Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

Anderson beamed a smile across his hotel suite and said: ‘I think making you Secretary of State was the best appointment I managed in seven long years of office.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bell.

‘I tell you what to do,’ decided Anderson. ‘Play the arms supply real close: don’t say they can’t have them and don’t say they can, either. Just leave the impression that existing contracts and arrangements will go on uninterrupted. It’s something that can be negotiated when the other agreements are hard and fast and can’t be reneged on.’

‘I think that would be best,’ said Bell.

‘Janet tells me you and Martha are taking a vacation, after Venice?’

‘Just a short one,’ confirmed Bell. ‘Paris and then London: maybe ten days.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ announced Anderson. ‘Why don’t we try something private in Venice? With the existing schedule it won’t be easy, I know, but something. Breakfast maybe?’

‘That sounds fine.’

‘Still wish to hell I was coming to Geneva.’

‘There’d be nothing wrong with a different sort of unattributable background briefing, setting out how Geneva was conceived and became a reality,’ suggested Bell.

Anderson smiled once more. ‘I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, getting you on board was the best goddamned decision I ever made. You have a good time in Geneva, you hear. And tell Martha what we’re going to do in Venice.’

Bell did, as the State Department plane lifted off for the flight to Switzerland.

‘What shall I wear?’ she demanded, at once.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe I’ll buy something in Geneva: they’ll have couturiere houses there, won’t they?’

‘I would imagine so,’ said Bell.

Martha gazed momentarily out of the window, clearly able to see the Wall. Then she turned back into the aircraft and said: ‘Do you think Anderson really appreciates all that you’ve done for him?’

‘I know he does,’ said the Secretary of State.

The American plane was the last scheduled to land at Geneva’s Cointrin airport that day of those bringing the leaders of every delegation to the Middle East conference. The Syrian delegation were the first to arrive, from Damascus, followed by the Jordanian group, from Amman. The Palestinians, personally led by Yasser Arafat, who predictably wore his combat tiger suit, flew in on a Libyan aircraft from Tripoli. All had cleared the airport before the Israeli plane landed, from Tel Aviv.

There was continuous television coverage throughout the day, but Charlie Muffin ignored it, staring instead at the stacked files provided by David Levy.

‘Jesus!’ he said aloud, daunted by the self-imposed task. Then he remembered the source of the dossiers and realized he was calling upon the wrong deity.

Giles had left early, while Barbara was still in bed, and she remained there, remembering how she had thought of bed when she was a little girl, as a nest in which she could huddle and be safe from any danger or difficulty. Last night had been difficult, although not as she’d thought it might be. She actually believed Roger had been relieved when she’d said she did not want immediately to make love, as nervous about it as she had been. Which he need not have been because she knew he could have made love: she’d felt his arousal almost as soon as he’d put his arms around her and finally kissed her. She wished, almost, that he’d tried. She certainly wouldn’t have protested or made to stop him because when they had been close together in the bed she’d wanted to as well but had not been able to tell him.

When she finally got up Barbara wandered, still in her nightdress, into the living room. The room service trolley had been collected the previous night but the single rose had been left in its slim vase on a side table. Already it was wilting. Barbara took it from the container and carried it with her to the window, standing with the flower between both hands and cupped just beneath her chin. Pale winter sunight was silvering the lake, broken in several places by bustling, self-important ferries. Maybe, she thought, she’d take a pleasure trip while Roger had to work. But not today: today she had other more important things to do, like organizing their vacation.

She went towards the bathroom still carrying the rose, deciding always to keep it, as the important souvenir it was: she’d press it, like her mother had pressed flowers as mementoes of special occasions. Use it maybe as a frontispiece for the album of photographs of the trip they’d make up. But then again, maybe not. Maybe she’d keep the rose separate, as a private reminder to herself.

She showered and dressed and from the suite telephoned the Hertz and Avis and Budget car rental agencies to get comparable quotes, before going downstairs to the coffee shop for breakfast. After she’d eaten she got the addresses of the six best travel agencies from the concierge and patiently toured all of them, collecting brochures and catalogues. From the last she obtained the location of the tourist offices for Germany and Italy and France and went to each of those, as well, to pick up official guide books and maps. She lunched contentedly alone in a cafe near the Promenade du Lac, flicking through some of the brochures and trying to devise an itinerary. She liked the idea of driving south into Italy and then along the coast into France. From there they could either drive right up to Paris and fly directly home or detour earlier into Germany.

Barbara returned to the hotel by mid-afternoon and for an hour wrote out different suggestions and routes, each of which she neatly annotated alongside the appropriate page so that it would be easily found when she discussed it later with Roger.

She actually felt quite tired when she finished, stretching up and going again to the window with its view of the lake. Everything was so beautiful, so wonderful: she decided she’d been right in thinking what she had at Dulles airport. She had never been so happy, not even on her wedding day. Somehow getting back together seemed better than getting married.

In Charlie’s experience any assessment by fellow professionals inevitably ranked the Israeli secret services among the top three in the business: frequently they came out top, likely to be beaten by Russia, America and perhaps Britain only on the extent and degree of technical intelligence-gathering facilities — particularly satellites — that the others possessed.

Within fifteen minutes of beginning on the background dossiers on everyone involved in the Middle East conference Charlie, jacket discarded, in his relieved stockinged feet and with the sustaining bottle of the Beau-Rivage’s best whisky delivered from room service, acknowledged how well deserved the reputation to be. Never, from any other service — and certainly not his own — had Charlie had access to such well documented and complete material. Each participant, even the support staffs and secretariats that Levy had talked of, were allocated a separate file and where that information linked to another person or a group also involved the dossier was annotated and indexed, to enable instant cross-referencing. And each file was accompanied by a photograph, sometimes several.

‘Bloody marvellous,’ he said admiringly, in the empty room.

Just as quickly Charlie formed another opinion: that by himself it was going to be an impossibility to assimilate everything that was there by the scheduled end of the conference, let alone by the beginning.

The most obvious short cut was not to attempt initially to read the files at all but to conduct upon each a visual photographic comparison against the Primrose Hill print. Even that took a long time because there were so many Israeli pictures and anxious though he was Charlie refused to hurry, never replacing them in their folders until he was entirely satisfied there was no fit, able to speed up only when the dossier proved to be that of a woman. The male to female ratio seemed to be about eight to one, perhaps higher.