Hazard (30 page)

“You make it sound like I was spared out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Not exactly.”

Again it struck Hazard how paradoxical Gabil's manner of speech was. His English was crisp and overprecise, as one would expect from a well-schooled foreigner. It was alarming, actually, that a man who looked so threatening should also be intelligent. With that in mind Hazard told him, “For what it's worth, you're not on my list.”

“That is reassuring,” Gabil said, and smiled.

They were having coffee. Bitter stuff, cold by now. As he sipped it Hazard thought about what Keven's opinion would be of this black, nerve-grating bile. He felt edgy.

Gabil shifted uncomfortably. The tubular-and-plastic bistro chair was inadequate for his size. “I'd like another look at your identification,” he said.

Hazard saw no reason to cooperate, but then on second thought he realized it couldn't hurt, might even help, even as much as it had before. Reaching into his shirt pocket he also exposed the Llama for a reminder. He brought out the little plastic-coated card and handed it across.

Gabil studied it carefully front and back before returning it to Hazard. “Skepticism is a valuable habit,” he said somewhat apologetically.

“You doubt what I am?”

“No.”

Hazard sat back to seem more relaxed and sure of himself. Now that he'd been warned and certified, he hoped for some answers. Gabil was looking thoughtfully at the table top. As though having come to a decision, he brought his eyes up abruptly to Hazard and asked, “How much do you know about Mosad?”

“Who?”

Gabil's rapid Mideastern pronounciation of the word prevented Hazard from visualizing it. More clearly Gabil repeated, “Mosad.”

Now it registered. Hazard remembered it as the name for the Israeli Central Bureau of Intelligence and Security. “What about it?” he asked.

“That is my affiliation.”

“You're saying you're an Israeli agent?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“I already have.”

“How?”

“By not killing you in London or last night.”

Hazard realized it was a better explanation than any he'd thought of.

“You doubt me?”

“As you said, it's a good habit.”

“How can I convince you?”

“What about your identification?”

“We never carry any.”

“Convenient.”

“Prudent.”

Couldn't argue that, Hazard thought. Especially for an Israeli agent hanging around with Arabs. “If you're really what you claim, why tell me?”

“I tried my best to avoid it.”

“You also said you'd try to avoid killing me.”

“We can eliminate that possibility if you now accept me at my word.”

“Okay, say I do.”

“Then we work together, exchange information and take care not to get in one another's way.”

Hazard pretended to be considering that while wondering what information Gabil was talking about. He himself had nothing to contribute.

“Our two countries have often shared secrets,” Gabil added.

“I suppose I could have you checked out,” Hazard said, though he had no intention of doing so.

“You could try. It would take time and I doubt it would get us anywhere. A great deal of effort went into creating my cover. Mosad would not want to risk spoiling it. They would deny my existence. I am afraid this will have to be between us, a matter of personal trust.”

Could be all this was an attempt to divert him, Hazard thought, although it seemed unlikely they'd take such an approach or go to such an extent. While he was thinking it over, Gabil got up, went to the bar and came back with two fresh coffees. Hazard let his sit there. Another dose of that straight caffeine would turn his nerve ends into live wires.

“What have you decided?” Gabil asked.

“I'll need more convincing.”

Gabil downed his coffee with one gulp, savoring the bitterness that remained in his mouth. “I am known by the name Gabil el-Kahled,” he said. “Actually, I am Abraham Ben-David.” He went on to say that he thought of Al Birah as his home, a small town about fifteen kilometers north of Jerusalem, despite not having lived there since 1956. His father had been a schoolteacher, his mother a refugee from Krakow, and he'd had a sister two years younger.

Hazard noticed the past tense.

The reason was Arab artillery shells. A sudden, senseless barrage on Al Birah, including a direct hit that left him at age sixteen the only survivor in his family. The visible evidence of the catastrophe was his face. After recovering in a Jerusalem hospital he was cared for on a kibbutz near Netanya, where he worked and studied and eventually qualified for the university in Tel Aviv. He specialized in languages, wanted to become a teacher. But then came the war of 1967, in which he served with the 202nd Israeli Infantry. Afterward he decided to stay in the army and was now a captain. In 1969, during a pitched skirmish in the Golan Heights, a Palestinian guerrilla was seriously wounded and taken prisoner by an Israeli patrol. The Arab was identified as one Gabil el-Kahled. He was not particularly notorious, not a well-known leader, merely another of the fanatics who transiently enlisted themselves in the nomadic, dangerous and anonymous guerrilla life. Mosad took an interest in el-Kahled, decided he could be of use. To help matters, el-Kahled died from his wounds three weeks after capture. His death was kept secret, and Mosad set out to find someone who might assume his identity. It required an unusually large man, as el-Kahled had been. Mosad's first approach was to search the army files, which led to Captain Abraham Ben-David. Mosad could not have asked for a better double. Not only was he the right size, he was also a language expert who spoke fluent Arabic in the appropriate dialect. And his facial wound from 1956 would help substantiate the cover. Would he volunteer? He did. He submitted to having his old wounds surgically reopened to make them appear recent; his nose was broken and rebroken to compensate for any difference in resemblance. He was then placed in Ramleh Jail, where among the other terrorist prisoners he was at once accepted and soon gained a reputation for his intense hatred for Jews and his obdurate loyalty to the Palestinian cause. After five months in Ramleh, a believable escape was arranged, along with passage to Beirut. He had no specific assignment. Mosad listed him as a floating agent, which meant he was on his own to infiltrate whatever enemy activity came his way and that he considered important. It was two months ago in Beirut that he was brought to Mustafa's attention. Mustafa sought him out, was impressed, checked him over and recruited him.

Gabil told all this as though he were reciting someone else's history. Hazard heard and used his imagination to fill in the rest.

“Do I call you Abraham?” Hazard asked him.

“No, think of me strictly as Gabil el-Kahled. At least for now.”

Hazard raised his cup and drank to that, acknowledging the trust with this small, bitter sacrifice.

“I must get back to the villa,” Gabil said. “I would appreciate your telling me what you know.”

“It's a long story,” Hazard said, now regretting his lie and hoping to put off revealing it.

“Then briefly.”

Hazard told the truth, beginning with Carl's death.

And when it was all out Gabil seemed more disappointed than angry. “You have no idea what Pinchon is up to?”

“Do you?”

“I am not yet trusted to that extent.”

Now Hazard understood what Gabil had meant when he'd said he could use the credit.

Gabil told him, “You are aware, of course, that Hatum and Mustafa take their orders from Pinchon, as did the other two.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Who tells Pinchon what to do?”

“My guess is no one.”

“But you're not sure.”

Gabil admitted he wasn't.

Hazard decided that his vendetta had to stop somewhere. If he added Pinchon to his list there would probably be someone else on top of him and who knew how many otters. He could end up taking on all the Arabs and Jew-haters in the world. As things were he had two down and only two to go and he was anxious to have it done and over with. No matter that he disliked Pinchon, that in some way Pinchon might be implicated; he would limit himself to those four he knew were directly responsible for Carl's death. He told Gabil his decision.

“I have a better suggestion.”

“What?”

“Stop now while you are ahead. Forget it and go home.”

“Thanks for the advice, but no thanks.”

“You may find yourself involved in something more serious.”

“Are you worried about me or that I might blow your cover?

Gabil resisted the obvious lie. “Mainly my cover.”

Honest Abe, thought Hazard. “Well, that being the case, you've got nothing to worry about.”

14

C
ATHEBINE DECIDED
it was time she was properly compensated for all her strategy.

She had, she thought, been extremely patient. They'd been together almost constantly for a week, seldom more than a reach apart. Except, of course, when they were separated by a bedroom wall. Drawing from her knowledge of men, Catherine was reasonably convinced that Hazard wasn't the type to endure abstinence for any length of time, surely not voluntarily, especially not when he was being so artfully provoked by her. Also, the fact that they hadn't spoken about Carl since that first night was a good sign. She took it to mean Hazard was now seeing her as a woman in her own right rather than merely his brother's widow. If, however, when it came down to it he still had guilts about trespassing, she believed she now knew how to handle them. By sharing them.

Once was all it would take, she thought. Once together, once over the wall and freely occupying intimate territories, they would both be relinquished and bound. For her that would be the battle half-won. Then she could begin to put what she felt to the test. Humiliations, hurts, the creating of doubts, the flourishing of jealousies, evident faithlessness, intentional deceit—how far would she push him? And for how long before she had enough proof to feel and sustain faith? She didn't know. No one except Carl had ever cared enough to make a serious try at playing it out. Hopefully, Hazard had as much or even more perseverance.

As Catherine saw it the night ahead was crucial. She spent all afternoon preparing for it. While Hazard was off to Villefranche on the excuse of sightseeing, she sunned nude—just enough for her skin to have a subtle, pink flush, be slightly feverish, and that much more sensitive to any touch. She also swam and was acutely aware of her vigor and suppleness; swam until she was nicely tired, which gave her a prelusive sense of submission.

She attended herself. First, her nails. Not that they needed doing. She was only concerned with their sharpness and used a strip of emery to hone them. She wished her nails were retractable, like a cat's, so that baring them would be another sign of arousal.

Every part of her body received such purposeful attention. Her skin was given a coating of clear, pure oil to create a more desirable sort of friction. Not a single tiny crease was overlooked. She shampooed her hair with a special substance that softened and enhanced its fair shade and she treated her lower hair to the same advantage. That private growth, the quality of it, she believed important, having herself responded negatively at certain times to the coarse, wiry resistance offered there by other women. She was more fortunate; hers was a golden floss, fine, relentingly soft and not entirely concealing. She sun dried and brushed the hair of her head and used a different, gentler brush on that below.

Not to interfere with her own natural fragrance, she chose to use only oils, powders, lotions and cosmetics that were odorless. While applying those she thought out the details. Her bedroom or his? Neither? A more neutral atmosphere would be better. Perhaps the main room on the thickly carpeted floor, with an abundance of helpful pillows. That would be freer and seem more spontaneous. Deciding on that, she thought to remind herself to have her little ruby-crusted Louis Quinze snuffbox placed conveniently nearby. At the right moment she would insist on sharing its contents. She would not drink much and she would see that he didn't either. Only some very good wine and perhaps some Strega. Anything potentially depressing would be avoided. For that reason she had gone all day without a cigarette. Other considerations: What for dinner and where? In or out? And what should she wear? More or less?

Confidently anticipating the prize, the pleasure, Catherine devised the denouement.

Hazard returned at seven.

After his meeting with Gabil he'd wandered around Villefranche and happened on the ancient waterfront chapel known as Saint Pierre's. It was just another nice enough old church, except for the way Jean Cocteau had decorated its interior, made it into a gentle atmosphere of pious pastels.

Hazard recalled the opening lines of his own early childhood prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven, hollow be thy name.
Purely innocent blasphemy. He'd never been one to ask for help from upstairs, although at times, for example when he was looking to draw a card to complete a straight, his requests were in that general direction. Anyway, he hadn't gone into Saint Pierre's to do any praying, but it was a good, quiet place to just sit and think.

The cold, objective fact of the matter was that now he and Gabil were on even terms. Each held the other's life in his hands. What a thing to have in common, thought Hazard, especially when it was probably the
only
thing they had in common.

He compared himself to Gabil, and felt he was coming up short. He wouldn't though, accept full blame. There was quite a difference between being an Israeli and an American these days. If he were an Israeli he'd be willing to put himself on the line, have the ideals and make the sacrifices. An Israeli didn't think of his country as an abstraction. An Israeli had a real sense of involvement with his land, a sort of new love. That was it, a new love. It seemed to Hazard that America had unfortunately grown away from that. Raw, spontaneous American patriotism was a thing of the past. Gone were the days when all it took was a slap in the national face, a President's emergency speech, and a parade to stir a man into volunteering for the long, honorable rest in Arlington Cemetery. Now the President sweated out a speech on television almost every week to sustain his public image, and people complained because he preempted Sonny and Cher or Flip Wilson. Now there were longer-than-ever parades every rain-or-shine Saturday and Sunday down Fifth Avenue and playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” was something to tolerate impatiently before every sporting event. Oh, sure, there were still plenty of so-called American patriots around ready to place a hand over the heart and sing “the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air” and conscientiously stick decals of the dear old Stars and Stripes on the rear windows of their new Japanese economy cars. But what didn't exist anymore was that all-together thing known as the great American people. That solidarity started giving way right after the last big war to end all. And it was still disintegrating.