The Convenience of Lies (27 page)

‘But
why would a supremely professional outfit like the Mossad want, need or trust a young outsider to do anything?’

‘Why
not? A teenage boy is just a tree in the forest. Being invisible can be useful.’

‘So
what was his motive? He’s not Jewish, is he?’

‘No,
but sayanim don’t have to be. In Benwick’s case, it’s all about guilt and anger.’

‘In
what way?’

‘His
mother was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck.’

‘Christ.
Really?’

‘Yes,
and one who derived particular pleasure in her sadistic work, apparently.’

‘And
he ends up working for Israeli’ intelligence. That’s amazing.’

After
the war, she escaped capture then met Benwick’s father. They married and settled in England. When Benwick was fourteen - and unaware of his mother’s past - German prosecutors sought her extradition to stand trial for war crimes.

‘But
rather than face that very public ordeal, she hanged herself,’ Evan said. ‘Benwick came home from school one day and found her… had to cut her body down. You can imagine the effect that had on a young boy.’

‘Absolutely.
So is working for the Israelis his way of making up for her crimes?’

‘Could
be. Whoever was talent-spotting for them saw the potential of harnessing his mixed-up feelings by showing him the appalling evidence against her.’

‘And
that’s how he ultimately comes to blow up the arms shipment?’

‘Yes,
but view this in the context of present-day politics,’ Evan said. ‘Iraq is threatening Israel with attack in order to draw them into the coalition of Western and Arab powers he’s fighting. Saddam’s banking on no Arab state being willing to be on the same side as Israel so if Tel Aviv joined the coalition, the pro-West Arabs would quit the war and leave Saddam that much stronger.’

‘You’re
saying he’s trying to provoke the Israelis into getting their retaliation in first?’

‘Yes
and it’s created a God-awful battle behind the scenes in London.’

‘Why
is that?’

Evan
heaped more brushwood on the fire which spat out sparks as it flared up.

‘Those
were British arms on the Arta but the Cabinet and the spooks were split on whether the original contract with Saddam should be honoured on not.’

‘Because
those weapons could be turned on our troops now he’s our enemy?’

‘Exactly,
but the arms lobby and their Arabist friends in the security services have other considerations, not least the unbelievable profits they make.’

‘Where
does Guy Inglis stand in all this?’

‘With
the hawks, as always,’ Evan said. ‘It was Inglis who notionally held the balance of power in the end.’

‘In
what way?’

‘The
hardliners in the spooks like Roly Vickers had Inglis threaten a leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher if Saddam didn’t receive the weaponry on the Arta and by then, her people didn’t dare run that risk.’

‘Why
ever not? I’d have thought if anyone could hold her ground, it’d be her.’

‘In
earlier times, maybe. Now, it’s different… she’s running out of road politically and Inglis knows this and has his own ambitious reasons to willingly undermine her at every twist and turn.’

‘Wow.
So the Israelis find this out and send Benwick into action… unofficially?’

‘Right,
then the arms traders send their goons in to stop him… equally unofficially.’

‘And
if this all comes out in the media?’

‘Then
the sky will fall in, not least on you,’ Evan said. ‘For the sake of your health, I think we need to get you out of the country - and quickly, too.’

Forty-Four

McCall fought against accepting the truth of it but his subconscious self suspected that Lexie’s kiss two nights before signalled the end of their renewed affair as surely as the first embrace had marked the beginning.

Lexie
gave and Lexie took away. But this time, she appeared different. He detected a rare humility in her, maybe a desire to atone for past hurts and to make the harder of two choices now and thereby save him from the pain she feared her illness would ultimately cause.

‘Let
me come with you,’ she said. ‘I can easily make it to the harbour.’

Lexie
couldn’t bear the idea of saying farewell at Staithe End. She hadn’t wanted the moment shared with Hester or Ruby or to have his memories of such a place despoiled by what she had to do.

This
was their last mile together. They walked it alone, hand in hand, and made their way along the opalescent shore towards where Evan said he’d wait with a car. How neat for all three of them to be on stage for this final act.

‘I’m
sorry, Mac… sorry for everything I wasn’t able to be for you.’

‘Please,
don’t say that. It’s what you are that I loved.’

‘Funny
old business, life… isn’t it? I don’t know what it’s all been for.’

‘Nor
me but listen, you’ll get better before long, you’ll be all right soon.’

‘Will
I, Mac?’

‘You’re
sure to, yes.’

‘We’ll
see… anyway, Evan’s got me an appointment with a specialist he knows in Cambridge and Hester can always take care of Ruby so I have nothing to worry about, not really. Only you.’

‘Then
you mustn’t,’ McCall said. ‘Evan says I’ve just got to keep a low profile for a
few
weeks, just till he’s sorted out all this fuss then I’ll be back with you. I promise.’

Lexie
looked into his face, afraid he still hadn’t understood. A single flash of headlights came from by the harbour causeway. Evan had seen them. They would have to part.

She
took McCall to herself with great tenderness. Her hair smelled of wood smoke and the damp sea-saltiness from their walk along the sands. In the half-light, her face was so grey, those once beautiful features so lightly pencilled in and leached of all natural colour.

She
kissed his lips and his eyes and clung to him as if he were her son going off to war. But the battle was hers and victory far from assured.

Then
Lexie broke free and turned away before any tears weakened her further. She headed back to Staithe End. He watched till she was gone. She didn’t look over her shoulder.

The
moon and stars lit the emptiness of the beach and the sea would soon wash away their footprints. No one would ever know who had passed that way that night.

*

McCall stared down from his window seat at the baking Namibian bush, ten thousand feet below. Somewhere in that vast sweep of desolation were jackals and lions, scorpions and snakes, all fighting to survive.

But
these creatures only killed to eat, like the desert tribesmen still hunting with bows and arrows and spears. Theirs was the timeless order of things.

Yet
other killers had also stalked their prey here - the crowbar men, assassins who murdered in the name of anti-terrorism to shore up the weakening influence of South Africa’s cruel apartheid regime.

But
the war was over. Namibians had won their independence, albeit the land beneath their feet was sown with skulls.

For
McCall, there was no choice but to go back, to make an act of contrition on that seared patch of earth where he’d seen the crowbar men at work - and himself for what he’d become.

He
wondered if Benwick might ever get the redemption he also craved. Evan had told him he wasn’t the assassin who’d shot Saddam’s Canadian weapons scientist in Brussels earlier that year.

Whatever
else Benwick had done, Evan said that hit was the work of three killers who’d rented an apartment in the same building.

‘Their
appearance suggested they were Moroccans.’

‘And
were they?’

‘Wh
o knows, but wherever they called home, they were from the Mossad, operating in a unit called Kidon.’

‘What’s
that?’

‘Kidon
means “bayonet” in Hebrew.’

‘Yes,
but what is it?’

‘The
Mossad wouldn’t call it a death squad but that’s what it is,’ Evan said. ‘Kidon targets and kills those enemies of Israel who pose the greatest long term threat.’

‘So
was Benwick in Kidon?’

‘Think
about it. Here’s a man who’s clever, highly resourceful, psychologically strong, utterly single-minded and as ruthless as blazes so what’s your guess?’

McCall
told Evan all that’d happened after he’d found Benwick hiding in woods near the weapons factory when his attempt to bomb it went wrong and his female accomplice was killed.

‘He’d
sprained his ankle badly and was stymied then I came along, only too willing to take her place.’

‘What
a dangerously rash course of action for you to take.’

‘There
speaks an academic. I don’t know any hack who wouldn’t have sold their birthright to get ringside at that guy’s fight.’

‘But
with what you now know is at stake, do you think our lords and masters will sit idly by while you traduce their schemes and reputations in the media?’

‘No,
probably not.’

‘And
who’ve you got on your side?’ Evan said. ‘From what you’ve told me, Benwick’s your only source and all your supporting evidence was lost when he blew up your car. That won’t give a libel lawyer much confidence, will it?’

Evan
was only pointing out the blindingly obvious - but he didn’t stop there.

‘Have
you considered that Benwick himself would want you kept quiet, too?’

‘You
seriously think he’d come back and finish the job?’

‘You
should ask yourself why he told you so many secrets, especially since there’s a Mossad curse which goes something like
may we read about you in the newspapers.
’

‘So
I was right. He told me things he shouldn’t because I was never intended to live long enough to reveal them.’

‘Correct,
and now you’re a risk to his security and the Mossad’s,’ Evan said. ‘And I doubt that many wake up from the sort of silence they impose.’

*

‘Welcome to independent Namibia, Mr McCall. What is the purpose of your visit?’

‘I’m
planning to go to Etosha to photograph the wild life up there.’

‘Your
passport says you are a para-legal. What is that profession?’

‘It
means I undertake inquiries for solicitors, lawyers.’

‘Well,
enjoy your holiday but take care in the north. It can be a dangerous place.’

‘Thanks,
I’ll watch my step.’

His
first hurdle was overcome. He’d flown via Geneva then Portugal to get a direct connection from Lisbon to Windhoek. This route avoided Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg where the South African Bureau of State Security kept records on journalists whose credits appeared on British current affairs shows. They already had McCall on file after his run-in with Koevoet so he’d rather not make it easy for them this time.

During
the long cab ride into town, he thought yet again about the enigmatic Evan. It wasn’t ever mentioned directly but he’d always believed him to be a spook asset. Maybe he talent-spotted in Cambridge or his academic status allowed him freer travel behind the Iron Curtain. McCall never tapped him up for sensitive information. Roly Vickers was always on hand for that.

But
why had the funny people cleared Evan to mark McCall’s card so fully on Benwick? Maybe it was just as simple as he’d said. Not all the spooks were hawks about what should happen over the MV Arta and its deathly cargo.

*

Next day, McCall hired a car through the receptionist at his hotel in central Windhoek. He drove north through the capital’s colonial facades from German rule, houses with tin roofs painted pink and a few office blocks to suggest progress towards modernity.

Ahead
was a six-hour drive through bush and dusty dorps towards Ovamboland and the Angolan border.

Out
of Windhoek, the tarred road gradually swept down several thousand feet from a high plain to the desert, a blistering, rock-strewn panorama of grass bleached brown and stunted trees, hung with the pouch-like nests of weaverbirds.

Signs
warned motorists to look out for elephants. Wildebeest and impala were hazards, too - but not as great as local drivers. The wrecks of their cars and trucks lay upended amid the litter of scree and boulders at the roadside.

McCall
stopped in a small town around mid-day and found a place to eat. It was cool and dark inside. Three heavily built white men, slouched on chairs and drinking beer from bottles, stopped talking as they heard him speak. Suspicion seemed to carry on the smoke from their cigarettes.

A
bull of a bartender raised his eyebrows a fraction by way of asking what McCall wanted. He asked for steak and French fries. The order was shouted through to a back kitchen in harshly accented Afrikaans. Then the eyebrows went on the move again.

‘And
a Tafel Lager, please.’

‘You
from England?’

‘Yes,
on holiday.’

‘To
Etosha, the wildlife?’

‘That’s
right. I’m an amateur photographer.’

‘Then
watch out for the blecks,’ he said. ‘Steal your cameras and the fillings from your fucking teeth, they will. Think they own the goddam place.’

Well,
they did now. They’d more than paid for it in blood and bodies. But McCall simply nodded and went to a corner table. It was best not to get into the rights and wrongs of the independence war, not with those who’d yet to adjust to losing.

When
McCall finished eating, he crossed the street to the post office to use its public phone. It’d be marginally more secure than the one in his hotel room. The number he called took a while to answer.

‘Father
Steffen, hello.’

‘Father,
it’s Mac… from London. Remember?’

‘Of
course. Where are you?’

‘Coming
up country. Can we meet?’

‘Yes,
why not? But where?’

‘Where
you rescued me… remember? I’ll be there before sundown.’

*

The massacre McCall witnessed was beyond evil, albeit random and chaotic in the arbitrary way death so often was in Africa. This was little consolation for he had been responsible for it, however unwittingly. Amends had to be made.

He
arrived at the stockaded kraal earlier than expected. It had been abandoned to its evil spirits. The three thatched huts he remembered were already starting to collapse, their stores robbed out by rats, walls weakened by gunfire.

Beyond
was a slight bump of dun-coloured soil marked by six crosses made from twigs bound with twine. For McCall, the smell of death still hung in the clammy air, as sickly as a slaughterhouse and enough for a guilty soul to turn away and retch.

Within
the compound, he saw darker patches of earth where lives had drained away. He paused, his godless head bowed, envious of anyone with faith who would have had prayers to offer those who lay beneath him.

Next
month, the seasonal storms would come - massed clouds firing down the first fat drops of rain to ricochet in the dust. Then turbid rills will form to swill away the haunting signs of atrocity forever.

Inside
one of the huts, three wooden beds had been stripped bare. Their brightly patterned blankets would’ve been used to wrap bodies for burial. In another corner lay a simple homemade toy - coat hanger wire bent into the rough outline of a car with working wheels and a long handle so it might be pushed along.

It
could only have belonged to the boy. How precious it must have been - a magic car to drive away from his world of poverty and war. McCall lifted it up with great care. This symbol of life and hope should be in his office, not the bullet casings which seeded the earth on that appalling day.

But
the toy wasn’t his to take. Then again, neither was the child’s life.

McCall
turned and walked into the brief but dramatic African sunset, a sky the colour of blood soon to fold into a blue-black night.