Raquel Rabinovitz knew what she had to do as the Jeep bowled on towards El Arish, Kantara, and the Suez Canal. The knowledge made her intensely sad but there was no alternative. At least she did not have to do it immediately; the rest of the day was theirs. What happened after that depended on Bartlett’s capacity for understanding.
She glanced at him sitting beside her. Face deeply tanned now with only a few peelings of skin on the bridge of his nose. Even the peeling skin was endearing. They passed a group of soldiers hitching lifts in the opposite direction. Muscled, brown and arrogant with their guns on their shoulders and their peaked desert caps. Pride gleamed inside her; but her love was reserved for the Englishman with the sensitive features and greying hair sitting beside her.
Bartlett said: ‘How on earth did you manage to get passes to go as far as Kantara?’
‘My work,’ she said. ‘I really am an expert on soil irrigation, you know. There is an irrigation project south of Kantara north of the Gidi Pass. I have work to do there.’
‘And they’ll let both of us into Kantara?’
‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘They will today because the Red Cross has arranged a truce. Arabs who were stranded by the June war are being exchanged across the Canal. Some had crossed the Canal to visit relatives this side, others had gone across to Egypt. So today there will not be any shooting. Not until the exchange is over anyway.’
‘And then they’ll start killing each other again?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Do you Israelis really want a peaceful settlement?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We have everything to lose because of the fighting.’ She took one hand off the steering wheel and touched his arm. ‘If the fighting stopped I could perhaps stop this other work and just help the desert to blossom.’ Her thoughts accelerated into a peaceful future. ‘Perhaps we could work together, you and I. Would you like that, Thomas?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘Are you still angry with me?’
‘I’m not angry. I wish you could have trusted me.’
‘We could explore the Sinai together. You have told me how you love it to the south. Where Rhutm grows in the wadis, where leopards roam the mountains.’
‘It’s very beautiful,’ he said.
She continued the seduction. ‘Drive up Wadi Feiran perhaps. You studying the formation of the mountains while I find sites for boring wells.’
She imagined them sleeping together in one of the guest rooms of St Catherine’s Monastery and wondering if it would constitute blasphemy.
They stopped at El Arish for refreshment. Most of the sand-coloured buildings were pitted with scars. The rest were truncated or devastated. In the centre of the town where they sat drinking beer and eating peta stuffed with humus and cold French fries there was a red-painted restaurant called the Café of Peace.
Their café was packed with troops. Jeeps and half-tracks stood outside. Men and machines exuded a triumphant virility. It was contagious. Despite her sadness Raquel revelled in the swagger around her. The soldiers smelled of sweat and oil and cordite. They wore sand goggles and their faces were powdered with dust. She studied them; bank clerks, surveyors, waiters, accountants, shopkeepers. And she thought of the man she had been going to marry. She was silent for a few minutes; then she touched Bartlett’s hand. He smiled at her as he gulped at his glass of ice-cold Gold Star.
She said: ‘There was a big battle here.’ She pointed towards the sea. ‘The Egyptian officers were having beautiful houses built on the beach. Once upon a time it was a rest centre for the British.’
‘Wc rested everywhere,’ Bartlett said.
Across the table a huge soldier who looked like Fidel Castro winked at her. His interest only enhanced her tenderness for Bartlett who had none of the characteristics which she had imagined she admired in a man. Except bravery. But with Bartlett it seemed as if everything was shared. The desert, the hot sky, the rustle of the wind in the palms. She wished he could share the Israeli triumph with her.
He bought two more beers and gestured around the small, hot café. ‘I don’t give much for the Arabs’ chances.’
‘They have no chance,’ she said.
‘I feel a little incongruous here. Only John Wayne’s missing at the moment.’
She wanted to kiss him. ‘You are not incongruous. I cannot imagine you being incongruous anywhere.’
‘Not even in the ladies’ changing rooms?’
‘You were not incongruous in the ladies’ changing room at El Hamma.’
She would ask him once more to let her have the maps, she thought. When they were on the road to Kantara. If he refused again she would have to act before they reached the Canal in case he had some crazy idea about handing the maps over to the United Nations. Which was as bad as handing them over to the Arabs or Russians.
Bartlett stood up and said: ‘Shouldn’t we be on our way?’
‘I suppose so.’
But she didn’t really want to go because the road might lead to the end of the sharing.
‘Come on then.’
He walked out of the café. Different in his slacks and bush shirt, but not incongruous. She followed him, aware of the gaze of Fidel Castro and his colleagues.
Outside Bartlett bought her a necklace of tiny shells threaded on string from one of the Arab stalls.
‘How much did that cost you?’ she said. She was aware it was an Israeli question.
‘You shouldn’t ask.’
‘How much?’
‘One Israeli pound.’
‘You were robbed.’ She put the necklace on. ‘But I shall always keep it.’
They drove beside long deserted sands and telegraph-pole palms and long waves moving in slowly as if they were pulled on thread.
Bartlett said: ‘Back home ten thousand people crowd on to a stretch of sand half a mile long.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it here,’ Raquel said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because it’s probably mined already.’
Soon, she thought, she would have to ask him for the last time. When they reached the outskirts of Kantara.
They drove on through desert and scrub. Past skeletons of trucks and tanks. Past a rusting ammunition train perforated with holes like a colander when its freight had exploded. Past resting camels, leaning palms and sleeping Arabs.
About fifteen miles before Kantara they were stopped at a roadblock beside a tented Army camp. Raquel showed her pass. The Israeli soldier, cigarette in mouth, looked curiously at Bartlett.
Raquel said in Hebrew: ‘He’s going to help me find more water for all of you.’
The soldier, who looked about eighteen, grinned and said: ‘Any cigarettes?’
She gave him a pack. He waved them on. Eight miles later she said: ‘Thomas, will you let me have those maps?’
‘I was wondering when you were going to ask.’
‘Will you?’
‘Perhaps. Not now.’
‘But you love me. Why cannot you give them to me now?’
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ Bartlett said. ‘It has nothing to do with my feeling for you. It has a lot to do with being made a fool of. Yosevitz, Ralston, that thieving Arab, and you. You’ve all tried to make a fool of me. I don’t intend to part with the maps now. I’ve given my word.’
‘You’ve given your word? Who have you given your word to?’
‘To Ralston, I’m afraid.’
The knowledge of what she now had to do settled heavily upon Raquel. Like fear, like sickness. ‘Why did you make such a promise to Ralston?’
‘Why not? It’s quite true that I don’t intend to help the Arabs or the Russians.’
‘Or the Israelis?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Give me the maps, then.’
‘Can you tell me why everyone wants them?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘because I don’t know.’ She looked away towards the serried skyline of broken buildings so that he could not see the lie on her face.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘So be it,’ she said. With one hand she picked up his hand and kissed it. ‘So be it, my Thomas.’ She pushed her foot down on the accelerator and the Jeep leaped forward towards the ruined city of Kantara.
From a distance of one mile Kantara appeared to have been devastated.
But as they got nearer they saw the occasional building still standing nursing its war wounds. Of humanity there was no Sign.
They passed a dry, overgrown park with a dead fountain in the middle. Signs swinging in front of heaps of rubble that had been cafés and shops; a scarred house of comparative dignity lonely behind a line of gum trees; empty streets with grass already invading through the cracks. A couple of dogs with herring-bone ribs barked at them feebly. There was a smell of putrefaction in the air.
Raquel looked anxiously around. She didn’t want to get as far as the battered hotel where the United Nations were billeted. She stopped the Jeep and pointed ahead at a shell-torn church. ‘That’s the Coptic Church,’ she said. ‘We gave permission for it to be rebuilt after the June war. Then the Egyptians shelled it again.’
‘Where is everyone?’ Bartlett said.
‘We arranged for them all to be evacuated because of the shelling.’ She decided to emphasise the point. ‘Arabs shelling Arabs, you understand.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on to the Canal.’
Raquel considered the heavy pistol concealed beneath the oil rags beside her seat. Too big for a girl. But not for an Israeli girl. She drove slowly forwards.
They passed a terrace of ruined khaki-coloured houses to which a long verandah adhered. Perched on the verandah was an armchair, its upholstery ripped apart by a shell splinter. A wall creaked in the imperceptible breeze.
‘Why don’t you get a move on?’ Bartlett said.
She accelerated slightly.
They were just passing the Coptic Church when Raquel saw a Jeep rattling towards them down a side street. She stopped their Jeep.
‘Why are you stopping?’ he said.
She looked at him sadly.
The other Jeep stopped at right angles to them. In it were a major and two soldiers in shirt sleeves. The major held a pistol in his hand and the two soldiers had Uzi submachine guns over their shoulders.
Raquel beckoned them over and spoke to the major In Hebrew.
Bartlett said: ‘What are you talking about?’
Raquel said: ‘I’m sorry, Thomas. We have to have those maps. I have told these men about the situation. In fact they knew we were coming here. You must have realised that I had to warn the Army about our approach.’
Bartlett shrugged. ‘It hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘Thomas,’ she said, ‘please forgive me.’
‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘We will go with them in their Jeep to an Army post where there is an officer of Israeli intelligence. There we will hand over the maps to him. You see, I have no alternative Thomas.’
The major gestured with his pistol. He was very dark with a small moustache and taut features. ‘Please hurry up,’ he said.
Raquel nodded. ‘The maps,’ she said. ‘Please get them, Thomas.’
Bartlett said: ‘Do you really think they are worth all this?’
‘They are worth it to us,’ she said.
‘Very well.’ He put his hand under Raquel’s empty seat and brought out the satchel containing the maps. He handed it to Raquel.
The major waved his pistol again and said: ‘You’d better come with us.’
‘We’ll follow you,’ Raquel said.
‘No, please, you come with us. There are many mines about. If you even stray away from our tyre tracks you might blow yourselves up.’
Bartlett said: ‘You’d better go with him whether there are any mines or not.’
‘Why?’ Raquel said.
‘Because if I’m not much mistaken that gentleman you’ve just handed the maps to is an Egyptian.’
Raquel stood still, muscles tensed.
The two soldiers looked questioningly at the major.
Then Raquel leaped for the gun beside the driving seat. She knew it was hopeless but it was preferable to whatever the Arabs had in store for her. It was also preferable to failure.
She felt the butt of the gun beneath the rags. She was aware that Bartlett and the major were fighting behind her.
She felt a blow on the head and the hot blue sky darkened to dusk to night.