Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“Mostly to Galilee — the women to Ras Shamir.”

Donner almost chuckled at the ease with which he had extracted this piece of information. He finished the cards and watched Abraham gather them up with a whispered “Thank you.” They shook hands and Donner saw his visitor out, carefully locking the door behind him. Then he carefully sorted out the money in his wallet, took up his pistol and turned out the lights. He shut the front door behind him and set off down the dusty path towards the lights of the town. He was in the best of possible moods. But there was some hard thinking to do. In a matter as complicated as scientific research he was somewhat out of his depth — the subject was a larger one than he was used to handling. And yet… the echo of the word “money” sounded pleasantly in his memory. After all, there would be no comeback from a mere Jew if such papers were lost ; and if he, Donner, could possess himself of them… He ordered a large Arab meal at the “Saad” and ate with gluttony.

While he could not form any clear thoughts about his own intentions as regards Judith Roth, he was filled with a pleasant premonitory sense that his luck was holding firm, that things were moving his way. Of course, he would keep the information to himself until he had explored all its possibilities; if the girl had something saleable it might be possible to prise it away from her. Who knows? She might even be anxious to pay him in order to remain “undiscovered”. Donner called for his bill in a throaty voice, feeling the fatness of his wallet with satisfaction: apart from the money paid him for the signatures he also possessed a large sum of the office’s funds — part of the secret vote set aside for confidential work. He had of course signed the green voucher in the regulation manner, but he had stated that it would be used to pay informers and for “special investigations”, and of course no receipts were expected from these tenebrous transactions. As a matter of fact… but why labour the point? Donner turned them to his own uses and quite a lot of his money went to little Coral Snow. It was with his inamorata in mind that he took a taxi now to Jaffa and set the bead curtains of the Montgomery Club swinging with a heave of his huge shoulders. A band played sagging Levantine jazz. Coral was standing in a group of girls at the bar, engaged in the none-too-elegant act of picking her front teeth with her little fingernail. She was clad in a kimono of tawdry vivacity, a Woolworth inspiration based on vague dreams of the summer palace at Pekin. It was very suitable for little blonde Coral with her fox-terrier face and her honest little eyes. “Humphrey!” she cried out with pleasure, and moved to meet him; Donner smiled broadly and rolled towards her with an air of complacent indulgence. “I hoped you’d come this evening. I was waiting for you, Humphrey — I was going to give you till eleven.”

“And then?”

“Go home, silly. What else?”

“Alone?”

“Oh, cut it out, can’t you?”

She looked aggrieved and Donner chuckled with delight at having taken a rise out of her. Actually Coral was a faithful little creature and had given him very little cause for heart-burnings. He would miss her in Syria. He ordered champagne-cup repeatedly and allowed his natural fund of Irish sentimentality full rein. They danced a little — Donner with the capacious, disorganized enthusiasm of a seal or a very large suitcase gone mad. He swayed about and rolled his buttocks heavily. But he did not tread on her feet.

By midnight they were lying in Coral’s cheap bed in the southern end of the town, talking in maudlin fashion about partings and forgetfulness and love; Donner, who was pretty drunk now, promised to spend all his leaves with her. Coral appeared both grateful and befittingly tearful. She stroked his paps with her little hand and told him that he would be always in her heart. And it was now that Donner could not resist a little boasting about his virtues as a policeman. The apropos was that Coral herself was not going to be the only person to feel the weight of his absence. No. The Police would never get over it either. What would they do without him? Nobody else was capable of swift thought and action. He would give her a typical example. This morning, the Secret Service asked him to trace a woman called Judith Roth. Within a few hours he knew where she was! Coral dipped into the bedside contrivance which housed the tin pisspot, detached from it a typist’s pad covered in doodles and graffiti and noted down the name. She did this with such charming naturalness that Donner noticed nothing. The pad contained fragments of several conversations both with him and with other men, policemen, pimps and patriots, which it was Coral’s duty to jot down. Twice a week she visited the Old Quarter of Jerusalem, where a smooth young man, dark and slim with melting black eyes and an Oxford accent, gratefully took jottings. Yes, she sat with her scribbles on her knee and recounted all she had heard, reconstructing partly from notes and partly from memory. This was the only way, as Coral had no means of evaluating her findings, or discriminating between worthless rubbish and real intelligence data. The young man smoked Abdullas and was called Ali. He reminded Coral of the “sheik” of romance and, indeed, he was one and never too proud to stoop and enjoy her on the sofa in the other room. But business first. The note about Judith Roth interested him very much, though he said nothing. Later, as he kissed Coral he told her that she was a clever little puss and she replied, “Oh Ali, you know I’d do anything for the Arabs!”

So it was that Donner found himself bidden to cocktails at the Long Bar of the Hadrian Hotel and to a meeting with Ali which threw a little more light on the question of Judith Roth and sharpened his cupidity quite considerably. Ali was very suave and soft-voiced; he spoke perfect English of great refinement, which suggested an English upbringing. But he had the long yellowish face of a shark with small unwinking black eyes set deeply in it — eyes which regarded Donner steadily and a trifle contemptuously. His cigarette smouldered in a long bone holder. Nor did he beat about the bush. “I know that you are a frank man and I want to be frank with you,” he said with an air of pious sincerity. “I know that you do a number of unorthodox things for a policeman, Mr. Donner.” Donner jumped, as if he had been pricked with a pin. He looked uncomfortably at his interlocutor. “I don’t know what you are getting at,” he said hoarsely. “I do my duty.”

“Of course you do. We all do. But sometimes you do more than your duty.”

Donner got angry. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t know who you are and what you are getting at. But if you think…

“I don’t think anything — I know,” said Ali, unperturbed. “And I want to make you a perfectly firm business offer — that is all. As a sensible man I feel sure you will accept it. After all, who today could afford to turn down a sum like… He smiled and named a large sum of money. “Just for a few bits of information?”

“Go on,” said Donner with an expressionless face.

“There is a girl,” said Ali with a sigh, and proceeded to tell Donner all that was at present known about Judith Roth. Donner listened, with his head on one side like a fox-terrier. Had he seen the Secret Service file? It was possible. Donner’s mind worked furiously. Was it a trap, perhaps? He sucked his teeth and said: “What is it all about?”

“We would like to know where she is, and if she is in possession of some papers; if she is, we would like to offer a large sum of money for a look at them.”

“War secrets,” said Donner, staring into his glass. He sat as still as a stone. “More bloody war secrets.”