after you dropped your stuff a couple of times. He knew you were trying to strike up a conversation with him and told our people to follow you.’
‘Is that so?’ she said indifferently.
‘They realised your flight arrived several hours before his and that you only went to the Immigration desk when his flight from Reykjavik was disembarking. You were timing it. Were you going to trail him to the hotel? Pick him up… that kind of thing?’ No answer came. ‘I guess Norquist was a big prize for you. To know what he was saying to the British government? ’
‘Teckman told you all this,’ she said huskily and then cleared her throat. ‘Are you still working for British Intelligence, Bobby?’
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘They don’t just give out information like that. What did you do for them?’
They were fencing again. He wondered how much this game had been part of their attraction. ‘They owed me,’ he said. ‘They wanted me to keep an eye on someone and I did. In exchange I got your number.’ He thought for a moment and decided to take a chance. ‘A lot else went on at Heathrow that day.’
Her expression became animated.
‘A dozen or more terrorist suspects passed through Terminal Three and exchanged identities at precisely the moment you arrived.’
She said nothing.
‘What were you doing there?’ he asked.
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Surely you can answer that. It doesn’t affect you or your security. Also it’s important. There has to be a connection between the arrival of Norquist at Heathrow and the identity switch of the terrorists. The current theory is that the Norquist killing was a diversion.’
‘See! You’re talking like you’re still working for SIS.’
‘That’s because I can’t avoid the conclusion that your movements that day could provide a clue. If you knew of Norquist’s arrangements, it follows someone else could.’
She looked out into the dark towards the waterline, where the waves caught the light as they reared before breaking on the sand. ‘Tell me more about the switch,’ she said.
‘No, you tell me something, Eva.’
‘My name is Irina. It always has been.’
‘You were Eva when I fell in love with you in Rome. You were Eva in New York.’
‘But I am Irina,’ she said with quiet defiance. ‘That is my name, Bobby.’
‘Look at us! We’re still at it. Fencing with each other over some bloody secret. Why? Why’re we still doing it?’
‘Because that’s our work. That’s what we’re good at.’
‘Look, if there’s anything you can tell me, please do. I’m instructed to tell you that you’ll receive no hassle when you pass through London again on your regular trips. Everything will remain as it is.’
‘There won’t be any more.’ The breeze lifted her hair at the front and for a moment he saw Tomas, standing in the cold outside his apartment in Brooklyn on that first night when he learned that he had a son.
He shook himself. ‘How did you know when to follow Norquist?’
She said nothing.
‘We know you were booked into the St James’s Hotel, as Norquist was. We don’t understand why you went to the safe house first, but we assume you were going to make your way to the hotel later, maybe make a pass at him?’
She shook her head despairingly.
‘Well… what was the plan then? You do realise that SIS can blow your cover and render you useless to Mossad?’
‘I need the money. I need their help in Tel Aviv. Don’t threaten me. After all you have done… don’t threaten me.’
‘How did you know when to fly?’ He demanded. ‘Norquist’s schedule was secret.’
She put her hand to her cheek. ‘It was easy. Norquist started life as a naval helicopter pilot in Vietnam. His aircraft was hit and he crushed several vertebrae when it crash-landed. Every time Norquist was planning a long flight somewhere, he got treatment for his back problem in New York.’
Harland stiffened but said nothing about Sammi Loz. ‘And?’
‘We are interested in the man who treated him. It seems their relationship went beyond the normal doctor-patient thing. They did business together. That’s all I can say without jeopardising my position. Please think of me and my mother.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘Some deals.’
‘What deals? Stocks, restaurants, futures, real estate? What?’
She looked at him quizzically, then said, ‘Real estate?’
‘Why would you be interested in this?’
‘Come on, you can’t ask me that. Please.’
‘Yes, I see.’ He paused, several calculations going on in his mind at once. ‘Information on high-ranking American officials is very useful to the Israeli government, but only if there is some impropriety that can be used against them, or even better, used to influence American policy in Israel’s favour. So you were seeking evidence of this nature. But why in London?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you.’
Harland slapped his knee. ‘Ah, I get it. You already had the evidence you needed and this meeting was part of a regular arrangement. He was working for you already. Was he telling you about American intelligence policy?’
She uncrossed her legs, leaned forward in the wicker chair and looked him in the eyes.
That was all he needed. ‘Thank you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We both know we’re talking about the osteopath.’
Her gaze held his eyes.
‘So let me suggest this. Not only was Norquist telling you about US intelligence planning, he was also keeping you informed about Sammi Loz, specifically the transactions in New York that enabled you to work out the money flow to Hizbollah. But of course it wasn’t easy for Mossad to see Norquist, so your people had to fit into his arrangements. You never contacted him by phone or email; instead you popped up at some moment during his travels, to receive information and give instructions. Each time a different person would make contact, so Norquist’s security wouldn’t be suspicious. That explains why he didn’t know who you were at Heathrow.’
She nodded, but by the way she looked at him he knew there was something more.
‘What is it? What else?’
Again she shook her head. She was prepared to give a mute confirmation, but only if he reached the right solution without her aid.
‘So let’s think about this,’ he said, wishing he had brought a couple of miniatures down to the beach. ‘There was something unusual about the message you were going to give him that day. That would explain why you followed him from New York and waited before passing through Immigration with him. If it had been routine you would simply have bided your time until you saw him at the St James’s Hotel. What was it? Did you have knowledge of the hit? Were you trying to warn him?’
Her eyes pulsed and he knew he was right. He was also momentarily aware that his attraction for her still moved deep in him. ‘Does that mean you knew about the switch that was going on in Terminal Three?’
‘No, we didn’t. You have to tell me about that.’
He then proceeded to give her everything he had learned from Isis Herrick, aware that this was specifically against the instructions of Sir Robin Teckman. But he had no illusions that he was still being used by Teckman, and reasoned that he could consult his own judgement about what to tell her. She listened intently, memorising the salient details, logging and filing them away to be recalled in a matter of hours for the benefit of her controllers in Tel Aviv. After he finished, she asked him a series of penetrating questions about the tracking of the suspects, not all of which he could answer, but she nevertheless soon grasped the significance of the exclusive Anglo-American arrangements.
‘Why is this? Why don’t they use the other services in Europe?’
‘Because they don’t trust them.’
‘But that is wrong. Only a few months ago the French told the British of some Algerian suspects. We help all the European agencies on Islamist terror cells, sharing information about the movements and backgrounds of suspects. This is the only way.’
‘I’m sure there are many who agree with you, but I didn’t design the policy.’ He stopped and looked at her again. ‘Has it occurred to you that this is the level we work best at – when we’re discussing some fucking intelligence problem?’
‘Yes,’ she said, as though this had long been evident to her.
‘Well,’ he said with a bleak smile, ‘let’s think about the connection between Sammi Loz and the switch at Heathrow. How much notice did you have of Norquist travelling?’
‘Eighteen hours.’
‘And how did you know where he was going?’
‘Other intelligence,’ she said.
‘Oh come on, Eva. What other intelligence?’
‘I cannot say. Operational security.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, raising his hands in surrender. ‘So when did you hear there was a threat to his life?’
‘Just before I got on the plane at JFK. Our people had been monitoring a website. There was nothing definite, but we thought that Norquist was the likely target, and I was told to get to him as soon as possible at Heathrow and warn him.’
‘Your service was ahead of everyone else on this. As far as I can gather, the British had very little notice of the threat.’
She shrugged.
‘Right, so you did get to him at Heathrow. Did you warn him?’
‘I was about to, but then I saw armed police waiting and I knew they must be there to protect him, so I thought it would be better to wait and talk to him about the other things later. I thought he was safe.’
‘Is it the assumption of your service that Sammi Loz tipped off the would-be killers about Norquist’s plans?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because?’
‘We believed Loz knew or guessed that Norquist had been talking to us and had betrayed details of his dealings. Norquist was disposable.’
‘I see. But if there’s a connection between the switch and Norquist’s death – and we should remember that was probably caused by a stray British bullet – it means that Loz must have had notice of Norquist’s plans far in advance of you. A dozen or more men had to get tickets and time their arrival at Heathrow. That would need several days’ preparation. As soon as the operation had begun and all these suspects were in the air bound for London, someone leaked the fact that an American diplomat was about to be topped at Heathrow, on a website they knew was being monitored. Diversion strategy in place.’
‘And because his plane was late, it worked even better than they had planned,’ she said.
Harland leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘That means Sammi Loz is the planner, or at least one of the planners. It’s odd that Teckman hadn’t sussed all this by now.’
‘He couldn’t, because he didn’t know of the corrupt relationship between Admiral Norquist and Sammi Loz. Only we knew this.’
‘Right, but he suspected something, because he asked me to watch Loz.’ He paused. ‘That’s who I have been with.’
‘With Loz!’ She was shocked. ‘Our people are looking for him all over. Where is he? You must tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘I can’t, because you will wade in and others may be killed.’
‘But he’s in British hands?’
‘Sort of.’
‘I will have to tell my people that immediately. For God’s sake, why didn’t you say this before?’
‘Operational security,’ he said, grinning.
‘Bullshit.’
‘I needn’t have told you at all, Eva.’
‘But don’t you see, we are working on this together now. There are things that only we can put together.’
‘Naturally that idea pleases me, but forgive me if I have a jaundiced view of your motives, Eva. I know where your loyalties lie – with your mother and Mossad. I come pretty well down the list after those two.’
She lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke. ‘I can’t deny you’re right. But this isn’t a question of loyalty. This is about collaboration for a mutual benefit.’
‘That sounds like a phrase from the communist era. Anyway, I’m out of this. I will tell Teckman what I’ve learned from you, but then I’m going to join the Secretary-General and go back to my work.’
‘Talking to Hamas?’
‘No, acting as a special adviser to Jaidi.’
‘Who is another patient of Dr Loz’s,’ she said tartly. ‘Does he receive home visits like Norquist did?’
‘You are well informed,’ said Harland. Then he told her about his own back problem and Sammi Loz’s skills, neither of which seemed to interest her much.
‘Will he be tried in Britain?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Probably.’
‘But there is information that he has been arrested. Do the Americans know? They are looking for him too.’
‘That’s a rather sensitive point. I don’t think anyone knows we’ve got him.’
She looked puzzled. ‘How come?’
‘He’s not under formal arrest.’
‘You mean you don’t have him?’
‘I’m not completely up to speed with the situation,’ said Harland.
She pulled a cell phone from her shoulder bag and got up. ‘I have to report on this. I am sorry, it is too important to wait.’
She went a little distance off into the sand and made her call. Harland’s eyes flicked between her back and two men who had sat down in the shadows between the pool and the rear of the hotel’s lobby. As he watched her he decided he still loved her, or rather needed her, but outweighing this was her propensity to hurt him, cut him out of her life. She had done it twice before and even if she came back when her mother passed on, there was no question in his mind that she would do it again. She was pathologically elusive.
When she returned he said, ‘Were they pleased? Was it worth the trip?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you for this, Bobby.’
‘Well, at least you didn’t have to sleep with me to get the information.’
‘That’s beneath you.’
Harland felt a guilty satisfaction that he could still hurt her. ‘That’s the old game, isn’t it? That’s what you were doing when we first met in Rome. The beautiful swallow from the East ensnaring all those tired officials and politicians.’
She gazed at him with the familiar look of defiance. ‘Fuck you, Bobby.’
‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But you should know how much I’ve missed you. Really, you should know that. I realise it’s over but you bloody well could have told me why you were leaving, helped me understand.’
She lowered her eyes and drew a circle in the sand with her shoe. ‘You’re right. It was cruel of me. But I thought it was the best way.’
He glanced back to the hotel. ‘You see we have company here. I saw them at the airport – Syrian or Lebanese footpads.’
‘No, they’re with me.’
‘You travel with a bodyguard?’
‘In Lebanon, yes. It’s still a dangerous place. People go missing.’
‘So you’re not staying here?’
‘No, I have to return. It is not easy to travel from here to Israel. I want to be back as early as I can for my mother’s sake.’
‘Right,’ he said, getting up. ‘So it’s goodbye?’
‘Yes.’ She handed him a card. ‘You may need to call me. This number will reach me wherever I am. I think we will need to be talking about this again.’ Her flawless English was suddenly tinged with the Czech accent he once loved to hear.
‘I’m not working that beat any more. I’m out of this business. ’
‘If you say so.’ She held out her hand.
He took it, drew her to him and kissed her on the cheek. ‘That’s it then,’ he said.
‘We will talk. Sooner than you think.’
He let her go and she walked away towards the three men.
Harland took out his own cell phone and dialled the number on the card she had just given him. He saw her answer. ‘You didn’t take my mobile number,’ he said, and gave it to her.
When she had disappeared into the hotel he made his own call – to Sir Robin Teckman.