“So are you going to tell me what all this is about?”
He was taking control. I had to stop that.
“Don’t be silly, Roger. You know why you’re here. Why else would you have come on your own? And at a moment’s notice.”
“I’ve been worried about you.”
“Do you want the lists, Roger?”
I realised I was trembling. My voice was too high-pitched. Get a grip, girl.
“What lists, Natalie?”
“Oh, I think you know. You’ll have properly inspected the cover I emailed you yesterday.”
Better. I’d said it slowly. I tried to breathe evenly.
“I have to tell you I have no idea what that was. Or what this is.”
I turned and addressed his profile. I was surprised at my own anger, for once, not just my ability to suppress it.
“You left your desk as soon as I called to be run around the West End. So don’t shit me around, Roger. You sent me into East Jerusalem to pretend to swap your little list, you tool. Well, surprise surprise, I have it after all.”
The fountains splashed in Trafalgar Square.
“What list would that be?”
He stared straight ahead, as if he was driving. I realised that he might be wired for sound.
“But it didn’t work out that way. Funny how there’s always a different strategy going down. What is it that makes God laugh, Roger? People making plans?”
He said nothing.
“Was it you or your boss who had me kidnapped, Roger?”
I hoped that “boss” was wounding. He half-smiled. I felt the rage begin to roll inside me.
“Tell me, Roger. Was the swap of names too much like a peace process? Too much like slowing the escalation to war?”
He raised his eyebrows slightly and shook his head in an attempt at theatrical bemusement.
“I really don’t know what this is about.”
“Well, let me speculate,” I said. We swung on to the Embankment. “Suppose we were collecting the names of those who were working for Hamas in the UN, with the big aid organisations. And what had we offered in return? The names of those who worked for us? Just at a wild guess, Roger, I’d say those Palestinians who had been turned.”
He was still, silent, but I could tell he was listening, because his eyes flickered across the cab’s windscreen. So I went on.
“But that’s too much like a negotiation, isn’t it, Roger. Like a negotiated settlement. Too much like peace – like an Israel settled within its old borders, eh? Just like the good old days before 1967. Before the magical mystery tour.”
I leaned in to him.
“And what better way to stop that than have a British priest kidnapped and killed, when the time was right. Was that your idea, Roger? Or theirs? But things don’t always work out as planned, do they . . . Roger.”
I spat his name. He turned to me for the first time. His neck and lower cheeks had flushed slightly and I could see that he was angry.
“Come back with me, Natalie. Let us help you.”
I ignored that and it was my turn to look out of the cab.
“Who did you make me kill, Roger? Were they Israelis? Or were they just turned Palestinians? On the list, maybe. Did they even know what they were doing? Or were they just another bunch of sad suckers doing a job for a few American dollars?”
He looked at me now, not unkindly, sighing and letting his shoulders drop, cocking his head to one side.
“You’re a fantasist, Natalie. Let me help you. I don’t know what’s happened to you. But I do know you need help.”
I looked from one pale eye to the other. I could have cried.
“Who did I kill?” I asked again, barely audibly, I think. He was still watching me and I looked back at him.
“You killed no one, Natalie. Come back with me. Let me help.”
It was a staring match now. I lost and looked out of the window again, through the black iron railings to the lawns at the Temple.
“What happened to Toby?” I asked, as one might inquire after a school friend.
“Why do you ask?”
I gathered myself.
“It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t tell me the truth. I have the lists. And if anything happens to me – or to anyone I love in the Middle East – let it be understood, Roger, they get published. Understand that, Roger. WikiArabs, WikiJews, Wikibollah.”
I’d altered the rhythm and there was silence. He was waiting for more. We were at Blackfriars, where this had all started.
“But there’s something else,” I said, moving my agenda on.
He turned his chest slightly towards me and stared at the cab’s light grey carpet to indicate he was listening.
“There’s still cash in that development budget you sent me out with. My cover, wasn’t it?”
“Please, Natalie, you’re not well. You need rest.”
I talked over him. “You’ll invest it after all. You’ll distribute it just as we said at the conference. But you’ll keep me informed and I’ll have final clearance on where it’s spent. And specifically you’ll put a million dollars into an organisation I’ll give you the name of.”
“I thought this might come down to money,” he said, exhaling.
He was trying to provoke me, distract me with the venal, the perceived blackmail. I took his hand on the seat, cupping my palm over his loose fist as a child might play that game, wrapping a rock with paper to win, the fragile beating the rough.
“Roger, we’re going to have such fun. I’m going to make you plant new fig orchards in Gaza. Oh, and we’re going to invest in a cafe in Nazareth, by the way. No, not invest – we’re going to save it.”
He jerked a single laugh of scorn, but nodded a kind of acquiescence.
“And I’m going to write my story, Roger. Change the names to protect the guilty. And you’re going to get it published for me. And if anything happens to me, the real names get published.”
We were on Ludgate Hill
