‘Just checking something.’ Harry picked up his coffee. It had gone cold. He exchanged it for the briefing sheet Jennings had given them. He stared again at the description of Silverman, although it produced nothing he hadn’t read several times already.
Subject: Samuel Silverman (Prof. — Haifa Univ.) Age 52 — 5?8? — slim build — 140lbs — hair black/flecked grey — receding — usually cut short — neat beard and moustache. Skin swarthy/Mediterranean — disfigurement (pockmarking) on cheeks — dark area approx. 4? square (believed b’mark) below right eye. Eyes black — described as piercing — even teeth, all white — firm jaw — strong nose. Likes Med/Middle East cooking — mostly veg — non-drinker/non-smoker. No known reading/film/music preferences — no known hobbies but keen walker.
The description fitted thousands of men; like many of those walking past in the street outside. He put it down and picked up the fragment of charred paper. It appeared to have been torn from a spiral notebook, with a line of jagged holes along one edge. The writing was at an angle across the paper, as if it had been scribbled in a hurry. The letters were faded, probably by the heat, but he could clearly make out ‘J.A. London’, followed by a number.
He handed it to Rik, saying, ‘“J. A. London”. A place or a person?’
Rik shrugged. ‘Take your choice. And what’s the six-digit number?’ He fed it into a search engine in a variety of permutations, but came up blank.
‘Mobile phone?’
‘Maybe. Without the first half, though, we’ll never track it down.’ Rik could access some useful databases, but there were limits to the information he could get from them without adequate pointers to help focus his search.
‘It might explain the flight to Heathrow. He decided to come over to somewhere or someone he felt close to.’ Harry fingered the number LH4736 T2 written on the briefing paper. ‘A Lufthansa flight number arriving at Terminal Two. It’s all we’ve got.’
‘Great.’ Rik fed that into his laptop, but shook his head. ‘Can’t access their passenger lists. They’re blocked. Do you know anyone in Immigration?’
Harry nodded. As it happened, he did. As vague as the lead was, it was their best bet. It must have seemed significant to the Israelis, otherwise why provide it? He took out his phone, checked the directory and dialled a number. When it was answered he spoke quickly, giving Silverman’s details and the flight number. He ended the call and nodded. ‘She’ll check it out. Might take a while.’
Rik gave a sly smile. ‘She? Did you say “she”? Christ, things are looking up. I thought your only contacts were hairy-arsed coppers with a drink problem.’ He picked up an A-Z of London and flicked through the index. After a few minutes, he sighed and tossed it to one side. ‘There are several places in London that fit the “J. A.”: James Avenue and Jersey Avenue to name two. We need a house number, otherwise we’re chasing smoke.’
Harry nodded. ‘Long shot. Leave it.’
Rik opened the folder and tapped the briefing paper where it mentioned Haifa University. There were no other details, such as contact numbers, faculty, or departmental names. ‘Didn’t you say Silverman was a doctor of theology?’
‘According to Jennings. Before he went AWOL.’
Harry chewed on that for a while. Jennings might have picked up the information at an original client briefing, but for some reason hadn’t bothered including it in his notes, such as they were. Still, even if they didn’t have the department, how big could the place be? The Professor must have had friends there at one time; someone might remember him and give them some background information.
‘I need a phone number,’ said Harry.
‘I’m on it.’ Rik turned to his laptop and began punching keys.
TWELVE
Harry dialled the number and waited. It rang twelve times before being answered by a gruff male voice. He asked if they had a Professor Samuel Silverman on the staff. There was a sharp reply in what he took to be Hebrew, before the phone clicked and a woman’s voice came on with an American accent. He repeated the question.
‘Who are you?’ She sounded instantly suspicious. ‘It’s a holiday today. Why do you want to know?’
‘I need to speak to him,’ he said finally, winging it. He had no idea if the university staff were aware that Silverman had gone walkabout, and didn’t want to set alarm bells ringing unnecessarily. ‘He was helping my nephew with some study advice.’
The woman made a grudging noise, and he heard the sound of paper rustling. In the background someone laughed and a computer beeped. ‘You say Samuel?’ said the woman after a lengthy wait. ‘Samuel Silverman?’
‘That’s right. Professor Samuel Silverman.’ He waited. If she wanted the department and the subject, he was sunk.
‘What’s he teaching? You don’t know?’ The woman must have extrasensory perception. He wondered what to say. What subject or speciality would an Israeli professor, apparently much valued by his government, teach? It wouldn’t be theology, in spite of what Jennings had said. Defence studies was more likely. Statistics, maybe. But they wouldn’t work — not now he’d mentioned a nephew. He had to risk a bluff. ‘You think my nephew tells me what he’s studying?’ he countered dramatically. ‘He tells me nothing, like he tells his parents. I have to force things out of him. It could be theology, though — he’s into all that stuff.’
Across the room, Rik shook his head in mock despair.
‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘Silvermans we have plenty of, but not a Samuel. And believe me, sir, we’ve had the same theology staff here since Golda Meir was in small pants.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sorry — nobody of that name on the staff here.’ In spite of her abruptness, she sounded sympathetic. ‘And no visiting lecturers, either — I checked the register, in case. We have people coming and going all the time, you see. You should maybe try another campus.’
He thanked her and rang off. ‘No Professor Samuel Silverman, nor ever was.’
Rik pulled a face. ‘Maybe he was caught playing naughties with a student and they’ve blanked him from the records.’
‘That would take some doing.’
‘Not if he was in tight with the government. Scandals they don’t need.’
‘OK, so given that he’s cut loose from his life in the Promised Land, what made him decide to come to Britain?’ He stood up and stretched, then stared at the ceiling as if it might contain the answer. He didn’t mind puzzles — relished them, in fact — but this wasn’t even a small one; it was a nothing made up of vague facts.
‘If he was grief-stricken,’ Rik ventured, ‘it might have been on impulse.’
‘Or he’s been here before without anyone knowing. It’s always easy going back to a place the second time round.’
‘Where would you go if it happened to you? If you had to disappear at a moment’s notice?’
Harry pursed his lips. Good point. Not being a family man himself, the question was academic. If he were forced, really forced, he could cut and run anywhere he chose at a moment’s notice. But trying to imagine himself into the lives of the people they were searching for was a habit that had often proved useful in whittling down the options.
‘I’d go anywhere I could find a hole, pull the lid over me and hide,’ he said eventually. ‘I suppose if I was coming from somewhere like Israel, I’d want a similar climate without the people. But nowhere I wouldn’t fit in and nowhere I’d be recognized.’
Rik yawned. ‘Fair enough. But wouldn’t you want somewhere familiar — somewhere where you knew you could hide?’
Harry saw what he was driving at. People on the run rarely chose a place they’d never been to in their lives before. A few did; those who could step off the edge with no backward glance and a sincere faith in their own abilities to survive in an alien location. But they were a rarity. Mostly, runners looked for a place with a similar culture or language, where the requirement to adapt was less of a struggle, or where they had local contacts to fall back on. There was no guarantee otherwise that they would find a suitable hole. It also followed that only the truly desperate, with none of the mental or financial resources required to successfully disappear, would put themselves unwittingly in the position where they stood out to the degree that people began asking questions.