The Run Around

‘What?’

‘That after all the work I’ve put into this – a whole goddamned year of background pressure and give-and- take diplomacy – that the public signings and agreements are going to be between the Arabs and Israel and the Palestinians,’ complained the President. ‘I should have been there, to be seen as the architect.’

‘You’ll be acknowledged as such,’ assured the Secretary of State.

Would it be possible for him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize? wondered Anderson. Kissinger had shared it, at the end of the Vietnam war. But with Le Duc Tho, not Nixon. He’d have to have the archives check the protocol for him: a scroll like that would look damned good as the centrepiece in Austin. Anderson said: ‘This is the milestone one, Jim. This is the big one we’re all going to be remembered by.’

‘That’s how I see it, too, Mr President,’ said the other man. Both of us remembered, he thought.

David Levy left the Foreign Minister’s office inconspicuously through the side door, merging easily into the throng of people in the outside corridors of the Knesset, letting their flow carry him past the Chagall murals towards the exit.

In the forecourt outside, protected against terrorist outrage by the decorative metal fence, he hesitated in the pale sunlight, gazing out over the Jerusalem hills and the valley from which the cross of Christ was supposed to have been cut. How much blood had been shed over this land in the two thousand years since then, he thought. It seemed difficult to imagine that it would ever stop. Or that Geneva could be the way.

Levy was a sabra, a Jew born in Israel without any real way of knowing what the Holocaust had truly been like, but his father had experienced it and told him how it was to exist in the Warsaw sewers, to be hunted like the rats they’d replaced, denied any proper home, any proper life. The old man had come to Palestine a fervent Zionist, one of Begin’s first lieutenants in the Irgun Zvai Lume service that fought against the British in 1947 and from which the Israeli external intelligence service, the Mossad, eventually grew. It had seemed natural that Levy should follow his father: frequently he wished the old man had lived to see how high he had risen in the organization. Levy knew his father would have been very proud. And particularly today, although Levy supposed security would have precluded his telling the old man. Levy had already been notified, of course, that he would be heading the Mossad contingent to the Geneva conference. But he had not expected the Foreign Minister’s appointment that put him in additional command of the group from Shin Bet, Israel’s counter-intelligence organization.

But then, he reflected further, there had been a lot about Mordechai Cohen’s briefing that he had not expected.

‘It’s an intolerable demand!’ protested Harkness. ‘The Foreign Office will be furious.’

‘They are,’ confirmed Wilson, mildly. The Director was conscious of his deputy’s antipathy towards Charlie Muffin and hoped it would not cloud Harkness’s judgement about the man’s professional abilities. Someone had to clear blocked drains and Charlie was good at it.

‘What explanation can we give for demanding, through the Foreign Ministries of seven countries, that the crew of eighteen of their national aircraft are located wherever they are in the world and made specifically available, as soon as possible?’

‘Drugs,’ said Wilson. ‘It was Charlie’s idea. Brilliant, isn’t it? We’re supposedly on the trail of a major international drugs syndicate. Hundreds of millions; all that stuff. Seem to hear about nothing else these days: makes it perfectly acceptable.’

‘And what if it all ends in nothing, after causing so much trouble!’ complained the deputy.

‘Why don’t you try to come up with an idea?’ suggested Wilson, briefly letting his irritation show.

Harkness blinked but said nothing.

Chapter Twelve

Vasili Zenin enjoyed the return drive to Geneva. He left Bern with sufficient time to reach Lausanne by lunchtime, choosing the Voile d’Or for its magnificent view of the lake and ate trout which the menu claimed to have been caught in it. He followed the north shore of the Leman and got to Geneva by early afternoon. Although it meant a long walk, Zenin left the car in the park at the Cornavin railway station and walked to the Place des Nations: it was unlikely the vehicle would have been distinguished from any of the hundreds of others but he did not intend taking the risk and anyway he wanted to time out on foot the escape routes that had been devised at Kuchino. He paced the most direct suggestion the first time, along the Rue des Montbrilliant and then the more circuitous roads, the Rue de Vermont and after that the Avenue Guiseppe Motta. The schedule provided by the Bern embassy was wrong in every case: the estimate for the Rue de Vermont, before it connected with the Vidollet, was at variance by at least fifteen minutes and on the Guiseppe Motta, until it reached the Rue de Servette, was out by twenty.

Zenin allowed the anger this time, letting it burn through him, determined there would be punishment when he returned to Moscow. Of course the embassy rezidentura had not been given any reason for providing the information and obviously the stupid bastards had not taken it seriously, dismissing it as some sort of nonsense request from Dzerzhinsky Square. And failed in one of the most vital segments of the operation because if this section was mistimed by as much as a minute – a few seconds even – he would be trapped within the cordon the Swiss would throw around the area. Bastards, he thought, stupid, idiotic bastards!

Zenin repeated all three routes twice more, to provide an average, and when he got back to the railway station on the last occasion stood for several moments looking speculatively at the baroque complex. The Kuchino planning had been for him to get away from Geneva by car but from the reconnaissance of the immediate area he had already recognized how easy it was for the roads to become accidentally blocked, beyond the danger of official barriers. Which was further advice the embassy had failed to provide. And which was something against which he could take no precautions. So what about a train? The woman would have a detailed timetable of the conference: that was a prime, although not the main, reason for her involvement. So he would be able to estimate a convenient train, even buy a ticket in advance so there would be no delay. A much better proposal, the Russian thought, warming to the idea: roads were easily closed but the trains would not be stopped. And he could even insure against being detained in the unlikely event of that happening. There was no necessity, after all, for him to catch an international express beyond the Swiss border. All he needed was one of the local services to get him out of the immediate area. Carouge, perhaps. Or Annemasse. Certainly no further than Thonon.

Zenin went into the echoing concourse and found the information section, patiently joining the queue, and when he reached the clerk obtained timetables for local, internal express and international services, as always providing himself with as wide a choice as possible.

Outside again Zenin followed the Guiseppe Motta route, because it brought him more immediately close to the building from which he was going to have to shoot.

It was a necessarily high building, in a street just off the Colombettes road, an apparent combination of office suites and apartments. Zenin knew the rooms that had been rented for the past two months were on the top floor of the north-east corner, providing a supposedly uninterrupted view from two separate windows of the grassed area where the commemorative photographs of the delegates were customarily taken. Having found fault with so much else in the local information Zenin accepted he would have to verify that but decided against doing it today. His connection with the apartment had to be restricted to the absolute minimum, so that particular but essential confirmation would have to wait until he installed the weapon. It would be necessary, also, properly to assess how long it would take him to get out of the flat, descend twenty storeys and regain the street. The embassy gave an estimate of seven minutes but Zenin was contemptuous now of all their timings.

He went back on to the Colombettes road and walked up to the multi-lane Ferney highway, nodding appreciatively at the noise, recognizing at once and with professional awareness that the traffic roar would mask completely the muted sound of the shots and certainly make any directional fix practically impossible. Just as quickly Zenin saw an additional advantage. Vehicles flooded by in an unbroken stream: it was virtually inevitable that any security sweep, no matter how well rehearsed and co-ordinated, would become snarled up in it.