Twenty-four

It was already midday in Israel, but ten o’clock in Britain, when Jake arrived in London on the British Airways flight. He was not armed but had in his hand-baggage all the equipment that is carried by a diabetic. There was a packet of disposable syringes, indistinguishable from the kind seen in a doctor’s surgery, which would be used for the daily dose of insulin; and another, smaller, portable syringe looking something like a fountain-pen with which a diabetic could top up his dose of insulin while sitting at a table in a restaurant.

There were four small bottles with the syringes, each labelled insulin, and all but one containing insulin – the odd one being filled instead with a poison which stopped the heart. It was easily administered, left no trace in the blood, and had been used successfully to dispose of terrorists and their mentors in different countries of the world.

Jake passed through customs and immigration control without difficulty. The stamps on his passport showed that he had been in and out of Britain many times before. Since his only luggage was the bag he had had with him on the plane, he went straight from Terminal One to catch the Underground into central London.

If he had been in a hurry, he would have taken a taxi, but Louvish always scrutinized his expenses on missions of this kind, and reacted to any unnecessary extravagance as if it were a blow aimed deliberately at the faltering economy of Israel. Since Jake knew that his target, Henry Nash, would already have gone from his flat to his office, and that he would have no opportunity to deal with him until he went out for lunch, he had no reason to hurry into the city. He sat reading Newsweek as the train made its way through the suburbs of Hounslow and Hammersmith. At South Kensington, he changed to the Circle Line, catching a train to Victoria. There, he went to the public lavatory, shut himself into a cubicle, took the portable syringe out of his bag and filled it with a dose of the poison. He screwed on the cap and clipped the syringe to the inside pocket of his polyester blouson. He closed the bag, used the lavatory, then left to deposit his bag in a storage locker.

He was booked on the El Al charter flight which flew from Gatwick to Tel Aviv that evening. He studied the railway timetable to check the times of the express to the airport; then he went back to the Underground and caught a train to Piccadilly Circus. From there he walked to the Swiss Centre in Leicester Square, went into the café and sat down.

It was here that Aron – the operative who had helped him with Father Lambert – was to bring a photograph of the target. Jake already knew a certain amount about Henry Nash, and had formed a picture of him in his mind; but that was not enough to make a positive identification, and Louvish would be angry if he killed the wrong man.

If there was one emotion which dominated the many thoughts and feelings flitting through Jake’s restless mind, it was the desire to earn Louvish’s approval. His regard for his father amounted to nothing beside his admiration for his commander. Certainly, the Professor was a zealous Zionist who had raised his son to be brave and heroic, but the very longing had exposed him to Jake as a man who himself was neither.

Louvish, on the other hand, was as decisive in action as he was in analysis: the logic of the thought led inexorably to the enactment of the deed. No misgivings were allowed to impede the attainment of an objective: pity, said Louvish, was merely cowardice in a pleasing disguise.

Jake did not like to kill. The first time was supposed to be the most difficult, but in his case it had been the easiest, in the heat of battle in the Lebanon where his victim, given the chance, would have happily killed him. Later, in cold blood, on missions in Athens and Geneva, it had become harder; but even there the targets had been strangers in a crowd. The worst had been the last, Father Lambert, because he had been kind to Jake since he was a child, and because he had looked at Jake and at Aron as they had dragged him to the window, not with hate or even fear but with a pity that did not seem at all like cowardice in a pleasing disguise.

Jake had understood quite clearly why Father Lambert had to die. There was never a flaw in the logic used by Louvish. He could see, too, why it was necessary to kill Henry Nash, and he told himself over and over again that he should no more flinch from sticking a needle into the arm of this Englishman than Judith had hesitated to hack off the head of Holofernes. Time might separate the one deed from the other, but the cause remained the same.

Only one thought worried him – that Louvish might judge it necessary to eliminate Anna too. It was unlikely that, if he did, he would involve Jake in her execution, but that did not resolve his anxiety. However much his sister had exasperated him over the years, she remained a member of his family, his people, his nation. Was not Anna one of those they were fighting to defend? Could it really be right to kill her? Or was it possible that, after all, Louvish’s logic was somehow flawed?

He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Aron should have arrived by now. What if he did not turn up? Jake could find the office, but how would he identify the man? He looked for a public telephone. There was none in sight. If he left the café, Aron might arrive and miss him. In any case, he knew the habits of a man like Henry Nash: he would not leave for lunch before half-past twelve. He could afford to wait. He could even wait until the evening – these things were better done in the rush-hour – and take a later plane, but he wanted to get back as soon as possible: he was afraid about what his father might do in his agitated state of mind.

That was why he must get back, yet Aron still had not come. It was now five to twelve. He stood up, left money for his coffee on the table, and went to look for a telephone. There was one outside in Leicester Square, but it was being used by a swarthy Lebanese. Jake could tell this from the man’s accent as he chatted in Arabic, apparently to a girl, trickling a loathsome flow of pornographic innuendo down the line, unaware that anyone around him could understand what he said.

Jake turned away. He hated London. He longed to be out of these gutters, filled with human rubbish, and back in Israel, in the desert, with his comrades in arms. How pitiable were those who had never known what it was to fight in the heat, side by side with your friends, for a cause that had been ordained by Yahweh himself. How majestic it was, when they camped under the stars, to know that their lives were not to be lived out as ants in the antheap of a city like London, but as the heroes of Providence, reconquering and rebuilding the land of God’s chosen people.

He found a telephone and dialled Aron’s number. The girl answered. Aron had left over an hour before. There had been a call from Tel Aviv. That had held him up. And the traffic. Or the Tube. She did not know how he had travelled. Jake told her to tell Aron, if he rang in, to meet him outside the offices of the Soho Newsletter.

It was now a quarter past twelve. He had to start his surveillance soon, or risk losing the chance of finishing the job in the lunch hour. He walked up Dean Street, past a nightclub advertising non-stop striptease by big-busted girls. He shuddered. How vile, this wantonness of the Philistines. Never, never, would Jerusalem become like London. Never would a new Isaiah be able to say: ‘What a harlot she has become, the faithful city …’

He came to the building which housed the office of the Soho Newsletter and walked straight past to the corner. He crossed the street and walked back down the other side. There was a small sandwich-bar, with three or four stools up against the counter. He could sit there and watch, but how would he know who to watch for? He would have to go to the office and try to find out. He crossed the street again and went straight into the old brick building, then up the stairway, with its bright green plastic banisters, to the first floor.

He did this with all the confidence of someone who worked there. Only at the door to the office of the Soho Newsletter did he hesitate for a moment, not because he was afraid, but because he had entered on the spur of the moment and had made no plan of what to do. He knew that Henry was the managing director, and that he was Andrew’s brother; he also knew that he was unlike Andrew in almost every way – an atheist, not a Catholic; a roué, not a prig.

He pushed open the door and found himself in a small foyer. He looked around at the wall. Perhaps there would be a photograph of the board of directors. There was none. There were framed prints; modern, tubular chairs; a table, with magazines on it; and a desk behind which a sharp-nosed girl sat answering the telephone and putting through calls.

She looked up as if to ask what Jake wanted, but as she did so the telephone burbled. She picked it up – her eyebrows still arched in the interrogatory look she had directed at Jake.

‘Soho Newsletter,’ she said in the sing-song voice of the trained receptionist. ‘Mr Nash? One moment, please.’ She pushed a button on the board in front of her, and turned back to Jake. ‘I’m sorry …’

‘I was wondering …’ Jake began.

She was not listening. The light was still flashing on her console. She smiled up at Jake. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She picked up the telephone again. ‘Sandy? Is Mr Nash in his office? Oh, I see. He can take it here, then. It’s that young chap – Alistair something or other. Will you take it? Good.’

She pushed another button; another light flashed for a moment, then stopped.

She turned back to Jake.

‘I was wondering …’ he began again.

Again she was distracted. Two men, both in suits, one blue, the other grey, came out into the foyer from the passage behind the desk. ‘There was a call for you,’ the girl said. ‘I put it through to Sandy.’

‘Was it Alistair?’ asked the man in the grey suit.

‘I think so, yes.’

‘About time,’ said the man in the blue suit.

‘Sandy can deal with him,’ said the man in the grey suit.

They went out.

‘I am sorry,’ said the girl to Jake.

‘I wanted to see Henry Nash,’ he said.

‘Oh, that was him who just went out of the door.’

‘Which one?’

‘The tall one.’

‘I’ll run and catch him.’

Out in the street, the two men were sauntering away from the office. Jake walked behind them, cursing the girl, because neither seemed taller than the other. They were both about the same age and, above all, they were the same type. The grey suit was better cut. The blue suit seemed crumpled. As he grew closer, he noticed that the man in the grey suit was an inch or two taller.

They came to the corner, stopped for a moment, finishing what they had to say, then parted – the man in the blue suit turning to the west, the man in the grey suit to the east. Jake went to the east, a short way behind, convinced that the man in the grey suit was his target. He felt for the syringe in his inside pocket, found it, but left it there. The street was neither empty enough nor crowded enough for him to prick him without running the risk of being seen. In a moment he would turn into Frith Street, or, even better, into Oxford Street, and there, quite safely, it could be done.

He removed his gaze from the back of the man’s head, knowing that people could sense when they were being followed. When the man hesitated before crossing a street, he too stopped. Then, when the man crossed the street, he followed and found that they had come into Soho Square.

The man walked through the garden in the centre, where small bunches of office workers sat eating sandwiches and drinking juice out of cartons and cans. This would do. If he sat down on a bench, Jake would sit next to him. But it seemed unlikely, from what he knew of Henry, that he would take sandwiches from the pocket of his well-cut suit.

He did not stop and sit down, but walked straight through the gardens and crossed the street on the other side of the square. There he hesitated, looked at his watch, then slipped furtively through the door of a red-brick church.

Jake frowned, wondering why an atheist should go into a church. He had looked at his watch. Perhaps he had an assignation. Churches, after all, were always used as a meeting place for lovers or spies. The newsletters involved covert connections. He must be using the church to meet a cautious informant.

Jake crossed the street and followed Henry into the church. He had been in churches before and always had loathed them. However beautiful the building, or rich the decoration, they were the temples of the enemy – stew-pots of that malign ideology which had persecuted the Jews since the death of Christ.

This one was ugly, and smelt of incense and candlewax. There was a lobby – empty but for a large marble bowl of holy water, and stands selling tracts of Catholic propaganda. Beyond, through double doors of glass, was the church itself – painted stucco, aping the baroque, with portraits above the altars of the Holy Family looking Irish or Italian – anything but Jewish.

At first the church seemed empty, but then he saw, kneeling before the statue of a woman, perhaps St Bernadette or the Virgin Mary, two Filippino women, and, right at the front, at the foot of the altar, the man in the grey suit, staring up at the figure of Christ on the cross.

Jake felt once again for the syringe in his inside pocket. This seemed as good a place as any for the job to be done. He took out the syringe, unscrewed the top, and, holding it behind his back with two fingers and the thumb of his right hand, he walked quietly down the left-hand side of the church.

When he was within fifteen feet of his target, he stopped and looked around. The church was still empty but for the Filippino women, and their eyes were fixed on the statue behind the bank of flickering candles. He looked back at the man, brought the syringe out from behind his back and stepped forward. At that moment, the figure in the grey suit went down on his knees before the cross, lowered his head, and clasped his hands together in prayer.

Jake cursed inaudibly, turned, and went back down the aisle. Henry Nash was an atheist. He would not pray. He had followed the wrong man. In the foyer, he put the top back onto the syringe and the syringe back into his pocket. He went out into the sunlight of Soho Square. As he did so, he caught sight of Aron, looking for him among the people sitting on the benches. He crossed the street, went up behind him, and tapped him on the shoulder. Aron turned. He looked afraid.

‘I was held up,’ he said. ‘There was a power cut on the Bakerloo Line.’

‘Never mind,’ said Jake. ‘Did you bring the photograph?’

‘Yes.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘But Louvish called. The mission is off.’

Jake took the photograph. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. There are developments in Jerusalem. The whole thing is definitely off.’

He looked at the photograph. He had followed the right man.

‘I’m not too late, am I?’ asked Aron. ‘You haven’t done it?’

‘No,’ said Jake. ‘I haven’t done it.’ He gave the photograph back to Aron. ‘Did Louvish say what I was to do?’

‘Go back as planned.’