The Last Testament (35 page)

‘I know,’ said Uri. ‘So maybe they’re in the first category.

They’re only not killing you because killing you would bring too much trouble.’

‘Or maybe there’s more than one group following us. Following me. All for different reasons.’

‘Maybe. Like I’ve said a million times, this country, this whole area, is seriously fucked up.’

Maggie put her drink down. Back to business. She pulled out the Post-it note she had scribbled on in Rosen’s office. ‘Your father said something about the “good times”. Some trip you took together for your Bar Mitzvah. He said he hoped you would remember that.’

‘I do remember it.’

‘What happened?’

‘He took me with him on a working trip to Crete. He wanted to check out the excavations at Knossos. Imagine it: I was thirteen years old, and I was looking at dusty old relics.’

‘And?’

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‘That was it.’

‘Come on, there has to be something specific. Was there a museum? Was there a particular piece that had special meaning to your father?’

‘It was a long time ago, Maggie. And I was a kid. I wasn’t interested in that stuff. I don’t remember any of it.’

‘Did anything happen?’

‘I remember waiting around a lot. And I liked the plane ride.

I remember that.’

‘Think Uri, think. There must be some reason your dad mentioned this in the message. Did something important happen there?’

‘Well, it felt important to me at the time. It was a big treat to be alone, just me and him. It hadn’t happened before.’ He looked up at Maggie, showing her that rueful smile once more. ‘And it didn’t happen again.’

‘Did you talk about something?’

‘I remember him talking about the Minoans, saying they had once been this great civilization. And look at them now, he said.

They don’t exist any more. That could happen to us, he said; to the Jews. It nearly
has
happened, lots of times. Nearly wiped out. That’s why we need Israel, he said. “Uri, after all we’ve been through, we need a place of our own.” That’s what he said.’

Anything specific
, Maggie was thinking impatiently, straining to stick to her own rule: she knew that sometimes you just had to let people talk, let the words unspool until the crucial sentence tumbled out.

‘He told me about his parents, how his mother had been killed by Hitler, how his father had survived. That was an amazing story. He hid, my grandfather, with a family of non-Jews, on a farm in Hungary. They kept him and a cousin in the pig sty.

Right at the end of the war, he escaped by crawling through two miles of sewers.

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‘My father said that the lesson of
his
father’s life was that the Jews would have to have somewhere where they would never need anyone else’s permission to survive. Where they could fight and defend themselves if they had to. No more cowering in a pig sty.’

The Nazi period . . . Maggie was seized by a sudden thought.

She remembered the rows about the Swiss banks who had kept their hands on long-dormant accounts held by Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis. Could there be a connection? ‘Uri.

You know the message mentioned Geneva? Might your family have left—’

‘My family had no money. Nothing. Poor before the Nazis and poor after.’

‘OK, so not money. But what about a safe deposit box in Geneva? Maybe your father hid the tablet in a Swiss bank.’

‘I just don’t see it; that wasn’t his world. A vault in Geneva?

That would cost serious money. Besides, when would he have had the time to put it there? He said on the DVD he had only just found the tablet.’

Maggie nodded; Uri was right. Geneva must mean something else.

‘And what about all this stuff at the end? “And if I am gone from this life, then you shall see me in the other life; that is life too.” I was under the impression your father was not a religious man.’

‘It’s a surprise that he talked this way. But maybe this is what happens when you hold the words of Abraham in your hand.

And if you fear death. Maybe you start talking like a rabbi.’

‘I’m sorry about all this, Uri.’

‘It’s not your fault. But it’s horrible to realize you hardly knew your own father. All these secrets. What kind of relationship can you have with someone who keeps so much from you?’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘They’re closing up here. We better go.’

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But instead of heading for the lifts, Maggie strode over to the front desk at reception. Uri watched as she launched into a long story about allergies and dust and how she simply couldn’t sleep another hour in her room. The night manager put up some resistance but soon surrendered. He took her old key, replacing it with one for room 302 and despatched a porter to move her things. As she turned around, she gave Uri a wink: ‘No bugs in room 302.’

He insisted on walking her to her room. Once they got to the door, she asked where he was going to sleep. He looked as if he hadn’t thought about it till that moment.

‘Well, my apartment is being watched. And so is my parents’

house.’

‘Seems like the only reason they’re not killing you is because you’re with me,’ said Maggie, smiling up at him.

‘Well, I’d better stay with you then.’

C H A P T E R F O R T Y - T H R E E

JERUSALEM, THURSDAY, 10.25PM

She knew she should have said no, that she should have insisted he take the lift back down, that he sleep in the car if necessary.

But she told herself it would be OK, that he would sleep on the sofa or the floor and that would be that.

She even tried opening a cupboard, looking for the extra blankets and pillows from which she would conjure a makeshift bed.

But when she turned around Uri was standing behind her, unmoving, as if refusing to play along with this charade.

‘Uri, listen, I explained—’

‘I know what you said,’ he replied, placing a finger on her lips. Before she could say another word, he had met her mouth with his. His kiss was gentle at first, as it had been the previous night, but that did not last. Soon it was urgent and the current of electricity came from her.

She kissed him hungrily, her lips and tongue desperate for the taste of his mouth. The ferocity of her desire shocked her, but there was nothing she could do to stem it. It had been pent up so long, suppressed for hour after hour, that now that the dam had burst, there was no holding it back.

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Her hands were moving through his hair, tugging at it, wanting to bring his face, his smell, closer. It was a sort of devouring, and they both felt the urgency of it. His hands were moving fast, first caressing the side of her face, then her neck, until now they were tearing at her top.

A moment later they had fallen onto the bed, their skin tingling from that first electric contact. Each caress, each taste, brought a new flash of intense sensation, until their bodies were joined. His back became slick with sweat and, as she gripped it, she was sure she could feel not only his desire but also his longing, his need, even his grief. And as she howled her release, she knew he could hear her own need, her yearning to be free after so long. They held each other tight like that for hours, even after the first wave had receded, their ardour barely fading.

Maybe she was too wired, but when she woke up sometime after two am she could not get back to sleep. Uri was slumbering beside her, his chest rising and falling with each long breath.

She guessed this was the first deep sleep he had had since his father died. She liked looking at him. For a long time she lay there on her side, just watching him, and felt a kind of peace spreading through her.

Nearly an hour passed that way until eventually Maggie grew restless. She got out of bed, grabbing the large T-shirt she had taken from Edward’s closet when she packed up on Sunday afternoon.
State be warned, Commerce kicks butt
read the legend: a souvenir of the interdepartmental softball game last summer, participation in which Edward regarded as crucial to his Washington career.

She crept over to the desk, just a few feet from the bed. She flipped open the lid of her laptop, her face turning blue from the screen glow in this darkened room. Uri didn’t stir.

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She waited for a connection and opened up her email. Top of the list was a message from Liz.

Mags

My Second Life account tells me you never used that link I sent
you. So knew you wouldn’t! But you should. Not only is it proof
of your 2L stardom, but there’s also some pretty cool stuff on there.

Here – again! – is my screen-name and password and a few basic
instructions: just go on as me . . . btw, we must talk about Dad’s
70th. I reckon a big do, you know, fly him and Mum to Vegas,
strippers, the works. What do you reckon? Just kidding xx L

Her sister had signed off with a smiley face which, at this moment, made Maggie smile.

The next one was from Robert Sanchez.
Subject: Update
. Inside, with no message, was a digest of the latest cables from the US

team in Jerusalem to Washington. Even in a skim read she could discern their message: the situation was grim.

Talks are down to a skeleton presence at Government House, with
lowest-level representation on both sides. The progress of less than
a week ago, before the Guttman killing, seems distant now . . .

two sides trading recriminations . . . hostile noises from the Arab
states, sabre rattling from Iran and Syria . . . pro-Israel lobby in
the US, led by Christian evangelicals, getting restless, liaising with
settler groups here to organize a telethon to run on Christian
Broadcasting Network on Sunday night . . . outbreak of violence
in the Temple Mount area today as Israeli forces fired tear gas on
worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, two Palestinians dead, one
teenager . . . ambush of settler car outside Ofra, two passengers
killed, one aged twelve . . .

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Maggie ran her fingers through her hair as she regretted again having given up smoking. Jesus, she could die for a cigarette now. She braced herself for message number three.

Edward: no subject

M,

Not that you would care but am off to Geneva this evening.

Government business, can’t get into it in an email.

We have some practical matters to resolve when we both return.

Please advise on your plans.

E

Maggie let herself fall back into her chair.
Please advise
. Had this man really once been her lover? She looked over at Uri, the outline of his sleeping body visible under a single white sheet, and she smiled.

Maggie clicked back to Liz’s message. Such a sweetie. She hit Reply.

You’re a great sister. I don’t deserve you. Will check out that link.

Re: Vegas. Can we arrange strippers to come as crown green bowlers?

She was about to hunt out Second Life when she had a sudden sinking feeling. Their phone calls were bugged, they were being followed and, it seemed, her work on Shimon Guttman’s computer had been watched. Someone, somewhere, was probably reading this right now. She snapped the lid shut, plunging the room into darkness once more.

She knew she wouldn’t sleep, she was buzzing too much. So she pulled on some clothes, creaked open the door and crept outside. She tiptoed down the corridor, heading for the rooms that all hotels maintained even though, in the era of the BlackBerry and wi-fi, hardly anybody used them any more: the Business Center.

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Her keycard let her in, to a room that was dark, empty and cold. There was just a single, forlorn terminal. But it worked, asking for her room number and nothing else. That was OK: hotel staff could see what she was doing, it was just the electronic eavesdroppers, hackers and Peeping Toms she wanted to avoid.

She called up Liz’s email again, scribbled down the name –

Lola Hepburn! – and password she had given her, and clicked on the link. The screen instantly went black, then displayed a message.

Welcome to Second Life, Lola.

She entered her details, then watched as a computer-generated landscape began to fill the screen, as if to herald the start of a video game. In the foreground, with her back to Maggie, was a CGI-version of a lithe young woman wearing tight jeans and a Union Jack bratop. This, Maggie realized, was Lola Hepburn, Liz’s embodiment in Second Life, her ‘avatar’. Maggie looked at the set of buttons that appeared at the foot of the screen:
Map, Fly,
Chat
and a few others whose meaning eluded her. There was an instruction to use the keyboard’s arrows to move backwards and forwards, left and right. She tried it and watched, amazed, as the buxom siren on screen moved ahead, jerkily, with arms swinging, in a simulation of human walking.

She seemed to be in some kind of virtual garden, with brown autumnal trees swaying in a gentle wind. It was as if Maggie were operating a camera, lurking a few yards behind and several feet above the avatar, one that followed its – her – every move. Now, as she went through the trees, the leaves loomed larger, in sharp, clear focus, as if the lens of her camera were right up close. It was bizarre and strangely mesmerizing.

She turned left, yet the buxom girl on screen didn’t seem to move. Rather the whole frame swivelled, the picture rotating around her as if she had turned left. Now she could see houses, the grey slate of the roof tiles suddenly appearing in pin-sharp 302

SAM BOURNE

detail. And there was a sound, a repeated phrase of music, like a fairground jingle. Sure enough, Maggie could see in the distance a spinning carousel. As she walked towards it, the music got louder. She seemed to be approaching via a meadow: with each step that she took, flowers would sprout from the ground in brilliant shades of violet, yellow and scarlet.