weapon. The rattle tore into Abigail’s ears, and she thought that, beside her, Badger flinched. There were two handguns in the bergen with their supplies, ammunition for four magazines, flash grenades and gas. He’d looked at them carefully, then deliberately shaken his head. Was he firearms trained? He’d answered, almost apologetic, that he was not. She cocked her own weapon, a Browning 9mm pistol, and checked again, with her hand, that the rifle was on its clips along the bottom of the bench seat in the back behind her ankles.
She had done what was demanded of her, and a little more – and had no fucking idea if any of it was sufficient.
They hit the road and Shagger said they’d burn some rubber. They went north, and the sunlight, low, bathed her. If she couldn’t comprehend what it would be like in the marshes over the border, who else could?
‘Are you all right, Mr Gibbons?’
It must have been three-quarters of an hour since he had spoken with Abigail Jones on the link, and he had sat through that time with his chin on his hands, staring across the room at the map with the lines marking the rivers, the route of Highway 6, the edges of the marshes, the larger islands and the canals. The strongest line was the border with Iran, and his focus had been the cross in black marker ink that located the household of Rashid Armajan, the Engineer, a bomb-maker of great skill.
His head jerked up. She had allowed him his chance to reflect, had twice put fresh tea beside him, but neither mug had been touched nor the biscuit. She would have thought his mood had lasted long enough. He twisted to face her. ‘Thank you, I’m fine, Sarah.’ He grimaced. ‘What do we say at these moments?’
‘We say, Mr Gibbons, “on a wing and a prayer”.’
‘A dodgy wing and a big prayer.’
She turned to the window. The rain ran hard on it and seemed set in for the afternoon. He drained the lukewarm mug, then crunched the biscuit. He clicked on the memory of his phone and called the Cousin first, then the Friend.
The American told him that all was in place. ‘Whatever we can give you, Len, we will, but at day’s end your guys have to deliver.’
The Friend said his people waited to be told of developments. ‘We’re ready to go, but we need the ticket filled out, and that’s for your people. At our end, we can run.’
Len Gibbons did not doubt what he was told, that the Friend could produce a killer.
Gabbi asked, ‘Don’t you have others?’
The man did not take offence at the challenge. ‘There is a file. Read it.’
‘Do you not have others?’ It was not a complaint, more with amusement that he was asked again so soon.
‘Do you want a state secret revealed? Do you wish to know how many competing operations are in discussion, development? Do you have to be told who has influenza, a hernia, who has a pregnant partner about to give birth? Do you concern yourself with who is tired, who might have lost the faith? The file is thin, but will thicken.’
He opened it. In the unit there were still older men, conservative, who preferred to use paper rather than rely exclusively on the electronic screen. The file contained four sheets of A4 – no photograph, no street map. He had driven in from his home, had dropped Leah at the defence ministry; they had talked about the coming public holiday, whether to go to the beach – not about choosing targets or killing them at close quarters – and why the refrigerator failed to achieve its maximum chill range. There was a concert at the end of the week, at the Mann Auditorium, and the Israeli Philharmonic would be playing Beethoven. They’d talked of that, and he had left her at the gate, seen the greetings of the sentries as she flashed a card at them and started to walk with her stick swinging in front of her. Many in the ministry, her section, would have wanted to bed her: only a few tiny fragments of the rocket’s casing had blinded her and she was not scarred, her skin without flaws. Many times on his travels Gabbi could have called whores into his hotel rooms. He had not. He believed she had not. The file had a name, a cursory biography, a map of a border area and an Internet digest on ‘brain tumours for beginners’, dummy-style. The last sheet told him that the wife of the target was believed to be about to travel abroad for final efforts at treatment.
His smile never carried humour. A finger stabbed at the map and found a point fractionally on the Iranian side of the border with Iraq. ‘I’m pleased to read this. I thought you wanted me to go there. How soon would I travel, wherever I travel to?’
‘There are surveillance people who go close today or tomorrow to watch the house and try to learn. Perhaps it will happen, perhaps not. If word comes, there’ll be a stampede.’
‘And you are giving it to me?’ He shrugged. He might go to a sales conference and he might not; he might be heading for a marketing seminar and might not; he might be called into a research-and-development brains trust and might not; he might be sent to shoot a man at close range but might not. He had been present at the killing of Moughniyeh in Damascus, of Majzoub in Beirut; he had been in Gaza, and in Turkey for a Syrian. That morning he had gone through the debrief and had told it factually, without remorse or triumphalism. He had reported that the pistol issued to him kicked to the left when fired. He had sat with the unit’s psychologist, and they had talked of the programme the Philharmonic were offering at the Mann. The report the psychologist would write might have been dug from the records: it would be the same in essence as that produced after his return from Damascus, Beirut, Gaza City, Istanbul… He changed little and was not scarred by his work.
‘Stay close.’
‘Of course.’ He finished the glass of water offered him, and stood. He had heard it said that the man behind the desk, elderly, a little obese, bald and almost haggard, had been a junior on the planning team for the incursion into Tunis when the life of Khalil al-Wazir, who rejoiced in the title of Abu Jihad – Father of the Holy War – was taken, and the blueprint of the operation was taught to recruits as a model. Gabbi would not have considered flippancy with this man, who had much blood on his hands. It was the end of a long day: the dusk fell on the city, throwing shadows on the buildings. The last of the sunlight blistered on the sea beyond the empty beach. ‘Call me.’
‘We hope to hear soon. The Americans bring the money, the British bring the idea and the location. We bring you. It’s a good arrangement, and gives us currency for the future, which is leverage. I do not know, no apologies, where you will go.’
‘I have, my darling Lili, a problem.’ He had been in Hamburg that day. He had operated. After seven hours in theatre – the patient was a prince from Riyadh who might, if he survived, buy a new wing for the neuro-surgery section – the consultant drove slowly and carefully home. He had been, unusually, complimented by the Chefarzt for the skill and precision of his work, but he could not be sure that the beast was fully extracted or whether enough remained to grow again beyond the most delicate reach of his knife. He had done his best and been praised. ‘It is from Iran, from my past, and it pinions me.’
He came off the autobahn and turned for Lubeck. His pleasure at the praise was diluted. What he might say to his wife, after he had read a story to his daughter, as they sat at dinner and she poured wine, served the food she had cooked and told him of her day played on his mind. When he interrupted her, she would hear him out with a frown and an ugly twist at her mouth. Then she would snap, ‘Tell them to go to hell. Put the phone down on them. Reject them out of hand. If they persist then call the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz. It’s what they’re there for, to deal with foreign threats. They’re in the book. Are you intimidated by those people? Are you, Steffen? They’re no part of your life.’ She could not understand. He would not know how to explain to Lili – a little thicker on the hips since childbirth, and fuller in the bosom, with the first grey hairs that needed the salon’s attention, dressed from the best of the shops in the Konigstrasse – the power and reach of the al-Quds Brigade and what could be done to the elderly couple who had fostered and mentored him. They would end the meal shouting, and doors would be slammed and the little girl would be crying on the stairs. No one who had not lived there would understand.
He came off the big traffic circle and headed for Rockstrasse. Sleet was in the air, and there might be snow before morning.
She might throw at him, ‘Are you not prepared to stand up to these people, tell them to go fuck…’
He owned a fine villa. Much of the old part of Lubeck had been devastated by British bombers in the spring of 1942, but the grand properties beyond the Burgtorbrucke had survived untouched. He was proud to have been able to buy a home on this street. It was an accolade to his work and endeavour. The light was on in the porch to welcome him, and the sleet flew in lines across it.
He would say nothing. She would not understand. Neither would her father, nor counter-intelligence officers. He thought himself alone, isolated.
