“Lancaster Gate, tomorrow, two o’clock.”
Click.
Jacqueline said, “What was that?”
“A wrong number. Go back to sleep.”
Maida Vale in morning. A gang of schoolboys teasing a pretty girl. Jacqueline imagined they were Phalangist militiamen armed with knives and axes. A lorry roared past, belching diesel fumes. Jacqueline saw a man tied to the bumper being dragged to death. Her block of flats loomed in front of her. She looked up and imagined Israeli soldiers standing on the roof, watching the slaughter below through binoculars, firing flares so the killers could better see their victims. She entered the building, climbed the stairs, and slipped into the flat. Gabriel was sitting on the couch.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he had survived Shatila? Why didn’t you tell me his family had been butchered like that?”
“What difference would it have made?”
“I just wish I had known!” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Is it true? Are the things he told me true?”
“Which part?”
“All of it, Gabriel! Don’t play fucking games with me.”
“Yes, it’s true! His family died at Shatila. He’s suffered. So what? We’ve all suffered. It doesn’t give him the right to murder innocent people because history didn’t go his way!”
“He was an innocent, Gabriel! He was just a boy!”
“We’re in the middle of an operation, Jacqueline. Now is not the time for a debate on moral equivalence and the ethics of counterterrorism.”
“I apologize for permitting the question of morality to enter my thoughts. I forgot you and Shamron never get tripped up over something so trivial.”
“Don’t lump me in with Shamron.”
“Why not? Because he gives orders, and you follow them?”
“What about Tunis?” Gabriel asked. “You knew Tunis was an assassination job, but you willingly took part in it. You even volunteered to go back the night of the killing.”
“That’s because the target was Abu Jihad. He had the blood of hundreds of Israelis and Jews on his hands.”
“This one has blood on his hands too. Don’t forget that.”
“He’s just a boy, a boy whose family was butchered while the Israeli army looked on and did nothing.”
“He’s not a boy. He’s a twenty-five-year-old man who helps Tariq kill people.”
“And you’re going to use him to get to Tariq, because of what Tariq did to you? When does it end? When there’s no more blood to shed? When, Gabriel?”
He stood up and pulled on his jacket.
Jacqueline said, “I want out.”
“You can’t leave now.”
“Yes, I can. I don’t want to sleep with Yusef anymore.”
“Why?”
“Why? You have the nerve to ask me why?”
“I’m sorry, Jacqueline. That didn’t come out-”
“You think of me as a whore, don’t you, Gabriel! You think it doesn’t bother me to sleep with a man I don’t care for.”
“That’s not true.”
“Is that what I was to you in Tunis? Just a whore?”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Then tell me what I was.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going back to France? Back to your villa in Valbonne? Back to your Parisian parties and your photo shoots and your fashion shows, where the most difficult question is deciding what shade of lipstick to wear?”
She slapped him across the left side of his face. He stared back at her, eyes cold, color rising in the skin over his cheekbone. She drew back her hand to slap him again, but he casually lifted his left hand and deflected her blow.
“Can’t you hear what’s going on?” Gabriel said. “He told you the story of what happened to him at Shatila for a reason. He’s testing you. He wants you for something.”
“I don’t care.”
“I thought you were someone I could depend on. Not someone who was going to fall apart in the middle of the game.”
“Shut up, Gabriel!”
“I’ll contact Shamron-tell him we’re out of business.”
He reached out for the door. She grabbed his hand. “Killing Tariq won’t make it right. That’s just an illusion. You think it will be like fixing a painting: you find the damage, retouch it, and everything is fine again. But it’s not like that for a human being. In fact it’s not even like that for a painting. If you look carefully you can always see where it’s been retouched. The scars never go away. The restorer doesn’t heal a painting. He just hides the wounds.”
“I need to know if you’re willing to continue.”
“And I want to know if I was just your whore in Tunis.”
Gabriel reached out and touched her cheek. “You were my lover in Tunis.” His hand fell to his side. “And my family was destroyed because of it.”
“I can’t change the past.”
“I know.”
“Did you care for me?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes, very much.”
“Do you care for me now?”
He closed his eyes. “I need to know whether you can go on.”
THIRTY
Hyde Park, London
Karp said, “Your friend picked a damned lousy place for a meeting.”
They were sitting in the back of a white Ford van on the Bayswater Road a few yards from Lancaster Gate, Karp hunched over a console of audio equipment, adjusting his levels. Gabriel could scarcely hear himself think over the riotous din of cars, taxis, lorries, and double-decker buses. Overhead the trees lining the northern edge of the park writhed in the wind. Through Karp’s microphones the air rushing through the branches sounded like white water. Beyond Lancaster Gate the fountains of the Italian Gardens splashed and danced. Through the microphones it sounded like a monsoonal downpour.
Gabriel said, “How many listeners do you have out there?”
“Three,” Karp said. “The guy on the bench who looks like a banker, the pretty girl tossing bread to the ducks, and the guy selling ice cream just inside the gate.”
“Not bad,” Gabriel said.
“Under these conditions don’t expect any miracles.”
Gabriel looked at his wristwatch: three minutes past two. He thought: He’s not going to show. They’ve spotted Karp’s team, and they’re aborting. He said, “Where the fuck is he?”
“Be patient, Gabe.”
