The Devil's Breath (34 page)

Telemann, revolted, showed her the picture. ‘Whose idea?’ he said.

She looked at it for a moment, her face quite blank. ‘Mine,’ she said.

‘You
enjoy
that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he?’

She smiled at him, sympathetic, indulging his ignorance. ‘Of course,’ she said.

Telemann nodded, packing the photos up, returning them to the box. ‘You got the place fitted?’ he said. ‘The bedroom?’

‘Yes.’

‘I counted three cameras.’

‘Four. One never worked.’

‘He knew about these?’ He gestured at the prints.

‘Of course not.’

Telemann nodded, thinking of the set-up again, the trouble
they must have gone to, the Mossad boys, the technical people, installing the cameras.

‘Neat,’ he said. ‘They still there? The cameras?’

‘Of course.’

‘Working?’

‘Yes.’

Telemann nodded again, wondering what his own snaps would look like, where they’d end up, the girl on his face, Uncle Sam well and truly fucked. He shook his head, part wonder, part admiration, part disgust.

‘What about the rest of it?’ he said at last. ‘Did you feel anything for him? Was that true?’

‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘He was good in bed but … no.’

‘What about him? Was he in love with you?’

‘In love with me? The man was an animal.’ She shrugged again. ‘We fucked a lot. That’s all.’

Telemann nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said.

He looked away, out across the lake. The wind had risen a little and the water was feathered with white caps. Of the rowing-boat there was no sign.

‘But didn’t he wonder?’ he said at last, lifting the photo in his lap, giving it back. ‘Exposing himself like that? Taking those kinds of risks?’

Inge shook her head, accepting the photo, putting it back in the box. ‘No,’ she said, ‘why should he? I was a nice German girl. I had a big appetite. A good body. I’d do anything he wanted.’ She paused for a moment, fingering the lid on the box. ‘He was quite protective in a way. And generous too. He bought the apartment for me. And clothes. And holidays. Anything I wanted. Money was never a problem. It was his way of saying thank you.’

‘For what?’ Telemann gazed at her. ‘For looking after his dick?’

‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘You should remember something about people like Otto. They’re often very naïve. Very single-minded. That’s why they’re so successful. They don’t waste time on the difficult things. They don’t waste time thinking. They just do it. Get on with it and do it. That’s why they get to the top.’ She
paused again, frowning. ‘That’s the way Otto was. I told you. The man was an animal. He chased and chased. He never stopped. Not once.’

‘So I see.’

‘Do you?’

Telemann nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

There was a long silence. Inge was still looking at him, still frowning.

‘One thing …’ she said at last.

‘What?’

‘Didn’t you notice?’

‘Notice what?’

She nodded at the wooden box. ‘There’s a television in the room,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Maybe you ought to look at the photos again.’

Telemann gazed at her, not understanding, then he reached for the box and sorted quickly through the photos until he found one with a clear view of the television. Wulf, in the foreground, was sound asleep, flat on his back, his head turned slightly to one side. Inge was sprawled over him, her head in his crotch, her eyes closed. Telemann peered at the photo. The curtains were drawn, and the room was darker than usual, and the image on the television was quite clear. A reporter was standing on a stretch of tarmac, addressing the camera. In the background, neatly echeloned away from the camera, was a line of F-15 fighter-bombers. There were at least ten of them, receding into the distance. Telemann recognized the yellows and sand-browns of the distinctive desert camouflage, and when he looked harder he could pick up the shapes of the ground-crews, bent over the bomb trollies, arming the sleek jets. Telemann nodded, putting a name to the location at last, Dharan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, America standing tall. He looked up. ‘That’s last week,’ he said slowly.

‘The week before last.’

‘NBC guy.’

‘CNN.’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘CNN.’

He looked at her for a moment, letting it sink in, the implications, the truth.

‘He left you a year ago,’ he said slowly. ‘Wulf.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘And then he came back.’

‘Why?’

She looked at him, that same slow curl of the lip, an expression close to pity. ‘Why do you think?’ she said at last.

Telemann nodded, his eyes back on the box. ‘You still see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Regularly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Soon?’

She didn’t answer, but smiled at him, her head tilting back again, her face in the sun, her eyes closed. Telemann studied her for a long time, thinking of the trip to the East.

‘The night we went to Halle,’ he said slowly. ‘
Was
that your mother?’

‘No.’

‘Who was she?’

‘A plant. A phoney. Like me.’

‘And Nikki?’

‘Nathan’s boy.’ She opened one eye, smiling. ‘We took the photo on the beach. At Netanya.’

‘Netanya?’

‘It’s a holiday place. North of Tel Aviv.’

Telemann nodded, looking away, hearing the pieces falling slowly into place, a rattle in some distant outpost of what used to be his brain.

‘You did well.’ He mimed applause. ‘Academy Award.’ He glanced down at the box again, the lid half-closed, Otto Wulf contemplating yet another fuck. ‘So what about the chemicals?’ he said finally. ‘Littmann? Jaegermeister? How much of all that is true?’

Inge said nothing, her face still tilted up towards the sun. Then she opened one eye, pushing the box towards him with her foot.

‘Help yourself,’ she said. ‘For these he’ll tell you anything.’

*

The old man, Abu Yussuf, found the letters in the boy’s room.

He’d been back in the apartment for less than an hour. He’d been looking for money, knowing that he had to get away. They’d find the boy in the woods. They’d trace where he lived, here, back in Newark. And then they’d come calling.

The old man knelt by the grimy window. He’d been on his hands and knees all over the room, looking for the places the boy might have used. He’d torn up the linoleum, first one side of the room, then the other, knowing that the boy had been here already, the stuff brittle and broken round the edges, recent damage. At first he’d found nothing, just a thick, greasy layer of dirt, years old. Then, beneath the window, he’d seen the floorboard, the wood rotten from a leak around the sash. He’d fetched a knife from the kitchen, digging in around the edges, prising the floorboard out, his mind playing the usual games, hearing the boy’s footsteps on the stairs, his whistle along the hall. The floorboard had come out at once. Underneath, he found something long and heavy, wrapped in oil-cloth, and a white plastic bag. In the oil-cloth was an automatic pistol. In the bag, with a couple of aerosols and a thick wad of 100-dollar notes, were the letters.

The old man sat back against the wall beside the window, gazing at the familiar script, the carefully shaped handwriting, hearing his wife’s voice, remembering her patience and her smile. There were four letters. They’d all been opened, the gum carefully separated, probably by steam from the kettle. The old man peered at the postmarks, trying to read the dates, trying to get the letters in the right order. The first had been mailed three weeks ago, 2 September. He pulled out the letter, three thin sheets of air-mail paper, and began to read, his lips moving as he did so. Hala still missed him. Life was still hard. One of his two surviving sons had been taken by the Israelis. He’d gone to one of the military prisons after an incident with
Al Sawda
, the hated ‘blackheads’, the black-bereted paratroops who patrolled the streets of Ramallah on days when the authorities expected real trouble. He’d been gone now for three days, no word from the prison, and Hala had been to her brother, Amer Tahoul, asking for help, asked what she could do. The old man looked
up, sweating in the heat, wondering why Amer hadn’t mentioned it on the telephone. Maybe he was being kind, he thought, sparing me more trouble. Or maybe the boy’s already been released.

He bent to the letter again, the second page. Hala was writing about someone else now, a visitor, a woman from Israel. The woman had come without warning or invitation. She’d simply appeared, the previous afternoon, a knock at the door. She was a young woman, pretty. She spoke Arabic well. She’d stayed for half an hour, maybe longer. She’d known Hala’s name, and Abu Yussuf’s name, and what had happened to their dead son. Hala had been frightened, knowing that the woman could only be from the Shin Beth, the Intelligence people, the Israeli’s eyes and ears on the West Bank. And so she’d said nothing when the woman asked about Abu Yussuf, where he was, what he was doing, when he’d be back. The woman had asked the question twice, very sympathetic, very kind, but Hala hadn’t been fooled. She knew that was one of the ways they did it, got their information, stole your secrets.

The old man looked up again, the letter at an end, remembering Amer on the phone, and his hand went to the other letters, eager to know what had happened to this strange Israeli visitor, the pretty girl from the Shin Beth. Had she come back? Had she asked more questions? What did she know?

Far away, towards the waterfront, a siren began to wail. It was a sound the old man had come to live with, but even now, after two months in New York, it still made him shiver. It had an animal quality, the tormented voice of this hot, hard city.

The old man got to his feet, the siren closer. He picked up the letters and the money, stuffing them both into the plastic bag. Halfway to the door, he paused, turning, eyeing the gun. He’d never used a gun in his life. He hated violence, what it did to people, how little it ever solved. But then he thought of the days and nights to come, what he might face, and he returned to the window, picking it up, surprised again at how heavy it was.

*

McVeigh frowned, spooning the last of the chick-peas into the envelope of pitta bread, not understanding.

‘Al what?’ he said.

‘
Al Kimawiya
.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The chemical.’ Cela glanced at Amer Tahoul. ‘It’s the local name for Saddam’s rockets. Everyone expects him to fire at Israel. The rockets have poison gas. They call it
Al Kimawiya
…’ She smiled. ‘The chemical.’

Amer Tahoul nodded. He’d been following the conversation carefully, sitting back in his chair, a cigarette between his fingers. ‘That’s why they sell us gas masks,’ he said quietly.

‘Who?’

‘The Israelis. For ninety dollars you can buy a gas mask.’

‘Do you have one?’

‘No.’

‘Too expensive?’

‘No.’

‘Why then?’

Amer shrugged, fingering the edge of the table. ‘They don’t work,’ he said. ‘They’re old. The design is no good. In Israel, everyone gets a gas mask. The newest. The very best. And free, too. Here?’ He offered Cela a smile. ‘Here we pay to be gassed. Ninety dollars.’ He looked at McVeigh. ‘My friend, what kind of bargain is that?’

McVeigh pulled a face, lifting the pitta bread to his mouth, enjoying the sour, sharp taste of the yoghurt and the chickpeas. They’d been in the restaurant for more than an hour, the Palestinian musing about life on the West Bank, how much tougher things had been over the last three years, since the start of the
Intifada
. Himself, he’d always been a moderate. He worked for the Municipality up in Ramallah. He had an important job. He was Treasurer for the city. He had a lot of contact with the Israelis. He’d got to know some of them, even liked one or two. It was wrong what people said. There were good and bad on both sides, and one day, maybe, they’d all learn to live together. But now? He’d shaken his head, talking
again about the
Intifada
, the uprising that had run like a fever through the West Bank. In the beginning, and always, control had been in the hands of the kids. They were the ones who’d known how to taunt the Israelis, how to provoke the violence and the reprisals. They were young, these kids, and they were wise. They understood the power of television pictures: of men and women choking on the streets of Ramallah, of school-kids facing fixed bayonets, of universities closed down, water supplies diverted, houses bulldozed, land seized. Thanks to the kids, it was up there, on the world’s agenda, a menu with prices, but still – he’d shrugged – nothing happened.

Listening, McVeigh had warmed to the man at once, the distinctions he made, the careful qualifications, the lack of malice, his quiet sense of humour. Recently, he said, the situation had worsened, both sides going to the limit, refusing to compromise. More and more settlers were pouring in from Israel, grabbing land, putting up houses, fencing themselves in behind dogs, and security lights, and thick coils of barbed wire, concentration camps of their own making. The Americans, of course, were wringing their hands, and issuing declarations, and demanding fair play, but the Israelis spoke a different language, the language of facts, and the facts were there for all to see: a police state, taxed and controlled from Jerusalem, an ugly snarl on the face of
Eretz Israel
. McVeigh had nodded, impressed with the man’s quiet passion, asking about the kids again, what they could possibly do, and Amer had nodded, accepting McVeigh’s point with a tired smile, confirming the obvious truth of it, that violence bred violence, that the kids had lost patience, that events were fast running out of control.

McVeigh leaned forward, aware of Cela watching him, still unsure quite what they were doing here, mid-evening, a smoky restaurant in the middle of Bethlehem.

‘How?’ he said. ‘How are they running out of control?’

The Palestinian looked at him for a moment, a slight man, prematurely stooped, with elegant hands and an expression of almost infinite patience.

‘The kids want to take the war to the Israelis. They want
guns, explosives, anything they can get. They’re bored by the rest of it.’ He smiled. ‘Words don’t count any more. Not really.’