Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 9

  I nodded. "Sadat told the story himself, later - when he fell out with Gaddafi."

  "Gaddafi," Ross echoed in disgust.

  "And he's involved with Suzy?"

  "He runs Libya, doesn't he? And this Suzy Katoul dame writes from there. To this place. Using my name!"

  "Well, you are an interested party."

  "Smart ass!" he growled, but his heart wasn't in it. He was too busy worrying about his security leak. He sighed. "Hell, we were bound to close this place down soon anyway. Next year probably, when the Brits pull out," he shrugged. "Gaddafi will probably take Malta over anyway, unless Mintoff raises the money in Europe. Turn the whole damned island into some crazy Arab Disneyland - no booze anywhere, but kebabs on sticks at every street corner."

  "Suzy," I reminded him. If Mintoff threw the British out and faced a twenty-eight million pound budget deficit because of it, that was his problem. Suzy Katoul was mine. "What did she say?"

  "Suzy," he mimicked, "will let us know her next move in twenty-four hours."

  The door opened and LeClerc entered with less noise than a cat. He sat on a sofa and watched us.

  "Anything?" Ross asked him.

  "We've got three men touring the Tripoli waterfront. So far they've seen nothing like the launch we're looking for." He watched the scowl darken on Ross's face and tried to lighten the gloom by adding, "But they've only had an hour - there's still hope."

  Ross winced. "Hope? What are you - some kind of Salvationist?"

  LeClerc inspected his fingernails.

  "Any political noises?"

  LeClerc shook his head. "None so far."

  Ross stared into space. "I suppose our masters have been informed?"

  "Half an hour ago," LeClerc mumbled. "Simultaneous transmissions. Washington, London, Bonn and Paris."

  Ross held his head in his hands. "Jesus. Now the shit really hits the fan."

  "It's the rules," LeClerc apologised. "You know standing orders say—"

  "I know standing orders by bloody heart!" Ross bit his head off. I was beginning to feel sorry for LeClerc which was something of a miracle considering the hours he kept me in front of those microphones.

  I nodded at the sheaf of papers in front of Ross. "Is that all Suzy said? All that paper just to say that?"

  "No. This little note says that." Ross tapped what looked like a compliment slip pinned to the top sheet. "The rest says something entirely different."

  "May I see?"

  "Why not?" He unclipped the compliments slip and tossed the rest of the papers to my side of the desk. "Forensics have been all over it. You can't damage anything."

  I braced myself as I unfolded the sheets of paper. But the anticipated shock turned to surprise as I tried to read them. Sheet after sheet was covered with equations and what looked like scientific formulae. But I recognised Cyrillic characters when I saw them.

  "Want to know what it says?" Ross asked in a flat, dead voice. "It's full instructions on how to convert plutonium to fissionable material. A do-it-yourself kit. How to make your own atomic bomb in five easy lessons."

  The moment of truth, I suppose. All along I had told myself that it couldn't happen. That whatever Suzy's politics - whatever, whoever she had become - she wouldn't contemplate this - this mass murder. Ross sat watching me with Elizabeth motionless at his side. I suppose they expected some reaction, but I could think of nothing to say - nothing constructive anyway.

  After a long pause Ross said, "The technology's perfect, according to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment boys - within two years of current work."

  "But written in Russian?" I said, baffled.

  "What do you expect, Arabic?"

  "But what did Suzy's note say? Are you sure it's her?"

  Ross sneered and handed me the compliments slip. I would have known Suzy's scrawl anywhere. She had written - "We hold the cargo from the Marisa. Our ultimatum will be communicated to you within the next twenty-four hours." And it was signed simply "Suzy Katoul - the Deir Yassin Memorial."

  "Deir Yassin Memorial," Ross growled. "One of the oldest tricks in the book. Arafat's pulled it a dozen times. Form a sub-group with some fancy title, commit some mindless atrocity and then claim it has nothing to do with the PLO. I can list dozens of them - Black September, the Eleventh day—" he stopped in mid-sentence. "You okay?"

  I must have gone white or shown something in my expression, because Ross stopped in full flight. Thirty-year-old memories revived with such searing clarity that I felt sick. Sick to the pit of my stomach. Deir Yassin! After all these years. Suzy still remembered! My voice shook as I answered. "Yes, I'm okay. It's just that it reminded me of something, that's all."

  "Yeah?" Ross extracted a wad of paper from his "in" tray. "Well, that reminds me." His thumbnail flicked through the pages of the transcript of my last session in the studio. "Don't get me wrong Harry. I like it. I can't wait to see the film." His sarcasm gave way to temper as his face flushed. "But we've only got another twenty-four hours for Chrissakes!"

  The door opened and the doctor arrived to collect me. LeClerc had already risen from his chair and shuffled from foot to foot as he waited. Arguing seemed pointless, so I just allowed them to lead me away.

  "He's a bit strung up this morning," LeClerc explained in the corridor.

  "I know," I nodded. "He's all heart underneath."

  And LeClerc seemed pleased to meet someone who made allowances.

  We had been in the studio for an hour. For some reason I was sitting up on the stage with the three of them grouped in a semi-circle facing me, Elizabeth in the centre and the doctor and LeClerc on either side of her. The lights were dimmed as usual, so although I could see Elizabeth clearly, the others were partly in shadow and when they spoke their voices seemed strangely remote and disembodied. It was becoming a bit of an inquisition and the strain of answering their questions began to tell on me.

  "Nadi's relatives," the doctor was asking. "His brothers and cousins who attended the funeral. Would you recognise them?"

  "After thirty years? For God's sake be reasonable. Even the youngest brother would be an old man now - if he lived through it."

  "Yes, of course," he humoured me. "But we'll show you some photographs later, just in case."

  "So what happened the next day?" LeClerc wanted to know. "After the funeral?"

  "After the funeral was over," I echoed. It sounded like an old music hall song. Odd word, funeral. To have a funeral right at the beginning of a war, when so many others were destined to die.

  It was three days before I returned to Katamon. Why three I can't remember. I think I hoped Haleem would contact me when she recovered enough strength to come to terms with the living. But not hearing from her I went to seek her out. Getting into Katamon had become a problem. With only a month or so left of their Mandate, the British were struggling desperately to keep Arab and Jew apart. A cordon had been flung round the entire area and the British troops were stopping everybody, examining papers, conducting body searches, even stripping the seats from cars in an unending search for arms. It meant waiting hours in the sticky heat and arguing about the reason for my visit with some snotty-nosed officer, who complained that journalists were a bloody nuisance, forever getting in the way. And all the while Arabs flowed out of the district, their belongings heaped on to carts or in the back of lorries for those lucky enough to scrounge petrol. A long steady stream of people, their eyes averted, women crying, children protesting, the men sullen and bitter. Finally it was my turn to go the other way, and I was allowed to walk up the hill, while a Lance Corporal drove my car to Bevingrad for safe keeping.

  I think I was afraid. Negib was certainly armed and had wanted to kill me three days earlier. I climbed the hill, my gaze constantly straying to the rooftops, expecting every minute to see his outline dark against the sun, so that by the time I turned into their row of villas I was bathed in sweat, not all of which was from the heat of the day. Up the steps to knock on the cedar-wood d
oor, bracing myself to meet Negib, preparing to face his anger and bunching my fists in case of attack. But nobody answered. I knocked again and waited. And again. Then I sensed someone watching me and I heard the scuffle of feet behind me. I swung round, expecting Negib, my fists rising to protect myself. But the man standing just inside the gate was a stranger. Beyond him, next to an ox-cart overloaded with possessions, stood an old woman, her dark eyes watching me carefully.

  "Excuse me," the man said in English. "But they are gone."

  "Gone?"

  He nodded.

  "But where? I mean, when will they be back?"

  He shook his head, and then cautiously, in case I was a police spy, he asked, "You know the family?"

  "Yes, we're friends."

  Doubt and suspicion hardened his expression. He was sorry to have involved himself now, I could see that. He half turned away to where his wife waited patiently at the gate.

  "I was here the other day," I said urgently. "The day - the day Nadi and Hemeh were killed."

  "Ah! You are that Englishman." Suspicion vanished and he almost nodded with approval. I breathed a sigh of relief, until he said, "Haleem left yesterday with her uncle."

  "Uncle? Which uncle? Left for where?"

  "Who knows?" he shrugged. "Perhaps for somewhere in the city, perhaps—"

  "Perhaps?"

  Still shrugging and shaking his head he said, "Forgive me, but truly I do not know."

  I pressed him, desperate now, my panic so strong that it was all I could do not to shake him. Finally he said, "It is the truth. I do not know where she went, but her uncle was not of Jerusalem. A man of the villages, a mukter perhaps?"

  It meant nothing to me. "Which village? Where?"

  But his gaze had turned inward like a blind man's. We walked to the gate, me keeping pace at his side. Some money found its way into my hand as I pleaded with him, but he shrugged me off, the way I turned beggars aside. The ox-cart lumbered into movement and they were away, the woman's black skirts sweeping the dust as she followed the cart. Out of sheer desperation I tried the door again. Haleem gone I couldn't believe it. That she might leave Katamon was understandable - but to go somewhere and not tell me? To avoid telling me? We had shared something - an understanding - some sense of a future together - unspoken perhaps, but real for all that. And I was still asking myself questions when the woman returned.

  "Haleem," she said urgently, out of breath and speaking in no more than a whisper.

  "Haleem - yes?"

  She eyed the money still in my hand until I thrust it at her. A claw clutched the notes and withdrew into the black folds of her shroud. "Haleem in the hills. To the west of the city."

  "West? How far west? Which village?"

  But she didn't know. She turned and scuttled away. There seemed no point in chasing her, both she and the old man had told me all they knew, I felt sure of it. I tried the door again, but of course there was no answer and after a while I went back down the hill. Funny, but on the way back I never once looked for Negib on the rooftops. It was not until afterwards - when my brain got into gear again - that I realised neither of them had mentioned Negib. For all I knew he was still in Jerusalem.

  Elizabeth watched me closely. Even in the gloom of the studio it was impossible to remain unaware of her eyes. They watched without blinking, as green and as still as a cat's.

  "I never saw Haleem again," I said.

  The doctor snickered with laughter. "Ships that pass in the night, eh, Mr. Brand? A bit on the side with a nice little wog girl and —"

  It was as far as he got. I was out of the chair without knowing it, my left hand at his throat as my right measured the punch. But LeClerc moved as swiftly, looping his arms around mine in a bear hug. For a split second we remained like that, the doctor swaying backwards out of reach and LeClerc on my back like a limpet. Then Elizabeth's voice cracked like ice on a pond." "That's enough! You'll apologise for that remark, doctor. At once!"

  His eyes never strayed from my face. Nervous eyes, full of surprise. "Of course," he said. "Figure of speech that's all. No harm in it."

  I glowered, not believing a word, detesting him. Even Ross was better. Ross was as blunt as a five pound hammer, but you knew where you stood with him, whereas the doctor made my flesh crawl.

  "It's all right," I hissed. "I was just going to get a drink. That is, if they're still on the house."

  "Paul," Elizabeth said.

  LeClerc unwrapped himself and went to the bar, while I flopped back into my chair and looked at Elizabeth. For an assistant, she pulled rank with an astonishing sureness. She looked back at me, cool, unsmiling, and very much in control. "But you searched for Haleem," she said, "didn't you Harry?"

  Searched? Hell, that was a joke. Jerusalem was a bloody mess. Under siege with no proper communications with the outside world, reporters bribing stray politicians to smuggle copy out and facing a bullet round every corner. Searched? Yes, I searched - I asked everybody! Most of the press boys knew her anyway, and they helped. Someone thought he'd seen her in Jaffa, but I hoped he was wrong. The Irgun had bombed the hell out of Jaffa for three days solid, until on the fourth those Arabs still alive had panicked and fled. They were the first I think - the very first Palestinian refugees. Yes, I searched all right - and I listened to the bar gossip and the rumours, the British statements all stiff upper lip, UN Press Handouts so much waffle, the Americans changing position faster than a high-class whore. And then on April 9th came Deir Yassin. My blood ran cold when I heard about it.

  Not many lived through the massacre, but a few witnesses survived to tell a tale of unparalleled savagery. Entire families women and children and babes in arms - were dragged from their homes and murdered in barbarous ways. The stomach of a pregnant woman was ripped open with a butcher's knife. Jewellery was torn from the throats of women and young girls then they were raped - then they were killed. The slaughter was still in progress when Jacques de Reynier led the first Red Cross column into the village.

  Deir Yassin - a village to the west of Jerusalem - attacked by the combined forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang. More than two hundred and fifty Arabs were murdered - most of them women and children or the elderly - and most of them brutally. When the Haggadah arrived, the Commander was so sickened by the sight that he refused to let his young Jewish soldiers enter the village, and when his commander arrived there was even talk of shooting the killers. Jew had killed Arab, now would Jew kill Jew? But instead the Haggadah rounded up the terrorists and made them clean the village. They carried the mutilated bodies down to Deir Yassin's rock quarry and laid them on the stones. And when they had finished, they poured petrol over them and set them ablaze.

  It was a lovely spring day. The blue skies were warm, birds sang, the almond trees were in blossom, the flowers were out - and everywhere there was this stench of the dead, the thick smell of blood, the terrible odour of corpses burning in the quarry.

  "The Deir Yassin Memorial," Elizabeth said slowly. "Thirty years later." She sat forward in her chair, knees tight together, hands clasped in her lap, an expression of total concentration on her face. "Is that what this is all about? Revenge?"

  LeClerc snorted. "Revenge against whom for God's sake? The entire state of Israel because of a single atrocity thirty years ago? Almost every Jew in Palestine condemned Deir Yassin."

  "But it happened," Elizabeth said thoughtfully. "An atrocity that went unpunished. Is that what we're up against Harry? Are the Arabs now going to claim their Nazi war criminals?"

  "I don't know." I shook my head. "But as far as Suzy's concerned it's more personal than that - at least I imagine she thinks so."

  Maybe the tiredness and strain sounded in my voice, and some of the sadness too, because Elizabeth looked at me shrewdly. "And I guess it's more personal for you too, isn't it? What did happen to Haleem Katoul, Harry?"

  It was years before I found out. 1957, the year after the Suez fiasco. The Middle East was playing the Big Game in e
arnest then. Civil war threatened in Lebanon, so the Sixth Fleet landed nine thousand marines in Beirut. "Invasion," screamed the Russians to the United Nations. "Mutual defence pact," answered the Yanks. Britain sent the paras in to prop Hussein up in Jordan. Nasser was arming Egypt with Russian tanks. Israel bought new French fighters and shiny British guns with good old-fashioned American dollars. And the CIA finally shoved Mossadeque from power in Iran and put the Shah there in his stead.

  The funny thing was that there was all this brave talk about self determination, but it was all guff. Small states everywhere were manipulated by larger ones in a never-ending game of chess - and the cheapest pawns on the board were the Palestinian refugees. They were all over the place. Half-a-million in Jordan, thousands in the Lebanon, thousands more in Syria and Egypt - and shanty villages by the mile along the Gaza Strip. More than one and a half million refugees. Conditions in the camps were appalling - over-crowded, unsanitary, disease-ridden - the sheer stench of some of them was enough to take your breath away. People died in those camps and entire families conspired to keep the death a secret from the officials, because to reveal it meant the loss of a precious ration book. There were always a few doctors of course, working themselves to the bone, stamping out one epidemic before drawing breath to start on another one. But it was a hopeless task. There was no work for the men and no pride of home for the women, so whole tracts of land became breeding grounds for resistance groups, whose bitterness boiled over with the passing years as the world forgot about them. By the late fifties they had ceased to be news altogether, though now and then, when I was looking for a filler piece, I would visit a camp and write about them. Which was how I came to meet Negib Katoul - after a gap of nine years.

  It was Beirut in '57. I was staying at the Hotel Normandy on the seafront at Ras Beirut. The bar was quite large and cool, and as far as meeting anyone was concerned it was about as discreet as anywhere in Beirut. Arabs were admitted in any state of scruffiness and I remember a side door which opened directly on to the street for those who wished to avoid someone in a hurry. It was a sort of journalists' gossip shop. Everyone knew everyone else and for those who wanted to yarn about Middle East politics it was the best place in town. Kim Philby was always there. By then he had survived his "third man" inquest and had arrived the year before, complete with a new cover job as correspondent for The Observer and The Economist. I never knew him well, but most of the boys did - probably because he was always buying the drinks.