A Dark Nativity by George Pitcher

Author:George Pitcher [Pitcher, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783524365
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

Part 2

11

I was wearing the half-smile of the incredulous, palms upwards on my knees, jaw slightly dropped. Toby was weaving in his hatchback through the Jerusalem traffic like a native. He was shaking his head.

“I tell you he came on to me, Toby.”

“I just don’t believe it.”

“Is that you don’t believe me as in you think I’m making it up, or as in you’re amazed and can barely warrant it?”

Toby carried on shaking his head and hooted at a cyclist.

I’d come strangely to like the boy Toby. We’d flown out via Switzerland, where we’d had an overnighter to collect a briefing from some UN worker bees – they don’t like to be called drones – about the projected $10 billion aid budget for the occupied territories. That was so I could speak “with some authority” about it at the conference. I took that as a clear signal that I was meant to talk their book.

I didn’t mind that, if the money was real, and I guess Zurich was meant to show me that too. I’d emailed Sarah, who was already in Jerusalem, and reckoned on her telling me what to say. I was obeying her and, now that Adrian was finished, I reckoned we were back on the same page.

We seemed an odd couple, Toby and me – he the young spook, me the washed-up aidie – to have this geopolitical power play performed just for us. It was like some silly case of mistaken identity, or like we’d won a competition to see how the peace process worked. I couldn’t or wouldn’t take it too seriously, especially in our down time and would send it up to Toby. Did he think Tel Aviv would get a Disneyland? Were we on commission? Could I get a photograph with the cheque – perhaps one of those giant charity ones – at the Shrine of the Holy Sepulchre?

“I’m just saying Americans don’t do that kind of thing. They’re too worried about getting into trouble. It wouldn’t happen.”

“But I’m telling you it did, Toby. Maybe he couldn’t resist me.”

“Now you are making it up.”

“Well, thank you very much, Tobes, you’re a gent.”

I didn’t care whether Toby believed me or not. In fact, I rather suspected that he was required not to believe me, otherwise he’d be in possession of salient information that he may have to report. So it was probably easier to keep it at the level of regular banter. For Toby’s sake, I didn’t tell him that I’d damned nearly crippled the American jerk. Maybe ruined his reproductive prospects.

We’d been introduced at a networking event ahead of the conference. Toby had taken his responsibilities as my escort very seriously, installing me in one of his office’s low-rise apartments in a leafy enclave of suburban Jerusalem, and had rarely left me alone as the conference approached. It was convened at the Mount Scopus campus of Jerusalem University, to the north-east of the city – a sort of white concrete affair that could have been one of England’s more modern universities.

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