Shake Off (15 page)

S
tanding in the drinks section of the food hall at Harrods I checked my watch. It was two minutes to twelve and the place was busy with tourists. I carried a Harrods carrier bag full of passports, a large amount of money in various currencies, forged documents, packs of codeine and the file of papers and reports on the massacre—the whole contents of my safety deposit box. The well-worn envelope sat in my inside jacket pocket, digging into my armpit every time I moved.

I had chosen a young taxi driver sitting on his own to deliver the note to the PLO mission, offering him £100 and strict instructions to hand-deliver it to someone inside. He’d jumped at the chance. The mission was a short taxi ride from Harrods—I knew where it was after using it for trade-craft practice when I’d first arrived in London, spotting the surveillance who were watching the place. I hoped the note had been passed to whoever was responsible for security. All I’d written was, “I worked for Abu Leila and was with him when he was martyred in Berlin. I have his personal effects. I will be in Harrods drinks department at 12 p.m. You will know me by what I carry.” It was the first time I’d written in Arabic since leaving Lebanon.

I was having second thoughts. I clutched the plastic bag and the carton of Turkish cigarettes I’d just bought, wondering whether I should leave—but where would I go? I was tired, too tired to think straight. Would anyone come? Perhaps they thought it some hoax or trap; they might even have called MI5, who would take their concerns seriously after Berlin. Hopefully though, I’d given them little time to organize anything. I stared at a bottle of Johnny Walker. I heard Arabic at my ear.

“The cigarettes are a nice touch, Michel.” I hadn’t put my name in the note. I turned to see a thin balding man with a kindly face and the wary eyes of someone trained to notice things. He had a twenty-four-hour growth of stubble except for where there was a small white scar on his chin. Exactly as Ramzi had described him: the taxi driver who had taken them back to the bridge from Ramallah. He gave nothing away in his expression, but experience was furrowed in his face. Not just age, but things seen and done. “It is Michel, no?”

I nodded, checking the busy store behind him.

“I’m Khalil. Don’t worry, I’m here alone, for sure. Like you, I know how to be careful. You have something for me, something of Abu Leila’s?”

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I said. “I wanted to report what happened—I felt it to be my duty.”

The man who called himself Khalil took some cigarettes from his raincoat, remembered where he was and put them back again. He was studying me for something. His eyes flicked to the Harrods bag. I grasped it with both hands. This was not how I had imagined things would go. Why wasn’t he asking me the details of what had happened in Berlin?

“I would like to talk about our mutual friend, I most certainly would, but not here. Let’s go somewhere more private, where we can sit down.” The last thing I wanted was to go somewhere private. Who was this man anyway?

“He knew the Old Man,” I said, my voice cracking.

Khalil smiled sadly. “Believe me, Michel, when I tell you that he was no friend of the Old Man.”

I didn’t understand.

“This was a mistake,” I said, but didn’t move. If only he’d say to me, “We’ll look after you, everything will be all right,” I’d go with him. But he simply stood there scrutinizing me. I could now see the potential violence in him; I’d seen a friendly face because I needed to.

“What do you have in the bag?” he asked.

“My life,” I said. “But I’ve brought it to the wrong place.”

“Do you have the envelope?”

“How—”

“It’s best for you if you give me the envelope, for sure. Have you opened it?”

I shook my head and started to walk past him.

“You are in danger if you keep it…”

A threat or a warning? I couldn’t tell. “I don’t have it with me,” I said, sticking the Turkish cigarettes in his hand. He started to say something but I continued into the air-conditioned cool of the main food hall, then through the exit onto a bright and hot Brompton Road.

I stood on the pavement outside like an idiot, disturbing the flow of shoppers. I couldn’t decide what to do next. Decide isn’t the right word: to decide means having options to choose from, and I didn’t have options, except to go either left or right.

Standing outside the meeting place was stupid. This Khalil would have brought someone with him, despite what he said. I had to move. With some effort I started to walk, and gradually, with every step, it got easier. I couldn’t say whether I went right or left, but it didn’t matter. I felt nauseous—Abu Leila “was no friend of the Old Man”—what did that mean? The man who called out, the man on the motorbike, he’d called out in Arabic—what did that mean? Khalil was the driver who’d insisted Ramzi take the envelope across. But he was no driver. My eyes were stinging as I walked and walked and those eels were in my head again, slipping around in the murk as I trod the pavement. And that big fucker was there, pushing itself forward and cannibalizing the others until I could no longer hold it back with practicalities, because I had run out of practicalities.

Things calmed down when I had done walking. I was back in Foyles, because for some reason I felt safe in a bookshop. I didn’t know what the people on my tail wanted from me, beyond the envelope, but they wouldn’t try anything in public, unless it was killing, in which case nowhere was safe, although the street would be their favored place to allow an easy getaway, like in Berlin. In all my training I’d never heard of anyone who had been assassinated in a bookshop: hotel rooms, the street, at home, all likely venues, but never a bookshop. In the toilets I locked myself in a cubicle. I sat on the toilet and took out the battered envelope. Perhaps this was the time to open it. Abu Leila was dead, it wouldn’t matter if I opened it. But something was holding me back, something I couldn’t put my finger on, something beyond my duty as a foot soldier not to interfere in what didn’t concern me. But then I didn’t even know whose foot soldier I was anymore. Someone entered the toilets so I quickly put the envelope away and left.

I remembered that I did have somewhere to go, of course, temporarily anyway. I had the house in Cambridge, the house that Abu Leila wanted for the Palestinian contingent of his rival talks. I hadn’t told anyone about the house. I could get the key off Rachel, the letting agent. The truth was that Rachel was the only civilian I could turn to, since Helen would be on her way to Turkey by now. I had her business card in my wallet still, with her home number written on the back. I also had money, plenty of money, and it would help me get about and remain undetected until I sorted myself out.

A bookshop also happens to be a good place to check for surveillance, and by now I was no longer bothering to hide the fact that I was running, which gave me more options. I doubted whether the people in London were the same as the people in West Berlin, but they were just doubts, based on a shouted word and what Khalil had said. The Israelis had recruited Arabs before, without them even knowing they were working for Mossad. Dissembling, Abu Leila had called it. But then Abu Leila was “no friend of the Old Man,” and he had been organizing rival talks. Those eels were swimming in my head again. I spent a couple of hours in Foyles, browsing everything from poetry to military history, but I couldn’t see my pale, slopey-shouldered friend, nor was the Golf visible when I cut through the backstreets to King’s Cross Station, stopping only to buy some clothes and an overnight case to put the Harrods bag in.

I rang Rachel at her office from King’s Cross. She was still there, according to the receptionist, and for a moment I panicked when she asked who she should say was calling, because I’d forgotten what name I’d used—but then it came to me: Roberto Levi. Rachel sounded truly pleased to hear from me. No, I didn’t need to come to the office for the keys, she would gladly meet me at the station and drive me to the house. When I hung up I finally came face to face with the black thought swimming in my head, holding onto it and seeing it for what it was: the dark awareness that I was absolutely and irretrievably on my own.

R
achel’s BMW was waiting at the curb when I came out of Cambridge railway station. She wasn’t wearing the suit that revealed her legs but instead wore a pristine tracksuit that suggested some physical activity was planned. Her hair was tied back less severely than before, and dark roots had started to grow through. She asked me to excuse her outfit, she was off to the gym, but was more than happy to drop me off at the house. I sank gratefully into the leather and closed my eyes on the short trip to the house, as she chatted about boring things, happy to carry on with me throwing in the odd grunt. I opened my eyes as she pulled into the drive and it was still light. She handed me the house keys.

“When are the rest of your party arriving?” she asked.

“I’ll be on my own for several days,” I said. “Is there somewhere nearby I can get food?” I hadn’t eaten since my greasy breakfast this morning.

She shook her head. “Not at this time of the day. I could come by and pick you up after the gym,” she said. “We could go out and eat. If you want to, of course?” She puckered her lips.

“I’m too tired.” And it was true, I was too exhausted to spend an evening of pretence with her.

“Of course, I can see that. I’m sorry.” She smiled. “Listen, why don’t I bring you something back later, a takeaway or something?” She was eager to please, and I was very hungry and in need of company, so I agreed with her suggestion of Chinese.

The house was bigger than I remembered. I made sure all the doors were locked and, after drawing the curtains, lay on the thick carpet in the front room. I wanted to take some codeine, but Rachel would be back in a couple of hours with food and I needed my wits about me when I was with her. I closed my eyes. A vision of Mama came to me, her hands, soft and prematurely wrinkled from continual washing, tucking me in. Then she disappeared, but I heard her screams, screams of dismay and horror at what she had just witnessed. I had only seen the beginning of it when we were lined up, before being knocked down by my father as the shots rang out. I’d heard one of the men, the man in charge, order someone to shut her up, and her voice was muffled as she was dragged into the house. But I had just lain there then as I was lying here now, as I had yesterday when Abu Leila was shot. I had done nothing.

I was woken by the unfamiliar doorbell. I went upstairs and looked out of the window of the dark bedroom. Rachel’s BMW was in the drive. I scanned the street but couldn’t see much of it from the window because of the trees. I went down and opened the door.

“You look like you’ve just woken up.” She pushed past me in a green dress, carrying a paper bag of food and her gym bag. I could hear her in the kitchen as I bolted the door. “You haven’t warmed any plates. Why are men so useless?” she said with a laugh. She was still flushed from her workout and shiny from the shower. She had little make-up on; it was a nice contrast to her professional get-up. In her summer dress and flat sandals she reminded me of Helen, and where she lacked Helen’s grace and litheness, she made up for it in cleavage. We ate at the breakfast bar, and Rachel opened a bottle of wine. I told her the bad news.

“Teetotal, eh?” She poured herself a large glass, leaving me to wonder how she would drive home. “I wish I could be teetotal.”

It soon became clear that Rachel had no intention of going home. After dinner she poured herself another drink and took the bottle to the living room, kicking off her sandals along the way.

“Isn’t the carpet great? I think there’s a decent hi-fi in here, Roberto.” Roberto went to look for it and found, hidden behind a sliding panel, a collection of records, mostly jazz, and a sophisticated sound system. Helen would love this, I thought, but Rachel hated jazz and so Roberto found something else to put on, some mindless popular music he found on the radio, and sat down opposite Rachel, who was sprawled on the big sofa—except she couldn’t sprawl like Helen could because she didn’t have the legs for it.

She started to tell me how she had spent last summer on a kibbutz in Tiberius and asked whether I had been to one. I shook my head; I wouldn’t be allowed near one, I thought. Had I been to Israel then, or thought about making
aliya,
she asked. I shook my head, although Mama’s village Lubya used to be in what Rachel called Tiberius, near what was called the Sea of Galilee. She spoke at length of her positive experiences, and not once did she mention the Palestinians or Arabs, or make reference to any problems there. Maybe, in her mind, there weren’t any. Maybe she felt it rude to mention them, since I was, after all, a client, and one must not mix politics with business. The more she drank, the more she spoke and giggled. The more she drank, the more blurred she looked. She asked me a few questions, but I let Roberto lie with practiced ease. Roberto, despite my exhaustion, was on form, a master of sleight of speech and verbal mirrors, bouncing back her questions with feigned interest in her. I wanted to tell her about my grandparents’ home in Lubya, as had been told to me, but instead Roberto spoke of an imaginary family of Italian Jews from Turin, culled from my reading of Primo Levi’s potted biography; for Roberto had started to believe that he was related to Primo. Rachel made no such connection because she did not, by her own admission, read books, preferring, she said, popular magazines and sentimental films.

“And the newspapers, Roberto, so full of doom and gloom—I never read them,” she slurred. Both Roberto and I agreed with her. I, because newspapers were full of omissions and lies; Roberto, because he was as shallow as Rachel and would say anything to ingratiate himself. Roberto and Rachel wanted to be liked; they didn’t like confrontation or the unpleasantness real feelings could arouse. I wanted Rachel to leave, because she wasn’t Helen, and I felt comfortable with Helen. Rachel was nebulous and lacking to me, but Roberto found her fascinating. Roberto, to his credit, knew that we both needed her; she was our link to the outside world. He was right, we did need her, but he wanted to take it further, he wanted more; he wanted to get to know her between her short legs.

Soon, Roberto had been invited onto the sofa and was nuzzling at Rachel’s neck. I, however, pawed at her breasts, because she knew nothing about anything. Roberto pulled off her hairband and admired her dyed, brittle hair. I laughed inwardly at her dark roots and impatiently pulled down the straps of her dress because she thought a kibbutz was a fun place to spend the summer. Roberto kissed her bare shoulders while I pulled up her dress and put my hand between her sweaty thighs. I was rough because she had not visited Lubya, where Mama’s family came from, even though there would be nothing to see because it had been razed to the ground after everyone had been driven out in 1948. She made a groaning noise, and silky-spoken Roberto persuaded her to remove her bra.

“Gently, Roberto, gently,” she said, to the wrong person, and Roberto apologized on my behalf, but I pulled and snatched at her underwear until it was around her ankles. Roberto wanted to get on his knees and kiss her between her thighs, but I said she didn’t need it or deserve it and wanted to get straight to it. We argued about it until Rachel took things into her own hands and all I could see was the top of her head, and so studied her darkening roots. Roberto and I both enjoyed what she was doing—she did it with some enthusiasm—until her mouth was unexpectedly and efficiently replaced with a condom, conjured from I don’t know where. Then she was on her back on the thick carpet, and both Roberto and I had our way, although Roberto wanted to take it nice and easy but I saw it as an opportunity to teach her a lesson. I thought I’d got my way over Roberto but she kept urging me on, faster and harder.

Afterwards, I went to the bathroom and flushed the sagging condom down the toilet, followed quickly by my Chinese meal, most of it undigested. I heard Rachel flush the toilet upstairs and followed the noise. When I got up there she was in the big bed in the master bedroom with its en-suite bathroom. I brushed my teeth, took some codeine and slipped in beside her, resting on her welcome bosom.

“You were like an animal, Roberto,” she whispered, twiddling with my hair. She was right, I was an animal: a dog maybe, or a pig.

“I’m tired,” I said. She turned out the lights and I moved to my pillow. She leaned over me in the dark, smelling of wine, her breasts resting heavily on my back.

“If you want to do it again, just wake me,” she whispered. But I’d just taken four codeine and so it wasn’t going to happen.