The Last Testament

CHAPTER THREE

Washington, Sunday, 10.43am

It wasn't a surprise. She had known that much the moment he had mentioned Africa and the UN. He had been telling her own life story back to her, pretending it was his own. It was a nasty little trick.

Still, that wasn't why she had grown agitated: she was used to dealing with creeps. This man seemed to know everything about her. Including her – what had he called it? – ‘mistake’.

‘I'm not here to taunt you.’

‘But you're not here for bloody divorce mediation either, are you?’

‘There's no wife for me to divorce. I'm like you used to be. Married to the job.’

‘And what job is that exactly?’

‘I work for the same people you used to work for. The United States government. My name is Judd Bonham.’ He extended a hand.

Maggie ignored it, heading slowly backwards towards her chair. She was reeling. First Edward and the boxes and now this. Initially, she had him down as some psycho stalker, a jilted husband who blamed her for his divorce. It wouldn't be too difficult to Google her whole life story, then trick his way in to scare her, to freak her out. But she had read him wrong. He was here on official business. But what on earth could it be? She hadn't done anything for the Agency or State Department since … then. That had been well over a year ago and she had cut all her ties instantly. Not a phone call, not a letter. Nothing. If she had had it her way, she wouldn't even be living in bloody America. She couldn't have gone back to Ireland, couldn't face that; but she had thought about following Liz to London. Instead she had ended up in sodding Washington, inside the belly of the beast. To be with Edward.

‘Gotta hand it to you though. You haven't lost your touch.’

She looked up at him.

‘You're still good. The old jet-on-the-runway trick. Engines revving up, ready to fly any moment. Love it.’

‘What?’

‘Your last appointment, Kathy and Brett. Threatening to walk out on the parties: they should teach that at negotiator school. Didn't Clinton do it at Camp David? Get the chopper all fired up, blades spinning. The mediator says he – or she – will walk and the parties get scared. Realize how much they need you and how much they need the talks. They suddenly see that any deal they'd make outside the room would be worse. And it brings them together, both sides desperate to keep the talks going. You mediation guys call it a “shared project”, don't you? Something like that. Even unites them against a common enemy: you. Genius.’

‘You were listening.’

‘It's the training, what can I say?’

‘You arsehole.’

‘I like how you say that. Ahhhrse-hole. Sounds sexy in your accent.’

‘Get out.’

‘Though I see you don't really do sexy so much these days. No more of the hair-tumbling-down-in-front-of-the-eyes routine. Is that Edward's influence?’

‘Go.’

‘Oh, I'll go. But first I have a little proposal to make.’

Maggie stared at him.

‘Don't worry, not that kind of proposal. Not that I couldn't be tempted, should you ever get tired of Edward—’

‘I'm going to call the police.’ She reached for the phone.

‘No you're not. And we both know why.’

That stopped her; she put the phone down. He knew about her ‘mistake’. And he would tell. The Washington Post, some blog, it didn't matter. The true reason for her exile, currently known only to a few diplomatic insiders, would become public. What was left of her reputation would be ruined.

‘What do you want?’ Almost a whisper.

‘We want you to come out of retirement.’

‘No.’

‘Come on, first rule of any negotiation: you have to listen.’

‘I am not having a negotiation with you. I want you to piss off.’

‘The people I work for tend not to take no for an answer.’

‘And who is it you work for exactly? “The United States government” is a bit vague.’

‘Let's say this has come from as close to the top as you can get in this town. You have a reputation, you know. Miss Costello.’

‘Well,’ you can tell them I'm flattered. But the answer is no.

‘You're not even curious?’

‘No, I am not. I don't do that work any more. I work here now. I mediate between husbands and wives. And I don't take emergency cases. Which means you have about one minute to get up and leave.’

‘I won't insult your intelligence, Maggie. You read the papers. You know what's happening in Jerusalem. We're this close to a deal.’ He held his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. ‘We've never been so close before.’

Maggie ignored him.

‘And you also know what happened yesterday.

An attack on the Israeli Prime Minister. Or what looked like an attack. Israeli security ended up killing some internal critic of the peace process. Could screw the whole thing.’

‘The answer's no.’

‘The powers that be have decided that this is too important an opportunity to be lost. They need you to go in there and do your thing. Work your magic. Come on, you've still got it. I could hear that just now. And this is something that really matters. Middle East peace, for Christ's sake. How could you pass that up? This is the World Series of peacemaking!’

‘I don't play baseball.’

‘No. OK.’ He was talking more quietly now and in a different tone. She recognized it for what it was, a change in tactics. ‘What I mean is, you're a mediator. It's your calling. It's what you were born to do. You're good at it and you love doing it. This is the chance to return to the work you love. At the highest possible level.’

She thought of the pictures she had seen on TV that morning, and the feeling she had had, but not admitted, even to herself. Envy. She had envied the men and women sitting at the head of the negotiating table in Jerusalem, the people charged with that weightiest and most thrilling of tasks, brokering peace. She had pictured them the instant she saw the news item. Like fishermen, reeling in a rare and prized specimen, they would be exerting both enormous strength and great gentleness. Pulling with all their might one moment, then backing off, letting out some more line the next. Knowing when the rod could bend, and knowing what would make it break. It was skilled, demanding work. But it was also the most exhilarating activity she had ever known.

Bonham read her face. ‘You must miss it. You wouldn't be human if you didn't. I mean counselling couples is valuable, no question. But the stakes are never as high, are they? You're never going to feel the thrill you did at Dayton or Geneva. Not here. Are you?’

Maggie wanted to shake her head in agreement. This man seemed to know her own mind better than she did. But she resisted, turning her head to stare out of the window.

‘Not that this is some kind of sport to you, I know that. It never was. Sure, you like the professional challenge. But that came second. To the goal. The pursuit of peace. You're one of the few people on the planet who knows how much these efforts matter. What can happen if things go wrong.’ Her mistake.

‘And few matter more than this one, Maggie. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have died in this conflict. It's gone on and on and on. Our whole adult lifetimes. And it will keep going. You'll turn on your TV set in ten years' time and there'll still be Palestinian kids shelled in playgrounds and Israeli teenagers blown to pieces on buses.’

‘And you think you can stop it?’

‘Me? I can't stop it. I can't stop anything. But you can.’

‘I don't believe that. Not any more.’

‘Come on. You haven't changed that much.’

‘Look, I didn't suddenly forget that people are dying there and everywhere else. I know only too well how much death and killing goes on in every fucking corner of this planet. But I happen to have realized there is nothing I can do about it. So it's better I stay out of it.’

‘The White House doesn't agree.’

‘Well, the White House can just shove it, can't it?’

Bonham sat back, as if assessing his prey. After a pause he said, ‘This is because of … what happened, isn't it?’

Maggie stared out of the window, willing her eyes to stay dry.

‘Look, Maggie. We know what went on there. You fouled up very badly. But it was one black mark on an otherwise exceptional record. The White House view is that you've done your penance. And you don't help anyone by staying in exile like this. You're not saving any lives here. It's time you came back.’

‘You're saying I'm forgiven.’

‘I'm saying it's time to move on. But, yes, if you like, you're forgiven.’

For the first time Maggie met his gaze. ‘But what if I haven't forgiven myself?’

‘Ah, that's a different problem, isn't it? Shouldn't be too tricky for you, though. That's a Catholic specialty, isn't it? Cancelling out the sin through repentance? Redemption and all that? So this is your chance.’

‘It's not as simple as that.’

‘True. You're not going to bring back the lives that were lost because of what happened. Your mistake. But you can prevent more lives being lost. And that's got to count for something. Hasn't it?’

She was about to say that she had once promised Edward that she wouldn't travel again. But she said nothing.

‘It's your choice, Maggie. If you believe that nothing else matters but your life here, your relationship here—’

She knew he'd heard the row in the kitchen.

‘—you'll ignore me and send me away from here. But if you miss the work you were born to do, if you care about ending a conflict that's spread so much bitterness around the world, if you want to make things right, you'll say yes.’

‘Tell me something,’ she said after a long pause. ‘Why the house visit? Why all this cloak and dagger bullshit, pretending to be a client?’

‘We tried phoning you, but you didn't return our calls. I didn't think you'd let me into the building.’

‘You called?’

‘We've been leaving messages here since yesterday afternoon. We left a couple early this morning.’

‘But,’ she stammered. She was sure she had checked, sure that there was nothing on the machine.

‘Maybe someone deleted the messages before you got to them.’ She felt the air seep out of her lungs. Edward.

Judd threw an envelope on the table, thick and heavy. ‘Tickets and briefing material. The plane for Tel Aviv leaves this afternoon. The choice is yours, Maggie.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Jerusalem, Saturday, 11.10pm

After-dark meetings were part of the tradition of this office. Ben-Gurion had done it in the fifties, debating and deciding till the early hours; Golda, too, always worked late at night, most famously when the Egyptians launched their surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973: legend has it the old lady barely slept for days. Somehow this room, with its single high-backed chair, reserved for the Prime Minister, lent itself to such encounters. It was small and intimate, with two couches forming an L-shape on which advisers or aides could sit around and talk for hours. The desk was functional, built for use rather than to impress. Rabin used to sit here alone deep into the night, with his own ink-pen, letters to the parents of soldiers – which, being Israel, meant every mother and father in the land.

Rabin was long gone now, taking the ashtrays that accompanied his chain-smoking habit with him. The current incumbent preferred, when stressed, to nibble on sunflower seeds, a habit which made him the peer of bus drivers and stallholders across the country. He gestured now to the man from Shin Bet, Israeli's internal security service, to begin speaking.

‘Prime Minister, the dead man was Shimon Guttman. We all know who we're talking about: the writer and activist, aged seventy-one. The first reports suggesting he was armed have now been discounted. Our investigators found no sign that he carried any weapon. Examination of the body showed he was killed by a bullet to the brain.’

The PM grimaced, then cracked one more seed shell between his front teeth.

‘As you know, he was found clasping a handwritten note, addressed to yourself. Intelligence say it will take some days to piece it together, the words were obscured by the blood—’

The Prime Minister waved him quiet. The head of Shin Bet put away the paper he had been consulting. The Deputy Prime Minster stared at his shoes; the Foreign and Defence Ministers stared at the PM, trying to gauge his reaction: none wanted to be the first to speak.

Amir Tal, special adviser to the PM and the youngest man in the room, decided to fill the quiet. ‘Of course, this has immediate political implications. First, we will come under fire—’

The Prime Minister raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry. We will be criticized for making a bad mistake, killing an innocent man. That kind of flak could come our way anytime. But, second, if we are about to sign a peace deal, this will make things much harder. The right were already boiling; now they're claiming their first martyr. They insist it is not a coincidence: Guttman was one of our loudest critics. And not just ours. He said the same thing during Oslo and again during Camp David: “Anyone who talks peace with the Arabs is a criminal who should be on trial for treason.” Arutz Sheva was on the air an hour ago saying “So now we know the government's plan; they want to silence dissent with gunfire”.’

‘Could they be right?’ It was the Foreign Minister, addressing Tal, avoiding the boss's eye.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I don't mean that we deliberately killed him. But that it was not a coincidence. Could it be deliberate in the other direction, the opposite of what Arutz Sheva are saying?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, was this a set-up? Guttman knew how things worked. You can't just rush towards the Prime Minister, shouting and screaming, and then reach into your jacket. He was a smart guy. He'd have known that.’

‘Are you saying—’

‘Yeah. I'm wondering if Guttman wanted to get shot. If he was deliberately luring us in, daring us to kill a famous opponent of the government.’

‘This is crazy.’

‘Is it? This is a guy who his whole life has gone in for the grand spectacular gesture, the great protest. And now, finally, it's the big one: we're about to make peace with the Arabs, to give away holy Judea and sacred Samaria. To prevent such a calamity, a fanatic like Guttman would have to come up with the biggest possible gesture. One that might actually mobilize the right.’

‘He would sacrifice his own life?’

‘He would.’ The Prime Minister had uttered his first two words since the meeting began. Until now, he had sat back, listening to the debate. That was his style. First, hear the arguments among the competing members of his court. Then, pepper them with questions. So how should we respond? What are our options? The cabinet had braced itself for just such an interrogation. But instead the Prime Minister had just leaned forward, saying nothing, cracking open yet another salty seed shell. Until those words: ‘He would.’

After a long pause, as if completing a thought that had been unspooling in his own head, he added, ‘I know this man. Inside out.’

The Chief of Staff, dressed in pressed olive green trousers and beige shirt, with a beret under his epaulette – the uniform of the soldier whose battlefield was politics – broke the silence that followed with what felt to him like a related question. He asked what everyone in the room – along with everyone who had heard the eyewitness accounts on TV – had wanted to know from the beginning. ‘How come he called you Kobi?’

‘Ah,’ said the Prime Minister.

‘I thought he hated your guts. Yet here he's talking to you like you're old chums.’

‘Rav Aluf, you of all people should know the answer to that question.’ The PM sat back, though he still preferred to look into middle distance rather than at any of his colleagues. ‘Kobi was the man I was a long, long time ago.’ The Defence Minister shuffled awkwardly in his seat, shooting a glance at the General. ‘It was what my friends called me. In the army. We were a good unit, one of the best. In ′67 we took a hill, just us: thirty-odd men. And you know who was the bravest, much braver than me, despite what Amir here tells the newspapers? A young scholar from the Hebrew University by the name of Shimon Guttman.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Jerusalem, Monday, 9.28am

For the first time since she got here the people checking her bags were Arabs. Everyone she had met since coming off the overnight flight at dawn this morning had been Israeli Jews. Now at the entrance to the US Consulate on Agron Street, she was waiting to be processed by Palestinian Arabs – albeit wearing shirts bearing the crest of the United States. Ordinarily an official of the United States government, as she now was once more, would be waved through. But these were extra-tense times, the driver explained, so it would take a little longer. One of the guards wanted Maggie to hand in her mobile phone, until a more senior man waved him away.

She was ushered into a small security lobby, staffed by a US marine behind thick glass watching a bank of TV monitors. As she gazed at the flickering images, she rewound her scene with Judd Bonham for the dozenth time. He had played her like a master, making every move she would have made. He had appealed to her conscience and flattered her ego, just as she had done to countless delegates, ambassadors and presidential aides. He had both dangled a stick, revealing what he knew, and offered a carrot. And, just as the rulebook dictates, the latter had been designed to reach the reluctant party's weakest spot: in her case, her desire to wipe the slate clean. You always tried to know a participant's greatest vulnerability. It pained her to think hers was so obvious.

Bonham must have known it would be a breeze. First some light intimidation, then a show of apparent kindness and empathy. It was the classic pattern. Police interrogator kicks away the chair, then puts a hand on the shoulder and offers to take the pain away. Good cop, bad cop, even if it was the same person. She had done it herself a dozen times.

Her gaze went to the marine. She couldn't quite believe she was back to all this again. Instinctively, she scrutinized the scene before her. Natural that the serious security would be entrusted only to an American. The choice of local hires was also a statement. Use of Palestinian staff to underline that the consulate in Jerusalem was the US mission to the Palestinians; a wholly different operation from the embassy in Tel Aviv, which represented America to the Israelis.

A door buzzed, opening up for a tall, fair-haired man. ‘Welcome to the madhouse! Jim Davis, Consul, good to see you.’ He stuck out a hand to shake.

‘As you can see, we work in the most beautiful pair of buildings the State Department owns anywhere in the world,’ he said as they walked into a garden, a wide, square lawn laid out before a grand, colonial house. The noise of Agron Street was shut out now. The only sound was the hummed melody of an aged gardener, bending over to prune a rosebush.

‘And this is our newest acquisition, the Lazarist Pères Monastery.’ Davis pointed to his left, to a structure that seemed part church, part fortress. It was modest; no fussy steeples or fancy turrets, but each arched window was decorated with a brick surround, as if reinforced against incoming fire. And all of it was built in the same pale, craggy stone that dominated this city. Every building, every house, every office, every hotel, even the supermarkets – they were all made of it. ‘Jerusalem stone’ the driver had called it on the way from the airport. ‘It is the law, it is the law!’ he had said, his stubbled face peering over his shoulder, prompting Maggie to nod eagerly towards the road, encouraging him to do the same.

She had been here before, a couple of times, nearly a decade ago. But she hadn't been close to the action. The White House ran that show: they were happy to let the do-gooders of State do Africa or East Timor and, on a good day, the Balkans. But the Middle East was the glamour assignment, the diplomatic big one, the only foreign story that consistently made the front page. So Maggie had always been kept back.

She looked up, shielding her eyes with the palm of her hand. The light was so bright here, reflecting and bouncing off all that pale, sand-coloured stone. A monastery in Jerusalem. Had probably been here centuries, all the way back to the Crusades. It reminded Maggie of the convent of her schooldays.

‘Took that over just a while back,’ Davis was explaining. Unusually for a long-time diplomat, his Southern accent was perfectly intact. ‘The brothers, or fathers, strictly speaking, have vacated most of the building. A few of them are hanging on, in a little corner that will stay theirs. Otherwise it now belongs to the United States of America.’

He was babbling, a male reaction Maggie was used to. She had seen it in Davis's eyes the moment he had greeted her, the initial instant of surprise, followed by a regrouping and the concentrated effort to act normally. She had thought this would stop as she moved into her late thirties, that she would become less of a magnet for male attention. But, even with the dressing down, it hadn't faded much. She was still tall, at five foot nine, and her figure had held its shape pretty well. Her hair was still thick and warm brown and, when she let it down, it was long enough to trail over her shoulders.