The Assassin (3 page)

‘Of course I'm not worried,' Elizabeth said. ‘I can't see anything happening to me on a plane, can you? I must say, I wouldn't like to go walking down a dark alley with him.' She glanced back at the hotel door; the man had waited for a moment, lighting a cigarette, the match flame protected by his cupped hands, his face clearly turned towards them. King said nothing; her instincts were right. The man they had watched through the glass door was not a reassuring type. He moved like an animal; the simple act of throwing the match into the gutter was tight with violence. He tossed it away like a grenade. If Elizabeth was worried by what she had seen, King was very satisfied. The type was right. All that remained to establish was the degree of his skill.

‘He won't give you any trouble,' King said. ‘Don't bother about anything like that. You know I wouldn't involve you in anything I felt you couldn't handle easily. After all, my dear, I asked you to do this and I'm responsbile for you.'

He had sometimes wondered what it would be like to take this particular product of the American social system into a quiet room and stretch her out across a bed. He had been forced to put up with the spoilt and frigid foibles of the women he slept with, but he had never accepted them. He wondered whether this girl—in her beautiful clothes, her hair so sleek that no man would dare to ruffle it—he wondered whether she would be any different. She was certainly different from most American women. She had never been married and, as far as he knew, she didn't go in for casual affairs. She was aware of her own attractions without falling visibly in love with herself; she was intelligent and spirited without being masculine. He felt sure that sex with her would be an experience. Even an achievement. But thinking about it was one thing; he had never taken any action and he never would. She was Cameron's niece, and the only use she could be put to had nothing to do with his private imaginings. He took out a Tiffany cigarette case and lit her cigarette with a lighter that matched. He knew his role and he had been playing it so long that now it was natural. He bought the best because after fifteen years it was a habit.

‘For the last time, I suppose you won't tell me what this is all about?'

‘No,' he shook his head. ‘I promised your uncle. Absolute secrecy. This is very important to him, Elizabeth. When you do know the story behind all this you'll understand why I can't say anything just yet. It's the biggest thing Huntley's ever attempted. And for him it could be dangerous if it blew up too soon. But if you're worried, like I said, you don't have to go through with it. I'll do it my self.'

‘Of course I wouldn't do that,' Elizabeth said. ‘You asked me to come to help out and I said I would. I owe my uncle a lot; he was good to me after the accident.' For a moment she looked away from him and her expression changed. When she was sad she was equally pretty to look at.

He leaned close to her again, restraining an impulse to touch her arm. He knew she disliked his occasional lapses, the signals he couldn't help giving that he might be tied up with Huntley Cameron, but he was nobody's uncle substitute where she was concerned. He knew she was afraid of him, and this excited his imagination. Other women accepted him, pursued him. She must have a keener perception than most.

‘Huntley's the only relative I've got,' Elizabeth said. ‘I won't let him down, or you, Eddi. I'm sorry I've been so difficult about it all. I won't ask any more questions. You're a very good friend to him, you know that? I hope he realises it. He hasn't got that many friends.'

She had large brown eyes; they were an unusual combination with her yellow hair and fair skin. They were very expressive, very open. The eyes of a woman who had no real secrets from the world. And not all that much knowledge of it either. He could see himself reflected in them, a tiny miniscule in the bright pupils. Eddi King, the good friend, helping the man who had so few friends. Pity the poor rich; nobody loved them for themselves. It was just possible, he thought, looking into the girl's face, that it might be because they weren't exactly lovable … ‘Now,' he said, ‘how about a drink before lunch?'

‘I'd love one.'

As they walked through to the bar King noticed the men's heads turning, the way their eyes went from her legs up to her face. They were thinking what he was thinking. What would it be like … It was a pity, a real pity, he would never be able to find out.

Keller lived in one room outside the Zone Franche, the Free Port where everything from carpets to coconuts was unloaded into the Lebanon. It was up three flights of stairs; a dank, urinous smell seeped up from the well of the house, mingled with fish. He had bought food, a bottle of wine, and some sweetmeats from the souk with Fuad's money.

The sweets were pink and of such high sugar content that Keller couldn't have eaten one of them. But the girl loved them; she had the Arab passion for sweet things, and he lay back on the bed and enjoyed watching her eat them. He had picked her out of the street one night, where he had fallen in a coma of hunger, and on an impulse, which he had never bothered to analyse afterwards, brought her in and fed her. It was like finding one of the stray cats that haunted Beirut, only they hung round the hotels and cafes and grew fat.

The girl was so thin and gaunt it was difficult to tell her age, or even imagine what she would look like with a little care. Keller gave her food and a few shillings to buy more and told her to go away. The next morning she was sitting on the landing outside his door. Her name was Souha, and in the way of strays, she had adopted him and refused to go away. Keller tried. He raised his fist and pretended to be angry, but she only cowered and stayed where she was. She spoke French as well as Arabic and a little Hebrew. She had come with the refugees from Palestine, belonging to no one, her father dead, her mother, who had been a Frenchwoman, long buried in Jerusalem.

All she wanted, she insisted, was to work for him. To be his woman, his servant, anything, if he would only let her stay.

If he wanted to get rid of her, then Keller knew he would have to throw her bodily into the street outside. He had looked into the huge brown eyes, brimming with tears, so big in the taut face that they looked grotesque, and knew he couldn't do it. He knew what hunger meant, and what it was like to sleep in the open. He knew what happened to strays in this world because it had already happened to him. He swore at her and himself and let her in. That was the beginning of the association, which was not uncommon except that he neither beat her when he felt bad tempered nor put her out to whore for him when he was short of money.

And in return she loved him with the devotion of which only dogs and women are capable. She kept the dingy room clean; she washed his clothes and mended them and cooked his food; at first she refused to eat with him, serving him first in the Muslim custom, and then taking what was left on his plate for herself. She had offered him her body with downcast eyes and the doubtful information that he would get no sickness from her because he was the first man she had known. She was too young and vulnerable for Keller's liking. He had lived with one of the girls in the night-club for a few weeks; she came from England, and she was undomesticated and unreliable. She practised sex in a way that satisfied him without giving him any comfort, and one day she left him for a Lebanese she had met in the club. He had always picked up women when he needed them, from the unspeakably vicious Arab girls in the stews of Algeria when he was in the Legion, to the blank-faced Indonesians before the siege of Dien Bien Phu. He knew everything about what to do with a woman's body and his own and nothing at all about loving another human being. He had told the girl Souha to go away and sleep in her corner and not bother him. And then one night he had come home and needed someone. She was there, watching him with her beautiful eyes, and suddenly he realised that she was pretty. She had long dark hair, which proved to be brown instead of black, when it was washed, and her skin was as pale as any European from the Latin countries.

He had held out his hand and she had come to him trembling. And that was the first time in his life that Keller had been gentle because she had told him the truth. He was the first. When it was over and he wanted to sleep, she took his hand and kissed it.

‘I love you,' she said. ‘Now I belong to you always.'

In the morning when he woke, her face, watching him with adoration, was the first thing he saw.

Now he moved his arm, closing it round her, and kissed the side of her neck.

‘If you eat any more of that filth you'll be sick.'

‘They're not filth,' she protested. They're lovely. I wish you'd try one.'

‘Not for me. For you, Souha, little greedy Souha. No wonder you're getting fat.'

She put the last sweet back and looked at him. ‘You think I'm too fat? I don't please you any more?'

‘You please me very much,' Keller said. It amused him to tease her but he dared not keep it up. She believed everything he said and it made her cry. ‘Go on, finish that and then lie close to me. I want to talk to you. How would you like to go away from here? No, no, not without me! We would go together somewhere. We would have money.' He turned his head and looked at her. ‘You've never had anything, have you? You don't know what money means.'

‘We could have more food,' she said. ‘I could go to the souk and buy some fine cloth and have them make an overcoat for you. I know what money can do. It can get all sorts of things we haven't got.'

‘And there would be a new dress for you—perhaps two new dresses.' He watched the expressions flying across her face. Surprise, delight, disbelief. Nobody had two new dresses. Only he had ever given her one, and that she cherished so much he had to order her to wear it. It was the only way he could explain to her that things might undergo a change. She could understand it in the simple terms of more to eat and things to wear. But if Fuad was right, this could be a new life, like being reborn with a bank balance instead of a birth certificate. Only with real money you could get the certificate too, with any name on it you liked. Big money. That was what Fuad kept saying. And today the whole shadowy proposal had started taking shape. He had to pass some kind of test for marksmanship. Keller took a cigarette from a new packet, and let Souha light it for him. If they wanted a marksman that meant they wanted a killer—whoever they were. They wanted someone who could shoot accurately from a distance. Who would it be? He drew on the cigarette, stroking the girl's thick plait of hair, winding it round his fingers.

One of the sheiks. Hussein of Jordan. He hoped it wasn't the King; getting away after shooting Hussein wouldn't be easy. Getting near enough to do it would be less so. A lot of professionals had tried for that target and failed. He would up the price on the bastards, if that was who they wanted to get. And get some in advance. At least Souha could be provided for in case he didn't come back. He tugged on the plait, turning her face towards him. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘What are you thinking about? New dresses?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I was thinking about money. Who would give us money, Bruno?' He had even told her his Christian name. No one had called him by it since he left the orphanage.

‘Someone who thinks I'm worth it. Don't you think I'm worth money to someone?'

‘I think you are worth more than all the gold in the Banque du Liban,' she said passionately. ‘Don't play with me. Tell me, what would you have to do to get money? Is it Fuad Hamedin? I don't trust him …'

‘I don't either. No, it's not for him. Maybe for a friend of his. I don't know yet. I'll know tomorrow.'

After a moment, she said, ‘Would it be a lot of money? Is that why you brought back all that food and wine—and the goujis for me—is it really big, this money?'

‘It could be very big,' Keller said slowly. ‘The more I think of it, little one, the bigger I believe it could be. The kind of money one dreams about. Enough to take us out of the Lebanon, enough so we could live anywhere we liked and never worry again.'

‘Then I don't want you to do it.' She pulled away from him and sat up; he looked into the big eyes, fierce with emotion.

‘That sort of money means danger. You would be in danger. I know it. Tell them we don't want anything. I can get money if you want. But don't do anything for Fuad. Don't get into danger, Bruno. I can earn money for us.'

He pinched out the red end of the cigarette, his skin was so tough he didn't feel the burn. ‘I've never hit you,' Keller said, ‘but if you ever speak like that again I will.'

‘I won't say it again.' She put her hands to her face and began to cry. ‘It's only that I love you.'

She was the first women he had ever known who hadn't been sliding about on her back for years. He remembered the bedaubed child prostitute at the bus shelter that morning, and the sly, oiled smile of Fuad when he talked about the girl. His own mother had been some kind of whore. ‘I know why you said it; I know you mean well, but you don't understand. You're my woman. No other man will ever touch you. And if we get some money our lives will change. You'll be a respectable girl with a house of your own.' He looked at her and wiped away the tears with the side of his hand. He might even marry her. But this he didn't say.

‘Be a good girl now, and don't cry. Come and I will show you that I'm not angry any more.'

He was picked up in a taxi outside the St George Hotel. Fuad was in it. He made a gesture to Keller not to speak. They drove for an hour, and then the taxi stopped outside a restaurant. Fuad paid and got out. He went to another car, got into the driver's seat, and with Keller in the back, drove out on to the coast road. Keller noticed that after a few minutes another car was following them.

‘Where are we going?'