She nodded. ‘It might be a good idea to touch base before you go.’
‘Maybe you’d like to have dinner one night?’ he asked.
Miles looked slightly awkward, more like a teenager than a rising star of the CIA. There was something boyish about him, thought Liz. It was attractive in some ways, enormously preferable to the man-of-the-world cockiness of Bruno Mackay. Yet once again Miles was mixing business and pleasure in a way Liz found discomfiting. She wished he wouldn’t.
So she said, ‘I’m a bit tied up until after the conference.’ Miles could not contain a look of disappointment, so she added more brightly, ‘Let’s meet up when you’re back from Damascus. Give me a ring at home.’
Liz turned and walked along the river towards Thames House, thinking about their conversation. It was the business side of it that held her attention. The Mossad involvement in all this continued to puzzle her: again and again that connection came back to one person, Danny Kollek.
She wondered how to find out more about him. I’ll put Peggy Kinsolving onto it, she thought – she’ll rootle out whatever there is to find. And I should check again with Sophie Margolis, and see if Hannah’s been in touch with Kollek recently.
All that seemed clear enough, but something was still bothering her. Then she stopped dead on the pavement. Of course, she saw what it was.
The attack on Liz, and the murder of Fane’s Syrian source in Cyprus, must mean that someone had leaked the fact that the British knew of the threat to the conference. Who knew about the threat? Only a few people in MI5 and MI6 and Miles and Bokus. At first she had thought that they were prime suspects – particularly Bokus, once A4 had photographed him meeting Kollek.
And even when Tyrus Oakes had admitted that Bokus was running Kollek, rather than, as they had first suspected, the other way round, Charles had continued to suspect that the CIA man might have unintentionally revealed more than he should have done to Danny Kollek.
But there was a problem with this scenario, Liz suddenly realised. Even if Bokus
So how on earth had the Syrians learned about the double agent in Cyprus?
She saw Thames House ahead of her, its stone pale in the midday sun. The questions of this case were starting to seem maddeningly circular; Liz had an sense that ultimately there would be something simple – a person, she was sure of that – linking them all together. Yet each time she peered into the mystery she saw only a hall of mirrors, reflecting something so far unrecognisable.
FORTY-ONE
Dougal had been warned by the hotel manager that Israelis could be rude. But the three he was showing around Gleneagles that morning were perfectly polite – if uncommunicative. They spoke to each other in Hebrew, and to Dougal barely at all.
The three Israelis were not staying in the hotel; they had taken one of the Glenmor timeshare houses, where their country’s delegation would also be staying during the peace conference. Normally the manager himself would have been escorting them, but he had even bigger fish to fry: the Secret Service had arrived the night before, and were already combing the hotel, where the American President would be staying.
The timeshares were pleasant, high-gabled houses, laid out in a meandering line around a pond and little stream just across a road behind the hotel grounds. When Dougal had collected the three visitors first thing that morning, they had no complaints about the accommodation.
The woman in this trio, Naomi, was about forty, a little haggard-looking, and perpetually talking on her mobile phone. She seemed to be consulting her superiors in London or Tel Aviv about every detail, from the way each room should be arranged to the food and kitchen utensils required to make two dozen kosher breakfasts. The younger of the two men, Oskar, seemed to be her assistant; he deferred to Naomi in any discussion, and agreed with everything she said.
It was the other man whom Dougal found unsettling. He kept himself aloof, and spoke to Dougal only when he had a question. He didn’t say much to Naomi or Oskar either, and Dougal had the distinct impression that the other two were a little nervous of the man. They called him Danny.
During the morning they focused on finalising domestic arrangements, inspecting each of the houses assigned to the Israeli delegation, the catering arrangements for those who might want to cook for themselves, and a tour of the hotel – Dougal showing them the restaurants, the pool and the small arcade of shops.
Dougal left them to themselves as they lunched, claiming he had to check in with the office – it wasn’t true, but he needed a break, especially from the dark-haired Danny, whose blank eyes Dougal found unnerving.
When they reconvened after lunch, on the gravel drive by the hotel entrance, Dougal sensed that something had been decided. Naomi was no longer on the phone, and she hung back as Danny stepped forward.
The Israeli said, ‘On the evening before the conference begins, we are planning to give a dinner for one of the delegations. We think the golf club restaurant would make a nice venue.’
Dougal nodded. ‘That can be arranged. The view of the hills is grand. Would you be wanting to go down there now and look at it?’
‘Later,’ said Danny, a little curtly. Dougal wondered if he’d been in the military, but then, hadn’t all Israelis? ‘We also want to provide some entertainment for our guests. Something local to this region that they might enjoy.’
‘Would you like live music?’ He could rustle up some pipers in kilts to give an ‘authentic’ Scottish flavour to the entertainment.
But Danny shook his head. ‘No, no music. We’d like something
‘Outside? The weather can be up and down, you know, especially now it’s autumn.’ And chilly, thought Dougal.
‘We’ll take the chance. Let’s go to the falconry centre,’ Danny said. The preoccupied man of the morning had given way to the leader, somebody who knew what he wanted. It was clear now that Danny was in charge of this curious trio.
‘They say all Arabs like birds of prey,’ Naomi said.
‘Is it Arabs you’ll be entertaining?’ asked Dougal as they stood waiting for Danny to finish his conversation with the head of the falconry centre. They had been there for over an hour; Dougal had had to struggle to look interested as Danny asked the falconry man another of his countless questions. How much did the birds weigh? Did their transmitter bother them? Would they mind being handled by strangers? This assuming the guests of the Israelis would want to have a go themselves.
‘Actually, I’m not supposed to say,’ said Naomi, looking guiltily towards Danny, who fortunately was listening intently to the falcon man. But Dougal noted that she had already nodded.
At last Danny was finished. He spoke sharply to Naomi and Oskar in Hebrew. Turning to Dougal, he said, ‘Now we need to look at the golf club restaurant. But on the way, let’s stop at the gun dog school.’
Danny strode confidently towards the school, and Dougal followed with Naomi and Oskar. He was beginning to feel like a spare part. You’d think he knew this place better than I do, thought Dougal crossly.
They stood outside a large fenced compound as a dozen black Labradors, cooped up inside the fence, jumped around friskily. The handler, a smiling woman with a mop of blond curly hair, came out to meet them. Danny took her to one side, talking earnestly to her, and Dougal could hear only snatches of their conversation.
Gradually it dawned on Dougal that the Israeli wanted the dogs to be part of the entertainment he was
