‘Can you just put that damn chip down,’ Eli said. ‘It’s got to go in tonight’s bag to be cleaned back home before we can see what’s on it and I don’t want to have to go back to the Russian and tell him that it’s not reading because you’ve covered it with sweat.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ With exaggerated care Rafi placed the memory chip on the desk. ‘There. Happy now?’

  Eli didn’t respond and Rafi went on, ‘Anyway, I’m trying to be more like you and I’m thinking about clues and nuance. I’m also prepared to bet you fifty shekels that Phuket isn’t an arms deal and it’s big.’

  ‘Arms or no arms, I bet it’s a bullshit operation,’ Eli said. ‘I’ll take your bet.’

  Eli had pulled his laptop towards him and keyed in his password. He sat back and waited for the system to go through its somersaults so he could write the report and go home.

  ‘What is it?’ Eli said. ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘I’ve got some good news.’

  ‘The only good news would be you getting out of my office so that I can write this report and go home.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rafi said and headed towards the door. ‘I’ll let you get on with it because you need to finish it tonight. Then you can take tomorrow off and I’ll cover for you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your son landed at Heathrow an hour ago. He just managed to get on a plane at JFK so he didn’t have time to message. He’s now on the way into Central London and is expecting to see his miserable father tonight.’

  Eli did complete the contact report before he left the office but it was brief and to the point. As he read through it before signing off and uploading onto the Office site, he considered that it said everything that needed to be said; a model report, aided by the shot of energy from the knowledge that Doron was on the way to West Hampstead and would certainly be hungry. Eli dashed from the embassy to Panzer’s, where he stocked up at the deli counter, bought some ready-prepared schnitzel and, to be on the safe side, bought a frozen meat meal that could be thrown in the oven. Since Gal had gone back to Israel, Eli had either snacked on whatever he could find at the flat, eaten at the embassy commissary or eaten out. The cupboards were bare.

  Even though Eli had rushed, Doron had beaten him to it and, when Eli approached the mansion block of flats in West Hampstead, he saw a slight figure sitting on a low wall, a bag at his feet and his head hunched over the phone screen as he either scrolled or played a game. Burdened by his bags of food, Eli didn’t increase his pace, but that wasn’t the only reason. The sight of his son made him well up and he needed the extra steps before hugging the boy to compose himself. Why? Eli thought. Why was he so emotional? He was just tired, that was all. That was the answer and that would just have to do.

  ‘Munyamin motek,’ Eli said when he was close enough to see the dark hair that curled around his forehead.

  Doron looked up and grinned. He hugged Eli and kissed his cheek. Then he grabbed the bags and made a show of seeing what was in them. ‘Panzer’s. You shouldn’t be carrying these heavy bags, old man.’

  ‘If you want anything to eat out of these bags, less of the “old man”,’ Eli said, as he remembered for a moment that ‘old man’ is what Silver Dove had called him. ‘I can still wrestle you down.’

  ‘Sure about that, Abba?’

  ‘Get on with you. Let’s get inside.’

  Five minutes later they were in the apartment and Eli was able to look his son over. It had only been a few months since he’d gone back to the US for his second year of aeronautic engineering at Dayton, but it seemed longer. It was longer, it was another lifetime, the one they all had before October 7. Eli knew that this was no mid-term break; Doron had been called up and was returning to his unit. Of course, since he was at university in the US, the boy might have deferred but he’d told his parents that if his unit was going into Gaza, he wanted to go back with them. Eli figured that if he was old enough to vote, he was old enough to decide what he wanted to do.

  In the kitchen of the large apartment, Doron sat at the wooden table and Eli bustled around, putting the food away, putting the kettle on and talking about nothing much. Only when there was a coffee and some smoked salmon in front of him did they talk about the news, which was all bad. One of the kids who’d been killed at the Nova festival was at the University of Beer Sheva and was a friend of a friend. His girlfriend had been raped before she was murdered.

  ‘How do we make sense of this, Abba?’

  ‘There is no sense to it, unless you accept that they wanted to hurt us in the most profound way possible and they succeeded. But your mother says it’s how we deal with it that will show who we are.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Doron said. ‘If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you strong?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Eli said and took a pull on the beer in front of him.

  ‘That’s what she used to say to me when she gave me medicine.’

  ‘Well, it seems to have worked,’ Eli said. ‘Tell me, what time do you have to be at the airport tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s the 10 o’clock, the red-eye, but the upside is that we have the day.’

  ‘Shall we talk to your mom and then go out for dinner? And then maybe tomorrow we can go for a tiyul…’

  ‘How far are we from Cambridge?’ Doron said.

  ‘Cambridge? You’re not thinking of switching courses? I thought you were enjoying Daytona. There’s nowhere like it in the world.’

  ‘I am, it’s amazing, but if I’m here, there’s an aviation museum near Cambridge; Duxford.’

  Doron had the exact same look he wore on his face when he asked for a birthday treat as a kid. He was cute and he knew how to play it, like his mother.

  ‘Okay,’ Eli said, though he’d have rather gone to look at art or some historic buildings than wander round freezing hangars looking at engines, but it was Doron’s outing.

  ‘I need a shower before we go out,’ Doron said.

  Eli picked up the empty plate and carried it to the sink. ‘Tov, take your shower, I’ll book a table at the Singapore Garden for, say, an hour? Is that okay? And I’ll try to get your mother on the phone so she can see you got here.’

  Doron disappeared and a few minutes later, Eli heard the water running. He had a good ten minutes to get through to Gal and make sure she was going to be around to pick Doron up when he arrived in Tel Aviv. Ever since October 7 they’d talked about Doron and whether he would insist on going back to his unit. They were in agreement; it wasn’t just about doing the right thing for the country when the inevitable war started, but it would be a waste for Doron to lose a year’s study if he went back to Israel and his unit. As much as Eli was thrilled to see his son, he’d have been happier if he was back in Daytona in the campus air tunnel, measuring drag velocity.

  If anyone could persuade Doron to turn round and go back to the US and continue his studies, Gal could. After all, she was a psychologist as well his mother.

  Eli propped his phone up against the kettle and keyed in Gal’s number. It rang once and then connected. She was expecting Eli. He’d messaged her as soon as Rafi had told him that Doron was in London.

  ‘You’re working late,’ Eli said when he saw the backdrop of Gal’s office, a whiteboard with a kaleidoscope of sticky-back notes all over it, while behind her the Tel Aviv University night sky twinkled. Eli also saw a glass of red wine on her desk. Typical Gal, Eli thought.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Gal said. ‘How is Doron? Is he there?’

  ‘He’s in the shower. We have a few minutes before he comes out.’

  ‘Probably more than a few,’ Gal said.

  Eli smiled. ‘We’re going to Singapore Garden. He’ll move his ass for the chicken satay. He’s on the 10.30 flight tomorrow night out of Heathrow, so he’ll be with you by four in the morning. There’s no chance you can pick him up, is there?’

  ‘Eli, I’d rather not, I’ve got so much work to do. The only time I can catch up on the reports is now. I’m drowning here. I’ll have breakfast with him. Eli, tell me, is it definite, is he really going straight to his unit?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s being vague. He’s making me go with him to some air museum in Cambridge tomorrow.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Gal said.

  Just then Eli heard the wail of sirens, the rising crescendo that demanded they run to the shelters. They had ninety seconds to get there.

  ‘Gal! Gal!’ Eli heard someone call his wife’s name in the background, ‘Motek, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Eli,’ Gal said. ‘I’ll talk to him, I promise. We’ll do this.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Eli said. ‘Who’s calling you motek, motek?’

  ‘Nobody, Eli, I have to go, we have to get out of here. The university is a target.’

  The screen went black.

  Chapter 17

  Petra squinted against the glare. It was a glittering winter’s day, the type of day Petra loved, where the cold air sliced into lungs and made her eyes stream. The sun was low and shone hard as if, for the brief hours it hit the winter landscape, creating long shadows and sharp edges, it demanded to be seen and remembered.

  Petra put her foot down on the accelerator and pushed into the outside lane of the A3, nosing up behind a black Focus that needed to get out of her way. After all her studies, she had begun to feel confident about her ability to recruit Wasim and run him and it was reflected in her driving. No one else would be able to talk to Wasim about his sister with the same level of confidence, nobody else would be able to build a level of trust that was based on truth. After all, she’d tried to save his sister’s life.

  More than anything, Petra was sorry not to have had the chance to see Eli since their last meeting. There was so much she wanted to talk to him about, but as Rafi had explained when he’d delivered to her a book called Palestine: Islamic Art and the Archaeology of Palestine, Eli was tied up with Office work, and family.

  Rafi had his head down and was fiddling with his phone as they barrelled along the motorway. ‘His son’s in town,’ Rafi said. ‘Wife’s back home in Israel and he’s trying to save the world.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Petra said as she flicked the indicator and slammed her foot on the accelerator to steam past a lorry meandering in the centre lane. ‘By the way, your scarf’s in my work bag. Don’t forget to take it back.’

  ‘Ah… you’re now wearing the flammable one.’

  ‘I like it and we’re not setting fire to anything today.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  She and Rafi were side by side in the hired Toyota Camry, heading out of London towards Hampshire. It was a big solid sedan with good acceleration and, although Rafi had driven the silver car to the agreed rendezvous, Petra had insisted he move into the passenger seat because his lane discipline was negligible, to say the least.

  ‘You drive like you’re in a tank and you’re planning to mow people down,’ she explained. ‘We have something called the Highway Code here.’

  ‘You also have speed limits, don’t you?’ Rafi said. ‘You are driving aggressively, as if you’re angry about something. Are you?’

  Petra ignored the comment. ‘Just give me the directions and tell me about the day ahead.’

  They were on their way to a private facility, where she was going to do some hands-on training in firearms. Using the cover of the film facilities company in Great Pulteney Street, they’d told the owners of the shooting gallery that they were prepping for a casting session with a major Hollywood talent, who was very specific about their requirements.

  The chance of Petra needing to use a gun was remote; case officers were rarely, if ever, involved in direct combat. After all, they were in the business of gathering intelligence and analysing it, yet it was one of the protocols within Petra’s training as a katsa that she was to be as prepared as she might have been if she’d made aliyah and either emigrated to Israel or been born there and, as such, she would have gone through the army and learnt how to handle firearms.

  ‘We have two hours at the shooting range,’ Rafi said. ‘All we’re going to do is look at half a dozen guns, see how one or two of them strip them down, show you how to clean them and put them back together and then you get to fire them.’

  ‘I really can’t see me using a gun to persuade Wasim that he’d like to become an agent, can you?’

  ‘No, but it’s protocol,’ Rafi said. ‘After that we have a session with someone you haven’t yet met, who is going to talk to you about Ethics and the Law and why the work that you’re doing is so important.’

  ‘What’s that, a pep talk?’ Petra slowed down and shifted into the inside lane as the Hook exit came up.

  ‘Far from it. His name is Nathan but he’s going to call himself Motti. He’s one of the people who are making our lives more difficult than they need to be.’

  ‘Our lives?’ Petra said.

  ‘Eli’s and mine and all the good people in the Office, the country and the world.’

  ‘Okay…’ Petra stopped at the roundabout at the top of the slip road and glanced over at Rafi. ‘Is this a bit of Office politics?’

  ‘It’s more serious, as everything seems to be these days,’ Rafi said. ‘I don’t know how much to tell you.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Rafi, you know it never works when you hold out on me,’ Petra said. ‘I always know when you’re lying so you may as well tell me.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Petra wasn’t remotely surprised by Rafi’s account that there was an operation being planned by one of the right-wingers in the organisation and he and Eli were being kept in the dark.

  ‘But they’ve got governmental authority for it, haven’t they?’ Petra said.

  ‘Yes, from the top, but it doesn’t mean that this secret operation is strategically sound. Or even likely to be properly executed. Eli wants me to find out what it is. Eli thinks it’s going to be a bullshit operation and we don’t have to worry about it. But I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Do you want me to do something?’ Petra said as she reversed into a bay in the car park of the facility and switched off the engine.

  ‘I’m not sure what you can do.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He’s religious, he thinks we’re doing God’s work, he thinks homosexuality is an aberration, he thinks that October 7 and the Holocaust happened because Jews weren’t observant.’

  ‘Well, sometimes one can’t help but wonder why all this shit keeps happening,’ Petra said.

  ‘That’s their argument. Women should dress modestly, their place is in the home bearing children and their work is to support the men in their lives. You know I could live with that idea, Petra.’

  ‘Why don’t you shut up,’ Petra smiled.

  They were at the door of the reception area. Petra adjusted the bag over her shoulder and assumed this morning’s persona of a locations finder, there to check out the facility’s suitability for a film shoot with the production’s arms expert.

  Chapter 18

  After two hours at the shooting gallery, Petra concluded that, although she had an aptitude for small arms, she had little interest in using them. A mechanical frame of mind helped her absorb all the information about cleaning and checking the weapons laid out for her, and while she could appreciate the different angles, weights, materials and shapes that were explained, and even discovered that she was a good shot, the notion of fetishising guns left her cold. The warehouse location had a reception area, where a couple of women were trying to keep themselves warm and offered Petra and Rafi tea and coffee while they waited to be seen. There was a glass case with accessories, gun bags with holders for ammunition and cleaning kit in pouches. In another glass case there were gun jackets and belts and bags. And the walls were lined with gun safes of different sizes for storing guns.

  Shooting was a rich person’s hobby.

  Despite her lack of interest, Petra noted how comfortable Rafi seemed among the weapons. He was even excited about the mechanisms and weighed the weapon in his hand with a gesture that was certainly practised. But he was also a patient trainer, and his best tip was how to control her breathing so that she might concentrate on the target and become one with the gun.

  On the way back to London, Petra was thoughtful and ignored all of Rafi’s attempts to chat. The weather had changed and the clouds had gathered and rolled up into towers; it began to rain; savage drops battered the windscreen and the radio gabbled upcoming election news. Petra pushed on through the traffic and road-surface water, thinking, not talking. She was thinking about the afternoon session with the Office guy who was going to talk to her about ethics.

  Eventually they manoeuvred their way around Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. Petra said, ‘You know, if you’re going to meet this Motti character first, you could drop me somewhere near the safe house and I’ll join you there a bit later? There’s no point me sitting around in the kitchen waiting for you to finish, is there?’

  ‘No,’ Rafi said. ‘Just make sure you follow all the protocols before you get there. It’s unlikely we’re being tailed but it still doesn’t mean we take chances.’

  Rafi dropped Petra at Paddington Station. It was far enough away from the Westbourne Grove safe house and it was also the perfect spot to circulate and thoroughly check herself. Once she was certain that she was clean, Petra did the shopping she thought she would need for her afternoon session with Motti and even went so far as to return to Paddington Station, where she changed from sweatshirt and jeans into her new outfit in a public toilet.

  Suitably garbed, Petra took a taxi back to Ledbury Road and took a turn around the streets, slowing down and then speeding up, doubling back and crossing the road to go down an alley behind the houses before climbing the stairs up to the front door of the safe house.

  This particular safe house was a shabby building. Outside the lower-ground-floor flat an overflowing wheelie bin with a broken lid sat on cracked paving and a broken bike was propped, chained to the railings, as if anybody would want to steal it. It was a sad house. White paint peeled from crumbling stucco plasterwork and the grand old villa was being eaten by damp and subsidence. It was also prey to the thud and roar of the traffic from the A40 that fought with the trains rattling into Paddington Station.

 

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