The Run Around

for a while, from over there.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you were alone,’ said Zenin. ‘I’m being careful, too.’

‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ said Sulafeh. ‘Now, I mean.’

‘And?’

‘I still don’t know.’ She was immediately drawn to him, but was unsure if that were because of his obvious attractiveness or because of what she knew him to be.

‘I’m not sure either,’ said Zenin, which was a lie but he was content to let her make what she wanted from the ambiguity.

She looked directly at him for several moments and Zenin held her eyes and a heaviness grew between them. To break the mood, Sulafeh patted the briefcase-type bag she had trapped between her leg and the chair leg and said: ‘I’ve got everything here.’

‘What’s everything?’

‘Complete plan of the conference area, with all the rooms and chambers marked and identified. The most up-to-date schedule of the sessions—’

‘Which could be changed, of course?’ Zenin interrupted.

‘I believe they frequently are,’ she agreed.

‘How much warning do you get, as interpreter?’

‘Overnight.’

‘So we’ll need to meet every day.’

She did not reply at once, looking directly at him again. Then she said: ‘Yes, we’ll have to meet every day.’

Zenin smiled at her and she smiled back. He said: ‘Will that be difficult for you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Beneath the atmosphere growing between them Zenin was instantly aware of her doubt. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not a problem with the conference arrangements,’ she qualified. ‘Until the sessions start there’s very little for me to do.’

‘What then?’

‘A man called Dajani, the other interpreter. He’s becoming a nuisance.’

‘Sexually?’ insisted Zenin, openly.

Sulafeh nodded. ‘He’s made a play from the beginning. Hung around the conference area and the hotel …’ She shuddered. ‘He’s repulsive,’ she said.

‘I can’t kill him,’ said Zenin, reflectively, ‘it would draw attention and we obviously can’t risk that.’

Although she knew what he was – or believed she knew what he was – the casualness with which he spoke of killing astonished her. At once there was a further, wonderful sensation: the eroticism of it erupted through her and she felt the sexual wetness between her legs. ‘No,’ she accepted, her voice uneven, ‘you can’t kill him.’

Zenin was conscious of the change in her tone and wondered at it. He said: ‘Have you slept with him yet?’

‘No,’ said Sulafeh. Her excitement continued to grow at the equally casual and detached way he was now talking of sex, and she wondered if it showed.

‘You might have to, if it’s the only way.’

Stop it! she thought, as a fresh surge swept through her. She said: ‘I suppose so.’

‘Could you do it, if you had to?’

‘I can do anything to ensure that we don’t fail,’ insisted the woman, striving for control and for the professionalism she was supposed to have. ‘I just don’t want to: like I said, he’s repulsive.’

‘Like you also said, it’s a nuisance,’ agreed Zenin, reflective again. ‘I don’t like the risk of anything unforeseen.’

‘There was no way I could have known.’

‘I wasn’t criticizing you.’ He thought she was flushed and said: ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘There’s no change in the schedule, for the commemorative photograph?’

‘No,’ she said.

Zenin gestured towards the bag and said: ‘Is the site marked there?’

‘Yes.’

He would have to visit the unseen apartment soon, to ensure the sightline was as he needed it to be. For his own enjoyment he reached across the cafe table, taking her hand. She reached forward to help him, enjoying his feel. ‘Such a small hand!’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Have you ever fired a Browning automatic?’

It had not been necessary for him to touch her, to ask a question like that. ‘I thought you were trained in the Libyan camps, like I was?’ she said. Throughout the planning Sulafeh had been told, by cut-outs she believed to be Arab but who were, in fact, KGB agents like Zenin, that he was a fanatical member of a breakaway faction of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal group.

‘I know the weapons I was trained on,’ said Zenin, the escape easy and still holding her hand. ‘Not how women were instructed.’

‘Usually it was Kalashnikov, Chinese as well as Russian,’ said Sulafeh. ‘But there were others – including Brownings.’

‘It’s a parabellum: heavy,’ said Zenin, freeing her hand at last. ‘You will need to be very close: the recoil could make you fire wide. Soft-nosed bullets, of course. Guaranteed to kill.’

Sulafeh felt the sensation growing again, at the return to casual talk about killing, and thought, please no! She did not think she could sustain much more. She said: ‘Interpreters have to get close; that’s their job.’

‘What about conference security: getting the gun in that day?’

Sulafeh snorted a dismissive laugh. ‘Ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I’ve completed the accreditation and got all my passes and I’ve made a particular point of becoming known to the security personnel, so that they recognize me.’ She touched the bag. ‘I’ve carried that all the time, so that it has become accepted without question, like I am. Not once has anyone demanded to look inside.’

‘What about metal-detecting devices?’

‘They have the hand-held sort, to run over the body. Again, I’ve never been checked.’

‘There aren’t any electronically governed doors you have to pass through?’

‘No.’

‘Careless,’ judged Zenin.

‘To our advantage,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll get you out, you know,’ said Zenin, in sudden promise. ‘We’ll need to go through everything very thoroughly, to make sure you understand, but I’ve already planned it. It’ll work.’

‘I was told you would,’ she said. ‘Look after me,’ she added.

‘Trust me.’

‘I can, very easily,’ she said, holding him with another of her direct looks.

There was the need to examine the apartment off the Colombettes road, thought Zenin. But alone. To consider – wildly imagine – taking her there would be madness, contravening all the training: that too intense, too action-packed training he’d earlier thought of so critically. It was part of the tension to want a woman, Zenin knew: excitement heightening all the senses and all the needs. He’d actually been warned about – and against – it during that training. But hadn’t believed it, until now. He said: ‘Have you got to go to the conference centre any more today?’

Sulafeh shook her head. ‘I went this morning, to collect the up-to-date schedules.’

‘What else do you have to do?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I left everything open.’ Sulafeh allowed the pause and then added: ‘I did not know what you would want.’

It would be safer for her to hand over the schedules somewhere less open, he thought. And then he thought