The Heat of Ramadan, page 15
The large brass bed was the grandest feature, its wide shiny finials throwing high shadows on the far wall beneath an oil painting of the Bristol seashore. The small lamps on the side tables had soft rose shades. The black telephone looked as though it had been there since 1940.
Beneath the bed’s white wool coverlet a figure rolled momentarily, like a dolphin’s back breaking the surface of the sea. Then it was still again.
Kamil turned back to the window. He examined his own reflection where it wavered like a fading memory against a fresh current of rivulets. Even after so much time, his second face was still strange to him. In place of the wavy red-blond hair, he tried to recall the mahogany curls of his former self. He mentally reacquired the thick sharp hook of his nose, drew long dark brows over the yellowish wisps which now arched above his eyes. He conjured up his once-proud moustache; he could almost feel the coarse ends again where they had once tickled the corners of his mouth. But even with that repainted image, the old Amar Kamil was not quite there.
Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head in wonder, for he thought that as strange as his new face still was to him, it should have been an utter shock to Leila. His wife had not seen him in nearly two years, yet she had accepted his return and his changed appearance as could only a true daughter of the Revolution. Naturally, at first she had had her doubts. Yet not once had she exhibited a reaction more emotional than scientific curiosity. She had felt his face, touched his ears. Then she had made him strip, and only when she had closely examined those parts of him which only a wife could identify in utter darkness had she finally smiled with satisfaction.
He was terribly proud of Leila. There were no others like her. Only Leila could have accepted a husband’s total disappearance, the thin thread of a promise to return. Only Leila could take him back in an instant, not question his metamorphosis, make love to him as if he’d been merely away on business, and now be lost in sleep while knowing how soon he would again be gone. It was terribly brave. And terribly sad.
Amar’s encounter with this emotion was not his first signal that he was changing, getting older. He had recently experienced a twinge of a feeling which as a soldier he had always managed to shelve—remorse. Granted that none of this was directed toward the victims of his terror activities. They were combatants in a new kind of warfare where you needn’t carry a weapon to be considered the enemy. Rather, his feelings emerged with regard to Rina and Katya. His other “wife.” His only child.
Of course, Rina had been an agent. She was neither dupe nor victim. The KGB had many of them. They left the Soviet Union as refuseniks, with prearranged target countries. They were at the very least half-Jews; the cover demanded authenticity. In Rina’s case, she had settled in Israel for the required period and, having absorbed sufficient language and cultural knowledge, she had become “disenchanted” with her new home and made a new start in America. Not long after, she had left her Brooklyn apartment for a vacation in Europe, returning to Moscow to spend the rest of her career helping train agents who were targeted for Tel Aviv.
Yes, Rina was a dedicated Party member. But she was also human, a warm, giving woman who had pretended for so long to be his loving wife. Kamil had also played his role well, and even though they had never verbalized the depth of the emotional predicament, the couple realized the painful truth of the adage, You become what you pretend to be.
And what of Katya? Of course she would be provided for, would want for nothing material, educational, social or at least socialistic. But who would be her father? Who would carry her when Rina was tired? What pair of coarse hands would be there to tuck her in at night? Would she long for a second, lower voice to read her stories and comfort her when she dreamed bad dreams?
Stalingrad, the Gulag, Afghanistan. There were already too many Russian children who had for their fathers fading photographs in black wood frames.
For all of his wanderings, sufferings, fanatical and violent dedication, Amar Kamil had managed to suppress most of his racial hatred for the foreigners who occupied his home. But the irony did not escape him, that his only child was half Palestinian Arab and half Russian Jew.
“Are you praying for sunshine, Amar? If so, you should be on your knees and facing in the other direction.”
The voice startled him. For a moment his fingers stiffened around the Makarov. Then he settled quickly and calmed, gathering his black robe and slipping into the sleeves, turning to Leila with an ironic smile.
She lay there in the bed, on her back, her shoulders propped against a pile of white down pillows that were puffed against the brass headboard like sheep gathered under a sheltering olive tree. Her magnificent curly black hair fell around her face and over the linens, reaching almost to her elbows. Even in the gloomy light, her dark eyes glistened brightly, and her lips against her olive skin looked almost as though she had sneaked a touch of ruby gloss, though she never wore makeup. The soft wool coverlet was pulled up over her breasts, but the inviting position of her legs was so clearly defined beneath the cloth that it brought a swelling to Kamil’s throat.
Wild. There was no other way to define her. It was the word that came to Kamil’s mind whenever he faced his wife, or thought of her.
In actuality, the word wife was merely a technical term, an ironic curtsy to their hasty betrothal in Lebanon five years before. They had been married in deference to her father’s strict Moslem beliefs, but both of them knew then that their relationship would never take precedence over Amar’s career.
While he worked, they would never live together or have children. Their couplings were occasional, carefully planned, elaborately disguised as the chance encounters of strangers, so that no opposition would deign her as more meaningful to Kamil than any other paramour.
Leila moved about, living off a network fund, but never a true part of the Movement. She would check in to various telephone numbers for a coded instruction to rendezvous. When Amar went to ground after Munich, she ensconced herself in Paris and got on with her life, although she continued to believe in his survival, and she never missed her monthly call.
And here they were, together in London. If only for a weekend.
“Actually, I was hoping that it would continue,” said Amar, referring to the inclement weather.
“So that you can stay here with me all day?”
“So that other people will stay inside. So that the traffic will stay light.”
“Bastard.”
“Let’s not talk about it, Leila.” Such open and careless discussion of his objectives made Kamil uncomfortable. His mission had hardly begun.
“If anyone is following you, my darling, tracking you already,” Leila offered with a trace of appetite for danger, “then you’ll be dead by lunchtime at any rate. So it hardly matters.”
“How I hate sentimental women.” Amar laughed and turned, putting the pistol on the chair. “I must dress.”
“So soon?” Leila pouted, pushing the hair away from her face and edging down on the bed just a bit. “It’s still early.”
“I can’t miss the opportunity,” he said.
“For what?” She knew that she should not ask, but she was just being naughty.
“For tea and scones.”
Leila ignored his parry and reached out with slender strong fingers.
“Kiss me once, then. Before you shave.”
A trap. Amar smiled. A kiss for Leila inevitably ended in a two-hour struggle beneath the sheets. He approached her, determined not to surrender. He took the hand and held it away from his body, leaned to her and touched her lips. She lifted her chin and trapped his mouth with her own, then reached for his free hand and placed it over her left breast. She pushed up to him with her shoulder.
He managed to extract himself. Leila’s eyes were already wide, her breath quickened with a few seconds’ passion.
“You are a devil,” Amar said.
“And you worship Satan.” Leila was still holding on to his robe. He took her hand away and kissed it as he left the bedside.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes I do.” He walked around the foot of the bed to a small closet. He began to select some clothing, and in the process he made to remove his robe in preparation for shaving and showering. Leila sat up in the bed on her elbows.
“Amar, it’s been so long.” For the first time in three days, her voice had a pleading quality. “And it will be so long again. I know you. I can tell.”
He did not bother to lie. “Yes,” he said.
“Then don’t deny me.” Now her demand grew harder. “I deserve that much of you. God knows you haven’t been celibate for all this time.”
He had not told her about Rina, and certainly not of Katya. What would be the point? But then she was right; he had given all of himself to his cause and much of himself to another woman. What could he give to Leila but as much of his physical self as he could manage? He pulled a pair of blue jeans off a hanger, clearing the pockets of unnecessary items. He just did not have enough time. He decided to turn her off by igniting a minor conflict.
“And I suppose you have been a nun all this time?”
“When I fucked someone,” her answer came quickly, “I thought only of you. They were awful. I would gladly have used a cucumber instead had it not been so cold.”
Kamil had to laugh. Leila was so plain, so out there, up front. She was half Palestinian and half Italian, an explosive combination to say the least. He often thought that her normal blood temperature must run well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
“You needn’t be quite so honest,” he said as he selected a plaid flannel shirt and an Israeli Dubon—an IDF-issue winter field jacket.
“Amar.” Leila’s voice purred from the bed. Kamil tried to ignore her. She called him again. “Amar.”
He turned to say something. His voice stuck in his throat.
The coverlet was pushed aside. Leila lay there, her upper body propped on the pile of pillows, her back arched. Her brown skin shone in the dusky light like oiled olive wood, her wide breasts pressed between her upper arms and the nearly black nipples erect. One of her legs lay straight out, the other knee raised and angled to the side. She was touching herself with both hands, inviting him; her dark eyes filled with liquid and she looked directly at him as she bit down on her lower lip.
She was a powerful electromagnet. And he was merely the dust of iron filings. He dropped the robe and came to her, up onto the bed and then plunging down like a divining rod finding a secret pool. She moaned loudly, a sound like pleasure, pain, and fear in one, and she gripped his buttocks hard and drove her nails into his flesh until he cried out.
“Give me bruises to remember you by,” Leila gasped.
Amar obeyed.
* * *
Serge Samal was experiencing a dull ache which had not disturbed him in years. Homesickness.
He did not quite understand it. He had been born in Europe, Paris to be precise, and even as a teenager had traveled extensively whenever studies and finances permitted. Serge spoke five different languages with near-native fluency, and he had the chameleonlike ability to assume the natural gestures and inflections of the surrounding natives. He could quickly feel at ease in the most cosmopolitan and chauvinistic of capitals—Bonn, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, London. So it made no sense that he should suddenly long for the provincial ways and means of Tel Aviv.
But there it was, a powerful urge for a cold Maccabee and a greasy schwarma, to be consumed satisfactorily only by the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
His immigration to Israel, like that of many European Jews, had been intended at first as only a visit. But then he had stayed on, discovering the cliché of a melting pot where he could exercise his language skills at will yet feel a comfort incomparable to that of other stops along his wandering path. Serge had not even really thought of himself as a Jew until long after his arrival in Tel Aviv. He looked decidedly Scandinavian and had been raised without the pervasive self-doubt and moral examination common to his Diasporan brethren. Then suddenly one morning he had awakened in the filthy fatigues of a Golani Brigade recruit, and he realized that he was as Semitic as one could ever hope to be.
However, his travels were interrupted only by the first two years of his military service, for he soon found himself volunteering for duties in AMAN. The wanderings, albeit under assignment for Special Operations, recommenced with glee, tempered with purpose.
Israel, he had always known, was really too small a place for his Odyssean appetite. Serge needed to move, to drive the endless autostradas, to cross over borders and converse with strangers, to board an aircraft and arrive in a strange new land with the surge of adventure in his veins.
So what the hell was this sentimental ache in his chest?
Maybe it was simply fatigue. After all, he’d been working pretty hard of late. He had not slept for thirty-six hours. Or maybe it was Talia. She was well into her seventh month, and the serious considerations brought on by imminent fatherhood had begun to weigh on him considerably. It was still very early, but he was sure that he did not want his own child to be raised as an unidentifiable expatriate. And the thought of having a son or daughter who would speak like an English boarding school brat was certainly repugnant.
It was his age. Yes, that was it. He was getting on, only in his early thirties yet prematurely edging toward that emotionalism of old men who gravitated toward their graves in the Holy Land.
Maybe it was the weather. Late spring, and the London skies spewed water like February in the Golan. In Tel Aviv, the beaches would already be crowded tomorrow. The Israeli schoolgirls would already be turning their summer almond. By the seashore the pa’kok, pa’kok of paddle balls would echo off the high towers of the hotels, vendors would be hawking their lemon popsicles, aggressive young men on leave from the army would be seducing women tourists with their unabashedly horrible English.
Oh, to put on shorts and a T-shirt, sit out on Dizengoff drinking a cup of afooch and read some trashy paper like Olam Hazeh.
Work was getting to him. That was part of it. The embassy staff inevitably commiserated, comparing notes, places of birth, chattering about their kibbutzim or their army units, how they missed Jerusalem or friends or families in the Galilee. Someone always wished he were diving in Eilat or hiking in the Negev, rather than working a security detail in Westminster. It rubbed off after a while.
Yet Serge was grateful for the job. After Bogenhausen he had wondered if he would ever work again, except as a taxi driver. Ben-Zion had nearly had his ass, but he was smart enough to resign from the army quickly. The General Security Services had been pleased to have him. They were a tough, somewhat more primitive outfit than the other intelligence arms. The fact that he and Eytan had shot the wrong Arab did not seem to disturb his new bosses to any great degree.
Eytan. He wondered what kind of shit Eckstein was enduring. He missed him. He missed all of them—Eytan, Peter, Ettie, Francie, Benni Baum.
Harry Webber.
Maybe that was part of it too.
When an army buddy died, your life could suddenly be brought into close focus. Serge was satisfied with the GSS conclusions that ‘Harry’s’ death was an accident, but that did not obviate the fact that Zvika had met his end eight thousand kilometers from home, in a filthy city full of strangers, squashed between a taxi bumper and his own beat-up Ford. The there but for the grace of God thoughts had sobered him for the last two weeks and resulted in some serious reexaminations.
Where was he going with his own life? He was past thirty, time for some considered assessments. He was about to start a family, and as a result of his own experiences he was surprising himself with the rather mature conclusion that children needed an anchor, that they would be better off with physical roots and the attendant security. He had been moving so hard and so fast for so long and what did he have to show for it? An album of adventures, a few languages, a permanent scar on his waist from the butt of a Beretta.
A bump in the road suddenly snapped him from his reverie, and he asked himself a more immediate question: Where the hell am I going right now?
He looked up and saw the passing windows of the Hyde Park Barracks, reflecting the bright-red side of his double-decker bus. The upper deck’s fuselage was covered by a long white-and-blue ad, and Serge read the reversed message in the barracks glass—It’s Quicker By Us—the guarantee of an express courier service.
The bus was still on Knightsbridge, moving west, and either Serge had not been daydreaming for very long or the traffic was already heavy. It was just after noon; the rain was letting up and the atmosphere actually rather humid. But still the pedestrians outside were bundled up as if for January. Londoners were mistrustful of the weather, and rightfully so, but they could manage to look cold even on the cusp of summer. Serge reckoned that if he had worked as a London umbrella salesman instead of an Israeli security officer he would already be a wealthy man.
Serge looked across the aisle and out of the far windows at the greeneries of Hyde Park. The weather was not conducive to picnicking, yet he could see two riders on Rotten Row, sitting erect on their wet steeds and cantering along in their slickers. The British were truly a strange people; the cliché that they preferred their pets to fellow humans seemed to be accurate, at least superficially. Their values were difficult to discern, their emotions hidden by layers of proper manners and swollen snobbery.
He rubbed his itching eyes. He had had a nightful and a bellyful of the British. The Foreign Office had summoned the Israeli ambassador to Whitehall for “extraordinary consultations,” a phrase applied to a calling on the carpet. The Brits were expressing disapproval over Israel’s heavy-handed policy with regard to the Palestinians in the West Bank. This of course seemed blatantly absurd to the Israelis, considering the intense anti-terror war being waged by the British against the IRA. Even more contradictory was the memory, still fresh, of England’s recent invasion of the Falklands, where the Brits had sacrificed hundreds of killed and wounded over a few sparse, unstrategic islands occupied primarily by sheep.
