Raquel Rabinovitz parked her Fiat near the press office in Tel Aviv and walked briskly up Kaplan Street past the Ministry of Defence. Outside the Ministry the street was busy with uniforms. She saw an Air Force officer walking with a girl soldier and exalted in the classlessness of Israeli society. She remembered how, during her Army service in the Sinai, she had heard noncommissioned men talking to generals as if they were equals. Nowhere else in the world could such relationships exist; but nowhere else in the world was the motive for military service so unified: private and general were both fighting for survival.
The morning was heating up. A few tourists were out hoping to see Moshe Dayan arriving at his ministry; traffic was building up and making pedestrians jump on the crossings. Raquel turned right down Bet Street and headed for the office which had nothing to do with soil irrigation.
Her thoughts turned, as they turned most days, to the man she had been going to marry. Medium height, shortish hair, green eyes, inclined to be histrionically tough, but really very gentle. He had once risked disciplinary action for refusing to demolish one of five Arab homes that were to be destroyed in Gaza as retaliation for terrorism because the family inside was sick; when his commander had seen the family he had agreed. Tough and gentle and dead for more than a year. Killed by a grenade thrown by a terrorist.
She felt the wallet in her pocket that still contained his photograph. Since the day he had been killed patriotism and a desire for revenge had fused into one emotion. Now her feelings were confused by the presence of Bartlett. She wished in a way that she had not been available to carry out the instructions to get to know him.
Since the death of her fiancé she had not slept with another man. Not until the other night with Bartlett. She was still surprised how natural it had been to make love to him. Because outwardly he did not possess any of the qualities which she had always looked for in a man. In particular he lacked the aggressiveness which Israeli women tended to expect.
She saw him with his arm crooked round the El Fatah gunman’s neck; she saw the machine-gun butt jabbing into his stomach. She felt his pain and inwardly cried out for him. And she knew she loved him for his courage which was not packaged in muscled belligerence, for his kindness and even his vagueness.
She turned into an alley where thin cats, some with two eyes and some with one, scavenged and fought and copulated with the intensity of the doomed. She walked up an iron staircase and opened a door marked F. FRISHMAN – FUNERALS ARRANGED AND EXECUTED. It was, she thought, most apt.
Julius Peytan spoke Hebrew with a South African accent. Occasionally he lapsed into English or Yiddish or his native Afrikaans. His linguistics could have been confusing, but he spoke with such deliberation and controlled power that his message was communicated whatever the language.
He was a large broad man with pillows of muscles just beginning to go slack. He wore dark trousers and an open-neck white shirt riding loose around his navel. He smoked a lot with the same deliberation that he talked – tasting the smoke, inhaling deeply, crushing out the butts with finality. His face was heavy featured, a little jowly, and his eyes were the colour of the smoke that trickled from his cigarettes. But whereas the smoke had warmth there was none in the eyes of Julius Peytan.
He had come to Palestine from Johannesburg in the ‘30s and had rapidly ascended the hierarchy of the Haganah. He had been imprisoned by the British and still harboured a certain admiration for those who had caught him because he had been deceived by their apparent naïveté. He had studied British methods and incorporated them into his own textbook of skills. After independence he had concerned himself with the pursuit of Nazis who had fled from their atrocities. As a result he knew South America as well as his native South Africa. Another result was promotion to the hierarchy of the Israeli secret service, the Shin Beit.
He leaned back now in his creaking swivel chair that seemed inadequate for his size and listened to Raquel Rabinovitz. The room was hardly furnished at all – chair and desk, a bookshelf nailed to the wall, a lot of maps, photographs of Israeli political leaders. On the table was a blotter, a pack of cigarettes, a box of matches and a Smith & Wesson.
Raquel’s words dwindled and died. They usually did when she was confronted by his impassive concentration.
Peytan said: ‘What are you trying to tell me, Miss Rabinovitz?’
‘Have I not made myself clear already?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Please go through it again.’
He ground out a cigarette as if he were squashing an insect.
‘Look, I do not like this assignment,’ Raquel said. ‘I have no heart for it. I know this should have no bearing on it. But really it is for the sake of Israel that I have come to see you because I cannot do my job properly.’
Peytan lit another cigarette and inhaled hugely. ‘You surprise me, Miss Rabinowitz. You have always struck me as possessing greater strengths than the average woman. That is precisely why you were chosen for this assignment. You do not need me to remind you of the importance of this assignment to Israel.’
There was a hint of menace in his voice.
‘I know of its importance,’ she said. ‘That is why I am thinking that you should assign someone else to the job.’
Peytan considered and analysed the statement. Then he said: ‘There is no one else, Miss Rabinovitz.’
‘But you have other women agents.’
‘It is too late. Far too late. You have made contact with Bartlett. You must finish the assignment.’ He paused. ‘In fact, I am surprised that you have not completed it already. After all, you have slept with him, have you not?’
Raquel blushed and was angry with herself because the blush betrayed feminine frailty. ‘Have you been keeping me under observation?’
‘No. I am merely presuming that you have slept with him because you are a capable operator. You have the advantage there over Yosevitz.’
Raquel looked at the Smith & Wesson and imagined its barrel stabbing into the spine of a fugitive Nazi. ‘This man Yosevitz,’ she said. ‘Why have you not done anything about him?’
Peytan stared at his cigarette: it looked like a matchstick in his large freckled hand. ‘He is, after all, a Jew,’ he said.
‘And an enemy of Israel.’
‘Yosevitz is an interesting case. I have known many men sent in by the Russians under the guise of immigrants for the purpose of subversion. Usually they have failed because the men themselves soon realise their true destiny.’
‘What if none of this applies to Yosevitz? What if he succeeds in this mission?’
Peytan lifted his bulk from the chair and patrolled the room. For a man of his size he was surprisingly light-footed.
Raquel looked at him warily. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what would happen?’
Peytan stopped in front of a wall map showing the 1967 cease-fire boundaries. ‘He would be killed, of course,’ he said.
‘But what if he managed to communicate the information to the Arabs?’
‘The answer to that is very simple,’ Peytan said. ‘He wouldn’t communicate it to the Arabs. The Russians want it for themselves. They want to negotiate the Middle East peace themselves. You see, at the moment they are just gun-runners to the Arabs. They want more power, more prestige. Just as our friends the Americans want to be the peacemakers. But the Russians have even more at stake: they want to keep the Chinese out.’ He lit another cigarette with deliberation. ‘These days we are finding that more and more Chinese weapons are being used by the Arabs.’
Raquel said: ‘It sounds very complicated.’
Peytan shrugged. ‘This is the Middle East. The Levant. Immediately anyone becomes involved with us then their lives become complicated.’
‘What about Ralston?’ Raquel said.
‘Ah yes, Ralston.’ Peytan sat down again in the creaking chair. ‘We are not absolutely sure about Mr Ralston. But the weight of evidence would indicate that he is working for American intelligence. We must presume that he is the successor to Everett.’
‘There is no doubt,’ Raquel said. ‘Look, was it just coincidence that he turned up at El Hamma?’
‘I agree.’ A tiny smile thawed on his face. ‘But you, Miss Rabinovitz, have a distinct advantage over Mr Ralston.’
‘I have told you – I do not think I can operate as well as I should.’
‘Are you in love with Bartlett?’
Raquel glanced into her handbag lying open on her lap and saw the picture of her dead fiancé looking up at her from her wallet. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I think you are. It astonishes me because I cannot see the attraction of a man like Bartlett to a girl like you. But then it would not be the first time that the qualities of the British have surprised me. However, Miss Rabinovitz, that is beside the point. Your country comes before everything. I think you would agree with that?’
Raquel nodded. ‘And after all there is not much future for you with such a man. He is not, after all, a Jew. And he is also married.’
‘I know. But you cannot control these things.’
‘Poor man. That he should have such a wife.’
Raquel looked at him with fresh interest. ‘You know Bartlett’s wife?’
‘I know of her.’
‘What is she like?’
Peytan shook the last cigarette out of the pack. ‘She has a big mouth,’ he said.
‘Is that all you know?’
‘She has provided us with quite a lot of information in the past. At cocktail parties and so on. But evidently the Americans also appreciated her worth because these days most of the information is false.’
‘Except this information?’
Peytan nodded. ‘But she didn’t get this from the Americans. She got it from her husband – the poor dumb bastard.’
Raquel said tautly: ‘He is not dumb.’
Peytan held up his hands but the gesture did not make him appear defenceless. ‘Okay. He’s a highly intelligent man already – he must be if he’s a geologist. But he is, perhaps, a little naïve.’
‘He is not naïve. It is just that he knows nothing about your sort of business.’
‘Or yours,’ Peytan said.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Or mine.’
Peytan’s voice hardened. ‘Now I think we understand each other, Miss Rabinovitz. You know your assignment and I expect you to carry it out regardless of any sentimental attachments you may have formed. I expect you to do this for the sake of your country and your people. Is that understood?’
She nodded. ‘It’s understood.’
‘Then please return to your duties. Time is running short.’
‘You know he’s hidden the contents of the briefcase?’
‘It should not be difficult for a girl of your accomplishment to find the hiding place.’
She stood up and snapped her handbag shut. ‘That was an unpleasant remark to make.’ She was surprised at her spirit.
He said: ‘In this business we do not take too much heed of the pleasantries, Miss Rabinovitz.’ He screwed up the empty cigarette pack and threw it on the floor. The interview was over.
She walked slowly back to her car. She felt the sun’s warmth on her shoulders; the streets were crowded with soldiers and the civilians they were defending; there was vibrancy in the air and vitality in the people. Men looked at her with admiration, women with envy. But Raquel Rabinovitz revelled in none of it.
She climbed into her baby car and drove to the seafront restaurant where Bartlett was waiting for her. It was one of the cafés frequented by prostitutes who specialised in hauling surprised tourists off the sidewalk. When they were not soliciting with characteristic Israeli determination they sat knitting.
One of them was sitting at Bartlett’s table.
Raquel said: ‘What is that woman doing here?’
Bartlett smiled at her uncertainly. ‘I couldn’t get rid of her,’ he said.
Raquel turned on the prostitute and spoke vehemently in Hebrew. The woman who looked as if she might be knitting with a not-too-distant future in mind stood up quivering with affronted dignity. Raquel snapped at her once more and the woman moved to another table pulling a ball of wool behind her.
Raquel sat down and ordered a Gold Star beer.