Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

Zenin allowed ten minutes, alert now not so much upon her but upon anyone or any group getting into position around her: she had almost completed the mineral water she had ordered and was actually looking nervously about her before the Russian moved.

He crossed the street and threaded his way through the outer tables, smiling as he approached her table.

‘Hello,’ he said, still testing. He spoke English.

‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s me.’

‘Go away.’

‘Why so hostile?’

‘If you don’t go away I shall call a waiter. Or the management.’

‘We can talk, can’t we?’

There was a waiter three tables away and Sulafeh looked towards the man and made as if to raise her hand in a summons.

‘Why be so difficult?’ said Zenin, pleased at her reaction. ‘Why give me the run around?’

She dropped her hand at the code phrase. At first she stared at him quite without expression and then, slowly, she smiled. She gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the table and said: ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

Zenin did, smiling back at her. Close up she was very attractive, almost beautiful. The olive skin of her face was perfect and unblemished and despite the compact she wore little make-up, only a suggestion of lip colouring. There was nothing at all around her eyes which were deep brown, open in apparent innocence and which were studying him with the interest matching that with which he was looking at her. He let his own eyes drop, briefly, to her body, particularly those full rounded breasts and she knew what he was doing and wasn’t offended. The nearby waiter came up and Zenin remembered to order mineral water although he could have explained alcohol away by telling her he was a Christian Palestinian. Sulafeh accepted another drink and when the waiter left looked at him expectantly. He said: ‘Would you have called someone to throw me out?’

‘Of course,’ she said, at once. ‘I’ve every reason to be here: we can’t risk anyone getting in the way, can we?’

Zenin nodded, believing her. ‘Very good,’ he said.

She swallowed, dipping her head at the praise. She said: ‘I’m being very careful.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’ she demanded at once.

‘I followed you here, all the way from your hotel.’ He jerked his head to the Rue Bautte. ‘And then watched for a while, from over there.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you were alone,’ said Zenin. ‘I’m being careful, too.’

‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ said Sulafeh. ‘Now, I mean.’

‘And?’

‘I still don’t know.’ She was immediately drawn to him, but was unsure if that were because of his obvious attractiveness or because of what she knew him to be.

‘I’m not sure either,’ said Zenin, which was a lie but he was content to let her make what she wanted from the ambiguity.

She looked directly at him for several moments and Zenin held her eyes and a heaviness grew between them. To break the mood, Sulafeh patted the briefcase-type bag she had trapped between her leg and the chair leg and said: ‘I’ve got everything here.’

‘What’s everything?’

‘Complete plan of the conference area, with all the rooms and chambers marked and identified. The most up-to-date schedule of the sessions-’

‘Which could be changed, of course?’ Zenin interrupted.

‘I believe they frequently are,’ she agreed.

‘How much warning do you get, as interpreter?’

‘Overnight.’

‘So we’ll need to meet every day.’

She did not reply at once, looking directly at him again. Then she said: ‘Yes, we’ll have to meet every day.’

Zenin smiled at her and she smiled back. He said: ‘Will that be difficult for you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Beneath the atmosphere growing between them Zenin was instantly aware of her doubt. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not a problem with the conference arrangements,’ she qualified. ‘Until the sessions start there’s very little for me to do.’

‘What then?’

‘A man called Dajani, the other interpreter. He’s becoming a nuisance.’

‘Sexually?’ insisted Zenin, openly.

Sulafeh nodded. ‘He’s made a play from the beginning. Hung around the conference area and the hotel …’ She shuddered. ‘He’s repulsive,’ she said.

‘I can’t kill him,’ said Zenin, reflectively, ‘it would draw attention and we obviously can’t risk that.’

Although she knew what he was — or believed she knew what he was — the casualness with which he spoke of killing astonished her. At once there was a further, wonderful sensation: the eroticism of it erupted through her and she felt the sexual wetness between her legs. ‘No,’ she accepted, her voice uneven, ‘you can’t kill him.’

Zenin was conscious of the change in her tone and wondered at it. He said: ‘Have you slept with him yet?’

‘No,’ said Sulafeh. Her excitement continued to grow at the equally casual and detached way he was now talking of sex, and she wondered if it showed.

‘You might have to, if it’s the only way.’

Stop it! she thought, as a fresh surge swept through her. She said: ‘I suppose so.’

‘Could you do it, if you had to?’

‘I can do anything to ensure that we don’t fail,’ insisted the woman, striving for control and for the professionalism she was supposed to have. ‘I just don’t want to: like I said, he’s repulsive.’

‘Like you also said, it’s a nuisance,’ agreed Zenin, reflective again. ‘I don’t like the risk of anything unforeseen.’

‘There was no way I could have known.’

‘I wasn’t criticizing you.’ He thought she was flushed and said: ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘There’s no change in the schedule, for the commemorative photograph?’

‘No,’ she said.

Zenin gestured towards the bag and said: ‘Is the site marked there?’

‘Yes.’

He would have to visit the unseen apartment soon, to ensure the sightline was as he needed it to be. For his own enjoyment he reached across the cafe table, taking her hand. She reached forward to help him, enjoying his feel. ‘Such a small hand!’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Have you ever fired a Browning automatic?’

It had not been necessary for him to touch her, to ask a question like that. ‘I thought you were trained in the Libyan camps, like I was?’ she said. Throughout the planning Sulafeh had been told, by cut-outs she believed to be Arab but who were, in fact, KGB agents like Zenin, that he was a fanatical member of a breakaway faction of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal group.

‘I know the weapons I was trained on,’ said Zenin, the escape easy and still holding her hand. ‘Not how women were instructed.’

‘Usually it was Kalashnikov, Chinese as well as Russian,’ said Sulafeh. ‘But there were others — including Brownings.’

‘It’s a parabellum: heavy,’ said Zenin, freeing her hand at last. ‘You will need to be very close: the recoil could make you fire wide. Soft-nosed bullets, of course. Guaranteed to kill.’

Sulafeh felt the sensation growing again, at the return to casual talk about killing, and thought, please no! She did not think she could sustain much more. She said: ‘Interpreters have to get close; that’s their job.’

‘What about conference security: getting the gun in that day?’

Sulafeh snorted a dismissive laugh. ‘Ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I’ve completed the accreditation and got all my passes and I’ve made a particular point of becoming known to the security personnel, so that they recognize me.’ She touched the bag. ‘I’ve carried that all the time, so that it has become accepted without question, like I am. Not once has anyone demanded to look inside.’