The Devil's Breath (9 page)

The taxi dropped McVeigh at the Dorchester. He took the lift to the seventh floor. The Arab had a suite at the end of the corridor. McVeigh knocked and stood carefully back. The door was opened at once by a youngish woman, Oriental, very black hair, expensive dress cut high at the neck. McVeigh introduced himself. Recognizing the name, the woman smiled, a minor alteration to the lower half of her face. McVeigh stepped inside. The Arab emerged from the bedroom, a small man, neat. He wore a blazer over a white silk shirt. There were Gucci loafers on his feet, and his grey slacks were perfectly pressed. He extended a hand and waved McVeigh into a chair, asking him whether he’d like a drink. McVeigh said no. ‘You
phoned a Mr Friedland,’ he said, ‘and Mr Friedland phoned me.’

The Arab inclined his head, glancing at the woman. She smiled at him, touching him lightly on the shoulder, fetching champagne from a small fridge. The champagne, already-open, was a third gone. She poured two glasses and looked at McVeigh. McVeigh shook his head. ‘No, thanks,’ he said again.

The Arab touched glasses with the woman and sipped at the champagne. Then he told McVeigh what he’d already told Friedland. He was a wealthy man. He had a conscience. His Palestinian brothers were orphans in the Middle East, disinherited by the Israelis, penned into refugee camps, the men forced to find work away to feed their families. Fellow Arabs did what they could. There were numerous funds, many appeals. But the fact remained that the Palestinians had no homeland, no rights, no future. Half a million were crammed into the Gaza strip. Twice that number scratched for a living on the West Bank. And in the three years of the
Intifada
, no fewer than 60,000 children –
kids
– had been injured at the hands of the Israelis.

McVeigh followed the recitation without comment. The man was passionate. He spoke slowly, clearly, his voice never rising, but with each fresh statistic his body bent a little further forward on the long leather couch until he was nearly touching McVeigh’s knee. His point made, he fell silent. The woman sat beside him, watching McVeigh.

McVeigh smiled peaceably. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

The Arab looked at him for a moment, his eyes very black. Then he began to talk again, his voice even lower. An Israeli had been killed. It had been a tragedy. No one had been arrested. But to add insult to injury, the Israelis had only one name on their lips. They were judge and jury. Evidence, proof, was immaterial. To anyone sane, anyone Western, anyone non-Arab, it was obvious who was to blame. The Palestinians.

He paused again, the champagne untouched. ‘Do you know how offensive that is?’ he asked. ‘To us? To me? To an Arab?’

McVeigh nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Do you realize how bored we get? The same old tune? And how angry? Our people? Our land? Our children?’

‘Yes.’

The Arab nodded slowly, still looking at him. The woman had turned away, curling her lip, shaking her head, a gesture of contempt.

McVeigh studied them both. ‘So what do you want,’ he said at last, ‘from me?’

The Arab was silent for a moment, then he relaxed, letting his whole body go limp, leaning back on the couch, sipping again at the champagne. He smiled, apologetic. ‘This man who died. His name is Arendt. Yakov Arendt.’

McVeigh nodded but said nothing. For as long as he could remember, he’d had a profound suspicion of coincidence. Things never simply happened. There was always a reason, a cause and a consequence. This belief had served him well. Twice, in the mountains, it had saved his life. Now he watched the Arab.

The Arab glanced up. ‘I want you to find out about this man,’ he said. ‘I want you to talk to his friends. His wife, if he has one. Maybe his bosses, the people he worked for. I want to know how he died, and why he died, and maybe who killed him. People I know say you’re very good. They say you know where to go, where to look.’ He paused. ‘I suggest you go to Israel. Israel is where it begins and ends.’

McVeigh frowned. ‘Israel’s a fair way,’ he said slowly.

The Arab nodded, toying with his glass, rolling the stem carefully between two fingers. ‘Five hundred pounds a day,’ he said, ‘plus expenses.’

McVeigh blinked. It was an absurd sum, nearly twice the going rate. It meant that Yakov Arendt had been a great deal more than a gifted amateur footballer. And it meant that finding out about him would be never less than dangerous. McVeigh studied the Arab for a moment, wondering who he really was, and why he was brokering the deal.

‘I knew Yakov,’ he said slowly. ‘He was a friend of mine.’

The Arab inclined his head, a wholly ambiguous gesture, his
eyes still on McVeigh. ‘Then I imagine there’s no question about you taking the job,’ he said softly.

‘No?’

‘No.’ He shook his head, standing up, extending a hand. ‘Where I come from friendship carries certain obligations …’ He smiled. ‘And this would be one of them.’

4

Back in Washington on the early shuttle from New York, Telemann drove to his new suite of offices on ‘F’ Street.

The offices were three blocks down from the Intelligence community headquarters near the old Executive Office Building beside the White House. The offices came with a large, capable woman called Juanita. Juanita was Sullivan’s idea. She’d worked for him in a variety of posts. She was Puerto Rican, discreet, clever and totally loyal. She’d organize the office, answer the phone and access whatever facilities Telemann might need. She had Sullivan’s clout and Sullivan’s temper. Telemann had liked her on sight.

Now, nudging 20 m.p.h. on the Beltway, Telemann dialled Sullivan’s home number on the mobile phone. The extra day in New York had locked the Manhattan Plaza investigation away for good. Benitez would keep looking, but the core-team was tiny. No chance, Telemann thought, that the story would leak any further.

Sullivan answered the phone. It was a quarter after six. He was already late for work.

‘It’s me,’ Telemann said, ‘I need the ULTRAS.’

Telemann slowed the car to a crawl as the commuter traffic thickened even more. ULTRAS were the daily digest of communications intercepts acquired and decoded by the National Security Agency out at Fort Meade. They were routed into the US from listening posts world-wide, and from specially assigned satellites. They came in buff files, edged in red. They were classified Top Secret. Sullivan was breathing hard on the phone. Telemann could hear him. Must have run in from the drive, he thought.

‘You got ’em,’ Sullivan said. ‘They went to Juanita last night. You get choice cuts from the PDB, too. Courtesy the Chief.’

Telemann whistled, eyeing a break in the nearside lane. PDBs were the Presidential Daily Briefs, ten beautifully printed pages of premium Intelligence yield that had the tightest circulation of all. Only half a dozen men in Washington were cleared to read the Brief, and while Sullivan wasn’t parting with the whole lot, it was the clearest possible indication of the status of Telemann’s assignment. Access to the PDB was the Presidential arm around his shoulders. It meant they trusted him. And it meant they were waiting.

Sullivan was muttering something else, his voice low and blurry. Sometimes, from fatigue or anger or sheer laziness, he had trouble getting the words out. Telemann bent to the speaker. ‘Pardon me?’ he said.

‘Analysis.’ Sullivan raised his voice. ‘We got you some help.’

‘Who? What help?’

‘Guy from the Agency.’

‘Who?’

Sullivan’s voice faded again, break-up on the transmission, and by the time the interference had cleared, he’d gone.

Telemann was downtown, his car parked, by seven-thirty. He walked the two blocks from the parking stack and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Juanita was already at her desk, a big woman, middle-aged, impeccably groomed. What little time Telemann had managed to spare for social chit-chat had gone nowhere. She’d moved north from Atlanta. She’d once worked for the Pepsi Corporation. There’d been a husband, maybe even kids, but now she lived alone, somewhere out in Silver Spring, riding the Métro to work every day. In this city, in every sense that mattered, she belonged to Sullivan. Now she smiled a welcome and picked up a small pile of mail. Beautiful hands. Long, scarlet nails. Telemann sifted quickly through the mail, standing by the desk. The promised ULTRA intercepts were nowhere. He glanced up.

‘Stuff from NSA?’ he said.

‘In there. Waiting for you.’

Juanita indicated the smaller of the two inner offices. When
Telemann had left for New York, it had been empty. Now, evidently, someone had moved in. He frowned, began to pursue it, but Juanita was back at the big IBM, her fingers moving sweetly over the keyboard. Telemann hesitated for a moment, then crossed to the office door. He went in without knocking. The desk had been moved from the window to the darkest corner. Bent over a pool of light from an Anglepoise was a familiar figure: lightly striped shirt, blue braces, bony face, sallow complexion, the thin cap of hair beginning to recede from the huge forehead. He looked up. He had a pen in his hand, the 15-dollar Shaeffer that never left him.

Telemann grinned. ‘Pete,’ he said. ‘Pete Emery.’

The other man smiled. ‘Hi.’

‘You on board? Mr Analysis?’

‘Yep,’ he said drily. ‘Saddled and signed up.’

The two men shook hands. Juanita appeared with two polystyrene cups and a flask of coffee. Telemann reversed a chair, pulling it up to Emery’s desk. It was still grey outside, the light diffused through the blinds. It felt, Telemann thought, slightly spooky. Two novices in some new religious order, picking their way, a strange mixture of excitement and dread.

‘How did he sell it to you?’

‘Who?’

‘Sullivan.’

‘He didn’t. I was ordered over here. I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.’

‘They sack you, too?’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’

‘You object?’

‘Not at all,’ he said wryly. ‘Peace and quiet. Regular salary. Security. Retirement benefits. Who needs it?’

He glanced down at the desk, and Telemann recognized the red-bordered ULTRA files. The computers over at NSA were programmed to recognize key words in the hundreds of daily pages of decoded intercepts. One of Telemann’s first requests had been for Middle Eastern cable and telephone traffic, dating back to June. The stuff had come sieved through one of the big Fort Meade mainframes, and he’d been dreading yet more
paperwork. Now, though, he didn’t have to worry. As promised, Sullivan had solved his little problem. More to the point, he’d recruited one of the best brains in the CIA’s Analytical Directorate.

Telemann looked up at Emery. ‘You got the whole story?’

‘Yep.’

‘Believe it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Why?’

Emery hesitated for a moment, gazing down at the NSA reports, the long bony fingers riffling through the sheets of light blue paper. Then he looked up. ‘Because it’s simple,’ he said. ‘And effective. Plus it checks out.’

‘Already?’

‘Sure.’ His eyes returned to the NSA intercepts. He lifted one from a separate pile near the phone. ‘I had the data re-run,’ he said, ‘with new key words. Whole bunch of stuff.’

‘And they came up?’

‘Sure.’

‘Lots of them?’

‘Enough.’

Telemann nodded. ‘Baghdad come up?’ he wondered aloud, thinking of the kid who’d disappeared from the Manhattan Plaza, Benitez’s little bombshell.

Emery watched him for a long moment. The light from the Anglepoise shadowed the planes of his face. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘it didn’t.’

‘Damascus?’

‘Negative.’

‘Tripoli?’

Emery shook his head again. Then he leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, eyes studying a small crack in the ceiling beside the air-conditioning louvre. ‘There’s nothing outgoing from where you’d think to look first,’ he said carefully. ‘Nothing that I can find. Nothing obvious. But then there’s no reason why there should be. Run a major operation, and you hide it under the biggest stones.’ He looked at Telemann. ‘Even the rag-heads would figure that.’

‘Sure.’

‘So—’ the eyes were back on the ceiling again ‘—who else might be interested? Given the simple things? Like proximity?’

‘Tel Aviv.’

‘Yeah.’ Emery nodded slowly. ‘You bet.’

‘You got stuff out of Tel Aviv?’

Emery nodded again. The eyes were closed now. He looked tired. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘Enough.’

Telemann reached for his coffee and swallowed a mouthful. He’d first met Emery back in ’81. Telemann had been running a covert liaison programme with the Argentinian Junta out of the Embassy in Buenos Aires. Argentinian military intelligence, G2, were obsessed with the Monteneros, up in Nicaragua, and their paranoia about Marxism extended to training a largish team of guerrillas in neighbouring Honduras. Emery, back at his desk in CIA headquarters in Langley, had mocked the operation from the start. Buenos Aires was 3000 miles away from Nicaragua. The Argentine generals were a bunch of fascist thugs. All they wanted was leverage in Washington. US interests would have been better served by the Mafia.

Telemann, an eager convert to the can-do ethic of the new administration, had flown back from Buenos Aires, enraged by what Emery was doing to his operation, by the latest acid memo from his desk. He’d stormed into Emery’s office. He’d accused him of disloyalty, of betrayal. The row had gone on for most of the afternoon, ending in a bar in downtown Washington, with Emery at the wrong end of a bottle of bourbon but still smiling, still sceptical, still pointing out the difference between White House hype and genuine yield. We do Intelligence, he kept saying. We deal in facts. And to deal in facts you need three things. You need to source it. You need to prove it. And then you need to sit down awhiles and think about it.

In the end, he’d been right. As the decade developed, the CIA had become the tool of an administration bent on forcing its view on the world. Spread a map and the proof was there. The CIA supported right-wing tyrants around the world. Zia in Pakistan. Doe in Liberia. Marcos in the Philippines. Duarte in El Salvador. Look, Emery used to say, late in the evening in
Charlie’s Bar, over in Georgetown, look at the deals we cut. Fancy guns, and the latest helicopter, and the world’s best personal security, and a couple of million bucks. For what? For a foot in the door and a hand on the tiller. At this, with decreasing conviction, Telemann would say his piece about world communism and the global conspiracy, vintage Reagan, and Emery would smile, swaying gently on his bar stool, and pat him on the shoulder, his pet commando. ‘Sure, buddy,’ he’d say, ‘you wanna get into bed with the slave owners, just you go ahead. Only never kid yourself who gets fucked …’

They’d become friends. Despite the differences in their age and temperament, despite their very different views of the world, they’d found it comfortable to be around each other. Emery, the older man, was a sceptic, almost Jesuitical, the perfect foil for Telemann. Telemann ran on 100 octane, always had. Emery favoured the slow lane, taking his time, enjoying the view, consulting the map from time to time to plot the most interesting route. He lived out in Maryland. He had a loveless marriage, no kids, and kept a sailboat on the Bay. Laura adored him, and so, in his own way, did Telemann. He was wise. You could trust the man, depend on him, and he cared, too. Recently, after three perfect days on the water, the kids had started calling him Uncle.

Now Telemann studied Emery across the desk. The surprise of finding him in the office had gone. In its place was a dim recognition of the kind of team Sullivan had put together. Telemann, at heart, had never stopped being a commando. His own brief spell behind a desk had proved it. He missed the action. He loved it out there. He knew he was good, and he was gratified that Sullivan had thought so too, but having the right guy at the sharp end wasn’t enough. You needed someone at the heart of it, someone strong and experienced and independent enough to take a careful look at the bits of the jigsaw Telemann would shake on to the tray. That was Emery’s talent. That was what he was doing in this dark little office. Emery would be his case officer. Emery would run him.

Now Telemann studied Emery across the desk. Already, the
man was poking at the jigsaw. Telemann nodded at the pile of intercepts. ‘Our friends in Tel Aviv …’ he prompted.

Emery nodded. ‘I think they’re watching,’ he said carefully, ‘but I don’t know how much they can see.’

‘But they’ll know
something
.’

‘Sure,’ he smiled. ‘Bound to.’

Telemann got up and walked to the window, peering down through the slats in the venetian blind. Four floors below, the traffic was backed up from the intersection. The Israelis had the tightest security service in the world, no question. The Middle East was theirs. In Intelligence terms, they practically owned it. They had priceless human-source assets all over. Damascus. Cairo. Baghdad. You name it. They took extraordinary risks, but the planning and the back-up were impeccable. Telemann had worked in Tel Aviv, and knew the Mossad headquarters on King Saul Boulevard, the ugly grey building with the discreetly armoured windows, and knew some of the agents, too. They were good. They were the best. They trusted nobody. They’d go to any lengths to secure a particular operation, achieve a particular hit. They were ruthless as hell and they seldom got burned. For years, Telemann’s idea of heaven was to drive into the car park out at Langley and find the building full of Israelis. Only then, he’d always thought, would – could – the Agency really deliver.

Telemann stepped away from the window and returned to the desk. ‘So what do we have?’

Emery glanced down and picked up a yellow legal pad. Telemann recognized the careful script, key words underlined, the odd exclamation mark.

Emery was frowning. ‘There was some traffic into Hamburg last month …’ he began.

Telemann nodded. Mossad loved Hamburg. They had a cosy relationship with the West German anti-terrorist police, a legacy from the Munich débâcle in ’72, but of all the German cities Hamburg offered them the warmest welcome. Mossad kept a small permanent outpost there, housed in the fortified basement of the Israeli Consulate on Alsterufer.

Emery glanced up, then bent his head again and went on. ‘We picked up a cable on the sixteenth,’ he said, ‘requesting information on a list of firms.’

‘And?’

‘There are seven companies, four of them German.’ He peered at his own writing. ‘Two of the others are Belgian. The other one’s Dutch. They’re listed, one to seven.’

‘And what do they do, these firms?’

‘They make chemicals of various kinds. Trimethyl phosphite, for instance.’

‘Is that important?’

‘It might be.’

‘Why?’

Emery looked up. He wasn’t smiling. ‘Because trimethyl is an organic compound. Add potassium chloride and phosphorus oxychloride and you get Tabun GA.’ He paused. ‘These firms do the other chemicals, too. They sell the stuff for export. I guess Tel Aviv want checks on the major European ports. They’re looking to establish channels, names, dates …’ He paused again. ‘End-users.’