They snatched their luggage from Sarah’s car, slung it in the Landrover, and roared out onto the dark highway. He swung left, away from Johannesburg. No car was following. He roared away into the night. He was still shaky.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘That depends on what you’ve got to tell me! Starting right now!’
Sarah closed her eyes. Boy, she had really fucked it up with him now. ‘The whole truth, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then I’ve got to trust you, James McQuade!’ she cried. ‘Because if you tell them I told you this, it’s probably the firing squad for me if I ever set foot back in Israel. So trust me, and be my love, or drop me off right now and let me disappear.’
‘Israel?’
‘Please don’t interrupt. I’ll answer questions afterwards.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Until half an hour ago I worked for Mossad. Half an hour ago I unilaterally resigned. Those two guys who rolled you – the younger one is also Mossad, the older guy is a local in the Jewish Defence Organization who was brought along today to use his accent to impersonate a South African policeman.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘I promise you I didn’t know they were going to roll you, and swear to God I didn’t lead you into an ambush. My job today was simply to hand over the uniforms to you and to stick with you. I suspected that I’d be followed, because that’s elementary tactics, but I didn’t know for sure until I heard the banging in the next room when they were working you over.’ She turned to him imploringly. ‘I swear it! On all that’s holy!’
‘Go on!’
‘And I swear to God I love you!’
He glared at the road furiously. ‘Your assignment was to seduce me?’
‘My assignment was a hell of a lot more than that! My assignment was to follow you, cheat you, betray you, steal, lie, beat you up – even seduce poor Lisa van Rensburg! In short, absolutely everything necessary to find out what information you have on Heinrich Muller – the State of Israel doesn’t give a damn what dirty tricks it plays to catch that bastard! Nor did I until I found myself falling in love with you. Now I’m in an impossible situation of divided loyalties. So I’ve quit!’
Jesus, he could not believe this. ‘And how do I know that this confession isn’t just another Mossad trick?!’
‘ “The punishment of the liar is that he is not believed even when he speaks the truth”?’ She sighed angrily. ‘The answer is, you don’t! You have only my word for it.’
‘And you’ve told Mossad that you’ve quit?’
‘I’ve told my boss. Matt.’
‘Jesus, Matt’s your boss? And he knows that you’ve run off with me into the night? Well, you won’t get that computer print-out from me, baby, because it’s safely locked away in a bank deposit box! Did he wish you luck?’
She turned to him angrily. ‘No, he did not wish me luck! He gave me a rocket and ordered me to stay at my post or face court martial! Legally, I still work for the State of Israel until my resignation is accepted. As soon as they find out I’ve done a moonlight flit, legally I’ll be suspended from duty and a warrant will be issued for my arrest – which is unenforceable outside the State of Israel. That’s the legal position. The factual position is that I’ve told them I’m walking off the job for reasons of conscience, and right now I’m sitting in this vehicle with my heart in my hand.’
He glared furiously through the windscreen, bemused. ‘Do you really risk the firing squad? Because if so I’m taking you straight back to your post!’
‘To my bed-post, huh?’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘Technically, they could throw the book at me. But in practice they wouldn’t dare risk the scandal that Mossad sends its agents out to screw innocent marine biologists and blackmail poor lesbians in the civil service for classified information – South Africa is a friendly state to Israel, remember. There’ll probably only be a disciplinary inquiry, so I’ll be dismissed from the Army, stripped of my pension and spend a year in the stockade while all this goes on.’
‘The Army?’
‘I’m only on secondment to Mossad. I’m a mere lieutenant in Signals. This assignment came up in a hurry, I was pulled off base because I’ve got good tits – or so they say. And I’m “unattached”.’ She added: ‘Or was.’
McQuade was having difficulty grappling with all this. ‘So is Buckley even your real name, for God’s sake?’
‘Oh, minor detail. Sarah, indeed. But Sarah Buchholz – close to Buckley. Ancestry, German. Lieutenant Sarah Buchholz, Israeli Army, at your service.’
McQuade was amazed. ‘But you sound so American.’
‘My parents are naturalized American citizens, I was born there, educated there, I only went to Israel after college.’
‘Why?’
‘Youth. Adventure. My father survived Hitler’s holiday camps, felt it was my duty, et cetera.’
‘So are you in fact Jewish?’
‘You mean I don’t look Jewish? My nose-job was that good?’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘Go to Israel and you see them all shapes and sizes and colours, from Scandinavian to Ethiopian. I’m half Jewish – whatever that means. My mother is as Aryan as they come. But if you mean am I kosher, no.’
‘But did you ever work for the Christian Science Monitor?’
‘No. I did a BA in journalism, then went straight to Israel. But if you had telephoned the Monitor, you’d have been told that Miz Sarah Buckley was somewhere in southern Africa on a busman’s holiday. Mossad has friends all over. These alibis are solidly worked out.’
‘But how the hell did you know I was going to get on that bloody plane in London?’
‘I don’t know. By the time I got my marching orders, all I knew was that you’d given Wiesenthal’s boys the slip in Vienna. But you were picked up and followed in England. I arrived the next morning and waited on twenty-four-hour alert at Heathrow airport. Apparently, there were other girls waiting at other airports. But I was the lucky one.’
‘And Matt is Mossad too? He’s your boss here?’
‘Yes, he got out here ahead of me. Because evidently Wiesenthal suspected you were on your way back.’
He said wonderingly, ‘But those uniforms?’
‘They come from Mossad’s Clever Chaps Department who can produce anything from a Mozart opera to a police uniform overnight. Jetted out here by scheduled El Al.’
He said bitterly, ‘And have you done other jobs for Mossad? Using your vital attributes.’
She said flatly, ‘Once. To trap a nuclear scientist who was telling state secrets, but the Mossad boys nailed him before I had to drop my knickers.’
‘But your come-on was so successful that when my case came up they immediately thought of Lieutenant Buchholz?’
‘Okay. But can you please not say that again?’
He said sarcastically, ‘Forgive me, but it’s been a big day for surprises.’
‘And may I again point out that I was doing my duty! In the highly important business of catching Heinrich Muller!’
‘An objective you have now abandoned?’
‘Of course I still want him brought to justice!’ she cried. ‘But I’ve had to quit as a matter of conscience because I’ve fallen in love with you and that conflicts with my duty! I’ve blown my cover, haven’t I? I blew it when I stopped them mauling you, and now I’ve come clean with you so I’m no further use to Mossad, am I?’ She glared at him. ‘But, I now want to help you catch him. And you can extract your damn information from him. Hang him up by his thumbs if you like. Then when you’ve finished with him, give him to me, to hand over to the Israelis.’
He glared. ‘So you still want to work unofficially for Mossad?’
‘I want Heinrich Muller,’ she cried. ‘And you want Heinrich Muller to tell you where the loot is! You regard Mossad as your enemy because if they find Muller first you lose the loot, but I want you to have that loot! You stumbled on it first and you have the moral right.’ She glared at him. ‘But don’t … please don’t … ask if I’m after that loot too, or you can stop this Landrover right here and wave me goodbye for ever.’ She looked at him, challengingly. ‘I’ve never had any money apart from my salary and I don’t want any more! I don’t give a shit what you do with the money.’
McQuade started to speak but she cut in:
‘Let me finish, Jim … And please listen carefully because this is the last time I’ll mention this: so uninterested am I personally in this Nazi loot that I really want you to drive straight to the Mossad safe-house in Johannesburg, tell them everything you know, and collaborate with them. Let Mossad help you find the bastard …’ She held up a finger. ‘This is the last time I’ll make this sales pitch, so listen to it, Jim! Mossad has three men out here this red-hot minute, trying to find out through me what the name is that Muller’s using. They rolled you tonight because I had failed to extract the name from you with blandishments, and I’d phoned the boss and told him I was walking off the job for reasons of conscience. Now these three are only the tip of the iceberg, Jim. One phone call and there’ll be a plane-load of Mossad guys out here. And believe me, those guys are good.’ She snorted. ‘Those two guys who rolled you tonight? Forget them. Only Steven, the younger one, is a professional. Tonight was a blunder. That was Panic Action, by Matt, because I told him I was quitting. Believe me, if any of the others had tackled you, you’d have been out of that hotel without your feet touching the ground. The only reason you haven’t been put through the wringer already and told everything is because Mossad hoped that I’d get it out of you politely.’ She took a breath, then shook her head at him. ‘But now that I’ve walked out and Matt’s bungled it, they’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by doing it the easy way.’
McQuade glared at the road.
‘So what are you recommending?’
Sarah took a tense breath.
‘As my last official function before I am formally put on the Israeli shit-list, I am urging you to go with me to Mossad and throw your lot in with them. Make a deal with them. Tell them what you know in exchange for the use of their big battalions, but after they’ve found Heinrich Muller they must let you have him long enough to enable you to find that loot … Just think of the work it would save you … The risk. The time, the money.’
‘And you really think they’d make a deal like that?’
She looked at him grimly. ‘Your trust in me is on the line, Jim McQuade, and my answer is I don’t know … I’m only a girlie in Signals.’
‘Well I do know – Heinrich Muller will be out of the country without his feet touching the ground and the whole damn business will be out of my control. Once they’ve got him, Israel will play it by the book. He’ll be assigned a lawyer, he’ll be kept in top security pending his trials, the international press will be bellowing the whole story from the rooftops and every treasure-hunter unhung will be after my submarine. And so will the South African government, and SWAPO, and the German government – I’ve taken legal advice.’
‘So your answer is No?’
‘Right.’
She sighed. ‘Okay. At least I tried.’ She took an uptight breath. ‘So, will you trust me? And let me come with you? Two heads are better than one, and I’m not exactly helpless.’ She gripped his arm, and he was astonished at the strength of her fingers. ‘So let me help you catch Heinrich Muller. And then after you’ve got your loot we’ll hand him over to Mossad together.’
‘And if I say no?’
She still held his arm.
‘Tonight you asked me to marry you. And my answer to that is, I love you but I will not marry you under these circumstances. Even if I did I would not go and live on your boat until you come back from the wars. Anyway, Mossad would have me off that boat within five minutes. So? If you say No, I’m not sure yet what I’ll do. All I know for sure is that I’m in contravention of the Armed Services Act and the Official Secrets Act and I’ve got to face that music sometime. If I face it now, it’s straight into the stockade. But if I do it after you and I have caught Heinrich Muller, I’ll be smelling of roses …’