Triple Page 13

  "I see." Hassan thought he knew what was coming next.

  "He drove out of Zurich in the car, got onto the E17 autobahn and increased his speed to one hundred and forty miles per hour."

  "And you lost him," said Hassan, feeling gratification and anxiety in equal parts.

  "We had a taxi and an embassy Mercedes."

  Hassan was visualizing the road map of Europe. "He could be headed for anywhere in France, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia . . . unless he doubles back, in which case Italy, Austria . . . He's vanished, then. All right--come back to base." He hung up before Tyrin could question his authority.

  So, he thought, the great KGB is not invincible after all. Much as he liked to see them fall on their collective face, his malicious pleasure was overshadowed by the fear that they had lost Dickstein permanently.

  He was still thinking about what they ought to do next when Rostov came back.

  "Anything?" the Russian asked.

  "Your people lost Dickstein," Hassan said, suppressing a smile.

  Rostov's face darkened. "How?"

  Hassan told him.

  Rostov asked, "So what are they doing now?"

  "I suggested they might come back here. I guess they're on their way."

  Rostov grunted.

  Hassan said, "I've been thinking about what we should do next."

  "We've got to find Dickstein again." Rostov was fiddling with something in his suitcase, and his replies were distracted.

  "Yes, but apart from that."

  Rostov turned around. "Get to the point."

  "I think we should pick up the delivery man and ask him what he passed to Dickstein."

  Rostov stood still, considering. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. Hassan was delighted.

  "We'll have to find him . . ."

  "That shouldn't be impossible," Rostov said. "If we keep watch on the nightclub, the airport, the Alfa Hotel and the Jean-Monnet building for a few days . . ."

  Hassan watched Rostov, studying his tall thin figure, and his impassive, unreadable face with its high forehead and close-cropped graying hair. I'm right, Hassan thought, and he's got to admit it.

  "You're right," Rostov said. "I should have thought of that."

  Hassan felt a glow of pride, and thought: maybe he's not such a bastard after all.

  Chapter Six

  The city of Oxford had not changed as much as the people. The city was predictably different: it was bigger, the cars and shops were more numerous and more garish, and the streets were more crowded. But the predominant characteristic of the place was still the cream-colored stone of the college buildings, with the occasional glimpse, through an arch, of the startling green turf of a deserted quadrangle. Dickstein noticed also the curious pale English light, such a contrast with the brassy glare of Israeli sunshine: of course it had always been there, but as a native he had never seen it. However, the students seemed a totally new breed. In the Middle East and all over Europe Dickstein had seen men with hair growing over their ears, with orange and pink neckerchiefs, with bell-bottom trousers and high-heeled shoes; and he had not been expecting people to be dressed as they were in 1948, in tweed jackets and corduroy trousers, with Oxford shirts and Paisley ties from Hall's. All the same he was not prepared for this. Many of them were barefoot in the streets, or wore peculiar open sandals without socks. Men and women had trousers which seemed to Dickstein to be vulgarly tight-fitting. After observing several women whose breasts wobbled freely inside loose, colorful shirts, he concluded that brassieres were out of fashion. There was a great deal of blue denim--not just jeans but shirts, jackets, skirts and even coats. And the hair! It was this that really shocked him. The men grew it not just over their ears but sometimes halfway down their backs. He saw two chaps with pigtails. Others, male and female, grew it upward and outward in great masses of curls so that they always looked as if they were peering through a hole in a hedge. This apparently being insufficiently outrageous for some, they had added Jesus beards, Mexican mustaches, or swooping side-whiskers. They might have been men from Mars.

  He walked through the city center, marveling, and headed out. It was twenty years since he had followed this route, but he remembered the way. Little things about his college days came back to him: the discovery of Louis Armstrong's astonishing cornet-playing; the way he had been secretly self-conscious about his Cockney accent; wondering why everyone but him liked so much to get drunk; borrowing books faster than he could read them so that the pile on the table in his room always grew higher.

  He wondered whether the years had changed him. Not much, he thought. Then he had been a frightened man looking for a fortress: now he had Israel for a fortress, but instead of hiding there he had to come out and fight to defend it. Then as now he had been a lukewarm socialist, knowing that society was unjust, not sure how it might be changed for the better. Growing older, he had gained skills but not wisdom. In fact, it seemed to him that he knew more and understood less.

  He was somewhat happier now, he decided. He knew who he was and what he had to do; he had figured out what life was about and discovered that he could cope with it; although his attitudes were much the same as they had been in 1948, he was now more sure of them. However, the young Dickstein had hoped for certain other kinds of happiness which, in the event, had not come his way; indeed, the possibility had receded as the years passed. This place reminded him uncomfortably of all that. This house especially.

  He stood outside, looking at it. It had not changed at all: the paintwork was still green and white, the garden still a jungle in the front. He opened the gate, walked up the path to the door, and knocked.

  This was not the efficient way to do it. Ashford might have moved away, or died, or simply gone on holiday. Dickstein should perhaps have called the university to check. However, if the inquiry was to be casual and discreet it was necessary to risk wasting a little time. Besides, he had rather liked the idea of seeing the old place again after so many years.

  The door opened and the woman said, "Yes?"

  Dickstein went cold with shock. His mouth dropped open. He staggered slightly, and put a hand against the wall to steady himself. His face creased into a frown of astonishment.

  It was she, and she was still twenty-five years old.

  In a voice full of incredulity, Dickstein said, "Eila . . . ?"

  She stared at the odd little man on the doorstep. He looked like a don, with his round spectacles and his old gray suit and his bristly short hair. There had been nothing wrong with him when she opened the door, but as soon as he set eyes on her he had turned quite gray.

  This kind of thing had happened to her once before, walking down the High Street. A delightful old gentleman had stared at her, doffed his hat, stopped her and said, "I say, I know we haven't been introduced but . . ."

  This was obviously the same phenomenon, so she said, "I'm not Eila. I'm Suza."

  "Suza!" said the stranger.

  "They say I look exactly like my mother did when she was my age. You obviously knew her. Will you come in?"

  The man stayed where he was. He seemed to be recovering from the surprise, although he was still pale. "I'm Nat Dickstein," he said with a little smile.

  "How do you do," Suza said. "Won't you--" Then she realized what he had said. It was her turn to be surprised. "Mister Dickstein!" she said, her voice rising almost to a squeal. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  "You remembered," he said when she let go. He looked pleased and embarrassed.

  "Of course!" she said. "You used to pet Hezekiah. You were the only one who could understand what he was saying."

  He gave that little smile again. "Hezekiah the cat . . . I'd forgotten."

  "Well, come in!"

  He stepped past her into the house, and she closed the door. Taking his arm, she led him across the square hall. "This is wonderful," she said. "Come into the kitchen, I've been messing about trying to make a cake."

  She gave him a stool. He sat dow
n and looked about slowly, giving little nods of recognition at the old kitchen table, the fireplace, the view through the window.

  "Let's have some coffee," Suza said. "Or would you prefer tea?"

  "Coffee, please. Thank you."

  "I expect you want to see Daddy. He's teaching this morning, but he'll be back soon for lunch." She poured coffee beans into a hand-operated grinder.

  "And your mother?"

  "She died fourteen years ago. Cancer." Suza looked at him, expecting the automatic "I'm sorry." The words did not come, but the thought showed on his face. Somehow she liked him more for that. She ground the beans. The noise filled the silence.

  When she had finished, Dickstein said, "Professor Ashford is still teaching . . . I was just trying to work out his age."

  "Sixty-five," she said. "He doesn't do a lot." Sixty-five sounded ancient but Daddy didn't seem old, she thought fondly: his mind was still sharp as a knife. She wondered what Dickstein did for a living. "Didn't you emigrate to Palestine?" she asked him.

  "Israel. I live on a kibbutz. I grow grapes and make wine."

  Israel. In this house it was always called Palestine. How would Daddy react to this old friend who now stood for everything Daddy stood against? She knew the answer: it would make no difference, for Daddy's politics were theoretical, not practical. She wondered why Dickstein had come. "Are you on holiday?"

  "Business. We now think the wine is good enough to export to Europe."

  "That's very good. And you're selling it?"

  "Looking out the possibilities. Tell me about yourself. I'll bet you're not a university professor."

  The remark annoyed her a little, and she knew she was blushing faintly just below her ears: she did not want this man to think she was not clever enough to be a don. "What makes you say that?" she said coolly.

  "You're so . . . warm." Dickstein looked away, as if he immediately regretted the choice of word. "Anyway, too young."

  She had misjudged him. He had not been condescending. "I have my father's ear for languages, but not his academic turn of mind, so I'm an air hostess," she said, and wondered if it were true that she did not have an academic mind, whether she really was not clever enough to be a don. She poured boiling water into a filter, and the smell of coffee filled the room. She did not know what to say next. She glanced up at Dickstein and discovered that he was openly gazing at her, deep in thought. His eyes were large and dark brown. Suddenly she felt shy--which was most unusual. She told him so.

  "Shy?" he said. "That's because I've been staring at you as if you were a painting, or something. I'm trying to get used to the fact that you're not Eila, you're the little girl with the old gray cat."

  "Hezekiah died, it must have been soon after you left."

  "There's a lot that's changed."

  "Were you great friends with my parents?"

  "I was one of your father's students. I admired your mother from a distance. Eila . . ." Again he looked away, as if to pretend that it was someone else speaking. "She wasn't just beautiful--she was striking."

  Suza looked into his face. She thought: You loved her. The thought came unbidden; it was intuitive; she immediately suspected it might be wrong. However, it would explain the severity of his reaction on the doorstep when he saw her. She said, "My mother was the original hippy--did you know that?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "She wanted to be free. She rebelled against the restrictions put on Arab women, even though she came from an affluent, liberal home. She married my father to get out of the Middle East. Of course she found that western society had its own ways of repressing women--so she proceeded to break most of the rules." As she spoke Suza remembered how she had realized, while she was becoming a woman and beginning to understand passion, that her mother was promiscuous. She had been shocked, she was sure, but somehow she could not recall the feeling.

  "That makes her a hippy?" Dickstein said.

  "Hippies believe in free love."

  "I see."

  And from his reaction to that she knew that her mother had not loved Nat Dickstein. For no reason at all this made her sad. "Tell me about your parents," she said. She was talking to him as if they were the same age.

  "Only if you pour the coffee."

  She laughed. "I was forgetting."

  "My father was a cobbler," Dickstein began. "He was good at mending boots but he wasn't much of a businessman. Still, the Thirties were good years for cobblers in the East End of London. People couldn't afford new boots, so they had their old ones mended year after year. We were never rich, but we had a little more money than most of the people around us. And, of course, there was some pressure on my father from his family to expand the business, open a second shop, employ other men."

  Suza passed him his coffee. "Milk, sugar?"

  "Sugar, no milk. Thank you."

  "Do go on." It was a different world, one she knew nothing about: it had never occurred to her that a shoe repairer would do well in a depression.

  "The leather dealers thought my father was a tartar--they could never sell him anything but the best. If there was a second-rate hide they would say, 'Don't bother giving that to Dickstein, he'll send it straight back.' So I was told, anyway." He gave that little smile again.

  "Is he still alive?" Suza asked.

  "He died before the war."

  "What happened?"

  "Well. The Thirties were the Fascist years in London. They used to hold open-air meetings every night. The speakers would tell them how Jews the world over were sucking the blood of working people. The speakers, the organizers, were respectable middle-class men, but the crowds were unemployed ruffians. After the meetings they would march through the streets, breaking windows and roughing-up passersby. Our house was a perfect target for them. We were Jews; my father was a shopkeeper and therefore a bloodsucker; and, true to their propaganda, we were slightly better off than the people around us."

  He stopped, staring into space. Suza waited for him to go on. As he told this story, he seemed to huddle--crossing his legs tightly, wrapping his arms around his body, hunching his back. Sitting there on the kitchen stool, in his ill-fitting suit of clerical gray, with his elbows and knees and shoulders pointing at all angles, he looked like a bundle of sticks in a bag.

  "We lived over the shop. Every damn night I used to lie awake, waiting for them to go past. I was blind terrified, mainly because I knew my father was so frightened. Sometimes they did nothing, just went by. Usually they shouted out slogans. Often, often they broke the windows. A couple of times they got into the shop and smashed it up. I thought they were going to come up the stairs. I put my head under the pillow, crying, and cursed God for making me Jewish."

  "Didn't the police do anything?"

  "What they could. If they were around they stopped it. But they had a lot to do in those days. The Communists were the only people who would help us fight back, and my father didn't want their help. All the political parties were against the Fascists, of course--but it was the Reds who gave out pickaxe handles and crowbars and built barricades. I tried to join the Party but they wouldn't have me--too young."

  "And your father?"

  "He just sort of lost heart. After the shop was wrecked the second time there was no money to fix it. It seemed he didn't have the energy to start again somewhere else. He went on the dole, and just kind of wasted. He died in 1938."

  "And you?"

  "Grew up fast. Joined the army as soon as I looked old enough. Got taken prisoner early. Came to Oxford after the war, then dropped out and went to Israel."

  "Have you got a family out there?"

  "The whole kibbutz is my family . . . but I never married."

  "Because of my mother?"

  "Perhaps. Partly. You're very direct."

  She felt the glow of a faint blush below her ears again: it had been a very intimate question to ask someone who was practically a stranger. Yet it had come quite naturally. She said, "I'm sorry."
<
br />   "Don't apologize," Dickstein said. "I rarely talk like this. Actually, this whole trip is, I don't know, full of the past. There's a word for it. Redolent."

  "That means smelling of death."

  Dickstein shrugged.

  There was a silence. I like this man a lot, Suza thought. I like his conversation and his silences, his big eyes and his old suit and his memories. I hope he'll stay a while.

  She picked up the coffee cups and opened the dishwasher. A spoon slid off a saucer and bounced under the large old freezer. She said, "Damn."

  Dickstein got down on his knees and peered underneath.

  "It's there forever, now," Suza said. "That thing is too heavy to move."

  Dickstein lifted one end of the freezer with his right hand and reached underneath it with his left. He lowered the end of the freezer, stood up and handed the spoon to Suza.

  She stared at him. "What are you--Captain America? That thing is heavy."

  "I work in the fields. How do you know about Captain America? He was the rage in my boyhood."

  "He's the rage now. The art in those comics is fantastic."

  "Well, stone the crows," he said. "We had to read them in secret because they were trash. Now they're art. Quite right, too."

  She smiled. "Do you really work in the fields?" He looked like a clerk, not a field hand.

  "Of course."

  "A wine salesman who actually gets dirt under his fingernails in the vineyard. That's unusual."

  "Not in Israel. We're a little . . . obsessive, I suppose . . . about the soil."

  Suza looked at her watch and was surprised to see how late it was. "Daddy should be home any minute. You'll eat with us, won't you? I'm afraid it's only a sandwich."

  "That would be lovely."

  She sliced a French loaf and began to make salad. Dickstein offered to wash lettuce, and she gave him an apron. After a while she caught him watching her again, smiling. "What are you thinking?"

  "I was remembering something that would embarrass you," he said.

  "Tell me anyway."

  "I was here one evening, around six," he began. "Your mother was out. I had come to borrow a book from your father. You were in your bath. Your father got a phone call from France, I can't remember why. While he was talking you began to cry. I went upstairs, took you out of the bath, dried you and put you into your nightdress. You must have been four or five years old."