Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

‘Quite a lot for you in the diplomatic pouch,’ announced the locally based man.

‘Borrow your office then?’ asked Charlie. ‘Hadn’t better go wandering about the streets with it, had I?’

‘Of course,’ said Cummings, tight-lipped.

Charlie studied intently the transcripts of the three different debriefings with Novikov, recognizing at once how the American team had mishandled it with their insistence upon the polygraph and smugly aware that no one had got any more than he had. The Washington embassy had replied at length to his query about the importance attached by the USA to the Middle East conference, from which Charlie found it easy to understand the CIA man’s attitude at their meeting. In addition there was included the CIA query to London about his personal involvement in Switzerland and Charlie sighed, easily able to understand that, too. He supposed it was obvious Giles would have alerted Langley to his being here. He tore open the last envelope, imagining it would be the Director’s reply to the American agency, but it wasn’t. As required by regulations, it was the official notification that a full investigation was being initiated into his affairs, with the warning that he would at some stage of the enquiry be required to undergo positive vetting.

‘Fucking Harkness,’ said Charlie, vehemently.

Cummings, who was waiting in an outer office, looked in through the door. ‘Did you say something?’ he enquired.

‘Yes,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘I said, “Fucking Harkness.” I often say it.’

Cummings breathed in sharply, shocked. Everything that they said about this dreadful man was obviously true.

Sulafeh Nabulsi had been included in the Palestinian support staff because of her outstanding ability as a linguist, not just because of her willingness to sleep with whoever was necessary to achieve the appointment. She spoke fluent Hebrew, Arabic and English and each better than the other language expert in the party, Mohammed Dajani. Their function, like that of linguists accompanying every other delegation, was to listen to the simultaneous translation during the conference to ensure the official version was absolutely accurate. They were also required to attend private sessions and gatherings, to act more obviously as translators. It meant they would frequently be closer to the leading participants of the conference than their bodyguards, which was why Sulafeh was of such importance to the KGB.

The Palestinian secretariat was accommodated a long way from the international complex, on two floors of a small hotel off the Rue Barthelemy-Menn, and were bussed across the city for the first day accreditation.

Sulafeh thrust on to the coach ahead of everyone else, to get a window seat so that she could see as much as possible. She did not know fully what would be asked of her by the unknown man she was to meet but was determined to be able to answer any query, not to fail him in anything.

She was aware of Dajani sitting beside her and of his thigh pressed against hers but did not turn to him, trying at once to orientate herself by identifying the streets and avenues, using the lake and the Rhone as markers.

‘A pretty city,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, still not looking at him. She moved her leg away.

‘After the formalities of today there won’t be a lot for us to do until the conference starts,’ reminded Dajani.

Maybe not for you, thought Sulafeh. Disinterested in his attempted conversation, she said: ‘There’ll be enough.’

‘I thought we might explore the city, you and L’

Sulafeh guessed that with his convoluted Arab chauvinism, Dajani resented a woman having matching importance to himself but still wanted to get her into bed. She said: ‘This seat seems too small for you. There are empty benches at the back.’

The pressure of his thigh diminished, slightly. He said: ‘What about it?’ She’d slept with everyone else, so why not him?

She shook her head, turning back to the window, and said: ‘I’ve got other things to do.’ If he wanted sex he could buy it.

‘Like what?’

Sulafeh hoped the man was not going to be a nuisance. Not wanting overly to antagonize him into becoming an unwanted distraction either, she said: ‘Maybe I’ll think about it.’

The pressure resumed against her leg. ‘I’m sure there are many enjoyable things we could do,’ he said, heavily.

‘Like buying a present for your wife?’ she said.

Dajani remained smiling, undeterred. ‘That,’ he said. ‘And other things.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Sulafeh, as dismissively as possible. The coach crossed a roadbridge over a skein of railway lines and she saw the huge terminal, to her left. Almost at once the bus made a right turn, following one of the routes that Vasili Zenin had paced during his earlier reconnaissance, and shortly afterwards she saw the entrance to the conference area. She concentrated absolutely, the man beside her forgotten. There were security barriers with uniformed and armed officials checking the documentation and authority of people arriving on foot or in private cars. But the coach was acknowledged as an official vehicle and gestured through. An important oversight, the girl thought.

In the secretariat building they formed lines at the registration desks, slowly edging forward to identify themselves against their already provided names and photographs. Sulafeh was accepted after a brief comparison with her picture and handed a plastic accreditation wallet equipped with a clip for it to be worn on a lapel or breast pocket. Her photograph was already inside, her authority authenticated by the conference secretary. She was also handed a bulging envelope, plastic again, containing maps and explanations of all the facilities and a provisional timetable of the conference sessions. Sulafeh clamped the identification at once on to her shirt-front and hurried out, wanting to distance herself from the persistent Dajani and study everything about the main building where the delegates would be assembling in a few days time.

The entrance was large and pillared and she halted, looking not directly at it but at the surrounding grassed area, consulting one of the maps that had been provided to establish where the commemorative photograph would be taken. To the right, she recognized, on a lawn landscaped in a gentle gradient to guarantee that everyone would be clearly visible: according to the schedule, it was timed for 11 a.m. on the opening day. Sulafeh smiled briefly to herself, at her own personal joke: there was going to be more recorded for posterity than any of them could possibly guess.

Still following the guide, Sulafeh located the conference chamber at the end of a corridor that appeared practically the width of the building itself, but wasn’t, not quite. Off it ran the committee rooms and offices allocated to each delegation: the Palestinian quarters were to the right, a honeycomb of boxed areas. Her desk was already designated by a nameplate. Dajani’s was on the far side of the office, for which she was grateful: it might spare her at least the groping pressure the man seemed to imagine was seductive.

As she passed down the corridor, Sulafeh mentally ticked off the offices of the Syrian, Jordanian, American and Israeli secretariats. Diplomatically the Israeli rooms had been separated from the Arab section by the Americans being placed in between and inside the conference chamber the diplomacy was continued, by the arrangement of the table at which they would sit. The room was vast, with high, corniced ceilings picked out in gold leaf, with the gold colouring continuing in the floor-to-ceiling curtaining in front of the enormous French windows, which opened on to gardens. The room was lighted by a series of glittering chandeliers which hung over a central but empty space. Around it, in a huge rectangle, was arranged the table, two long sides running the length of the room, with two shorter links at the top and bottom. The initial impression was that the entire rectangle was one continuous table but Sulafeh saw there was a separating gap of about a foot keeping apart the top and bottom seating arrangement from those on either side. She smiled again, contemptuously this time, sneering at the stupidity of it all. It meant that it was possible for Jew to meet Arab, with America as the mediator, but that both sides could claim with diplomatic pedantry that neither had sat at the same table. She supposed it was in this same room that a dispute over table arrangement had delayed the start of talks to end the Vietnamese war and cost an extra 2,000 lives in the two months it took to resolve.