The Devil's Breath (43 page)

Telemann glanced round, hearing his name called. Emery was 20 metres away, squatting on his haunches, something in his hand. Telemann joined him, stepping round the puddles. They
were in a different area now, outside the main farmhouse, the ground still littered with debris and charred wood. Telemann frowned, recognizing the remains of a pump, the outlet pipe open-mouthed, the rubber hose gone. The night he’d been here, he’d heard a motor running in the darkness. At the time, he’d put the noise down to a generator supplying the electricity, but now, looking down, he began to have second thoughts. The farmhouse, after all, might have been mains-fed. In which case, the noise he’d heard could only have been the pump. He peered at Emery, who had something in his hand. He turned it over. It was steel, the length of a milk bottle, the same kind of size. It was open-mouthed at both ends. Emery lifted it to his nose, smelling it carefully. He looked up, shaking his head.

Telemann bent down. ‘What’s it smell of?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What is it?’

‘God knows.’ Emery looked inside, inserting a finger.

‘What’s that?’

‘Some kind of filter.’ Emery frowned, measuring it by eye. ‘About twenty millimetres.’ He stood up, looking round again, stirring up the debris with his foot. The place stank, a sad, sour smell, a soup of thick, glutinous ash. Emery paused, and bent again, reaching down with his fingers, retrieving a length of pipe, fitting it to the object he’d already found, confirming that it was the same bore. He glanced at Telemann.

‘You come out here at all? When you visited?’

‘No. Only the farmhouse.’ Telemann gestured around him. ‘Not out here.’

Emery nodded, continuing his search, finding more lengths of pipe. He laid them out on the sodden ash, producing a small camera, photographing them from three angles. Then he began to pace the area of damage, up and down, a step at a time, finding another length of pipe. He took more photographs, with Telemann watching. Finally, he pocketed the camera, joining Telemann on the grass beneath the trees. It had started to rain, a thin drizzle, misting the fields. Emery grimaced at Telemann. He’d wrapped the object he’d found in a handkerchief.

Telemann nodded at the pipes, still neatly latticed on the ashes. ‘What would you find in the pipes?’ he said.

Emery shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Fire destroys everything. They’d know that.’

‘And that thing?’ Telemann eyed the filter.

‘I don’t know.’

Telemann nodded, none the wiser, limping after Emery as he walked back through the trees towards the car.

Twenty minutes later, rejoining the autobahn for Hamburg, Telemann glanced across at him. In an hour they’d be outside Inge’s lakeside apartment, another locked door, another neat piece of houseclearing, another dead end.

Telemann thought of Wulf again. ‘She meant to kill him,’ he said quietly. ‘I know she did.’

Emery said nothing for a moment, adjusting the wipers to the rain. Then he glanced across at Telemann. He was smiling.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘That or suicide.’

*

By the time McVeigh awoke, it was dark. The wind had risen, and he could hear the trees stirring near by. There was a draught, too, and how and again he caught a faint tinkling from the hanging chimes by the front door. He struggled upright. Even now he still had the taste of diesel in his mouth, a sour, slightly metallic taste, and he swallowed a couple of times, trying to get rid of it.

He peered round, suddenly aware of a presence in the room, someone else sitting in the low wicker chair by the door, looking at him. He blinked. It was Cela.

‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘I have food for you. Soon we must go.’

They ate together in the tiny kitchen, a salad of eggs and tomatoes and feta cheese. Cela had brought bread from the dining-hall, newly baked, and McVeigh piled the salad between thick slices, surprised at how hungry he was. There was a jug of juice, too, and sluicing down the last of the salad, he could taste plums and apples and pears, windfalls from the orchard, pulped and chilled. Finishing the meal, washing his plate in the sink, McVeigh called to Cela. She was in the next room, laying
out fresh clothes for him, a shirt, jeans and a pair of heavy boots.

‘Where are we going?’ he said.

‘Lebanon.’

‘
Where?
’

‘Lebanon.’ She looked up, squatting on the wooden floor. ‘Moshe will take you to the border. Up in the mountains. He knows the paths through the mine-fields. Amer’s people will meet you there. We must go soon. They have a car. They want you in Beirut by dawn.’

McVeigh nodded, drying the plate, joining Cela in the next room. ‘Moshe do this often?’ he said.

Cela looked away, still folding the shirt, not answering. McVeigh stood beside her. She was wearing shorts and a thin T-shirt. Hardly the clothes for a hike in the mountains.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You coming too?’

Cela looked up.

‘Well?’ he said.

Cela shook her head. ‘I’ll come with you part of the way,’ she said. ‘Then you’re on your own.’

McVeigh frowned, not understanding. ‘You’re staying on the kibbutz?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they’re still looking for you?’

‘Yes.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course.’

‘But won’t they come here? Isn’t this the obvious place to look?’

‘Of course,’ she said again, gesturing round. ‘But it’s a big kibbutz. It’s easy to hide. No one talks. And there are other places to go, too. Other friends I can stay with. They can look for ever. They won’t find me.’ She paused, fingering a loose button on the shirt. ‘It’s my home,’ she said. ‘It’s where I belong.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe that’s hard for you to understand?’

‘Yes.’ McVeigh nodded. ‘Just now it is.’ He took the shirt from her, pulling it on, over his head. It smelled newly laundered, a soft, clean smell. He reached for the jeans and put those on too, surprised at what a good fit they were. Dressed,
he helped Cela to her feet. ‘You can’t hide for ever,’ he said. ‘If they want to find you, they will.’

She looked at him for a moment, inspecting him, very close, and then she licked a finger and touched his face, high on the cheek-bone, a blemish of some kind, something he’d missed in the shower. Then she smiled, her face tilted up, and kissed him lightly on the chin. ‘If you get to America,’ she said softly, ‘they’ll never dare touch me.’

They left the kibbutz half an hour later, Moshe driving a small jeep, a relic from the ’73 war. The jeep was open at the back, and McVeigh sat sideways on the metal floor as it bucketed along. Getting into the jeep, Moshe had produced a gun which he had handed to him with a dark smile. The weapon was an Uzi, an Israeli-made sub-machine-gun. McVeigh had used them before, in and out of uniform, and rated them highly. It was a beautiful gun, perfectly balanced, reliable, accurate, capable of absorbing infinite punishment. Now he had the weapon on his lap, the two spare magazines wedged in his belt. Quite why he’d need it, neither Moshe nor Cela had made clear. Maybe he was expected to fight his way across the border. Maybe the travel arrangements were less than perfect.

Off the mountain, back on the valley floor, they turned right and headed north along a narrow track through mile after mile of orchards. Moshe drove fast, dancing the jeep round the worst of the pot-holes, growling from time to time as one or other of the wheels left the ground. The night air was cool in the valley and McVeigh sucked hungrily at the slipstream, forcing it deep into his lungs, still haunted by the memory of the morning’s journey. That he’d survived at all was a miracle, and he knew it, one hand on Cela’s shoulder, a gesture of gratitude and admiration.

At the head of the valley they turned right again, a bigger road, a dusty white ribbon winding up the mountainside. Moshe dropped through the gear-box, urging the jeep ahead, cursing softly when he misjudged a particularly vicious hairpin, the jeep slewing sideways on the loose gravel, McVeigh bracing himself for the inevitable impact, Cela motionless, unperturbed. The
jeep came to a halt in a cloud of dust and they were off again, whining up the mountain, the lights of another kibbutz straddling the hillside above them. They turned off again, plunging down a narrow track, the lights suddenly gone. It was abruptly colder, and lifting his head, peering forward, McVeigh could smell the damp, resinous breath of a forest.

Amongst trees, they stopped, Moshe killing the engine. In the silence, McVeigh could hear the splash of water falling on to rocks. Cela glanced around. She’d produced a small bottle from a bag at her feet. The bottle had a screw-top. McVeigh could see it in the light from Moshe’s torch. Cela motioned for him to get out of the jeep. He did so, joining her in a small clearing beneath the trees.

‘What now?’

‘Come with me.’

She led the way down a path through the trees, sweeping left and right with the beam of Moshe’s torch. McVeigh could hear Moshe turning the jeep round behind them. He wondered for a moment whether they’d arrived at the border, whether it was Cela’s job to pick a route through the mine-fields. Then, suddenly, they were out of the trees and standing on the edge of a narrow gorge. Cela angled the torch down. Water was bubbling over a series of ledges. McVeigh could see it tumbling over a longer drop downstream. He shivered. For the first time in Israel, he felt a sense of physical chill.

Cela handed him the torch, telling him to shine it on the water. He did so, pooling the beam on a spot a metre or two in front of her. Cela squatted at the water’s edge, filling the bottle, sealing it tight, putting it to one side. Watching her, McVeigh knew she’d been here before, doing this very same thing. Her movements had an element of ritual, of something semi-religious. She hesitated for a moment, gazing upstream, then she cupped both hands, filling them with water, raising them to her mouth, drinking. She did it again, retrieving the bottle, standing up, rejoining McVeigh. She gave him the bottle.

‘Here,’ she said.

‘For me?’

‘No. For Yussuf.’

McVeigh nodded, feeling how cold the water was through the glass. ‘Yussuf?’ he said. ‘You want me to give this to Yussuf?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at him, then nodded back at the stream, invisible now in the darkness. ‘That’s the River Jordan. Where it begins. Every time Yakov went abroad, I came up here. To give him the water too.’ She hesitated, touching McVeigh lightly on the hand. ‘Please. For Yussuf. Tell him what it is. Tell him it comes from me.’

‘Will he understand?’

‘No.’

‘Did he know Yakov?’

‘No.’ She paused. ‘Tell him it comes from an Israeli wife. An Israeli widow.’ She paused again. ‘And tell him that some of us are ashamed. We shoot and we cry.’ She reached for his hand and pressed something else into it, a small square of cloth, edged with tassles. ‘And give him this, too.’

‘What is it?’

‘I cut it from Hala’s scarf. It’s his wife’s. It’s for him.’

McVeigh nodded, pocketing the material, turning away from the river. Cela had the torch now, the beam probing the path back. As she began to move away, he caught her arm, the gentlest touch. ‘What about me?’ he said.

Cela stopped and looked up at him, her face just visible in the spill from the torch. ‘You?’ She smiled. ‘You’ll come back. I know you will.’

‘You want that? You’d like that to happen?’

Cela looked at him for a moment longer, still smiling. Then she leaned up for him with both hands, her eyes closing, the beam of the torch spearing wildly into the trees. Her lips were still wet, with the sweet, chill taste of the Jordan.

‘You know what we say,’ she whispered, ‘here, in Israel?’

McVeigh shook his head, holding her. She opened her eyes, looking at him.

‘We say
shalom
,’ she said. ‘It means Peace.’

*

It took Telemann less than a minute to get into Inge’s apartment. He did it with a tempered-steel pick, Emery’s credit card,
and a final kick from his one good leg. For a moment, the two men stood in the open doorway, listening. Four rings on the doorbell had produced no response, but Telemann had been caught like this before. The favourite trick had you inside too quickly, anxious to avoid enquiries from the neighbours. Off-guard, unbalanced, that was when they took you. Telemann waited for a moment longer, his leg beginning to throb again. Then he stepped inside, gesturing for Emery to follow.

The apartment was empty. They moved quickly from room to room, confirming the obvious, that Inge and Blum had decamped, leaving behind them nothing but soiled bedding, cupboards of food, and a small saucepan on the stove, stone-cold, the milk covered with a thin film of whey.

Telemann returned to the bedroom. The wardrobe was empty, the drawers too. On the dressing-table were a couple of discarded hairclips and an old brush. Telemann lifted the brush, inspecting it closely, recognizing the long blond hairs. He sniffed it once, eyeing the bed in the mirror, then he circled the room, remembering the photographs, the angles they’d captured, looking for the hidden cameras. According to Inge there’d been four, and he found them one by one, neat, effective installations, the cavities masked by hanging pictures, or curtain drapes, or one or other of the huge mirrors. The cameras themselves had gone, but Telemann was able to trace the tiny cable runs which had linked them together, the cables forming a junction at floor level, another cable laid beneath the carpet, emerging on the inside of one of the legs of the bed. Telemann lay full-length on the bed for a moment, reaching down, his fingers finding the button at once. He smiled, the simplicity of it. This was how she’d triggered the cameras, either shot for shot, or – more likely – a single pulse initiating a sequence of shots, carefully timed, offering her a chance to choreograph the action, the circus ringmaster with her mask and her whip and her repertoire of animal tricks. He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering again whether she’d bothered to waste any film on his own brief appearance, realizing for the first time that he didn’t care.

He opened his eyes again to find Emery in the doorway, watching him.

‘Stay here long?’

Telemann nodded, rueful. ‘Three days.’