“I went to see Hiram Varkal. He heads up the Mossad station here in London. I was guessing he had no part in this organization I’ve told you about, and I wanted to find out what he knew. If Varkal seemed safe, I was going to tell him everything so he could send it right to the top, to the Director himself.”
“The last two Israelis you met up with didn’t fare too well. Wasn’t this guy a little nervous about meeting you?”
“He would have been if he’d known about it.”
Christine listened intently as he explained how he’d cornered Varkal in the restaurant. He then went over their conversation and offered a brief version of the battle that ensued. She drove on in grim silence, acknowledging events she would never have thought possible two weeks ago. When Slaton was done, she realized things had gotten deeper yet.
“So you think you killed at least one of the three?”
“Yes,” he replied evenly. “Maybe two. I had no choice. They’d drawn their guns.”
The body count rises again, she thought. “What about this guy, Varkal? If he believed you, he’ll pass on what you told him, right? And maybe he can convince the police you were acting in self-defense.”
“No.”
The reply was too simple, too quick. Then Christine understood. “You mean you killed him?”
Slaton shook his head, “I hit two of the security guys. But one of them took out Varkal.”
“What?” She looked at him with disbelief, “Why would his own bodyguards shoot him?”
“Simple. Because he’d been talking to me.”
Christine nearly ran a red light. She jammed on the brakes and the little car skidded just short of a crosswalk. Pedestrians moved cautiously in front of them, and an old man jabbed his cane at Christine with a disapproving stare. She held a deathgrip on the steering wheel. What else? she wondered. What more could happen?
She said, “Tomorrow this will be in every paper in England, won’t it? Your picture and mine right next to it with a big question mark underneath.”
“If my picture makes the paper, that’s a very bad sign.”
“I probably shouldn’t ask, but why?”
“Because there aren’t many photos of me,” he said evenly, “and the ones that do exist are held by a particular agency of the Israeli government. The one that trained me to be what I am.”
Christine considered that. “You mean the only official photos—”
“I mean the only pictures. No family albums, no vacation pictures, no Polaroids with my schoolmates. None of that. The ones that existed before I became a kidon were destroyed. That’s how it works.”
The light turned green and Christine drove on slowly, giving thought to what he’d just said. It all seemed so cold and cynical, even cruel in a way. It was yet another part of an existence she could never have imagined.
Slaton went on, “Granted, I’ve been a busy fellow for the last eighteen years. It’s possible our enemies might have snapped one or two candid photos. But if a mug shot shows up on the BBC evening news, it’s there courtesy of my government. It would mean the Mossad thinks I’ve turned. They’d be throwing me to the wolves and they’ll go after me themselves. Hard. Governments don’t like their disaffected assassins running around. Far too messy for — there!” he spat out, his head whipping to one side.
Her heart spiked. “What?”
He pointed back to a sidestreet they’d just passed. “There was a pharmacy down that street. Turn around.”
Christine breathed a sigh of relief and wheeled the car around. She looked at his wounded arm. He seemed completely unbothered by it. She remembered all the other scars she’d seen across his battered body. How could anyone live such a life? And now she was being pulled into it. Again she tried to imagine some way out.
Christine said, “If we went to the police and told them everything right away, wouldn’t that give you enough insurance?”
“Everything on my side is speculation. They can tie me to one dead man, maybe more. They’ll think I’m a lunatic, and before they figure out otherwise — well, like I said, there are a lot of people who would be very concerned if I were sitting in a jail cell answering questions.”
She tried a new tack. “What about the newspapers? Go tell them everything. Once it’s made public, no one could come after you.”
“Do you really think anyone would print something like this? Who would believe it?”
Christine found a parking space directly in front of the pharmacy. Who would believe it? she thought. Why do I believe it? The question pounded in her mind. She had always thought herself to be an intelligent, reasonable woman. A person of science and logic. But she did believe him. He had kidnapped her. Twice. She had seen him kill a man, yet for some damned reason she sensed that everything he told her was true.
She felt him watching her. It made her uncomfortable and she forced herself to a new line of thought. Christine leaned toward him.
“Hold still,” she said in her best professional voice. She pulled the jacket carefully from his wounded arm, then unbuttoned his shirt cuff and eased it back to get a better look at the wound. It would be impossible to tell without an X-ray whether any part of the bullet remained in his body, but she could clearly make out an entry wound on the anterior forearm, and an exit wound in back.
“We need to clean and dress this. Then we should get an X-ray to check for any damage we can’t see.”
“Hospitals are out for now, so let’s just clean it and be done.”
Christine frowned. She was mentally logging what she’d need from the pharmacy when she suddenly noticed their closeness. She felt his breath on her neck and her gaze shifted. With their faces only inches apart, the two locked eyes. He looked at her openly, for the first time without calculation, without the cold alertness that had permeated his every action. And then there was more. His expression seemed to hold familiarity, as if he was looking at someone else, someone he knew far more intimately. In the silence, Christine felt awkward. She pulled away.
“All right,” she said, collecting herself. “I’ll go get what we need to repair you. Something to cleanse the wound, gauze, tape. Maybe an over-the-counter pain medication. Anything else?”
“Yeah, get me a razor and some shaving cream.”
“Okay.”
As she grabbed the door handle, he reached out gently and held her by the wrist.
“Christine … I’m sorry about that. You reminded me of someone.” She nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. It was the first time he’d ever called her by her first name. “Well, I can honestly say that you don’t remind me of anyone I’ve ever known.”
He produced a thin smile of his own, but then, in a moment, it disappeared. He returned to his duty of evaluating all activity on the streets and sidewalks. The kidon was back as quickly as he’d gone.
“I don’t like it,” Chatham declared. Back in his Scotland Yard office after the midday train ride from Penzance, he held a copy of the police accident report on the death of one Yosef Meier.
“I must say, sir, I really didn’t see anything suspicious in it myself,” Ian Dark offered.
“No, nothing suspicious. Nothing at all! This wasn’t an investigation. It was someone filling an administrative square.” Chatham jabbed a finger at the bottom of one page, “See, only one eyewitness interviewed. One!” Chatham tossed it aside.
“It’s been less than a week. Perhaps we should look into it ourselves.”
Chatham shook his head. “I wish we could, but we can’t deploy our forces too thinly. Right now it’s only us and Mrs. Smythe. Which reminds me, has she reported in yet?”
“She had Chief Bickerstaff call in. Seems this entire affair has raised quite a row in Penzance. No less than a dozen locals have gone in to see Bickerstaff this morning, all of them claiming to have witnessed some part of what went on yesterday. One woman actually identified the BMW, but she saw it leaving the motel. Nothing we didn’t already know. As for the transfer car, a number of people are certain they spotted it.”