‘I just said we know nothing about all that!’
‘Nonsense!’ David said, turning to face the two women. ‘I’m sure everyone knows the situation.’
What situation?
‘May I ask what you’re talking about?’ Fredrika said.
‘The fact that Abraham wasn’t Saul’s son.’
‘David!’
‘The boy is dead, Gali. What does it matter?’
Gali began to cry, silent, heart-rending tears.
David softened.
‘What are you saying?’ Fredrika said, looking at him.
David couldn’t meet her eye.
‘Well, that’s the rumour. That Saul had had a vasectomy. One of our neighbours who’s a doctor arranged for him to have it done in Haifa, and then along comes Daphne a few years later and announces that she’s pregnant.’
‘But why didn’t Saul want children?’
Fredrika didn’t understand. He must have been so young when he made the decision not to be a parent.
David didn’t respond.
Fredrika gently placed a hand on Gali’s arm.
‘Why didn’t Saul want children?’ she repeated.
An eternity passed before Gali wiped her eyes and answered the question, her voice no more than a faint whisper.
‘Because he was afraid that the Paper Boy would take them.’
One of the earliest flights from London took off at seven o’clock in the morning, and Eden Lundell was on board. The night had been an endless torment of sleepless anxiety. The story Fred Banks had told her had triggered a chain of thought she was incapable of stopping. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Palestinian boy who had died in the explosion on the West Bank. Half dozing, half awake she pictured him running towards the house where he thought he would be safe. Yanking open the door and standing on the trigger mechanism for the bomb that someone had concealed in the entrance to keep enemies away.
But why had no one told the boy he must never, ever use that door?
The whole thing was insane, and Eden couldn’t get her head around it.
And now two more boys had died. Ten years later and in a different part of the world.
The fate of the Palestinian boy was the key to the mystery into which the police investigation had developed, she was sure of it.
She left her hotel at five thirty in the morning and travelled out to Heathrow. She was hoping that Fred would have more to tell her, that he would call.
And he did.
The plane had barely touched down at Arlanda when Eden switched on her phone. Fred called as the plane taxied in.
‘Can we meet?’ he said.
‘No, I’ve just landed in Stockholm.’
‘We need to talk. I have more information for you.’
She closed her eyes. Thought for a moment.
A plane wasn’t the best place to conduct a top secret conversation, but she had no choice. She tried to remember what the missing child was called.
Polly Eisenberg.
Time was running out for her.
It was for Polly, and for those who had already died, that they had to bend the rules.
‘It will have to be now,’ she said.
‘I’ve checked the minutes from meetings on the joint operation with Mossad. On one occasion a couple of representatives from Efraim Kiel’s special team were there; I have their names here.’
Eden had spent her waking hours during the night trying to piece together the puzzle.
The boy who died in the explosion was important.
So was the secret source who led them to the suspected terrorist.
The source known as the Paper Boy.
Even before Fred told her the names of the other team members, she knew what he was going to say.
‘Saul Goldmann and Gideon Eisenberg. I’ve read one or two articles online; they’re the fathers of the boys who were murdered, aren’t they?’
‘They are,’ Eden said.
The plane had arrived at its gate and the passengers were beginning to disembark. Eden stayed where she was in her window seat.
This was nothing but pure revenge.
An eye for an eye.
The most classic principle of all, which never seemed to go out of fashion.
‘We have to find out the name of the boy who died on the West Bank,’ she said. ‘Otherwise we’ll never find the murderer.’
‘I know,’ Fred said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you there. His name isn’t in any of the records, nor any explanation as to why he was in that house in the first place.’
‘Could he have been the suspect’s son?’
‘More than likely. But he died in the explosion.’
‘Who else was in the house?’
‘It doesn’t say; it just says that three bodies were found inside, the boy and two adult males. As far as MI5 were concerned the matter was resolved, however tragic the outcome. We have no information about how Mossad chose to follow up what had occurred.’
Eden worked through what she had heard.
Efraim Kiel had led a team recruiting sources in the Palestinian enclave of the West Bank. Saul Goldmann and Gideon Eisenberg had been part of that team. After the disaster of the boy’s death, both Saul and Gideon had immediately left the country and moved to Sweden. That was back in 2002. And now, ten years later, when their own sons had reached the same age as that Palestinian boy, at a guess, someone was taking revenge.
It was hardly surprising that the Goldmanns and Eisenbergs weren’t co-operating, according to Alex. They were keeping quiet because they weren’t allowed to talk about what had happened. An episode that still haunted them, a decade later.
The question was what she should do now. Because officially the information she had been given did not exist.
‘They must realise what’s going on,’ Fred said.
‘Of course.’
‘I imagine the most likely scenario is that they’ll get in touch with their parent organisation in Israel and ask for help.’
Eden didn’t think that was going to happen. By leaving Israel, Saul and Gideon had turned their backs on their former employer. There had to be a concrete reason why those two, but not Efraim who had also been there, had felt compelled to move.
It was painful to think of Efraim’s name.
You fucking lunatic, you’re not mixed up in all this, are you?
She didn’t believe he was. Not as a killer, anyway.
Nor did she think that he just happened to be in Stockholm when everything kicked off. Could Mossad have sent him to keep a watchful eye on his former colleagues? Could they have had some kind of warning about what was going to happen?
If so, then Efraim had failed spectacularly.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Fred asked.
The anxiety in his voice gave him away.
There would be devastating consequences for his career if it emerged that he had passed on classified information, particularly as he had given it to a woman who had once been accused of working as a double agent.
Eden had never been good at gratitude or being in someone’s debt, but she would never forget this.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Honest and gentle.
‘Don’t burn me,’ he said.
‘Not for anything in the world.’
She was the last to get off the plane. She called GD and told him she was on her way in. She tried to assemble far too many fragments to form a whole. If the motive was revenge, then who was the avenger?
The Paper Boy, she thought. Is that what this is all about?
A little while later, in a cab on the way from the airport, she realised that there were only three people who could answer that question:
Saul, Gideon and Efraim.
If they even knew.
Because something was missing from this story. She felt strongly that it was all related to the boy who had died in the house, but could there be alternative scenarios? She didn’t know how many men had made up Efraim’s team; were there more men and women who had been punished by having their children murdered? Could there be more victims in Israel? If so, the Israelis should have made the connection by this stage, and got in touch with the Swedish police.