Blood Rules (45 page)

Malcolm Raleigh threw his body across Colin’s to shield him from the flowers and their burden of fresh, pungently scented blood, but he died, still he died. Colin drank the blood, which was also the blood of Ehud Chafets, and he ought to have repaid his father, “paid him back,” that’s what he’d said to Robbie, but what he did was this: as he was thrusting his way through the tiny porthole of the DC-4 he felt his father behind him, and so he lashed out with his feet and lashed again,
kick kick kick,
until he could feel no more struggling behind him and he was up into the light, free.

Free.

He lay with his back against a damp rock wall in Yemen, head lolling over toward the cave entrance. He was awake, he was rational, his sight had focused into perception of great sharpness. He knew his own name and everything about his situation, just as he knew, with total clarity and for the first time, that his hands were clean of his father’s blood.

Because he had surfaced into this limpid pool of utter tranquillity he could also be certain that his senses were to be relied upon. Thus he knew that in the oval of decreasing light immediately behind Leila, a shadow had moved and instantly become still. Somebody outside the cave....

A rescue party.

Leila sat with the rifle in her lap. She kept it trained on Sharett, which meant that she kept it trained also on Robbie, their son. Move the barrel less than an inch, and it would be aimed at Colin.

If he shouted a warning, the rescuers would storm in.

If he kept quiet, they would creep up on her and try to overpower her.

He had a choice.

Robbie no longer felt sure what was real and what was dream. He floated in and out of consciousness like a plane flying through cloud, now light, now dim. In the dream he was lying on his bed, awake, while his father spoke on the telephone. He sounded far, far away, but Robbie could almost make out the words. They’d been in his head for days now. The night before they flew to Bahrain, Dad was talking to a man called Richard … Robert …

His mother was an animal. No, don’t say that. She was his mother. But still she had to be made to see that what she’d done was
wrong. …

If only his father would shut up. Stop it, Dad. Say goodbye to Richard. Rodney. Robert. …

I have to make her see.

“He’s right,” Leila said unexpectedly. “Halib cheated everyone. Even me.”

It was almost dark in the cave. Colin strained to see his former wife through the gloom, but her expression remained closed to him. He knew she was preparing her last throw, the one that would bring Robbie to her side.

“In New York,” she said, “I trusted Halib. He wouldn’t let me be the one to take you away from school that day. But later he told me he’d collected you and you were safe, where no one would ever find you.” She paused, thinking. Then, in a voice that rang with grief, she said, “He was right.”

Colin’s ears ached with the effort to hear. Outside the cave the sky had turned dark blue. Shadows slithered everywhere.

“You were safe …
and he promised to get you back!”

“And suppose I didn’t want to be gotten back?” Robbie wailed. “Did you ever think of that?”

Colin felt a resurgence of that desperate need to forge a relationship with his son, the kind he would have wanted with his own father. The longing brought with it an odd sympathy for Leila, because he knew she shared it. And yes, another thing they had in common: neither of them gave a damn what Robbie might want.

His heart gave a lurch and he felt himself teeter on the lip of an abyss.

Robbie’s head throbbed with pain and confusion. Dad, do
shut up!
Say goodbye to your friend, put down the phone. …

Must make Mum
see. …

“You needn’t have left me,” he said. “You needn’t have killed anyone.” Say goodbye, Dad. To Robert. To … to …
Raful!
He woke into full consciousness. “Mummy!” His cry rent the silence.
“Mummy!”

One determined tug was enough to free himself. Sharett lunged for him and missed. He rushed toward his mother. Colin knew what was in the boy’s mind: he wanted to buy back time. He wanted to find a way of convincing her she’d been wrong, of punishing her, but also of
knowing
her and healing all that was past.

He wanted her love.

Leila opened her arms to Robbie. She dropped the gun. It fell near Colin. She held her son tight. Colin leaned forward. He picked up the gun.

Leila was crouched sideways to him, less than two feet away. He could hear her sobs and see paleness where her shirt was. When Sharett yelled “Now!” Colin shouted, “Robbie!
Down!”

In the same second that Colin pulled the trigger, Robbie screamed.

Shlomo Stern blew his whistle.

Robbie remembered something, as he buried his face in his mother’s breast. Funny, he hadn’t thought about it since childhood. He was in bed, it was late; Leila came into the bedroom....

“Put that book away,” she said, in a voice that was meant to be fierce but sounded kind. “You can read it tomorrow.”

He smiled up at her. ‘"Night, Mummy,” he said sleepily.

“You can finish it tomorrow,” she said tenderly, as she tucked him up in bed. “But this day’s over now. …”

Noise shook the very walls of the cave: hurricane noise. When at last the firing stopped, Shlomo Stern switched on his torch. Colin crawled up to see that Leila had one arm thrown lightly around Robbie’s shoulders. A thick scarlet trail seeped between the boy’s lips, but even that could not conceal how mother and son were smiling.

More torches had flashed on now; the cave seemed full of huge men with dark, oily faces and black holes where their eyes should be. Raful and Dannie Neeman had flung themselves flat the second Stern’s whistle sounded. They’d survived. Colin looked up from the two corpses at his feet. He gazed into Sharett’s eyes, and he said, “You promised.” His voice was hushed. “You promised me, Raful.”

“Don’t. …” Sharett’s voice was a mere rasp against the silence. “Don’t. …”

“You promised me he wouldn’t be hurt. After New York, you said if I helped you; that was the only way. …”

Sharett opened his mouth to speak. No words came out.

“We had plans. … Help me to help you, that’s what you said. Be kind to Sharett, and you need never fear Leila again. Never walk down the street wondering if Robbie’s
really
safe at school, or—”

He swallowed. Bait, Sharett had said; I need bait. And for a long time Colin had refused to dangle his own son as bait. But in the end, fear and loathing of the woman who’d betrayed him had worn him down. He’d acquiesced when Raful managed to scatter references to their trip through the newspapers, even though Celestine had seen one of the earliest articles and rung him up with a warning. He’d agreed to pretend not to recognize Sharett when they met on the plane.

He’d put his trust in Sharett.

“You lied,” he said.

He could have said no, when Sharett proposed trailing a hijack in front of Leila Hanif. What if he’d had the strength to throw himself between Robbie and the one with the gun, as he’d done before, on the plane, so that the bullets took his life, not Robbie’s?
What if he’d been his father’s son, the son he’d always yearned to be?

He could have changed everything. Yes. He could.

He looked down to see Leila’s gun still in his hands. He raised it.

Colonel Shlomo Stern’s mind was on his wife’s cancer, his body geared up for combat, still set to automatic. When he caught the flash of moving metal in someone’s torch beam he fired instinctively, almost absentmindedly. Colin never even heard the shots.

Departure was infinitely better than arrival, Andrew Nunn thought, as the big white Cadillac swung off the hotel’s forecourt and headed for the Corniche. Sound drums and trumpets. Et cetera. The car was splendid, if you had a thing about sheepskin and Arab music, and as for motorcycle outriders—well, just what he’d always wanted. One regret haunted him, only one: he still hadn’t managed to prize a smile out of Selman Shehabi, and after all they’d gone though together these past few days that irked, it really did.

He was halfway to the airport when the phone buzzed. He picked it up and, to his astonishment, heard the voice of Britain’s Prime Minister.

“Well, yes,” he said, after a while. “Thank you for those kind words. … I can honestly say it was nothing, Prime Minister.” And he laughed in that knowing way people do when they’re being modest, whereas in fact it was the truth: they’d brought him here for their own purposes, he’d buggered about on the phone till the skin of his ear had started to peel, they’d finished with him and dispatched him to the airport, and here he was, having done nothing, on the blower to the PM, being told how the sun shone out of his arse.

“Your Parliamentary Private Secretary? Of course I’ll

have a word, delighted Hello, Richard.”

Another distant voice. “Andrew … my dear boy, how are you? Covered in sand, what?”

Haw. Haw. Haw.

“Look, Andrew, bit of a bruiser, this one. We’re doing the thing tailormade, our end, and it would be frightfully helpful if you could just lend a wee hand.”

“My dear chap—”

“News blackout about the lady,” the PPS said blandly. “Whole thing planned, orchestrated, led by well-known Palestinian johnny called Fouad Nusseibeh, killed by storm troopers. Rule Britannia, massed bands, and chorus of the Irish Guards, got it?”

“No Leila Hanif?”

“No who?”

“Haw!” said Andrew. Haw. Haw.

“No hunt-the-kiddie, no emotional angle for the Sundays to sink their teeth into, just good old-fashioned Middle East political butchery.”

“Mixture as before?” Andrew Nunn inquired.

“Abso-bloody-lutely, old man.”

“Understood. By the way, were the SAS upset?”

“SAS?” A long silence from London. “Oooh … oh, yes, I know what you’re referring to. Most
awful
confusion, I’m afraid—somehow they never got off the ground our end. Never left Hereford. Total balls-up.”

Now it was Andrew’s turn to be at a loss for words. His brain struggled to make connections, found them coming all too easily. A deal, cobbled together between Jerusalem and London, mutual satisfaction guaranteed....

“Andrew? I say, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Any problems?”

“None whatsoever,” Andrew Nunn said wearily.

“Spoken like a scholar and a gent. PM’s
frightfully
pleased, actually.”

“Jolly good.” Andrew cleared his throat. “Any news of what’s happening upcountry? The Israeli storm squad in Yemen?”

“Mm? Sorry?” But suddenly the line, until now clear as a bell, developed a fault so serious that after a while Andrew Nunn replaced the receiver, and it was a funny thing but somehow he knew the PPS wouldn’t be calling back. So. There was to be no sympathy for Leila Hanif, the woman who’d hijacked a plane because she wanted her son. Not at all the sort of show the PM would like to see. Not cricket.

Major Trewin was waiting at the terminal entrance, his beautifully tailored tropicals fitting every bit as well as the cabinet’s story concerning the hijack; there were salutes and much snappy hefting of luggage by soldiers and some handshaking with chaps he wouldn’t be seeing again. And ah, yes! There was Jack Leroy Francis Consett, the company pilot, “L.F.” as he was jocularly known, or “Lucky Fucker” Consett, on account of all the near misses he was rumored to have not quite almost had.

“Jakarta?” said L.F., and for an absurd moment Andrew Nunn, unqualified hero of the moment, was tempted to reply, No, she went of her own accord, but sanity prevailed and instead he said, “I don’t think so, old boy. Is that where you’re headed?”

“Yup. Thought you were too: I’ve been sent to fetch you. The oil-cargo contract’s all stitched up at last.”

Andrew nodded. “I heard. But I think I’ll cadge a lift from Cathay, if it’s all the same to you. Back to good old Blighty.”

“You’re serious?”

“Never more so.”

“But what am I going to tell—”

“Just say this: Life’s too short.”

And with that terse judgment he left them, going to Cathay Pacific’s desk to pick up his first class single to London; doing it, because the damn contract was still going to be there this time next week, because he hadn’t seen Anne-Marie in yonks and she was thoughtful and beautiful, and somewhere deep down inside himself, amid all the statistics and the mortality figures and the amortization percentages on a ten-year-old DC-10, there was a solid nugget of love, and he wanted to give it to her.

So he went through the gate and stood underneath the bright yellow lights that make Bahrain airport so stark, to watch L.F.'s Lear take off, sans passenger; and although he had a long wait until his flight to London, he did not go to the Dilmun lounge but instead stayed beside the window, looking out at the desert moon, a perfect crescent floating on its back, and he wondered if they too could see it, the mother who did not exist and the son she loved so much.