Spoils of War, page 24
Dale had been watching him over the rim of her glass. ‘And this was just before the time Noura was arrested and Jalloul disappeared? More than a coincidence? But it doesn’t sound as if Ghani and friends were any too sure about what they were doing.’
‘Exactly. It’s one thing to get your hands on a heap of bullion, but quite another to turn it into cash. To do it officially, you have to prove that you’re the legitimate owner. But there is a thriving unofficial market on the side. At a guess, I’d say that’s where these people would have turned once they realized they weren’t going to get any help from Zunckel.’
‘Melt it down and ship it to India, the way your friend in Saudi suggested?’
‘Something like that. But they’d still need help from a middleman.’
The head waiter came to tell them that their table in the restaurant was ready. There was fresh asparagus on the menu, and they ordered that and stuffed breast of veal with a bottle of Swiss Dôle du Mont recommended by the sommelier. They continued to speculate for a while on the subject of the gold, but nothing they came up with seemed to shed any more light on the real purpose of their enquiries.
Dale had more solid information to report. She had bought a French guidebook and some detailed road maps, on one of which she had found the village called Vaux-sur-Autruche, the last known home of Nadine Schuster. It was a tiny spot just to the east of Belfort, which, in turn, was a hundred and fifty-odd kilometres from Zurich, an easy two-hour drive. The proximity of the two places was another thing that had come to seem more than a coincidence.
‘So we go there tomorrow?’
‘It’s a long shot, but we can’t afford not to try.’
Along the Ml motorway, the traffic charging north out of London seemed unabated well after the rush hour was over. Juggernauts and long-distance coaches crammed the two inside lanes, trapping cars between them in an endless stampede of light and noise. Faster vehicles cruised by to the right, but Issa Shakir stuck to the inside lane, keeping the Ford Sierra a careful distance behind the nearest truck.
Ten miles out he took the turning at Junction Six, the first practicable place to double back along the motorway without looping off on to a secondary road. Halfway back to London, he followed the signs that pointed to the Scratchwood service area, filtering left and crossing a road bridge that gave access to the brightly lit petrol station, parking area and restaurants. He didn’t stop, but kept to the left lane and swung across a second bridge, going down the ramp that led back on to the southbound carriageway. Thin traffic just here, nothing immediately in front or behind, and the darkness around the Sierra was emphasized by the stream of light from other vehicles rushing by on the main carriageway. Issa kept the speed steady at thirty miles an hour until he was halfway into the filter. Then he said to his brother in the back seat: ‘Now!’
Ali had kept his left hand clasped to the back of Abdel Karim’s jacket all through the journey, and the silenced pistol in his right hand jammed into the renegade’s neck. Not that he thought the Kurd, bound and gagged and blindfolded, had any hope or intention of escaping, but just to keep him frightened.
Ali leaned across Karim and released the door catch. Then he shot him in the head.
The force of the bullet threw him out of the car, and he hit the hard shoulder of the road and rolled along it and off it like a bundle of rags, disappearing almost at once into the dark. The door slammed itself shut as Issa accelerated, getting up to fifty miles an hour before he joined the main stream of traffic towards London.
An hour later, in the safe house in Finsbury Park, the Mudeer received the two brothers’ report in silence. They had found him in the drawing room, dressed immaculately once again and watching the news on television. He wasn’t one for giving praise too freely, and tonight he seemed especially preoccupied, but at last he grunted and said: ‘That was well done. In spite of the loss of our comrade Osman, our tracks remain well covered. The Kurd will soon be found, but no-one will know where he has been. More importantly, no-one will know what we have learned from him.’
The Mudeer looked at Ali and Issa significantly. He had not allowed them to be present during much of his interrogation of Karim, but in the brief periods Ali had spent in the room he’d had the impression that the Kurd wasn’t saying very much.
‘Our country has many enemies,’ their chief went on, ‘as you have been trained to appreciate. We have rid ourselves of an important one, but there are others more than willing to continue his work. Not all of them are as obvious as the Kurd. Among the most subtle and dangerous are economic enemies: people who attack the wealth and stability of our state for their own greedy purposes. These must be rooted out and crushed.’
The Mudeer paused. ‘It is clear from my questioning of the Kurd that the Nazarene, Rushton, is one of these. He has business interests in Kuwait. He is an accomplice of the opportunist sheikhs there in a new conspiracy to undermine and weaken us.’
The potent words sent a thrill of apprehension through Ali. ‘Does Rushton’s journey to Zurich have to do with that?’ he asked.
‘Very probably. I can tell you in confidence that over the years our leadership has wisely moved sums of money in secret to Switzerland, to keep them from the grasp of the very criminals and thieves who now plunder our country under the protection of United Nations sanctions. The arrangements are in the hands of a few selected men, and the details need not concern you. It is enough for you to understand that Rushton and the Kuwaitis have hopes of seizing this money, and that they must be stopped. There is more to be learned first.’ He gestured at the television. ‘The police here are now extremely vigilant. For the present we must risk no more forceful actions. But I have plans for both of you over the next few days.’
Jack woke up and for an instant didn’t know where he was. Then he was aware of the warmth of Dale’s body pressed against his in the unfamiliar bed.
They had left the light on, and when he raised his head from the pillow he saw a tender, knowing smile on her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Just a few minutes.’
His left arm lay across her firm, flat stomach. Lifting it to look at his watch, he saw it was just after eleven. Not that he had to bother about the time. Neither that nor anything else could diminish his extraordinary feeling of elation. For the first time in eight years he was in bed with a woman other than Alison; not just any woman either, but one who had more than fulfilled all the desires he had had for her. The feeling went beyond the satisfaction of male conquest, though, beyond guilty physical pleasure; in fact, he had no sense of guilt at all. In making love to Dale he seemed to have rediscovered something he had lost long ago, a true sense of shared wanting and delight.
It was she who had made the decisive move. When they’d finished dinner and Dr Hamadi still hadn’t returned Jack’s call, they had gone back to the bar for coffee and brandy. After they’d been talking for half an hour she had stood up and said simply: ‘We can’t wait down here all night.’
In their room, it had happened just as he’d imagined it. She had slipped unselfconsciously out of her clothes, taken him by the hand and led him to the bed.
When she lay on her back as now, her small breasts all but disappeared, emphasizing the hard, boyish strength of her body. There was a yielding softness to her lips, though, and when he kissed her she drew his tongue into her mouth. They lay for a couple of minutes with their mouths working greedily at each other in a miniature simulation of coupling, until with a sudden mutual urgency they locked their bodies together and he slid into the wetness between her thighs. This time their ardour was even stronger than before, and it was amazing how close to the reality his fantasies had been: Dale’s muscular legs clasped around his back, drawing him in so deep that he had the sensation of almost disappearing inside her; and then a simultaneous climax, Jack hearing her whimpers of pleasure and feeling the successive, shivering spasms of her orgasm as his own lust was released.
They separated and lay side by side for a while, looking at each other in a kind of wonder at the strength of their passion. Eventually it was Dale who spoke, striking the light note that seemed necessary.
‘I think we’re pretty good at this, huh?’
‘I think we’re brilliant. And I’m glad you made me wait.’
The call from Kuwait came ten minutes later. When he answered the ring on the bedside phone, Jack was greeted not by Hamadi’s voice but by the rougher tones of Major Al-Shaheb.
‘Mr Rushton? I’m sorry to call so late, but finally I think I have the information you wanted. What use it will be to you is another matter.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘These six photographs you sent me . . . May I ask how recently they were taken?’
‘Between three and five years ago, more or less.’
‘Then that makes sense. I thought at first there had been some mistake. You see, I have been able to identify all six of these men from our records, but . . .’
Al-Shaheb hesitated like someone unwillingly breaking bad news. ‘Go on,’ Jack prompted.
‘Well, all of them are dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘All wiped out together,’ the major said with more enthusiasm. ‘All burned alive on the Mutla Ridge, in February. I think I have already mentioned the incident to you.’
Jack recalled the conversation they’d had after his visit to the prisoner Fadel. ‘You mean the truck full of Iraqis that was hit by a bomb? The one that killed General Malik?’
‘Precisely. And ten or eleven others. These pictures of yours correspond to those of half a dozen men that I have on my files. Under their real names, of course. The ones on their passports – Ghani, Hayawi and the rest – are false.’
‘Then who were they really?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They were identified by the charred scraps of paper that were found with their bodies. A crowd of Mukhabarat swine fleeing from their crimes, and among them the biggest pig of all.’
‘Malik himself? You mean he was one of these six?’
‘There’s no doubt of it. The man whose name you have as Mohamed Ghani was, in fact, Omar Hassan Malik, chief of the Mukhabarat in Kuwait. The five others were all his lackeys, all now burning in hell with him. I don’t know what lead you’ve been following, Mr Rushton, but it looks as if it has run out on you.’
Jack put down the phone in a daze. A vision of that scowling face came back to him. The character of Ghani as the ringleader of a gang of crooks had already taken shape in his mind. To recognize that Ghani had been one and the same person as Jalloul’s chief enemy required a leap of logic that was beyond him.
23
The N1 autobahn out of Zurich cut through the snow-patched hills of Aargau and descended into the Swiss Rhineland, following the course of the river for a time and giving occasional glimpses of it. Wide loops of blue water twinkling in the sunshine, steep, thickly wooded slopes on the far bank hinting at the forbidding terrain of the Black Forest behind them. Downstream from Rheinfelden the river widened and became like a second motorway, traversed by a steady traffic of barges and passenger boats.
It was Saturday morning, another cold but cloudless day. Dale had gone for a run first thing, and after snatching a light breakfast they had set off at ten o’clock in their hired Volkswagen Golf. Cocooned in a warm afterglow of intimacy from the night before, they didn’t talk much but found no need to search for words. Their separate selves seemed to belong to a distant past; their situation had the dangerous illusions of a honeymoon about it, Jack knew, but he wanted it to go on for ever.
He had pushed what he had learned from Al-Shaheb last night to the back of his mind. There was no sense in trying to understand the inexplicable.
They reached Basle or, rather, passed it by, in less than an hour: a collection of church spires huddling around the Rhine before the river twisted away to the north. There was a sense of being at the heart of Europe here, with Germany and France both on the doorstep; indeed, they were still in the suburbs of the city when they came to a border post and were waved casually through.
They were in the French department of Haut-Rhin, in the region of Alsace. The main route to Belfort was the motorway via Mulhouse, but they chose a secondary road heading due west that looked likely to take them more directly to the village called Vaux-sur-Autruche. The nature of the countryside had changed, from the grand to the picturesque. Sleek cattle grazed on gently sloping pastures and rooks swarmed behind ploughs, searching the newly turned earth for worms and grubs. The villages and small towns they passed had German names – Ranspach, Tagsdorf, Altkirch – but their look was French: the avenues of pollarded plane trees, the squares with their monuments aux morts from two world wars. After fifty kilometres they crossed the Rhine-Rhône Canal, and a few minutes later a roadside sign welcomed them to the Territoire de Belfort.
It was an odd but significant little corner of France. On the map it appeared as a tiny wedge driven into a gap between Alsace and Franche-Comte. And a gap was precisely what it was, as Dale instructed Jack from the guidebook she had bought: an opening between the Vosges mountains and the Jura, a strategic passageway through which invading armies had marched from the earliest times. In 1916 it had been touch-and-go whether the German General Staff would choose Belfort or Verdun as the site of the battle intended to bleed France to death.
A sign to the left pointed them down departmental route number 29, the road they were looking for, but gave no indication that it led to Vaux. It was a narrow road flanked by high hedges, and after winding through two or three small villages that were named on the map it became little more than a country lane. Past a small schoolhouse and then a hump-backed bridge over two converging streams, it made a sudden left turn and then looped back around a cobbled square overlooked by a dozen houses.
Jack halted the car and looked at Dale in puzzlement. ‘Is this it?’
‘It must be. But we’d better ask.’
The place had an abandoned, vaguely down-at-heel appearance, and seemed hardly to add up to a village. There was no church or other public building in the square, just a fountain that looked as if it hadn’t worked for years, a small shop with a sign saying Epicerie, and a nameless café adjoining it. A couple of tractors were parked outside the café, and agriculture made other trespasses on the human habitat: a metal barn occupied one side of the square, and there were patches of cow dung on the cobbles.
As they stepped out of the car, Jack sensed Dale sharing his own sudden misgivings. They had come equipped only with the name of Nadine Schuster, with no real clue to her connection with this tiny hamlet. It was a literal dead end, a strange point of origin for a woman who had once had an Arab lover; and one, moreover, who had once volunteered to become a spy in order to stay with her.
Dale glanced at her watch and then around at the deserted square. ‘Just after twelve. The sacred hour of the déjeuner, bad time to go knocking on doors. I guess we should try the café. No, here’s someone we can ask.’
A small boy had walked into the village from the same direction by which they had entered it. He looked dressed for school, in corduroy trousers, a white shirt and dark pullover, and was presumably on his way home for lunch. He seemed rather nervous as they approached him across the square, but when Dale addressed him he gave her a tentative smile.
‘Bonjour. Est-ce que tu habites ce village?’
‘Ouai?’ A question within the answer.
‘Il s’appelle comment?’
‘Ici, c’est le village de Vaux, madame,’ the boy replied politely. He was ten or eleven years old, with the shyly curious manner of a country child. In spite of that his features were strongly formed, giving him a prematurely adult look. The prominent nose, the narrow jaw and the liquid brown eyes harked at origins from another time or place. The Midi, perhaps, or even one of the former French possessions in North Africa.
‘Bien,’ Dale said. ‘Alors, peut-être tu peux nous aider. Nous cherchons une dame qui a habité ici dans le temps. Elle s’appelle Nadine Schuster. Est-ce que tu la connais?’
The boy’s smile vanished. He didn’t answer, but stared at her in confusion. It was hard to guess what had caused this sudden change in his manner, but on that well-defined but innocent face there was something very like fear.
‘Qu’y a-t-il?’ Dale asked. ‘Tu a compris ce que j’ai dit?’
He chewed on his lip and lowered his gaze to the ground, where he was twisting the toe of his shoe about on the cobbles. Then he looked up with a more definite apprehension at Jack, as though whatever threat he had sensed came from this silent male presence rather than from her. In a moment of intuition, Jack thought he had understood the boy’s fear. He reached out a hand in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but that proved the breaking point. The child’s lower lip was quivering. He flinched back with a whimper of fright and ran away across the square.
Dale said: ‘You scared him! You should have left him to me.’
‘Sorry. But I don’t think it’s really me he’s frightened of.’
He watched the boy run to the épicene, yank open the door and go inside. From the decisive way he had moved, there was nothing random about this choice of a refuge. Jack went after him at a trot, ignoring Dale’s further protests. He was remembering another three-way encounter, between himself, Dale and the Kuwaiti youth called Tewfiq and he knew what it was he recognized in this boy: not Provence, not North Africa, but Arab. Not just a general look this time, but a particular one. He knew instinctively that the boy was the true reason for their coming here.
Dale caught up with him as he reached the glazed double doors of the village shop.
