Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

Christ , she thought, I should have pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about . But it was too late for that. Some spy.

His dark, strong fingers tapped the package between them and she stared at it as if it were a poisonous snake. A bomb? No, he was obviously going to sit right there while she opened it. But she was afraid now, afraid that this compact person with the soulful eyes was Beck’s enemy and, by association, her own.

“I’m sorry,” she said, half rising before his fingers caught her elbow and pain lanced up her arm as if she’d hit her funny bone, and she sank back with a feeling of helplessness in no way mitigated by the crowd of newsies around her. She tried again: “I’m sorry; this is really impossible. I don’t know you, I don’t know what your game is, or the State Department’s, but if Mister Beck wants to cancel our interview, he can consider it done. I don’t take bribes from government officials, Mister—”

“Elint.”

“Elint. And I don’t get into cars with strangers, especially in the Middle East.”

In a flash the gift-wrapped package was on the table between them and her mouth dried up like the desert. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the BBC Brit watching them, glass in hand, elbows on the bar, and making nasty cracks—she could tell from the swoop of his mouth.

Nothing for it, then, she decided, and tugged at the wrappings while Elint nodded approvingly.

There were two small boxes nested in the tissue of the larger cardboard box, she found when she’d removed its lid. In the first was a black chrome watch, very expensive, everything-proof, like Beck’s.

“Christ, it is from him,” she muttered, flattery flushing her cheeks. She clasped it around her wrist, afraid it might not fit.

But it fit perfectly and Elint was saying, “It is indeed. If you’ll press in on the winding stem, you’ll see a small red light appear where the hands join.”

She did and it did: “Gee,” she looked up with a lopsided grin, “my very own Dick Tracy watch. What—?”

“This is deadly serious, Miss Patrick.” Now she knew that those were fighter’s eyes which watched her like a specimen while at the same time they watched the room at her back. “Now, small talk, please, while our drinks are served.”

She made some and never remembered what she’d said, then chugged half her Budweiser and slapped the glass down. “Deadly serious, you were saying. What does the light mean?”

“That you’ve activated a tracer/transmitter: it will let us know where you are and allow us to keep track of your conversations.”

“Oh,” she said, too stunned even to object.

“Anyone with a sophisticated antibugging device will detect it, so do not use it casually—only when you feel threatened, or if you want a conversation monitored.”

“Anyone with a sophisticated antibugging device?” she parroted numbly.

“We sincerely hope—” he toasted her with his beer, “that our enemies are unsophisticated.”

Enemies? Our enemies? “How do I turn it off?”

“Press the winding stem again; a green light will replace the red one, then go out.”

She did and again the watch performed as Elint predicted; this time, when she looked up, it was the watch, not her, at which he gazed fondly, like a favorite child, before taking a pack of Players from his breast pocket and saying, “Open the other package and give me a light.”

She reached into her bag for her disposable lighter, but a flicker of displeasure crossed his face: follow orders, his expression implored; do not improvise.

So she brought out only her own cigarettes and then opened the second box, in which was a silver pocket lighter of the old-fashioned sort, with a flip-open lid. She noticed, as she brushed the wheel with her thumb and a flame rose obediently, that there was a small green dot, hardly a light at all, behind the wheel.

He cupped her hands and the lighter in his own, though there was no wind, a habitual gesture of someone who had lit many cigarettes in the open dark where a flame must be hidden. When he sat back, the cigarette dangling from his sensual lips, he said: “This will let you know if you yourself are being bugged by such an unsophisticated enemy—I would give you a better one, but it would register your own watch and defeat the purpose.”

“The purpose?”

“Your protection, Miss Patrick. Only that.”

“If you say so, Elint. That’s a funny name. Is it a Jewish one?” It would be, she thought; this quiet man no taller than herself, with his rounded arms and deep lines like white scars around his recessed eyes, must be one of the fabled Mossad operatives, part of the Israeli apparatus. And Beck had sent him—or had he?

“It’s a funny name,” he agreed, “for a Jew. Jews should die in Israel, don’t you agree? This is the meaning of life, for a Jew.”

So Elint had been listening to her conversation long before he’d butted into it. Her mouth wouldn’t moisten; her pulse wouldn’t ease. Beck, what are you doing to me? “Are you an Israeli, Elint?” She’d meant to ask flatly if he were an Israeli agent; she became a coward at the last instant.

“Sometimes,” he smiled. “Right now, I must be your newest beau; we shall stroll out together; you will show signs of feminine disposition toward me—a kiss on the cheek, a brush of hips, a holding of hands—whatever is natural. In the vestibule, you may call our mutual friend from a phone booth to verify my good will, but I hope you trust me better than to feel the need. Then we will go to my car and then your apartment, and then I will drive you to your dinner date. This is acceptable?”

All of that he said as he leaned forward in an intimate and courtly way, a bit too close for her American tastes, as Arabs and Israelis tended to do.

I have to get a new dress, Elint—shop, find something to wear.” But her ploy produced an unexpected result from this odd, somehow charming, little man.

“Good. Good. I will help you; I know many fine shops and I have funds for just such contingencies.”

As he helped her out of the booth, she could have sworn that he was actually looking forward to taking her shopping for a date with another man.

By the time she had shopped, showered, and changed, she was quite used to Elint, who was used to making people comfortable and very used to waiting. He never once seemed impatient; she never felt she had to apologize.

She hadn’t insisted on making the phone call; somehow it seemed like an insult, a breach of faith. Even in her apartment he seemed comfortable, staring out the window into East Jerusalem as if it interested him more than she did.

She wanted to resent his intrusion into her life, her privacy, to suspect him and disrespect him, but she couldn’t: he made it impossible, putting her so much at ease she realized she was singing in the shower as if he weren’t out there, watching the streets, watching everything with supremely wise and patient eyes.

When she appeared in her new silk dress, he nodded conspiratorially as if he’d expected her to look so elegant, when she’d never had a dress like that before, and forebore compliments that might have made her self-conscious.

“Exactly time to go,” he told her, and the way he said it made her check her own watch, itself the perfect complement to her elegantly understated commando-camouflage shirtwaist with its military flair. But then he was holding her hooded, poly-coated raincoat for her and she remembered that she didn’t like to go outside any more, that every time she did she was exposing herself, and her excitement bled away.

Only when they reached the King David did Elint give her another disconcerting moment: he parked his mid-size Chevrolet with its open-faced air conditioner across the street and said, “You must go the rest of your way on your own. I will be around, looking out for your safety, all the time.”