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.”
“But—”
He was already reaching across her to open her door.
Flustered, she got out, fumbling the last of her disposable masks up over her mouth and nose, her handbag with the little Colt in it clutched to her stomach; what if she needed him? But then, she’d never needed him before today. How could she get in touch with him, she wanted to ask. His expression made it an intrusion as he waited for her to close the car door again, then locked it and sat there, staring straight ahead, his motor idling.
She nearly got hit by a car running across the street.
The King David was full of dazed, unhappy tourists bundled up as if it were the dead of winter. She realized she didn’t know Beck’s proper title, though it was part of her job to know such things—she’d attributed the propaganda she’d floated for him to “State Department sources”—and had to ask the maitre d’ for “Mister Beck’s table, please.”
This evidently made her seem charmingly naive, for the maitre d’ smiled unctuously and escorted her there himself.
One look at Beck and all her doubts fled; his physical proximity was like an electric shock; she felt a flush of pleasure when he stood up, complimented her appearance, and waited for the maitre d’ to push her chair in under her before he sat down again.
“How are you?” From him, the banal courtesy meant something more: how was his spy, how was his agent, how was his poule de luxe?
For she felt very de luxe in her new dress, having dinner with this eminently civilized man who managed to be sexy even in a conservative dark blue suit and tie, until she clutched her bag in her lap and felt the unequivocal weight of the Colt there.
“A little queasy,” she admitted. “I hope it’s not… you know what.”
“The excitement, more likely—good old stress.” He reached out and took the fingers of her left hand in his tanned ones; he wore no wedding ring; she hadn’t thought to notice before. But she did notice the smudges of weariness under his taut eyes and deep shadows at the corners of his mouth; his hair was just the tiniest bit shaggy; she could see a few silver hairs. “Let’s figure out what we’re having; then we can talk.”
She didn’t care, she told him, and he made her feel as if she should while he scanned the wine list and menu and then looked up: “Have a drink? It’ll relax you.”
“Is it so obvious? I don’t know where to begin, what I can tell you here…. I mean, is it safe to talk?”
“In a moment it will be,” he said encouragingly, and ordered her a white wine spritzer when the cocktail waiter came.
Then: “Tell me about your day, Chris. Did my rookie collect any intelligence?” A grin crinkled the corners of his eyes.
She blurted: “Intelligence!” too loudly; he sat back. He wasn’t being fair; she wanted a more personal discussion. “Intelligence. Let me tell you something, Beck: all that crap you fed me—casualty estimates and brave propaganda about how well the US is holding up—it’s bullshit. One of my friends knows some ham radio operators and they’ve heard from American and European hams… things are,” her voice choked up; she cleared her throat, “a hell of a lot worse than you led me to believe.”
He chuckled softly, his head to one side: “That’s the Chris Patrick I remember.”
“It’s me, all right. A BBC friend of mine says the estimate’s more like fifty-five million and rising.”
His hand was on the white tablecloth; he studied it, not looking up: “Intelligence leaks better than it disseminates—that’s why I need you.”
He needed her. Despite herself, she sat straighter. “You’ve heard,” she said, “that the Shi’ites are saying it’s the will of God, punishing the American Satans and their Israeli puppets—that God is going to punish the Israelis further? There’s going to be another Arab–Israeli war, maybe more than one.”
His mouth twitched: “Your colleagues read this as a probable result of the upstepping in terrorist activies?”
“Some do, some don’t really give a damn any more. Somebody said to me today that a Jew should die in Israel. I’m not Jewish.”
“Who said that?” His posture didn’t change; he just became very still, even to the eyes.
“Your friend Elint. Oh, I forgot to thank you for—”
“Who? ” It was his turn to snap.
A cold dread reached up from her spine: “Elint,” she said uncertainly, one hand around the listening device that was the watch on her wrist. “You didn’t send somebody called Elint, alias Harold Levy, to me with ‘presents’?”
He’d relaxed now; he said, “Yes and no. Elint’s one of ours. What were the presents?”
She showed him, relieved beyond measure that she hadn’t made some terrible mistake, and he shook his head in a curious mixture of appreciation, pride, and amusement: “That’s just fine. You do exactly what Elint tells you and you can’t go wrong.”
“But he lied to me, he said this,” she tapped the watch, “was from you.” She was disappointed.
“It is, after a fashion. Wear it in good health.”
“You know, you’re just too fucking mysterious for your own good. I’m not—”
Their drinks came and she grasped hers like someone dying of thirst.
When the waiter was gone, he said, “You’re not what?”
“I’m not telling you anything else until you tell me something.”
Again he leaned back: “Shoot.” The steady, unflinching gaze told her she could ask him anything and get a straight answer.
“What is it I’m doing for you? What’s the point of floating all this disinformation?”
“The point, not to give you a lecture, is that all governments and their ears—intelligence services—have a tendency to tweak their shots, to selectively deliver intelligence to support policy. That can’t happen here—it’s too dangerous. And it’s equally dangerous to let our enemies in ComBloc think that we’re in total disarray.”