It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. But two days after he’d booked their flights, Malik’s publisher demanded he fly to Paris and undertake a special interview. It took some jiggling, but Malik was able to fix things. Dianne would fly directly from London. He’d take the train to Paris, do the interview, drop the tape off at the magazine, then catch the first available flight and meet her at the Tel Aviv Hilton.
But there was a problem. Because Malik was jumping from point to point, he wanted to take only carry-on luggage. Dianne had a big suitcase. Could she take a few things for him-so he’d have enough clothes for their week in Israel and the West Bank? And also his portable radio and some other personal effects?
Of course she could. And so, she flew to Israel on a Monday-the British Air flight. She took a cab from Ben Gurion and checked into the Hilton.
The room was perfect: on the eighth floor, with a broad ocean view. Malik arrived Wednesday evening from Paris, with his rolling leather carry-on and a present for her: a fabulous Louis Vuitton backpack. It was his apology for being tardy.
They made love twice. Afterward, Malik took the radio from her bag and turned it on so he could listen to BBC World News. He was, she’d told the interrogators, a real news freak-had been for as long as she’d known him.
When the radio didn’t work, he’d checked the batteries and discovered they were dead. So he’d sent her out to buy fresh ones at the newsstand in the lobby while he unpacked.
They’d traveled all over, Malik making lots of notes and taking lots of digital photographs for his article. They visited Jaffa and walked all around Tel Aviv. They took a bus all the way to Haifa and Acre. They visited Tiberias and swam in the Sea of Galilee. They stayed in a beachfront hotel in Netanya and wandered past the tourist restaurants. They spent two days in Jerusalem, staying at the American Colony Hotel, an old Arab palace on the Nablus Road. On the second day, the hotel concierge hired an Arab taxi for them and they drove through the occupied territories to visit Jericho, and then Ramallah.
In Ramallah, in a restaurant, they’d met by chance a PLO security officer who’d invited them to see evidence of how badly the Palestinians were being treated by the Israelis. He’d taken them to the Fatah offices and played a video: a long montage of photographs showing dead Palestinian children, all murdered, he said, by criminal Israeli settlers. Dianne admitted Malik had spent some time alone with the Palestinian while she looked at the video.
After one more night in Jerusalem, they took a cab to Tel Aviv and reregistered at the Hilton. They ate dinner in the room, then made love. Afterward, Malik suggested they go nightclubbing. They started at Montana, a crowded beer bar on the northern edge of Old Tel Aviv. From there, they went on to a number of clubs, working their way south, toward the Hilton. Then Malik suggested they try to get into what he called the hottest club in Tel Aviv: Michael’s Pub. It was on the waterfront, a block and a half from the American embassy.
They’d taken a cab. They were sufficiently fashionable to be allowed through the rope line after Dianne’s backpack was checked by the security guard. They’d found a table near the dance floor, ordered a couple of whiskey sours and a plate ofmezze, and gotten up to dance. They’d danced two dances, and Dianne excused herself to go to the loo. That’s where she was when Malik blew himself up.
10:31A.M.Showtime. Tom stepped through the doorway. His face a neutral mask, he reached behind himself and pulled on the handle until he heard the heavy bolt snap shut.
14
10:31A.M. The interrogation room was bare and palpably cool-at least fifteen degrees cooler than the corridor. There was something else in evidence, too: the faint but unmistakable scent of Salah’sparfum pénitentiaire.
She was tiny-fragile as a soft-boned baby chick and obviously as vulnerable. Not more than five two or five three. She stood, fists clenched, behind a metal table. She had the sort of delicately featured yet hugely plain face that made her look ten years older than her actual age. Her appearance certainly wasn’t helped by the shapeless gray prison shift and dirty tennis shoes with no laces.
She looked at Tom with wide-eyed apprehension. Under his relentless gaze, her right hand jerked upward in order to smooth down her uncombed, short, mouse-brown hair. She was largely unsuccessful. An absurd, recalcitrant cowlick completed her hapless and wretched appearance.
Her body language readexhausted written in capital letters, but her brown eyes were clear, even-Tom found this surprising-piercing. Equally promising, she displayed neither the zombie look, the loony’s smile, or the thousand-yard stare. Salah had done well. He’d wrung her dry, yet been careful not to break her into unusable emotional shards.
Tom slipped into character and kept his voice neutral but commanding.“Assieds-toi.” It was the way you told a dog or a naughty child to sit.
She slipped demurely onto a straight-backed chair that was bolted to the concrete. She looked like a schoolgirclass="underline" knees pressed together under her shift, ankles locked. She raised her hands from her lap and clasped them together, interlocking her fingers as if she were about to play the old nursery game. “This is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.”
Tom allowed himself a quick scan of the room. The cameras had to be behind him. And the microphones? There were probably three or four of them, spread out so nothing would be missed.
He looked down at her.“Parle-moi de Mal-ik,” he said, speaking in a slow, almost pedantic Marseillaise accent. “Tell me everything the two of you did on that first”-he punched the word-“wonderfultrip to Paris last March.”
She cocked her head as a child would do and looked up at him for fifteen, perhaps twenty seconds. He could see the gears engaging. She was trying to figure out what he wanted, where he was going.
He gave her nothing. “Paris. Last March.”
Finally, a single tear formed in the corner of her right eye. When it had built up enough mass, it rolled down her cheek and plopped from her chin onto the front of her shift. “Oh, Malik,” she said. “Poor, silly, romantic Malik. I loved him so.”
She started to blubber and tugged at the sleeve of her shift so she could wipe her nose. Then she caught herself and stopped, muffling a huge sob.
“Here. Use this.” Reaching into the pocket of his coveralls, Tom played with the fresh, starched handkerchief he’d brought until it released what he’d hidden inside its opaque folds. He extracted the hankie, shook it out, advanced, reached over the chair that had been placed for him, and dropped it onto the surface of the table.
She picked it up. It was an oversize gentleman’s handkerchief made of French linen. It had hand-rolled edges and it smelled ever so faintly of Givenchy Gentleman. Tom knew Malik had used the same cologne. And just like Salah, he understood sensory triggers can often help interrogators prime the pump, so to speak, when they’re dealing with emotionally frail personalities.
He watched her body language. He silently counted the seconds-one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three-until the emotional tidal wave washed over her.
Fire in the hole!She held the handkerchief to her face and silent-screamed, caught her breath, silent-screamed again, and collapsed on the tabletop, her arms splayed out around her head.