Читать книгу The Spoils of War - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 19

6

Gaza

A guard, far more courteous than the last pair, took Rashid to a shower, and then to a room with a bed. He heard the guard turn the bolt from the outside, but at least the room was not in the basement, and it had a window on a dusty yard.

The night was cold. He lay with a single thin blanket and shivered, listening to the sound of knocking and ringing in the building’s steam pipes. He was exhausted, but the bile of betrayal—his own, others’, perhaps Salem’s—rolled around his guts. He shivered. His teeth chattered. Eventually, he slept, and in his dreams he ran and ran, while Salem called for help behind him.

Washington

Late in the day, McKinnon astonished Ray Spinner by poking his head into his cubicle and saying, “You’d better read this.”

Spinner saw the word demarche and From and To. He read the whole thing—naval officer, Israeli government with one foot in dogshit, naughty-naughty. It occurred to him that the Qatib business, which he had tried to kick sideways, was suddenly much bigger and much more important than he had thought.

McKinnon was leaning on the carpeted wall. “State’s got its balls in an uproar because Mossad was doing its job, apparently. About this Qatib, so your instincts were right in asking for follow-up. Full Marks. Some Navy guy got his pants caught in the gears, or something. Find out what happened and keep me current. One way or the other, the Qatib thing will expand and make at least a nice little case study.” He handed over another piece of paper. This time, he was grinning.

A reply, Spinner saw, from Dukas direct to the Assistant Secretary—Oh, my God!—with some sort of bureaucratic blahblah-blah. Spinner looked at McKinnon. Was he going to get fired now?

“Questions?” McKinnon said.

“What do I do about Dukas’s message?”

“That’s a dumb question, but you’re allowed one. Tell him to fuck off with the jokes and get you the data. That clear?”

“My pleasure.” So he wasn’t fired. He could feel sweat below his eyes. He tried to smile. McKinnon laughed and slipped out, and Spinner could hear him still laughing as he went up the row of cubicles.

In Israel, that was the day that an elderly man was kidnapped and murdered. The al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade claimed credit. It was also the day that two Palestinians shot into a car, killing an Israeli woman.