Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

She had moved fast. Once she had unpicked the anagram, everything else seemed to fit into place. She had stared hard at the photograph of Nour, to find whatever it was that had nagged away at her when she first saw it. She had looked into his eyes, as she had done before, but then her gaze had shifted to the background.

He was clearly standing indoors, in a home rather than an office, in front of what seemed to be a bookcase. Visible was a complex floral pattern in blue and green. When Maggie clicked on the image to make it larger, she could see that this was not wallpaper, as she had first guessed, but a design on a plate, resting on the shelf just behind Nour’s shoulder.

Of course . She had seen that pattern before; indeed, she had been struck by its beauty. She had seen it just twenty-four hours earlier, when she had made a condolence call at the home of Shimon Guttman. In a house full of books, the ceramic plate had stood out. And here was Nour, standing in front of one just like it. Could it be that the two of them had discovered this pottery together, perhaps taking a piece each? Were these two men, whose politics made them sworn enemies, in fact collaborators?

She smiled to herself at the very thought. The CIA chief had declared Nour’s death a typical collaborator killing: maybe he was right, he just had the wrong kind of collaboration in mind.

And then her eye had moved away from the ceramic, noticing again the disembodied arm looped over Nour’s shoulder. Was it possible that this picture had been taken in front of the very bookcase Maggie had seen on Monday night, right here in Jerusalem? Did that arm embracing the Palestinian belong to none other than the fierce Israeli hawk, Shimon Guttman?

She had reached for her cellphone, about to call Davis with her discovery. Or to go up a level, to the Deputy Secretary of State who had sent her to see Khalil al-Shafi. But she paused. What exactly did she have here? A coincidence that was odd, granted, but hardly clear evidence of anything. On the other hand, the chances that there really was an Ehud Ramon toiling away in some university faculty somewhere, leaving no trace on Google, were close to zero.

The truth was, this connection between the two dead men had gripped her because of the conversation she had had in the mourning house with Rachel Guttman. So far she had said nothing about that to anyone. If challenged, she would have said that she had not taken the old lady’s words seriously, that she had regarded them as the ramblings of a traumatized widow. That was at least half-true. But Mrs Guttman’s words had nagged away at her. And now this link-if that’s what it was-to the dead Palestinian.

It was all too speculative to be worth briefing colleagues about, at least in this form. She didn’t want them concluding that her spell in the wilderness had turned her into a conspiracy nut. Yet she couldn’t quite leave it either. The solution was to make this one visit, find out what she could, then present her findings to her bosses. The CIA station chief would be the obvious destination: she should tell him what she knew and he could see what it meant. All she needed was to ask the Guttman widow a couple of questions.

That decision had been taken no more than half an hour ago. Now, the taxi pulled up on the corner of the Guttmans’ street: soon she would have her answers. ‘I’ll walk from here,’ she told the driver.

The vigil that had been held there since Saturday night-right-wingers and settlers, determined to keep up the pressure on the government-was smaller now. A handful of activists with candles, keeping a respectful distance from the house.

Maggie checked her watch. It was late to visit like this, unannounced, but something told her Rachel Guttman wouldn’t be asleep.

She looked for a doorbell, finding a buzzer with a Hebrew scrawl on it which she took to be the family name. She pressed it quickly, to minimize the disturbance. No reply.

But the lights were on and she could hear a record playing. A melancholy, haunting melody. Mahler, Maggie reckoned. Someone was definitely home. She tried the metal knocker on the door, first lightly, then more firmly. At her second attempt, the door came open a little. It had been left ajar, just like the mourning houses Maggie remembered from Dublin, open to all-comers, day and night.

The hallway was empty, but the house felt warm. There was, Maggie felt sure, even the smell of cooking.

‘Hello? Mrs Guttman?’

No reply. Perhaps the old lady had dozed off in her chair. Maggie stepped inside hesitantly, not wanting to barge into this stranger’s house. She made for the main room, which last night had been jammed with hundreds of people. It took her a second to get her bearings, but she soon found it. There, in the space between the tall, leather-bound volumes, was the ceramic plate. No mistaking it: the pattern was identical to the one in the newspaper picture of Ahmed Nour.

She tried again. ‘Hello?’ But there was no response. Maggie was confused. The house was open and gave every sign of being occupied.

She stole another glance at the plate, turned out of the main room and tried to follow the warmth and the smell. It took her down a corridor and eventually to a door onto what Maggie guessed was the kitchen.

She pushed at it but it was tightly shut. She knocked on the door, almost whispering. ‘Mrs Guttman? It’s Maggie Costello. We met yesterday.’

As she spoke, she turned the handle and opened the door. She peered into the dark. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, to make out the shape of a table and chairs at one end, all empty. She looked towards the sink and the kitchen counter. No one there.

Only then did her gaze fall to the floor, where she saw the outline of what seemed to be a body. Maggie crouched down to get a better look-but there was no doubt about it.

There, cold and lifeless, its hand gnarled around a small, empty bottle of pills, was the corpse of Rachel Guttman.

BAGHDAD , APRIL 2003

He only had a rumour to go on. His brother-in-law had mentioned it at the garage yesterday, not that he would dare ask him about it now. If he did, he would only demand why he was asking and before long it would get back to his wife and he would never hear the end of it.

No, he would find this out himself. He knew where the café was, just after the fruit market on Mutannabi Street. Apparently everyone had been coming here.

Abdel-Aziz al-Askari took a seat close to the back, an observation post, so that he could see who came in and who came out. He signalled for mint tea, served here piping hot and in a stikkam , a narrow glass as tall as your first finger, and looked around. A few old-timers playing sheshbesh ; several puffing on the nargileh pipe; a group clustered around a TV set watching footage of the statue of Saddam falling, apparently played on a loop. They were men and the talk was louder than usual, but there was none of the loud euphoria he had always imagined this day would bring. Liberation! The fall of the dictator! He had pictured screaming, dancing ecstasy; spontaneous hugs between strangers on the street; he had seen himself kissing beautiful women, everyone falling into each other’s arms at the sheer delight of it all.

But it was not like that. People were holding back, just in case. What if the secret police burst in, announcing that the Americans had been defeated and anyone who had so much as smiled at Saddam’s alleged defeat would be hanged? After all, few believed the hated Mahabarat had simply vanished overnight. What if the pictures on Al-Arabiya were in fact an elaborate hoax, designed by Uday and Qusay to test the Iraqi people, to flush out those who were disloyal to the regime? What, above all, if Saddam had not gone?