Deaken's War Page 11

  “What time is it?” said Karen.

  “Eight.”

  She set and wound her watch. “Forgot,” she said. She wouldn’t let it happen again—it was important to keep track of the time. Though exactly why, she wasn’t quite sure.

  “We could walk in the garden if you like.”

  “All right.”

  He stood back to allow her to go through the door ahead of him. She hadn’t been expecting the courtesy and half collided with him. They both smiled, embarrassed.

  “You’re not going to run away, are you?” he said.

  “No,” she said. Why give him that assurance so readily?

  The faraway field was being worked again, bowed men following a machine that appeared to be ploughing a slow, unwavering line. She thought the field was pretty, neatly patterned as if they were knitting the design into the earth. Crows were sounding approval from the high elms and she heard again the clock-chime she had counted in the bathroom. She turned, but couldn’t see the tower. There were more trees and more crows, their nests picked out on the upper branches like musical notes for a tune the occupants couldn’t get right. It was still wet underfoot. Karen saw her shoes were being stained black. More musical notes.

  “How long have you been married?” Levy did not look at her.

  “Nine years,” she said. “What about you?”

  “Three.”

  “Children?” It was a blurted question.

  “Two,” he said. “Both boys.” He smiled in private recollection. “Shimeon is two … named after me. Yatzik is a baby, just four months.” The correction came immediately. “Five months. I’ve been away for a while.”

  “I haven’t got any children.”

  “Why not?” It was a thoughtless question from a man still enclosed in his own thoughts.

  They reached the perimeter edge near the hedge and beyond it the trees with their tuneless birds. He took her elbow, an automatic gesture to guide her around. She was aware of the contact but didn’t try to pull away.

  “Richard doesn’t want to.”

  “Why not?” he repeated.

  She shrugged. “He says he wants to get settled first … become established.”

  She was aware of him stiffening at the words, his hand actually tightening against her arm. “My shoes are getting soaked,” she said.

  “Why not take them off?”

  She was seized at once by the careless, uncomplicated delight of doing something without thought of censure or explanation or excuse. For now. The coldness of the grass came as a shock. She shivered, and he tightened his grip on her arm. Around them birds screeched and guffawed, as if aware of the awkwardness; the sun finally shouldered itself up over the barrier of the trees. Karen’s feet were frozen and she felt ridiculous, standing before him with her shoes in her hand: they weren’t even her newest pair and the insoles were stained with wear. She hadn’t thought she was going anywhere.

  “That wasn’t a good idea,” she said.

  “No.”

  She looked helplessly down at her feet, then at the shoes in her hand. “It’ll be worse if I put them on again.”

  “We’d better go back.”

  She gave another involuntary shiver.

  “We’d better get you dry. I don’t want anyone else falling sick.”

  They walked, self-consciously apart, back to the farmhouse. Karen made Man Friday tracks over the flagstones; they were even colder than the grass.

  “I’ll use the towel in my room,” she said, wondering as she spoke why an explanation was necessary.

  “I’ll see how the boy is.”

  It was a wide staircase and they went up side by side, careful still not to touch.

  “I’ll get dry then,” she said at the top.

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t until she got back to the room that Karen realized that she had left so hurriedly, at Levy’s summons, that she hadn’t made the bed. She took the towel from its rail near the washstand and sat down on the thrown-back covering, crooking her leg in front of her. Her feet had dried already but walking barefoot had made them dirty. She put water from the jug into its matching bowl, placed it beside the bed and immersed both her feet.

  She looked up to see Levy in the doorway.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Asleep,” said Levy. “Still sweating. No different really.”

  She dried her feet, taking care to ensure that her skirt didn’t ride up over her thighs.

  “Your shoes are still wet.”

  “I’d better wait until they dry; they’re the only ones I’ve got.” She tucked her legs beneath her. She wished the bed were made.

  “I’ll put them outside when the sun gets hotter.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s all right.” He remained in the doorway, as if there were a demarcation line he could not cross. “Would you like to try backgammon again?”

  He had tried to teach her the previous afternoon, under Azziz’s contemptuous stare, and she hadn’t wanted to learn. “No thanks.”

  “Cards?”

  “I don’t know any card games.”

  “I want to make love to you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.” Why wasn’t she outraged? Offended at least? Frightened?

  He came into the room and closed the door. Karen knew that if she wanted to she could stop him. But she said nothing. Levy bent down and picked up the bowl. The water was dirty, creating a line around the edge and she wished it hadn’t. He put it on the washstand and came back to kneel before her, not touching her but leaning forward, to bring his face against hers and not really kissing; more biting and nipping, trying to get her lips between his teeth. Karen felt a flood between her legs, a flood she hadn’t known before and which embarrassed her. They collided in their urgency, his hands moving over her, not groping and pawing but seeking reassurance. She felt his touch beneath her skirt and opened her legs, wanting to help him all she could. He couldn’t wait to undress himself, just thrusting aside his trousers and stabbing at her. Karen came to him, the whimper rising into a moaning scream as they burst together and she felt his hardness going on and on as if forever. At first, after the initial coupling, they were wrong, mistiming each other, but then he slid his hands beneath her buttocks and held her, slowing her to his movement until they rode together, each in perfect time with the other. Despite their frenzy and the flow that had already soaked her, it took a long time: they grew comfortable with each other, enjoying the fit. It was Karen who started the race, nails deep into the thickness of his legs, hauling him into her with each thrust.

  “Come on,” she gasped. “Come on, come on, come on,” bucking each time she made the demand.

  Levy tried desperately to keep up, like a man running for a disappearing train. He just missed. She was already exploding in a back-arching groan when he made it, hurrying the more to finish at the same time. They ended the journey together, limp and exhausted against each other, conscious of the discomfort of clothes between them.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  They undressed afterwards, giggling at the reverse order, reaching out to touch and to feel as if afraid that as quickly as it had happened it would end and they would lose each other.

  “Your back is bruised,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  Naked they tunnelled into the bed, building their own burrow. Very quickly it became hot.

  “I believe this is called the Stockholm Syndrome. Women developing sexual fantasies about men who kidnap them.”

  “It didn’t seem like a fantasy to me.”

  “It didn’t to me, either.”

  “Sorry?”

  “No,” she said. “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s …” She stopped, unable to find the expression she wanted. “… strange though, isn’t it?” she finished badly.

  “Yes,” said Levy. He was moving his hand over her body, as if he still n
eeded the reassurance of her presence.

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Rebecca.”

  “What’s she like?”

  Levy thought for a while, as if he needed to remember precise details. “Dark,” he said. “Black hair and deep brown eyes. She’s tall, slim. She graduated two years before me.”

  “Graduated?”

  “She’s a teacher—we both are.”

  Karen pulled away to scrutinize his face. “It suits you better … better than being a man with a gun, I mean.” She felt a satisfaction at having been right about him. And at the same time—inexplicably—a disappointment. Was that what had originally attracted her to him, the fervent radicalism Richard had once had but now lost? She pushed the thought away, unwilling to make the comparison.

  “Were teachers,” he corrected. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t be,” he said. “Not allowed.”

  Levy had moved away from her now, his body still close enough to touch but his mind far distant. “We were in Beersheba, in the south. It was a good school; we had a good house. The children hadn’t come of course, not Shimeon or Yatzik. Then the war happened in ‘73. It’s strange. I’m a Sabra, born in Israel, but until then I’d never been into Sinai. The Negev but never the Sinai …” He reflected for a moment. Karen remained silent beside him, not wanting to intrude. “It was beautiful, so beautiful, even through the eye-slit of a tank. I couldn’t get over the stillness and the size and the peace …” He laughed at the word. “Peace, even when we were fighting a war.” There was another pause. “The Egyptians made it across the canal but we pushed them back … right back, right out of the desert. The Sinai was ours …”

  Karen was conscious that his voice was charged with an intense excitement.

  “It became government policy to resettle the areas. Make new homesteads. I persuaded Rebecca to give up our safe home and trust me and to come with me into a wilderness. I felt liberated, like a pioneer, the sort of settlers my parents had been, from Poland. Lots of places were developed … Yammit … Haruvit … that’s where we made a town, near Haruvit.” He laughed, but there was no mirth. “Not a big town … a large village, I suppose. But it existed. We built houses and a school where Rebecca and I taught, and we planted and we made the desert grow. Shimeon was born there. Yatzik too … the only home they’ve ever known …” Levy caressed her, and she settled into the crook of his arm.

  “And then came the peace talks,” he said. “Camp David, with Carter and Sadat and Begin playing world statesmen. Resettlement land suddenly became occupied territory. Not the Golan, of course. Begin needed to seem strong, so he seized the Golan. But the Sinai was different. It didn’t matter about all the people who had put their faith in the government; for the greater good, the occupied territories had to be returned …”

  “For recognition, surely?”

  “What recognition!” he said. “Israel is there on all the maps. And always will be. Israel will never gain anything by weakness. What about the Saudi Arabian plan to get official Arab acceptance of the country? They couldn’t even start the bloody conference in Morocco because Libya, Syria, Algeria and Iraq treated it as a joke.”

  “The Sinai has been cleared,” reminded Karen.

  “Temporarily,” insisted Levy.

  Karen wondered if Levy would accept the analogy that what had happened to the Sinai settlers was almost exactly what had happened to the dispossessed Palestinians. Perhaps a discussion for later, she decided, not now.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked softly.

  “Fight. Like we’ve always had to.”

  Karen felt a great sadness envelop her.

  “We fought the Arabs and won. Now, if we have to, we’ll fight the Jews,” he said.

  “You intend to fight your own people!”

  “There’s a monument in Israel which will always be identified with resistance. It’s called Masada.”

  “I know,” Karen said. “The Jews put themselves to the sword rather than be captured by the Romans. They didn’t fight other Jews.”

  “This will be our Masada,” he said stubbornly.

  “Oh, my darling,” she said. “My poor darling.”

  “You’re patronizing me!”

  “No I’m not,” she said anxiously, feeling up and putting her finger against his lips. “Really I’m not. I’m just frightened for you.”

  “You needn’t be,” he said with schoolboy bravura. “We’re going to have weapons enough to fight a war.” She felt him turn to her. “That’s what we’re going to get from Azziz. A whole boatload.”

  “How many are there of you?”

  “Enough.”

  “But you know how good your people are, your army and your security forces,” she said. “It won’t matter what sort of weaponry you’ve got; they’ll destroy you.”

  “Maybe, if it was just us … only our settlement,” conceded Levy. “But it won’t be. Once the other settlers see what’s happened, the resistance will spread. Throughout the Sinai and onto the West Bank: even Jerusalem. They won’t be able to ignore that.”

  They will, thought Karen; oh, my darling, they will. Just as all strong, determined regimes always crushed any irritating resistance, whatever the morality of their argument. She had studied it, been involved in it for what seemed a lifetime. She knew the arguments, catchphrases, the cliches; and the message was always the same. The smaller sacrifice for the larger good: the justification for every general in every war. David and Goliath was a fairy story, nothing more: in real life the roof only ever fell in upon the weak and the innocent.

  “I should see how the boy is,” said Levy checking his watch. “And I’ve got to go to make a telephone call.”

  “Not yet,” said Karen.

  This time their lovemaking was slower, without any desperation, and they came together ecstatically. When he kissed her, Levy found her tears and said, “Me too, darling, it was beautiful for me.”

  “I’m glad,” said Karen. She would let him think she cried from pleasure, she decided.

  Deaken was comparing the photograph and the brochure like a man unable to accept he had the winning ticket in a fabulous lottery. “No doubt!” he said. “No doubt at all!” His excitement swept away the depression of his conversation with Underberg.

  “So we can get them out,” said Azziz quietly.

  “We?” queried Deaken.

  “We have some men,” said Grearson. “They’re already flying to Strasbourg. I made contact with them an hour ago while you were ashore.”

  “What’s wrong with the police?”

  “How long do you think that would take?” Azziz spoke dismissively. “Days of dreary explanations, then time to assemble their antiterrorist squads. I want my son back now. Like I thought you wanted your wife back.”

  “Of course I want her back,” said Deaken angrily. “But what if anything goes wrong?”

  “It won’t,” said Grearson.

  Now that the opportunity had come to take the sort of action he had wanted ever since Karen’s kidnap, Deaken felt a curious reluctance to act. He was still frightened, he realized. “What about the negotiations with Underberg?”

  Grearson laughed contemptuously. “You heard what he said. All in good time. We’re not going to get them back through any negotiation, any payment.… You surely didn’t think we intended letting those arms go to waste, did you?” he quoted again. “They haven’t made all their demands yet, it could be weeks before we even get into the position of negotiating.”

  Deaken couldn’t dispute the logic. “What have you arranged?” he said.

  “The nearest town of any size to Rixheim is Mulhouse,” said Grearson. “There’s a hotel there called the Parc. That’s the assembly point.”

  “For whom?”

  “I’m flying up.”

  “I want to come too,” said Deaken.

  “I expected you to,” said Grearson, with weary resignation
.

  Karen wanted another bath, but she was reluctant to ask permission of anyone except Levy. Instead she got up, naked, from the bed, filled the basin with cold water and washed herself down, gasping at the water’s chill. But inside she felt a burning warmth, a completeness she hadn’t known for a long time. If ever. She frowned at the qualification, once more refusing the comparison, refusing to consider what she had done and what was happening to her. Only three days ago, or was it four, she had accused Richard of running. Now it was her turn.

  Karen was fastening her buttons when the bedroom door burst open. Levy stood there, flushed.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  14

  They had already registered by the time Deaken and Grearson reached Mulhouse, arriving at the hotel on the rue Sinne singly and in pairs, with the cover story to the management that they were engineers assembling from all over France for an international conference which was due to begin within twenty-four hours across the border in Geneva. It provided a satisfactory reason for their abrupt arrival and what they expected to be an equally abrupt departure. They even paid in advance, and with cash, not credit cards. Because it was the biggest—and his by right as commanding officer—the meeting took place in Evans’s room, not technically a suite but with definite aspirations, a larger than normal bedroom with a hollowed-out annexe to the side, with chairs and a table.

  Deaken watched, scrutinizing every face, as Grearson explained for the first time what was expected of them. There was no expression from any of them; no shock at the idea of kidnap, no fear or apprehension at confronting unknown opposition or unfamiliar terrain. They didn’t even look human. They could almost have been created from some firm flesh-coloured material that would be hard and metallic to the touch, not something that could be bruised or broken.