Olives (25 page)

Certain Lynch
had intended me to be disconcerted at quite how easily they had
broken into my house to return it, I opened another bottle and sat
down to read the thing, taking great care not to spill wine on
it.

I put the bid
evaluation document back on the Minister’s secretary’s desk early
on Sunday morning before going down to my office and starting work
on the second issue of the magazine.

The
evaluation had been a fascinating read.
The committee had suggested the winning bidder might
consider subcontracting the Brits for their water conservation and
waste management expertise, but this wasn’t conditional to an
award, meaning Daoud’s consortium could effectively ignore the
advice. Otherwise, the document was unequivocal – it recommended
the Jerusalem Consortium for its technical bid. The last line of
the thing effectively saved having to read the forty preceding
pages.

The Jerusalem
Consortium offer is technically in advance of the Anglo-Jordanian
Consortium and offers significant increases in Jordan’s water
resources through exploration of sources previously untapped by
Jordanian stakeholders. We consider the offer and solution as
outlined by the Jerusalem Consortium bid to be the only tenable
course forward to meet Jordan’s water needs for the coming
twenty-five years and recommend it be adopted.

The
conclusion avoided what Zahlan would have called the elephant in
the room – the water the Jerusalem Consortium planned to tap would
come from sources which would otherwise flow into Israel. Daoud’s
bid was based on boring into a series of previously unknown deep
springs which rose to feed the massive Lake
Tiberias – Israel’s hard-won Sea of Galilee.
Jordan’s gain would be Israel’s loss. Daoud was taking back the
water.

Aisha came by
my desk and we chatted, somehow managing to keep at least a
semi-professional distance but both of us aching to touch as she
sat at her favourite spot on the side of my desk, grinning and
playing with the silver and amber Bedouin necklace she wore over
her burgundy polo-neck.

‘
Lunch, Brit?
Vinny?’

Vinny was
Vinaigrette, the perennially popular sushi and salad joint in the
bustling
Shmeisani
area.

‘
I can’t. I’m
meeting up with one of the British Business Group people for lunch.
How about later? Come around to mine and we’ll go up
together.’

Her hand
brushed up my arm as she stood, a quick squeeze that thrilled me.
‘I’d like to. About five?’

My eyes
travelled up her body, from her snug-fitting jeans to the curves
under the tight top, undressing her and wanting her, almost feeling
the warmth of her smooth skin under my hands as my eyes moved over
her. By the time our eyes locked, Aisha’s were wide and her lips
parted.

My voice came
out hoarse. ‘How about four?’

She nodded
and fled.

I left the
Ministry building at lunchtime to meet Lynch, who had picked a busy
street café near the Sixth Circle. He was cheery, gesturing me to a
chair.

‘
The falafel
sandwich is only gorgeous,’ he beamed at me. ‘And the strawberry
juice here is world-famous, so and it is.’

I sat down
opposite him at the rickety, plastic-covered table and took one of
his cigarettes before ordering a chicken
shawarma
and an
orange juice from the swarthy waiter. The traffic roared and honked
alongside, the air reeked of frying and sweet
shisha
tobacco smoke mixed with exhaust fumes and hot
engine.

‘
I hardly
need say this, Paul, but you did a great job with that document.
It’s everything we wanted and more. Good man. It’s a shame there
aren’t more like you about, that’s the truth.’

The sandwich
came and I stubbed out the cigarette, pulling the tissue paper away
from the tightly wrapped round of hot chicken, garlic, pickle and
potato chip. I ate while Lynch finished his smoke, gazing
benevolently around him. I wiped my mouth, the paper wrap from the
sandwich crumpled on the table.

‘
It’s all I’m
doing for you.’ My voice was flat. I’d rehearsed this scene in my
mind many times by now and it was playing out pretty much as I’d
reckoned it would.

‘
Sure, Paul.
Let’s walk a minute.’

Lynch got up,
dropping a couple of Dinars on the tabletop. I finished my orange
and followed him up the street. I caught up with him as he turned
right into a side-street.

He heard me
catching up. ‘You were away at the weekend.’

The
RFP-returning invisible hand would have reported the house had been
empty, the car away. Part of me wanted to make up a lie for him,
but I hadn’t foreseen this angle developing in our conversation and
the only thing coming to my rescue was the truth.

‘
Yes, I went
with Aisha to her grandmother’s farm.’

Lynch pulled
to a halt and turned to face me. His blue eyes focused on me before
skittering away to look around us, his voice insouciant.

‘
Oh, right.
Now where would that be, Paul?’

I hadn’t
spotted the change in him, even though I had stopped and turned to
face him. ‘Near Qaffin. The West Bank. By the wall.’

‘
Why the fuck
didn’t you tell me you were planning to do that?’

‘
It didn’t
seem to matter.’

‘
Everything
matters. You fucking idiot. Have you got no sense at all? Who did
you go with?’

‘
Just
Aisha.’

‘
Who did you
meet?’

‘
Her
grandmother. Her uncle Hamad.’

‘
Anyone
else?’

‘
No.’

‘
Anyone take
the car away?’

I shook my
head, puzzled at the violence making him tremble, his lips
compressed into a white-edged cut across his face.

‘
No.’

‘
Anyone give
you anything to carry, any bags?’

‘
No. What’s
the game, Gerry? You train in airport security or
something?’

He raised a
finger to me, his head tilted to one side as he spat the words.
‘Don’t be fucking smart with me, Stokes. You want to go away for
dirty weekends with your Arab bint, you tell me first. You hear
me?’

The wave
rushed over me, greater anger than I’d ever felt before. It all
came to a head, my resentment at Lynch’s arrogant assumption he
controlled my life, his disrespect for Aisha all channelled
themselves in a moment of burning fury. His finger stayed in my
face as I found physical release for my impotent frustration. I
lashed out at him with all my strength.

He moved with
blinding speed to catch my hand and snare my momentum, moving with
me expertly with force and precision like a dancer, a whirl of
action that slammed me up against the wall with my arm wrenched up
my back. The bolt of pain in my shoulder forced me to stifle a
scream, grazing my cheek on the rough stone. I felt the rasp of his
cheek, our breath mingling as the moment passed and the tension
slowly went out of our bodies. But he didn’t release me. He spoke
in a voice so low it was almost a lover’s whisper.

‘
You move,
you tell me. You shit, you tell me. I am looking after you, you
ungrateful little bastard and I can’t fucking do that if you launch
off on daft little tours. You understand me?’

I said
nothing and he wrenched my pinioned arm. I cried out,
‘Yes.’

He let go of
me and stepped back. I turned, rubbing my shoulder and saw the
tension in him as he waited for me to make another move. I didn’t.
His voice was calm, his face impassive.

‘
I should
have left them fucking shoot her when they wanted to.’

I
rubbed my aching shoulder and
glowered at him. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

He stepped
towards me and I flinched. I didn’t like myself very much for that.
His hand rested on my chest.

‘
You aren’t
in the UK, Paul. You’re somewhere very strange and foreign and you
understand very little of what’s going on here. I’ve played it
straight with you, but you need to piss straight with me, too. Let
me know before you take any more pleasure trips or, so help me God,
I’ll put you in frigging hospital next time. If you survive any
next time.’

He wheeled
away from me, stopped and turned. ‘Oh, and another thing. If you
ever call me Gerry again, you won’t even see the fucking lights go
out, you hear me?’

He marched
away without waiting for an answer.

*

Aisha and I
lay together on my bed, touching and talking in murmurs, the clean
cotton sheets rustling under our clothes. Somehow she understood I
was still struggling with the aftermath of the journey we’d taken
together and it brought us even closer, something I hadn’t thought
possible. The farm bound us. Our touching became more intense, more
intimate and our rhythms increased together, kissing deeply as our
hands explored and cajoled, opening clothes and finding warm skin,
our hands seeking pleasure. Stayed from reaching the ultimate
intimacy by Aisha’s reticence, we used our hands, our mouths
pressed hard together, until we cried out with a single
voice.

We lay in
each other’s arms, damp heat cooling and the smell of our
excitement mingling with her heavy perfume in a rich, lustful
stench. The release brought a tremendous sadness upon me and I
cried, Aisha crying with me, cradling me into the nape of her neck
and softly repeating my name.

I woke in the
middle of the night to find she had left, the bed cold beside me. I
thought I heard a helicopter, but it was just my imagination
playing tricks again in the darkness.

Morning
smells filled the kitchen – coffee, toast and butter – the door
open to let the cool, fresh morning air into the room, the sky
outside grey and dull. I wandered into the living room and flicked
on the TV to catch the news as I saw the red text flashing across
the screen in its white panel, ‘Israel Terror Attack.’

I sat down to
watch, finishing my slice of toast and wiping my hand on my sock as
I heard the presenter play for time. I watched the news ticker. A
bomb, a big one. Fifteen people dead. A busy shopping centre in
Haifa.

The presenter
cut to pictures of the blast, a home video of a family shopping
trip, Grandpa mugging for the camera, giving the thumbs up and
Hebrew chattering and laughter on the soundtrack.

Behind the
old man, hundreds of feet away, a plume of smoke mushrooms into
existence, the street jumps as the corona of the concussion expands
in a moment of violence, the black, roiling cloud billowing around
a scarlet core. The camera goes wobbly before falling, skittering
footage across the tarmac, scattered images, blurred legs. The
camera is picked up again, steadies and records wreckage, smoke,
dust, blurred people running. A child crying, blood on her frilly
pink frock.

Strange
details lodged in my mind as the shock of it forced me into slow
motion. The name of a shop: Haifa Antiquities. The colour of a
young man’s shirt: blue, spattered with red. He’s holding his hand
to his ear, his mouth is open and his eyes are clenched shut in
agony. He’s staggering in circles. There’s someone pointing a phone
at him. The report cut back to the newsreader and a blurry
satellite linkup to their reporter in Jerusalem.

I held the
remote control loosely in my hand. Strange details. Like the small,
innocuous car down the street, caught on film behind Grandpa’s
shoulder, the epicentre of the blast, momentarily there before
being rocked and engulfed in the dusty, cloudy explosion. A glint
of sunlight on the windscreen before the blast.

I
channel-hopped desperately, catching the scrap of video, watching
it again and again as my coffee went cold on the floor, catching
the instant when the windscreen of the car flashed in the sun
before it detonated. A small, dark blue Toyota Tercel.

EIGHTEEN

Water flicked
through the car’s open window, lashing my eyes. I raced through the
city streets, the engine screaming and tyres hissing on the wet
tarmac. I broke out into open country and a vista of cypress-dotted
hills and rock outcrops before the road looped back into the
suburbs.

I sped around
a tight corner in a hilly residential area. The tyres hit a bad
road repair and I slid out of control across the smooth,
treacherous bitumen. The car spun a full circle before bumping
against the kerb, not a damaging impact, but heavy enough to jolt
me into awareness of my surroundings.

A pretty
street, one of the old ones. Silence, apart from the soft rain
falling around me and the ticking of the cooling engine, mist
rising from the hot bonnet.

I left the
car where it had stalled, impelled by a need for movement, any
movement to escape the horror of that piece of video, of the moment
before a street in Haifa was torn apart.

At the top of
the road there was a small, white building topped with a cupola and
a crucifix. I opened the whining iron gate and walked through a
pretty garden up to the big door of the church. Inside was warm,
the walls and ceiling coloured with rich Byzantine decoration,
golden icons hung on the walls, the flames of the candles bobbing
as I passed. Pinpricks of light stretched away from me, glowing in
the dark comfort of the interior. I walked up to the altar and
gazed at the Eastern sumptuousness of it all, my mind empty of
everything but the revulsion and shame filling me. I sat down on a
cold wooden pew, my fingers tracing the worn lines, the smell of
wood and frankincense in my nostrils as my breathing
slowed.