misunderstand what I say. You’re to pouch the photographs to London, right now. And after that you are to do nothing but sit and wait, until I come back to you. You got that? Sit and do nothing. Go near no one, upset no one, talk to no one. You disobey me just once, by one iota, and I will personally oversee your dismissal. You heard everything I have said?’
‘I heard,’ said Charlie. He’d backed himself into a right fucking corner this time, he thought: and he wasn’t quite sure why he’d even done it. And less sure what he hoped to achieve by manoeuvring the phoney reason for staying on. Unless it was to say I told you so when it happened.
To the waiting Cummings in the office outside the secure communications room Charlie said: ‘There’s an urgent shipment for London. A special pouch. Can you fix it for me?’
‘Of course,’ said the resident intelligence officer.
Charlie sent all the photographs, even the women, wanting the unnecessary comparisons to take as long as possible.
The choice of the railway terminal as a meeting spot was professionally excellent, crowded with passengers and noise amongst which it was easy for Vasili Zenin to merge invisibly. With his customary caution he arrived thirty minutes early, the mistake of taking the woman back to the apartment still nagging irritatingly in his mind and determined against any further relaxation.
He found a slightly raised section near the northern departure gates from which it was possible for him to maintain an elevated watch, alert as he had been at the restaurant the previous day for any surveillance build-up and like the previous day isolating nothing about which to become alarmed.
Zenin picked out Sulafeh almost as soon as she entered the vast concourse, immediately curious at the woman’s demeanour. She was hurrying and darting bird-like looks around her, behaving quite differently from the way she had when he’d followed her from the Palestinian hotel and Zenin’s initial impression was that she had herself spotted someone in pursuit whom he’d missed. Anxiously he scanned the crowd around and behind her, letting their planned meeting time pass while he searched, unable to detect anything.
He still approached cautiously, until the last moment hiding himself from her, conscious as he got closer of her continued nervous fidgeting. Sulafeh thrust forward when he let her see him at last, holding out her hand almost in some sort of plea, her face twisted as if she were in physical pain.
‘What is it!’ he said.
‘It’s not going to work!’ she said. ‘It can’t work, not now!’
Chapter Twenty-nine
It only took minutes for Vasili Zenin to realize the woman’s attitude was fuelled by anger and not anxiety but longer to discover the reason because so furious was she that her thoughts and words came disjointed, without any comprehensible thread. He held the hand she offered and talked over her, telling her to stop and become calm but had to say it several times before she ceased babbling, her throat moving as if she were literally swallowing the words. As she did so the tension went visibly from her, so that she seemed to sag in front of him.
Zenin looked quickly around, judging it safe to talk where they were at least until he got some reason for her attitude, and said: ‘OK. But slowly now. Why can’t it work!’
‘Dajani,’ she started, the explanation still jumbled. ‘The other translator, the one I told you about.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘He was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel after I left you: and began the usual stuff. I couldn’t stand it, so I told him to go to hell,’ expanded Sulafeh. ‘When I got to the Palais des Nations this morning I was called in by our secretariat Director; his name is Zeidan. He said there were to be some changes to the translation rota. I’ve been relegated. For everything.’
‘The photographic session?’ demanded Zenin, at once.
‘That’s why it can’t work now,’ said the woman. ‘I specifically asked about the ceremony. He said Dajani would definitely lead there. They published this morning for secretariat guidance the positions in which everyone will be standing – I’ve brought it with me. I shall be at least twenty yards away.’
She was right, accepted the Russian, it couldn’t work now. He looked around him again, deciding they had been there long enough. And he needed time to think. He cupped her arm in his, conscious of the anger still trembling through her, and said: ‘Let’s go and find a cafe.’
Sulafeh fell obediently into step beside him, enjoying his touch, the frustration ebbing away: he’d think of something, she knew. Make it all possible. She felt completely protected – confident, too – now that she was with him.
Zenin took her to the first reasonably sized cafe they encountered, on the corner of the Rue Fendt: there were pavement tables but he went inside and got a booth in a corner near the bar, where they were quite hidden. He retained her hand across the table, aware she needed his touch, pressing her fingers against any conversation until they had ordered and the waiter had delivered the drinks – mineral water, retaining the pretence – and then said: ‘I want to go through everything, know it all. Why won’t it work? How is Dajani involved?’
‘Because I asked specifically about that, too,’ said Sulafeh. ‘It was always the intention for me to lead the photographic session: I manoeuvred for that particular appointment for months, because it was so important. Obviously I reminded Zeidan. He said Dajani came to him this morning. Said it might offend the other Arab delegations to have a woman in such apparent importance. Sexist bastard!’
The operation had always been structured for the aftermath to be more important than the actual killing and the cornerstone of that structure was the woman’s involvement, Zenin knew: whatever an unknown man named Dajani had done was almost immaterial. The one consideration was to get Sulafeh Nabulsi within apparent killing distance of the assembled delegations because the Palestinians had to be blamed. He said: ‘There is no possibility of persuading …’ He stopped, searching for the name. ‘… Zeidan,’ he resumed, remembering. ‘No possibility of persuading Zeidan to reverse the change?’
‘None.’
‘Is he someone else who’s tried to get you into bed?’
Sulafeh hesitated, finding the conversation more difficult than before because of what had happened between them. Reluctantly she said: ‘Yes.’
‘Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Would it work?’
She wished so much he hadn’t asked like that: as if he were talking about some other woman and not her. She said: ‘There’s not enough time.’
‘No,’ he agreed, his voice distant, his thoughts quite detached, ‘there’s not enough time …’ And then he stopped, smiling, coming back to her. ‘Time!’ he said. ‘There’s not enough time!’
Sulafeh regarded him curiously. She said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘There are only two of you, as translators? You and this man Dajani?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long did your selection take?’
‘Me, about six months. Him, I don’t know.’
‘And there’s been a long preparation?’
‘Of course,’ said Sulafeh. ‘We’ve had to memorize the position papers and be able to recognize the delegation spokesmen for the translation to be simultaneous …’ Now she smiled, at an irony by which she imagined he would be amused. ‘And we had to be acknowledged acceptable by everyone attending.’
Zenin continued smiling but at his own hardening resolve to the problem, not what she regarded as amusing. He pressed her hand again but more sensually this time. ‘If anything happened to Dajani there would not be enough time to prepare a replacement, would there? You’d have to be restored to the original arrangement?’
‘No,’ she agreed, with slowly growing awareness. At once came the caution, mixed with the memory of her excitement. ‘But when I told you Dajani could be a nuisance you said you couldn’t risk attention by killing him.’
