Meanwhile within Kurtz's service a number of valuable lessons had been added to the great sum of technical and human knowledge that formed the treasury of its many operations. Non-Jews, despite the inherent prejudice against them, were not only usable, but sometimes essential. A Jewish girl might never have held the middle ground so well. The technicians were also fascinated by the business of the batteries in the clock radio; it's never too late to learn. An expurgated case history was duly assembled for training use, to great effect. In a perfect world, it was argued, the case officer should have noticed when he made the swap that the batteries were missing from the agent's model. But at least he put two and two together when the homing signal stopped, and went in straight away, Becker's name, of course, appeared in none of this; quite apart from the question of security, Kurtz had heard no recent good of him and was not disposed to see him canonised.
And in the late spring at last, as soon as the Litani basin was dry enough for tanks, Kurtz's worst fears and Gavron's worst threats were fulfilled: the long-awaited Israeli push into Lebanon occurred, ending the present phase of hostilities or, according to where you stood, heralding the next one. The refugee camps that had played host to Charlie were sanitised, which meant roughly that bulldozers were brought in to bury the bodies and complete what the tanks and artillery bombing raids had started; a pitiful trail of refugees set off northward, leaving their hundreds, then their thousands, of dead behind. Special groups eradicated the secret places in Beirut where Charlie had stayed; of the house in Sidon only the chickens and the tangerine orchard remained. The house was destroyed by a team of Sayaret, who also put an end to the two boys Kareem and Yasir. They came in at night, from the sea, exactly as Yasir, the great intelligence officer, had always predicted, and they used a special kind of American explosive bullet, still on the secret list, that has only to touch the body to kill. Of all this-of the effective destruction of her brief love-affair with Palestine-Charlie was wisely spared all knowledge. It could unhinge her, the psychiatrist said; with her imagination and self-absorption, she could perfectly easily hold herself responsible for the entire invasion. Better to keep it from her, therefore; let her find out in her own good time. As to Kurtz, for a month or more he was hardly seen, or, if seen, hardly recognised. His body seemed to shrink to half its size, his Slav eyes lost all their sparkle, he looked his age, whatever that was, at last. Then one day, like a man who had shaken off a long and wasting illness, he returned, and within hours, it seemed, had vigorously resumed his strange running feud with Misha Gavron.
In Berlin, Gadi Becker at first floated in a vacuum comparable to Charlie's; but he had floated there before, and was in certain ways less sensitive to its causes and effects. He returned to his flat, and to his failing business prospects; insolvency was once more round the corner. Though he spent days arguing on the telephone with wholesalers, or else hauling boxes from one side of the storeroom to the other, the world slump seemed to have hit the Berlin garment industry harder and further than any other. There was a girl he sometimes slept with, a rather stately creature straight out of the thirties, warm-hearted to a fault and even, to appease his inherited standards, vaguely Jewish. After several days' futile reflection, he phoned her and said he was temporarily in town. Just for a few days, he said; maybe only one. He listened to her joy at his being back, and to her light-hearted remonstrations at his disappearance; but he listened also to the unclear voices of his own inner mind.
"So come round," she said when she had finished scolding him.
But he didn't. He could not approve of the pleasure she might give him.
Scared of himself, he hastened to a fashionable Greek nightclub he knew of, run by a woman of cosmopolitan wisdom and, having at last succeeded in getting drunk, watched the guests smash the plates too eagerly, in the best German-Greek tradition. Next day, without too much planning, he began a novel about a Berlin-Jewish family that had fled to Israel and then uprooted itself again, unable to come to terms with what was being done in the name of Zion. But when he looked at what he had written, he consigned his notes first to the waste-paper basket and then, for security reasons, to the grate. A new man from the Bonn Embassy flew up to visit him, and said he was the replacement for the last man: if you need to communicate with Jerusalem or anything, ask for me. Without seeming to be able to prevent himself, Becker embarked on a provocative discussion with him about the State of Israel. And he ended with a most offensive question, something he claimed to have culled from the writings of Arthur Koestler, and evidently adapted to his own preoccupation. "What are we to become, I wonder?" he said. "A Jewish homeland or an ugly little Spartan state?"
The new man was hard-eyed and unimaginative and the question clearly annoyed him without his understanding the meaning of it. He left some money and his card: Second Secretary, Commercial. But more significantly he left a cloud of doubt behind him, which Kurtz's telephone call next morning was certainly intended to disperse.
"What the hell are you trying to tell me?" he demanded roughly, in English, as soon as Becker had picked up the phone. "You're going to start muddying the nest, then come on home where nobody pays you any attention."
"How is she?" Becker said.
Kurtz's response was perhaps deliberately cruel, for the conversation took place just when he was at his lowest. "Frankie's just fine. Fine in her mind, fine in her appearance, and for some reason beyond me she persists in loving you. Elli spoke to her only the other day and formed the distinct impression that she did not regard the divorce as binding."
"Divorces aren't intended to be binding."
But Kurtz as usual had an answer. "Divorces aren't intended, period."
"So how is she?" Becker repeated, with emphasis.
Kurtz had to harness his temper before replying. "If we are speaking of a mutual friend, she is in good health, she is being healed, and she never wants to see you again-and may you remain young for ever!" Kurtz ended with an unbridled shout, and rang off.
The same evening, Frankie rang-Kurtz must have given her the number out of spite. The telephone was Frankie's instrument. Others might play the violin, the harp, or the shofar, but for Frankie it was the telephone every time.
Becker listened to her for quite a time. To her weeping, at which she was unequalled; to her cajolements, and her promises. "I'll be whatever you want me to be," she said. "Just tell me and I'll be it."
But the last thing Becker wanted was to invent anybody.
It was not long after this that Kurtz and the psychiatrist decided the time had come to throw Charlie back into the water.
The tour was called A Bouquet of Comedy, and the theatre, like others she had known, served as a Women's Institute and a play school, and no doubt as a polling booth at election times as well. It was a lousy play and a lousy theatre, and it came at the lower end of her decline. The theatre had a tin roof and a wooden floor, and when she stamped, bullet puffs of dust came up between the blocks. She had begun by taking only tragic parts, because after one nervous look at her Ned Quilley had assumed that tragedy was what she wanted, and so, for her own reasons, had Charlie. But she discovered quickly that serious parts, if they meant anything to her at all, were too much for her. She would cry or weep at the most incongruous places, and several times she had to fake an exit in order to get hold of herself.