Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

‘Mr Aweida. I thought you were going to be dead.’

‘You mean because of what happened to my cousin. A terrible crime. Terrible.’

‘Do you think you were the real target?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘Do you think the men who killed your cousin got the wrong Afif Aweida?’

‘How can there be the “wrong” Afif Aweida? My cousin was stabbed at random. It could have been anybody.’

‘I’m not so sure. Do you know of any reason why your life might be in danger, Mr Aweida?’

To her surprise, the shop owner seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. He was in mourning for his cousin, but Palestinians were used to grieving for their dead. He was sad for him, and they had always had a bond, sharing the same name. But that did not mean he had to be scared, did it? Maggie realized she would have to start at the very beginning.

‘Can we talk somewhere private, Mr Aweida? Perhaps in your back room there?’ Maggie nodded towards the door he had walked through when she had arrived.

‘No. No need, we can speak freely here.’ He clapped his hands, urging the young man at the front to leave.

Maggie got up, walking towards the back door. She wanted to test him out. Sure enough, Afif Aweida leapt to his feet, blocking her path.

‘Mr Aweida. I work for the American government, in the peace talks. I am not interested in your business dealings. Or in whatever it is you keep behind that door. But you do need to help me. Because your cousin was not killed at random. And many more people will die unless we can find out what’s going on.’

Aweida paled. ‘Go on.’

‘Did you know Shimon Guttman?’

Again, Aweida seemed agitated. ‘I know the name, yes. He was a famous man in Israel. He was killed on Saturday.’

Maggie scanned his face. She saw the same nervousness she had seen a moment earlier, when she had mentioned the back office. A realization began to form.

‘Afif,’ she began, leaning forward. ‘I am not a policewoman. I don’t care what you buy and sell here. But I am interested in making sure this peace process is not stopped. If it is, many more Palestinians, like your cousin, and many more Israelis, like Professor Guttman, will die. So I need to ask you again. And I swear it will go no further than this room. Did you know Shimon Guttman?’

Quietly, and looking over Maggie’s shoulder to check no one was near, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘Do you have any idea why he might have mentioned your name to someone last week?’

At this, Aweida’s brow furrowed again. ‘No, I don’t know why he would mention me to anyone.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Last week.’

‘Will you tell me what happened?’

Reluctantly Afif Aweida sat down and explained about the brief, unannounced visit Guttman had made to the shop, his first for ages. At Maggie’s prompting, and only a half-sentence at a time, he explained their ‘arrangement’, whereby Guttman translated a set of ancient clay tablets, keeping one for himself.

‘And you say that none seemed especially significant?’

‘No. They were all standard: household inventories, schoolwork.’

‘Nothing else at all?’

Again, the sheepish expression. ‘There was one item. A letter from a mother to her son.’

‘And did Professor Guttman take it?’

‘No.’

‘But he wanted it?’

‘He tried to persuade me to give it to him, but then he eventually gave up. He let me keep it, and he took something else.’

Maggie leaned back. Something about this scene Aweida had just described seemed familiar. ‘Tell me again. Did he fight you hard for that tablet from the mother straight away? Or only after he had read all of them?’

‘Miss Costello, this was a week ago.’

‘Try to remember.’

‘He read all of them. Then he decided that that one was the best.’

No , he didn’t . Of course that’s why it seemed familiar. She had done the same thing herself. In a Balkan negotiation, she had insisted that access to the coast road was the deal-breaker. Decommissioning of weapons could come later. But an absolute must was access to the coast road: she couldn’t possibly go back to the other side without it. As she predicted, they promptly offered to decommission weapons, but on the coast road, they would not budge. Grim-faced, she had said she would see what she could do. Then she had gone into the room where the other side were waiting and told them that they had got exactly what they had wanted most: the decommissioning of arms.

Guttman had done the same trick, fighting for the apple so that he could get what he really wanted: the orange.

‘And this tablet he took, do you have any idea what it said on it?’

‘He said it was an inventory, a woman’s.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Madam, I cannot read this ancient language. I only know what the Professor told me.’

‘And, one last thing. How did he seem when he left here? What mood was he in?’

‘Ah, this I remember. He seemed rather unwell. As if he needed a glass of water. I offered, but he didn’t take it. He had to rush off.’

I bet he did . ‘And that was the last you heard of him?’

‘Yes. Until what we heard on the news.’

‘Thank you, Mr Aweida. I really appreciate it.’

As Maggie got up and headed for the exit she had a glimpse of what Shimon Guttman must have felt: the sense of having made an important discovery, and the urgent need to share it with someone.

Once outside, feeling safer now among the tourist throng, she reached for her cellphone, dialling Uri’s number.

‘Uri, I think I know what’s going on.’

‘Good. You can tell me on the way.’

‘On the way to where?’

‘You didn’t get my text? My father’s lawyer just called me. He says he has something for me. A message.’

‘Who from?’

‘From my father.’

LAKE GENEVA , SWITZERLAND ,THE PREVIOUS MONDAY

Officially, Baruch Kishon was meant to hate Europe. As a conservative ideologue, writing blistering commentaries for the Israeli press for nearly four decades, he had made a good living lambasting the lily-livered appeasers of the Old World, contrasting them unfavourably with the strong champions of liberty to be found in the New. While the Americans knew right from wrong, the Europeans-the French were the worst, but the British were almost as bad-sank to their knees the moment any dictator with a moustache started strutting on the podium. They had crumbled before Hitler and bowed and scraped to Saddam. And they were ready to sell out Israel the way they had been ready-eager-to betray the Jews in the 1930s. It was congenital with them. He had written as much, more than once. The European Union didn’t need a motto, concluded one of his favourite columns, just a single word: surrender.

Yet he had a dirty little secret, one common to many of the Israelis who shared his unbending brand of politics. While he may have hated everything Europe stood for, the place itself he loved . He couldn’t get enough of it: the sidewalk cafés in Paris, where the café au lait and croissants came just so; the splendour of the Uffizi or St Peter’s Square; the theatres in London’s West End, the shopping on Bond Street. After the chaos, rudeness, dust and grime of Israel, it was such a relief to come to a place that was colder, but also cooler and calmer. Where bus queues did not turn into riots and where, yes, the trains really did run on time.

Nowhere did Baruch Kishon feel this more keenly than in Switzerland, where you could eat your lunch off the railway platform and set your watch by the trains. Which is why he had felt only delight when Guttman had mentioned Geneva in that long, rambling monologue he delivered on the phone last Saturday. A call which, Kishon now believed, might well have been the Professor’s last.