LITMIR.BIZ

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ignoring the sound of the engines and the bustle of the airport, Yakov Zubko and his family looked across the concrete of the runway to the purple of the hills beyond, the smell of the orange blossom drifting to them, filling the night air. B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim, he thought, this year in Jerusalem. No more lying, he also thought, no more thieving, no more risks on the black market, no more people always waiting for him and the likes of him.

      ‘We are home, Alexandra Zubko,’ he said at last, the first tears filling his eyes.

      ‘We are home, Yakov Zubko,’ she said.

      * * *

      Three days later Abu Nabil began his entry into Europe, having spent the intervening time further concealing his departure from Syria. In his fifty-three years he had learned that it was as necessary to protect himself from those who called themselves his friends as from those he knew to be his enemies. He spent time in Amman, a seemingly unlikely choice given his role in Black September but one which could only be viewed accurately in the light of what was to come, as well as Cairo and Rome, crossing and re-crossing his tracks, making the telephone calls to arrange the appointments he was seeking in the capitals of the West, before his flight to Paris.

      Five days after he had left the flat in Damascus, he flew into Charles de Gaulle using a false name and passport issued in Kuwait, both of which, had the authorities checked, would have been found to be correct. Nabil was a careful man.

      His first appointment was the following morning. He took a cab to the Georges Cinq, which had been booked from Rome, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking the streets. He knew the city well, though he had not visited it for many years, not since he had taken his lonely road after 1970. The places he visited in those hours, therefore, were places which he, though not necessarily others, considered shrines to the fallen, the streets and backstreets where the Israelis had executed their storm of revenge following the Munich massacre in 1972. By the time he returned to the Georges Cinq, he had made his penance; subconsciously, he was wondering how many more he was about to ask to take the same long road to martyrdom.

      The meeting the next day was at St Germain-en-Laye. Nabil’s movements for the two hours prior to it were a microcosm of his movements the five days before: the false trails, the checks and cross-checks to make sure that he was not being followed.

      He arrived at the quai half an hour early, spending the next twenty minutes examining the area in the quiet but efficient manner his shadows would have employed if the politics in which he was about to engage had not required him to travel alone. Ten minutes before the meeting was due he completed his inspection and returned to the side of the restaurant overlooking the river, from where he could observe both the jetty and the road leading to it.

      The Citroën appeared at eleven thirty precisely. He watched as the car stopped in the parking area and the single occupant got out, locked the driver’s door, and made his way to the wooden gangplank overlooking the Seine. Only when he was as satisfied as he could be that the contact was not being followed did Nabil leave the security of his position and walk to the water’s edge. The other man heard him coming and turned to greet him.

      ‘Ahlan wa Sahlan.’ They embraced, kissing each other on the cheeks. It was ten years since they had last met and both showed the passing of time. ‘I have missed you.’ The greeting was traditional, between old and dear friends. ‘I have missed you more.’

      They turned away from the path and walked along the wooden jetty to the line of boats moored at the end.

      ‘So, Khalidi, I see you are still making a reputation for yourself.’ The second man addressed Nabil by the name by which he had known him when they were children together forty years before. Nabil smiled. ‘I do my best,’ he said, ‘though sometimes it is not appreciated.’ He leaned against the wooden railings. ‘And you, Ahmad Hussein, you are also doing well. I read about your companies in the Wall Street Journal, I even have shares in you.’ Hussein laughed. ‘Insh’Allah,’ he said. ‘God willing.’

      Abu Nabil looked across the water, turning, scanning the parking area, confirming Hussein had not been followed. ‘And your wife and little ones, they are still well?’

      ‘Rima is just as beautiful as when you suggested she should choose you not me.’ They both remembered, both laughed. They had been friends, close friends, since birth. ‘The children are also well,’ Hussein went on, knowing why Nabil was scouring the area behind them, knowing he had to. ‘Leila is playing the piano, Jamil prefers American football.’

      He did not talk of the family of the man who had requested the meeting.

      ‘Life has been good to you,’ said Nabil. There was no malice in his voice.

      ‘Yes,’ said Hussein, ‘life has been good to me.’ He wondered where it was leading, why Abu Nabil had asked for the meeting.

      ‘And yet you have not forgotten.’ Abu Nabil drew the other man back to the single thread which linked them. ‘You still send money, still do what you can to help.’

      ‘No,’ said Hussein, ‘I have not forgotten.’

      There was a sadness in his voice. They looked out over the river, watching the barge plough its way against the current. For the next ten minutes they stood almost motionless, talking of the old days, Nabil talking of the monies that Hussein had donated, the food and clothing he had sent unsolicited and unrecognised to the thousands who had poured into the refugee camps, the jobs he had created for the sons and daughters of the Diaspora, Hussein shrugging his shoulders, saying it was nothing, saying it was the least he could do. Meaning it.

      After ten minutes they turned back, away from the river, and went to the restaurant overlooking the jetty, taking a table in the corner, away from the window.

      To the waitress who served them they seemed like two businessmen discussing their affairs. In one way, at least, she was correct. Hussein was president of the company he had created twenty-five years before. Although its head office was in New York, where he had moved as the eldest son of a refugee family in the years after the United Nations had recommended the division of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1947, its activities had spawned over Western Europe and the United States, as well as the Middle East, to the point where Hussein held as much power in his chosen domain as Nabil commanded in his.

      Hussein poured them each a glass of wine, and broke the bread the waitress had given them. ‘There is something you want from me,’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ said Nabil, ‘there is something I want from you.’

      On the river outside it had begun to rain.

      For the next fifteen minutes he went through the single, simple request, pausing only when the waitress served them or cleared the table between them. The two people, he said, the two people he wished Ahmad Hussein to find for him. Telling him why he wanted them, the objective he wished to achieve through them, not telling him the means he had already set in motion to achieve that objective.

      Like the pieces in a chess game, the soldier Sharaf had thought in Damascus, each required to play his part, each allowed to know his part, and no more. Himself, the accountant Saad. Now, Nabil would have added, the man he was seeing in Paris, the two men Hussein would identify for him and the politician he would meet tomorrow in London. Plus the man he himself would send out, as well as the man the others would send to stop him. And the innocents, always the innocents, who would come between them. Like a chess game, each move, each piece, a part of the game, each move a game in itself.

      On the river outside it had stopped raining.

      The two men left separately. By four that afternoon Nabil had checked out of the Georges Cinq and taken a cab to Charles de Gaulle; at five thirty he took British Airways flight number BA313 to London Heathrow.

      The flight was comfortable, and the service friendly; he asked for a soft drink and spent the hour going through the English newspapers on board, checking both the political and financial sections. The pound had slipped another half-cent against the dollar,

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