Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

When did they let you go? What time did the phone call come?

Uri looked puzzled for a second, then wrote down a guess at the answer. Maggie looked at the clock on the wall in the café. It was hard to work out with any accuracy, but if Uri was right, he had been released just minutes after her. The phone call must have come from Miller. We’re letting her go; now let him go, too.

Maggie pulled back the piece of paper. ‘So, Uri, I need to eat. What do they have here? I need to have something hot.’ As she spoke, she was writing furiously.

They set us free to follow us. They haven’t given up. They want us to lead them to it.

‘Well,’ said Uri, reading Maggie’s note and nodding. ‘The eggs are not bad. And the coffee. They serve it in big cups. Almost like bowls.’

They carried on like that, chatting about nothing. They spoke about what had happened, knowing it would sound strange if they didn’t. But of what they would do next, they said not a word. At least not out loud.

There were fewer cars on the road now: Shabbat was coming, Uri explained. Jerusalem was getting more and more orthodox these days which meant driving from Friday afternoon till sundown on Saturday was frowned upon. Another reason this place could make you crazy.

Uri hailed a cab, speaking to the driver who promptly cranked up the volume on the radio.

‘OK, Vladimir Junior,’ said Maggie. ‘What’s going on?’ She made a dramatic face before quoting his message: ‘“I know what we have to do.”’

Uri explained that he had worked it out as the pain had intensified; he was sure it came to him right then. They were torturing him for information he didn’t have. But by the time they were ready to let him go, he had something. My brother , his father had said. Who else could he mean?

He had gone back to the internet café, logged on as his father once again and found that email Ahmed Nour’s son or daughter had sent. Who are you? And why were you contacting my father? In their haste, Maggie and he had done nothing about it, assuming that Nour Junior knew as little about his father as Uri did about his.

This time Uri had replied and, not long afterwards, there had been a response. Uri had been careful to say little, just that he had information on the death of Ahmed Nour and was keen to share it. The two bereaved sons, Israeli and Palestinian, agreed to meet at the American Colony Hotel, just fractionally on the eastern, and therefore Arab, side of the invisible seam that divided Jerusalem. They would be there in just a few minutes.

Maggie nodded. She had stayed there once, the last time she had been here. Nearly ten years ago, but she remembered it: the place was a legend. Watering hole for visiting journalists, diplomats, unofficial would-be peacemakers, assorted do-gooders and spies for all she knew. They would sit in the shaded courtyard, sipping mint tea and trading gossip for hours. In the evening, you would see the news correspondents come in, the dust of Gaza on their shoes. After a day seeing Third-World poverty and often bloody violence, coming back to the Colony was like returning to a safe haven.

That’s how it seemed now, too, as they paid the taxi and walked in. The cool stone floor of the lobby, the old-world portraits and drawings on the wall, the bowing welcome of the staff. ‘Colony’ was right; the place could have been air-dropped straight out of the 1920s. It came back to her now, a memory of the room she slept in nearly a decade earlier. Above the desk had been a black and white photograph of the British General Allenby, entering Jerusalem in 1917. Modern Israel might have been just outside, but in here you could find the Palestine of long ago.

Uri didn’t linger. He headed through the lobby and down the stairs, limping heavily. It was hardly a precaution-he knew they were being followed-but he told Nour to meet them by the one place the Colony’s guests rarely used. If there was anyone else but Nour’s son around, they would know just how closely they were being pursued.

Sure enough, the swimming pool was desolate, surrounded by a few unused sunchairs. Even when the weather was good, no one really sunbathed in Jerusalem. Not that kind of city. There was only one person here.

When he saw Uri approach, followed a pace or two behind by Maggie, he stood up. Against the bright sunlight, Maggie couldn’t make out much more than an outline at first. But as she got nearer, she could see that he was tall, with hair cut short, almost shaven. As her eyes adjusted, she registered that he was probably in his early thirties, with sharp, clear green eyes. He wore jeans and a loose T-shirt.

Uri offered a hand, which the Palestinian took hesitantly. Maggie remembered the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn back in 1993, how awkward Rabin had seemed, his whole upper body clenched into a posture of reluctance. The media had made so much of it, but the world fraternity of mediators had given it a familiar nod: they saw similarly constipated body language all the time.

‘I realize,’ Uri began, ‘that I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Mustapha. And you’re-’

‘I’m Uri.’ They were speaking over each other. Nervousness, Maggie decided, and unfamiliarity: Israelis and Palestinians might live yards away from each other but, she knew, they hardly ever did anything as simple as talk.

Each gestured for the other to continue. Then Uri remembered himself, dipping into his shoulder bag to produce the portable radio he had picked up that morning. He turned it up loud, before mouthing, by way of explanation, the single word: bugs. Then he began again, first introducing Maggie, then getting to business.

‘Mustapha, thanks so much for coming here. I know it’s not easy.’

‘I’m lucky to have Jerusalem residency. Otherwise, from Ramallah, it would have been impossible.’

‘Look, as you know, our fathers knew each other.’ Uri went on to explain the discovery of the anagram and the coded emails. Then, taking a deep breath, as if girding himself, he explained everything else: the tablet, the videomessage from his father, the tunnels. How Uri knew they were close, but not close enough.

‘And you think my father knew where this tablet was hidden?’

‘Maybe. After my father, yours was the very first killed. Someone thought he knew something.’

Mustapha Nour, who had been holding Uri’s gaze, now looked over at Maggie, as if for validation. She gave a small nod.

‘You know,’ he said finally, looking down at his fingers, ‘I always stayed out of politics. That was my father’s business.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Uri.

‘We went through his emails and notebooks. We didn’t see anything about this. There was a lock on his phone, so we couldn’t check that, but his assistant went through his computer thoroughly.’

‘Did he talk to you, in the last few days? About some kind of discovery?’

‘No. We didn’t talk much about his work.’

Uri leaned back, exhaling noisily. Maggie could tell that he was about to give up; this had been his last good idea.

I have put it somewhere safe, somewhere only you and my brother could know.

A wheel began to turn slowly in Maggie’s brain. She thought of how Shimon Guttman’s messages had worked so far, urging Uri to remember things he already knew. What did we do on that trip, Uri? I hope you remember that . Perhaps, Maggie thought now, he had done the same with his ‘brother’, Ahmed Nour. He had passed on no new information to his Palestinian colleague. Nour merely had to remember something he already knew.

‘Mustapha,’ Maggie began, placing a hand on Uri’s forearm, gently but firmly telling him to give her a moment. ‘Did it come as a complete surprise to you that your father knew an Israeli?’