There was a moment of uncertainty among them back at the entrance, where Blom’s car was waiting, and Giles said: ‘My people picked up something about an attack on a member of the Palestinian secretariat?’
Blom’s face tightened, perceptibly. ‘It is not a matter for us,’ he said. ‘It is a police investigation.’
‘What happened?’ asked Charlie, curiously.
‘Street crime: a mugging,’ said Blom. ‘A member of the Palestinian translator staff. Mohammed Dajani.’
Long-time Arafat supporter, Charlie remembered, from the Israeli files. Identified as a moderate and advocate of negotiation, certainly with no marked involvement in what Jerusalem regarded as terrorism. Charlie said: ‘Have your people talked to him?’
Blom sighed. He said: ‘This is not something into which to start reading significance. I have personally seen the full police report. He was attacked last night near the university. Unfortunately quite badly injured: a broken pelvis. But it was a robbery, pure and simple. He lost a watch and a quantity of money.’
‘What about any sort of documentation to have gained access here?’ demanded Levy.
Blom smiled, happy for the first time with a question. ‘Precisely why the evidence was submitted to me,’ he said. ‘There were some accreditation documents found near him. There’s been the most detailed check with what was found and what remained in his hotel room. Nothing whatsoever is missing.’ Blom saw the disappointment on the faces assembled around him. ‘As I already told you,’ Blom said, continuing to enjoy himself, ‘it is a regrettable street crime, nothing more.’
‘How many people involved in the attack?’ asked Charlie.
‘He thinks only one, but he’s not sure.’
‘Description?’ pressed Giles.
‘There was absolutely no street lighting: he saw nothing.’
‘It wouldn’t seem to have any significance,’ agreed Levy. ‘Not with all the documentation remaining intact.’
‘I am glad you agree with me,’ said Blom.
It was Giles who resolved the impasse about what to do next, inviting everyone into the American secretariat section where American security had established their headquarters. Blom declined, remarking heavily that there were further arrangements he had to make, but Charlie and Levy accepted.
Giles had a separate but necessarily cramped office very close to where the conference was to take place. Everything appeared temporary, a snake’s nest of telephone, teleprinter and television cables across the floor of the outside rooms and a lot of people looking lost, trying to remember where their assigned places were. From a desk drawer Giles produced a bottle of Jack Daniels and apologized for only having two glasses. Charlie said he was happy with the cup.
‘Well?’ said Charlie. It was nice to be admitted at last but he was unsure how genuine was their acceptance.
‘I think we closed a few doors that were too wide open,’ said Giles.
‘I don’t have any authority to interview Dajani,’ said Charlie. He looked at Levy. ‘And I guess it would be difficult for you, as well …’ He turned to Giles. ‘Don’t you think it might be an idea to investigate the attack yourselves?’
‘For what?’ said Levy. ‘According to Blom, the man didn’t see anything.’
‘According to Blom, there’s no danger!’ said Charlie, conscious as he spoke of the look which passed between the two other men. In full awareness, he said: ‘So you would have suggested all the tightening up today even if there hadn’t been any warning!’
‘That’s our job, Charlie,’ said the Israeli.
Being patronized was something that pissed Charlie off the most and he thought it was close to happening here. So much for acceptance. He said: ‘You don’t think it’s worth looking at independently: you’re the people talking about doors that have been left too wide open.’
‘I think it’s been checked out,’ said Levy.
‘I don’t believe it’s anything to get spooked about,’ agreed the American.
‘Believers in coincidence!’
‘Don’t make a monster out of every shadow, Charlie!’ pleaded Levy. ‘The poor bastard was mugged: the one thing that would have made it suspicious – the loss of any conference documents – didn’t happen!’
‘Like nothing else is going to happen,’ accused Charlie. Cunts, he thought. He was still thinking it three hours later when Alexander Cummings reached him at the Beau-Rivage from the Bern embassy.
‘You’re to come right away,’ ordered the British intelligence rezident. ‘London says it’s important.’
Back and forth like a fiddler’s elbow, thought Charlie.
Alexei Berenkov had studied all the interrogation transcripts and the records of the trial evidence and reviewed yet again his own interview with Edwin Sampson. And acknowledged that the only conclusion possible was that which Kalenin had reached, that Natalia Nikandrova Fedova was a loyal and dedicated KGB intelligence officer whose brilliant intervention had prevented Sampson infiltrating the Soviet service.
And he refused to accept it.
Berenkov had survived in the West for so long by refusing ever to believe the obvious – intrigued during the debriefing after his capture to realize it was also a precept of Charlie Muffin’s – even when it was supported by incontestable fact.
The need was to uncover something which did contest the facts. Because Natalia was attached to the First Chief Directorate and subject to his authority it was easy for Berenkov to know at all times where she was, enabling his squads to enter her apartment without any fear of discovery. The searchers went in first, under Berenkov’s strict instructions that nothing should be disturbed for her to realize her apartment had been burgled, and after them the technical experts went to work. There were two video cameras installed, both with fish-eye lenses capable of recording the activities throughout the entire room, one in the main bedroom and another in the living room. The encompassing lenses were the size of pinheads and fitted high in the ceiling cornice in both rooms. The audio equipment was not put actually into the telephone, where Natalia might have discovered it, but installed as an additional wire alongside the regular lead-in line. An extra microphone was fixed as a transistor to a small portable radio which usually appeared to be kept in the kitchen but which she sometimes carried from room to room, particularly to the bathroom in the mornings.
Berenkov hoped the break would not take long: Charlie Muffin was a problem that should be eradicated as quickly as possible.
Chapter Thirty-four
‘It could be nothing,’ cautioned Sir Alistair Wilson, over the echoing, scrambled line, ‘but I think it’s sufficient for a warning.’
‘What?’ demanded Charlie.
‘The two men didn’t match,’ said the British Director. ‘But another picture did.’
‘With the man in Primrose Hill?’
‘No,’ declared the Director, ‘with a picture you sent of a woman described as Sulafeh Nabulsi.’
Charlie frowned in the secure communications room of the Bern embassy, striving for recall. ‘The translator,’ he said, remembering.
‘We didn’t have a name, until your picture. All there was on our terrorist files were two other photographs, both blurred and indistinct. With the assessment that she was a fanatic,’ said Wilson.
‘A positive match!’
‘The technical physiognomy comparison suggests it’s the same person and two of our expert visual examiners here agree.’
Charlie’s mind was far ahead of the conversation. Levy and Giles might believe in coincidence – his word, Charlie recalled – but he didn’t. So what connection was there between an apparent street attack on one translator with the Palestinian party and this sudden discrepancy with another? Charlie was sure the Israeli dossier upon the woman had not recorded any terrorist connections at all, like it had with some of the others. Aged thirty-four, he remembered further. Single and a language graduate from the University of Jerusalem. Her father had been listed as a doctor, practising in Ramallah, her mother dead. There had even been a number of teaching appointments he could not recall, apart from their having been in the Lebanon and Egypt. And from the University of Cairo there had been a further language degree. As the memories returned, Charlie had the most important recollection. The Israeli material had been indexed, with function descriptions of everyone. Now that Dajani had been incapacitated Sulafeh Nabulsi was not just another translator, she was the only translator. Charlie, a man of hunches, felt a familiar tingle: he had not known it for far too long. He said: ‘What have we got on her?’