Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

The place was hardly full, but already there seemed to be lithe, sweaty bodies in every corner. Maggie was struck by the range of faces. In front of her were two girls, blonde with porcelain skin, while just behind was a tall black man with an Afro and thin, sharp features. Dancing alongside were a man and woman, each with dark, corkscrew curls. Maggie thought back to the briefing pack Bonham had given her, the page about the multiple tribes of Israel: Russians, Ethiopians, the Mizrachim , those from Arab countries. They were all here.

Maggie caught a glimpse of herself on a mirrored wall and was sufficiently shocked by what she saw to stop and stare. All her working life, she had been the youngest in the room. At negotiations between middle-aged men, she was the novelty: not only a woman, but a young and, let’s be honest, attractive woman. They didn’t know what to make of her. How many times had she been asked when her boss, the mediator, would be along? Or asked to be a love and bring three coffees over to the French delegation. Or told how nice it was to have some decoration in these dull, grey talks.

She had got used to it and, of course, used it to her advantage. It wrongfooted the negotiators, made them more candid than they intended to be. They said things to her they would not have said to a ‘real’ mediator, as if talks with her were a kind of dress rehearsal. Only once the deal was done would they fully understand that she was indeed the real thing. But her greatest asset was the competition. Without realizing it, these suits would compete for her attention. She first spotted it when she ran a back-channel session for the Sri Lankan civil war, held in a log cabin in Sweden. At mealtimes, she noticed, the participants would jostle to be seated near her. They wanted her to laugh at their jokes, to nod at their insights. They couldn’t help themselves: it was how they were conditioned to behave around an attractive woman. But for her it was inestimably useful. Every little move she pushed them to make, inch by tortured inch, was one they knew would keep them in her affections. If they held out over this word in a treaty, or that line on a map, she would be disappointed in them. And they didn’t want that.

But she didn’t look like that here. Now, surrounded by these gorgeous creatures, none older than twenty-five, with their glowing skin and skimpy tops, she realized she must be the oldest person in the place. She saw the black trousers, Ann Taylor jacket and Agnes B shirt of her own outfit: fine for work, positively elegant when meeting diplomats and ministers. But here it was dull. And those crow’s feet around her eyes, or the creases when she smiled…

‘He’s over there.’

Uri gestured towards a man sitting back watching the dancing, his hand around the neck of a beer bottle, nodding to the music. He looked part-stoned, part-drunk-and fully out of it.

Uri sat beside him and, after a brief, seated embrace, spoke into his ear. While they spoke, Maggie scoped the club. By the entrance she could see a man, newly arrived, who looked as out of place as she was. He wore rimless glasses, which declared him ‘adult’ amongst these partying children.

She could see from Eyal’s expression that Uri had reached the point in the story where he had lost both his parents. Eyal was shaking his head and pulling on Uri’s shoulder, as if initiating another hug. But Uri was already bringing out the cellphone to show Eyal that the last call Shimon Guttman had made had been to Baruch Kishon.

Eyal shrugged apologetically; he didn’t know anything. Uri kept up the questions, now turning back to Maggie with snatches of translation. When had he last spoken with his father? On Sunday morning. His father was off on ‘assignment’. Nothing unusual there. The old man was always going away; that’s why he and Eyal’s mother had broken up. Had he said anything about where he was going? Nothing Eyal could remember. Mind you, he had been off his face the night before. Eyal smiled.

‘Eyal, did your father mention a trip to Geneva?’

Careful , thought Maggie.

‘As in, like, Switzerland? No. He usually tells me when he’s going abroad. Likes me to check on his apartment. Pretty anal that way.’

‘So you don’t think he’s abroad?’

‘Nope.’

‘But you haven’t spoken to him since Sunday? And you’re not worried?’

‘I wasn’t worried. Till you guys started freaking me out.’

They drove back fast, with Eyal, no longer blissed out, in the back. Uri kept up the questioning, extracting only one more detail: that when Eyal and his father spoke on Sunday morning, Baruch Kishon had seemed in a good mood. He said he had a ‘hot’ story to work on. Or maybe it was cool. Eyal couldn’t remember.

The eleven o’clock news came on, Uri passing on only that the kibbutz arson story was now the lead item: they had found among the wreckage some charred human remains. An IDF spokesman said there was firm evidence that this was a terror attack, mounted by Palestinians from Jenin. Speculation was already mounting over the political fallout. This raid was bound to be seen as a threat to the already fragile peace talks in Jerusalem, and a further blow to the standing of Prime Minister Yariv.

Maggie pulled out her phone and saw that she had missed a call. The noise of the club had drowned it out, no doubt, dulling her senses even to the silent vibration of an incoming call. She listened to the voicemail: Davis, letting her know about Bet Alpha. ‘ An attack on a kibbutz now, Maggie. The Deputy Secretary asked me to give you this message. “Whatever else Maggie Costello is up to, remind her that her job is to stop relations between these two sides deteriorating any further. Make sure she’s got that.” OK, you got it, verbatim. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news .’

The worst thing was, she couldn’t argue. The Deputy Secretary was right: she had to keep the lid on this violence. And she knew how it would look, her taking off on some speculative quest involving anagrams and pottery patterns. Yet she was sure that the two key deaths, Guttman’s and Nour’s, were linked. Finding out how was surely the best way, maybe even the only way, to stop this current round of killing. The alternative was to hold an endless round of meetings where people would make the right noises-but the violence would just keep on going. She had been round that track before and was determined not to go round again.

They were at Kishon’s apartment twenty minutes later. Eyal seemed nervous about opening up the place. After what he had heard about Uri’s parents, he was clearly fearful of what he might find. He walked in first, switching on lights, calling out his father’s name.

‘Eyal, look around.’ It was Uri, scoping the apartment as if it was a movie location. ‘Look carefully. Tell us if you notice anything different, anything out of place. Anything at all.’

Maggie herself could see nothing: the place was preternaturally tidy. Anal was right. Mindful of her success at the Guttman house, she asked Eyal where his father worked. He directed her to a desk in the corner of the living room, while he went to check the bedroom.

‘Hey, Eyal, there’s no computer here.’

He reappeared in the doorway. ‘Oh, yeah. I forgot. He always works on a laptop. That’s the only machine he uses. Sorry.’

Damn . In this place, as neat as a mausoleum, it had been her best hope. There were no stray pieces of paper, no piles of books to work through. This was a dead end.

She took one last look at the desk. Think, Maggie, think . Just a phone, a fax, a blank message pad, a picture of what she assumed was Eyal and his sister as kids, and a pen in a stand. Nothing.

She stepped away, then turned back. She pulled the pad towards her, picked it up and held it up to the light.