“Well, then.”
“This isn’t the time.” He eyed me sullenly for a moment and then his forefinger shot out, pointing at my nose. “All right, my girl, let’s say you’re going to meet an Israeli agent tonight. It’s all been arranged cutouts, the safe house, everything. What are you going to tell him?”
“What we know.”
“Which is what? That Ghaled is planning something against them? That’ll be no news to him. That he’s got arms of a sort, rockets perhaps? No news again.”
“What about the night of July the third?”
“What about it? An anniversary day in Israel. Did you think I hadn’t looked it up? Tammuz twenty in the Hebrew calendar. Anniversary of the death of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. From Ghaled’s point of view a symbolic day on which to strike. Yes, indeed!”
“There’s going to be a ship, the Amalia, off Tel Aviv that night with some of Ghaled’s men aboard. We know that much.”
“A neutral ship outside Israeli territorial waters? What are these men of Ghaled’s going to do? Spit in the sea? But go on. You also know that five hundred electrically operated detonators are being manufactured in our battery works. How are they going to be used? Do you know? You do not. How do you think this good Israeli agent is going to respond to your tidings? I’ll tell you. He’s going to say, ‘Thank you very much, Miss Malandra, this is all very interesting and suggestive. Will you please now go back and discover what this alleged plan of Ghaled’s really is? That is, Miss Malandra, if you really want to help us as you say you do’.” He threw up his hands. “You see? You don’t yet know enough to be useful. Why then run the risk of making this dangerous contact? Why not wait until the information you have — if you can get it — makes the risk worth taking? Why take useless chances?”
I should have mentioned another member of the committee-the hectoring Grand Inquisitor.
There was nothing I could say, of course; he was right. However, I didn’t have to reply because letting off steam like that had started him thinking again. He pushed the Urgent file away from him and watched a fly that was circling the office. After a time he opened the deep drawer in his desk and took out the aerosol insecticide spray he always kept there. He shook it absently.
“Pressure,” he murmured. “We must apply pressure.”
He took the cap off the spray, waited for the fly to come around again, and then gave it a short burst.
When he was sure that the fly was doomed he returned the spray to the drawer.
“I want to speak to Elie Abouti,” he said.
That was one of the last things I had expected to hear. Abouti was the contractor who had built the electronics assembly plant. He was completely unscrupulous and had been clever enough to conceal the depths of his infamy until it was too late for us to take countermeasures. He had made a fantastic profit on the job, which, thanks to his ingenious use of substandard materials, had become a major maintenance problem almost before it had been completed. Michael had vowed vengeance to the most bloodcurdling terms. If he now wanted to talk to Abouti it could only be that the hour of vengeance was at hand. I was curious to see what form it would take, and wondered what connection it could have with the Ghaled situation.
When Abouti came on the line you would have thought that he and Michael were the best of friends. I could hear Abouti’s high voice quacking happily as they exchanged compliments, and Michael was oozing camaraderie. I waited patiently for him to come to the point, but when he did I could hardly believe my ears.
“My dear friend,” Michael said unctuously, “I am most happy to tell you that I see a chance, a good chance, of our being able to work together again.”
The quacking at the other end became slightly guarded in tone. Small wonder. Although the vengeance had been vowed privately, Abouti could not have been unaware of Michael’s feelings on the subject of the electronics plant buildings.
“I am delighted to hear it, my dear friend, delighted,” Michael was saying, and then he chuckled.
“But this time, my dear Abouti, I hope you will not take it amiss if I ask that I may be allowed a little personal share in your profit.”
The quacking immediately became more animated. A man who wants to share with you in an illegal profit to be made out of a government contract cannot be seriously ill-disposed toward you.
“Have you still got Rashti working for you?” Michael asked.
Rashti was Abouti’s overseer and as big a crook, if that were possible, as Abouti himself. He, too, had been marked down for vengeance.
“Good. Can he be made available at short notice with a survey team? Possibly next week? I ask because we may have to act quickly to secure this business without competition. Best to move in and occupy the site. There is an Italian interest involved. Yes, it will be a Ministry development contract. The Der’a area. But the foreign interest will try to exercise control unless the door is firmly closed.”
He had lost me by then. Obviously, Abouti was not going to go to the trouble and expense of a move onto government land without the usual written directive from the Ministry. I did not see how Michael could possibly get one for the car-battery project at that stage. The joint venture with the Italians had still to be approved.
The conversation ended with expressions of mutual respect and goodwill and undertakings on Michael’s part to produce the directive within a day or two.
He hung up at last and smiled spitefully at the telephone. “Hooked and loving every minute of it,” he said.
“How are you going to get the directive?”
“Somehow.”
“From Hawa?”
“Who else?” He looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, Teresa. I’m afraid it means having him to dinner.”
He knew that I disliked those evenings; he disliked them himself. Like many other educated Syrians, Dr. Hawa was ambivalent on the subject of female emancipation. In theory he approved; in practice it made him uneasy. Although Michael had been allowed to meet Dr. Hawa’s wife briefly he had always known that an invitation to the villa that included her would not be accepted, so none had ever been issued. Though I naturally thought that my presence and status in the household was the stumbling block, Michael had always denied this. Hawa wasn’t a prude, he said; it was just that he was an Arab and felt more at ease on social occasions in all-male company. He also liked to drink alcohol and in that sort of privacy could do so. Being Dr. Hawa, of course, he also liked the other guests to be of subordinate status so that he could dominate the proceedings. He was most relaxed, however, in solitary tête-à-tête with Michael, who would always respond to his genial bullying with the kind of subtle impudence that Hawa seemed to find entertaining. He was the king, Michael the licensed fool.
Sometimes on these occasions I used to do what the Muslim women did in their homes; that is, listen in an adjoining room through one of the decorated grilles which had been put there originally for that purpose; but the conversation was mostly so boring, or, especially when a lot of brandy had been drunk, infuriating, that generally I went off to bed and left them to it.
This time, though, I was determined not to miss a word.
It was on the evening of the day on which we had received Ghaled’s approval of the fuse adapter ring sample, and the order had gone to the Beirut machine shop for a hundred more. It seemed to me that we had just made it possible for a hundred explosions to take place, and the thought was depressing. I desperately wanted Michael to succeed with Hawa. So far, all we had done was help Ghaled in his plan to kill a lot of people, and though our putting a survey team into the battery works wouldn’t be likely to stop him, at least it might hinder and obstruct him. It would be something. Besides, as Michael says, you never know about pressure. Just a little of it can sometimes do a lot — not perhaps directly, but by slightly changing the value of some small unknown in the equation.