‘Nothing can be allowed to cause any difficulty, now that negotiations have progressed this far,’ insisted Sulafeh, enjoying the sound of her apparent sincerity.
‘We don’t intend it to,’ said the man, furthering her amusement.
He asked if this were her first visit to Geneva and she admitted it was and flirtatiously the man said it was an interesting city with a lot to see and Sulafeh responded just as flirtatiously, saying she hoped to do just that and maybe find someone to show her. Dajani appeared from the door of their offices, further up the corridor, beckoning her forward and Sulafeh walked away, satisfied she had established herself in their minds just as she intended establishing recognition among as many security staff and permanent officials as possible in the lead-up to the conference, to reduce the risk of any spot-check challenge.
Dajani’s summons had been for her to attend the first briefing session from the secretariat Director, a man named Zeidan who had been with Arafat from the halcyon days of the PLO presence in Jordan. It was a pointless lecture, delivered only to bolster Zeidan’s self-importance. He told them to orientate themselves completely with the conference facilities and to minimize contact with the secretariat of any of the other delegations, to avoid the slightest risk of indiscretion or compromise. He concluded by assuring them that they were present at an important moment in Palestinian history and there was a mumble of agreement from the people assembled in offices which proved to be cramped when they were all together at the same time. Sulafeh’s lack of response was undetected in the murmur of general acceptance.
‘I guess we’d better discover where everything is,’ said Dajani.
‘I’ve already done that,’ refused Sulafeh.
‘Why not show me then?’
‘I’ve other things to do.’ From now on she slept with whom she wanted, not with whom she had to.
She’d noticed the kiosk in the secretariat building and returned to it, studying the available street maps of Geneva and finally buying the most detailed. She ignored the waiting delegation bus, walking by it in the car park and twice made a point of engaging in passing conversation with groups of security guards, to extend her automatic acceptance. At the check-point exit she went to the main guardhouse and pretended to need help understanding her map to ensure that the people on duty there would remember her.
Sulafeh used the pedestrian underpass of the Ferney highway which Vasili Zenin had already isolated as a barrier to his advantage and walked back into the city along the Rue de Montbrilliant which the Russian had also explored, earlier. She located the post office she was seeking on the obviously named Quai de la Poste, just across the Coulouvreniere bridge, but did not go into it because the planning decreed there were still three more days before she could expect the instructions to be delivered at the poste restante facility and it would have been wrong to present herself prematurely, remote though the risk was of her later being remembered by any of the counter staff. Instead she found a pavement café and ordered coffee, sitting relaxed with her legs stretched out before her, staring over the lake. Was the man with whom she was going to work already here in Switzerland? Or still to arrive? And what would he be like, physically? Different, she hoped, from Dajani, with his sagging belly and sour, uncleaned breath. Would it ultimately be necessary to sleep with Dajani, to placate the man? She did not want to but she would if it were necessary: she could always close her mind and her sensations to the act, like she had so often in the past.
Barbara Giles chose for a lawyer a man named Henry Harris because they’d attended high school together and even dated once or twice but halfway through the meeting she wished she had gone instead to a stranger to handle the divorce because although she supposed it was unavoidable she found the probing questioning embarrassing. Hot with difficulty she said her sex life with Roger was satisfactory and that she did not believe he had a mistress and that financially he provided everything she asked for, did not drink excessively and had never, ever, hit her. They rarely even rowed.
Harris, a ginger-haired, freckle-faced man whose college muscle had turned into indulged fat looked up finally and said: ‘So what the hell’s the problem!’
‘I wish I knew,’ said the woman, inadequately.
‘Barbara,’ said the lawyer, encouragingly. ‘You’ve got to do better than this. So far I haven’t got grounds for a divorce petition: I’ve got a nomination for marriage of the year!’
‘We’re just not interested in each other any more.’
‘You sure that’s true?’
‘Roger doesn’t appear to be, at least.’
‘You didn’t tell me his job.’
‘He works for the government,’ said the woman, producing the familiar cliché.
‘The CIA?’ recognized Harris, at once.
‘I guess that’s the problem,’ she said. ‘We’ve lived in all sorts of exciting places and now we’re back here and he’s got a senior grading and it should all be wonderful and it isn’t. We can never talk about anything, like all the other husbands and wives in the country talk about things. It’s actually like he does have a mistress.’
‘Thought about getting guidance?’
‘What can a counsellor tell me that I haven’t already told myself?’
‘I would have thought it was worth a try: it’s certainly a better idea than thinking of a divorce,’ said the lawyer. ‘Like I said, there aren’t proper grounds at the moment.’
‘What about disinterest?’
‘From what you’ve said, Roger isn’t disinterested,’ disputed Harris. ‘What exactly does he say about dissolving the marriage.’
‘That he’s willing to do whatever will make me happy.’
‘And will a divorce make you happy?’
Barbara Giles looked down into her lap, lower lip between her teeth. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘You’ve got to work it out between the two of you and at the moment I’m not the one to help,’ decided Harris, positively.
‘You know what I find it impossible to understand?’
‘What?’
‘That people – ordinary people – actually believe working in intelligence is some sort of exciting job.’
As she spoke her husband was in the code room at the American embassy at Bern, translating the series of messages coming in from the CIA headquarters at Langley. The unnecessarily repeated theme through most was the high presidential authority attached to the conference, which had to be protected at all costs. The last said: ‘Distrust all offered British help. Consider their representative, Charles Muffin, as hostile to be treated as such at all times.’
Five streets from the US embassy, Vasili Zenin despatched the meeting instructions to Sulafeh Nabulsi at the poste restante section of the Geneva post office she had already isolated.
And in Geneva itself the hotel check by Swiss counterintelligence finally reached the small, breakfast-only auberge off the Boulevard de la Tour.
‘Yes,’ said the clerk, ‘I think I recognize him.’
Chapter Eighteen
Although he was ahead of the time given in the unexpected summons – wanting again to be first – Charlie was in fact the last to arrive in the Geneva office suite where he’d had the initial meeting with the other intelligence officials. They all appeared relaxed and settled, coffee already set out before them and Charlie wondered if there’d been a prior discussion between them from which he’d been excluded.
‘Tried not to be late, too,’ he said.
‘You’re not,’ said the Swiss intelligence chief, smoothly. He smiled, encompassing them all, and said: ‘It would seem, gentlemen, that our immediate problems are over.’ At once he corrected the expression of satisfaction, concentrating upon the CIA supervisor. ‘But that your FBI might have inherited them.’