Espionage: A Jigsaw in 500 Pieces [part two]

by Peter Wild

[ Read chapters 1-10 ]

[ 11 ]

A man walks out of a building in Israel in 1974. In his left hand he holds a well-travelled leather satchel. There is an umbrella, of all things, clutched beneath his arm. The umbrella is unusual. There is no need of an umbrella, not today. The sun is blazing down, the heat is ferocious. The man pauses in the doorway; as if to get his bearings, he looks first one way and then another. Satisfied, he sets off, walking at a gentle pace. The man walks the length of Bialik Street before checking his watch. Then, he turns upon his heel and walks all the way back, retracing his steps. He doesn't look in any shop windows and he rarely lifts his eyes from the floor. If you look carefully, you will see that he is counting. Eh'ad, shnyim, shlosha, arba'a, he counts. At the first traffic light, he turns right onto Begin Street. He doesn't appear to be in any kind of hurry. There is a lilting gait to his walk. We could be watching Fred Astaire. The man is graceful. And still he counts, as he wends among the crowds. H'amisha, shisha, shiv'a, shmona, tish'a, assara. On Bezalel Street, he looks up at the Paz Tower and checks his watch again. A young woman approaches the man. Two streets over a bomb explodes. The ground shakes. The satchel is passed.



[ 12 ]

Later that same night, the man - Eluf Alameda - is found dead in his hotel room, impaled upon his umbrella. There is also a terrorist attack on the northern border town of Ma'alot. The woman, meanwhile, is followed. She is a highly trained professional, but still. She does not see the two men parked across from her hotel. Nor does she observe the bearded gentleman in the lobby of her hotel. Eyes are everywhere. She knows this. She presumes she is watched all the time. Such a presumption compels her to act quickly. They may come for her at any time. Or they may not. She knows the value of the satchel. Such value may serve to keep the wolves at bay. At least for a little while. She goes to her room, moves a plant pot from the bathroom to the veranda and waits. Waiting is a major part of the job. You have to be patient. Six hours later, she too is discovered, her head all but taken off by a piece of cheese wire, three fingers on the floor by her splayed feet. There is no sign of a forced entry and no sign of the satchel. What's more, the man in the lobby and the men in the car parked across the street played no part in the assassination. Or so they tell their immediate superiors.



[ 13 ]

Seven years go by. Two men meet amid the hustle and thrum of the busy Turkish market in Maybachufer, near Kottbusser Tor. Perhaps one of the men sat across the road from a hotel once upon a time. Perhaps one of the men used to go bearded, as was the style. Perhaps one of the men would go so far as to deny any involvement with Mossad. Perhaps the other of the men would categorically deny any relationship with the KGB. Howsoever, the two men meet. They greet each other and they walk, passing the time. Occasionally one of them smiles. They converse in French and they chit chat. They make small talk. This is a profession, after all, founded upon the principles of presenting a certain face to the world. Each man can imagine circumstances in which he kills the other. But there will be no killings today. Each man wants what the other can offer. Each organisation has a plan. Each thinks they know the way to retrieve the missing satchel. The Israelis think that there is a man, a certain man, who can help them. The Russians know the man cannot help them. It doesn't hurt to give a little, if by giving you also receive. The Russians want to know the answer to a question: who killed Eluf Alameda?



[ 14 ]

The Israelis don't know. But Steve McQueen knows. Steve McQueen is CIA. Between you and me. He would never admit it. You could torture him. Go ahead. He'd like it. He pays women a lot of money to torture him in his spare time. Partially because he thinks it makes him harder, better at what he does. And partially because after years of abuse, abuse makes him hard. Abuse helps Steve McQueen to get off. And Steve McQueen needs to get off. His job is a constant and unremitting grind. There is no let up for Steve McQueen. Not that he is really Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen is just his code name. This was back in the days when people at the agency had a sense of humour. Because, you see, Steve McQueen - agent Steve McQueen - didn't look anything like Steve McQueen, actor. Not a bit. If you set out to find the person in the world who looked the least like Steve McQueen, you wouldn't be far wrong if you settled on 'Steve McQueen'. But a man couldn't spend his life trapped within quote marks. So Steve McQueen was Steve McQueen was Steve McQueen, didn't let the joke nettle him, got on with things. It helped that he was the best agent the agency had. It helped that he knew where the satchel was.



[ 15 ]

Ostensibly, Giorgia Aiello was a barber. Ostensibly, he cut hair. Men, women, children. Wherever he was needed, whenever it was required, Giorgia Aiello was there. Snip-snip-snip. Appena il senso lo gradite, he liked to say to his customers as he whipped the white cover away, imagining himself to be a toreador facing down an enraged bull. His main patch was the town square of Limon sul Garda, but he had been known to travel a little further afield in his time. Come giovane, he'd made quite a name for himself. If Giorgia Aiello had not been there, it was not worth going. This was an expression coined by his grandma many years previously but the thought, the feeling, the idea had entered the popular collective memory of Limon sul Garda. Giorgia Aiello was il barbiere mobile, the travelling barber. The whys and wherefores of his acquaintance with Steve McQueen needn't concern us. Let us just say that Giorgia Aiello was known to the CIA and was known to be of use. Certainly Steve McQueen employed Giorgia Aiello as his satchel man for the better part of the 1980s. The organisation was pleased with Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen was pleased with Giorgia Aiello. Everything was just about peachy keen, jelly bean. And then a scientist made a discovery.



[ 16 ]

Apparently, the residents of Limon sul Garda experience a low incidence of cardiovascular disease. It was in all the newspapers at the time. For some unknown reason, the newspapers reported, the Limone villagers thrived and escaped heart disease, at a time when heart disease was the nation's number one killer. Intrigued by the anomaly, a horde of eager young scientists descended upon the town hoping to gain more insight into what made the villagers so damn special. Unfortunately, they drew journalists in their wake - as shit will invariably draw the flies - and the journalists sought to interview just about every damn person in the town. Who can say how Giorgia Aiello gave the game away? Who can say who saw what? All we know is, Giorgia kissed his wife buona notte one evening and was never seen again. The polizia did their best. But it was summer. They had a lot on. They couldn't be everywhere at once. And maybe just maybe Giorgia had left of his own accord. He was, after all, famous. He was il barbiere mobile, sì? As for the satchel... Well, of course. The satchel was gone too. The satchel was gone and the trail was dead, deader than dead, for the longest time, for a decade or more.



[ 17 ]

It is a decade of blood. Whoever has the satchel dies. The satchel is the kiss of death. The satchel ensures you are taken, somehow. In your sleep, perhaps, or while you are awake. It doesn't matter all that much. Just as long as you know. If you have the satchel you will be taken. A car explodes in Paris. An old man falls out of a window in Belgrade. A fire razes a small village outside of Lijian. Six solders die in a hail of gunfire on the road between Jordan and Petra. Mortar attacks level a supposed safe house in Haret, in the south of Beirut. A chemical fire kills a mother and her three children in a small semi-detached house in Glasgow. A man is found frozen to death, naked and frozen to death, in the alleyway behind his building in the heart of Mtsensk. Wherever the satchel goes, chaos follows. Krajina in 1991, Abkhazia in 1993, Kigali in 1994, Jakarta in 1998. The Gaza Strip, Darfur, New Orleans. And the rumours. Such rumours. The Russian mafia has the satchel, the PLO has the satchel, the IRA has the satchel. The satchel is in North Korea. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Iraq. Tel Aviv. The satchel is in Beslan, New York, Mumbai, East Timor, London, Bali, Madrid. And then the satchel was found - and the satchel was empty.



[ 18 ]

By which point, of course, you're thinking what the hell kind of jigsaw puzzle is this anyway? 18 pieces in and what have you got? A history of calamity and catastrophe. Who needs it? A jigsaw puzzle, lest we tread too far from our original starting point, is a leisure pursuit. Leisure rhyming with pleasure and not seizure. Leisure. As in something you do to take your mind offof the daily round of shit, right? I can see. I find your hesitation interesting. You're not the kind of person who will just give up like that. There is a beautiful little crease between your eyes. Part of you is waiting for the sun to break through the crowds. And part of you - part of you - wants to know what the hell is the problem with the satchel. I know. I'm interested myself. But I'm reluctant to interfere over much. I try to keep my distance. You should make your own way. Look at my wife, chuckling to herself as she peels and chops the root vegetables for her pot, for the broth she will make, the heartening food that will fill our bellies and keep us warm in the depths of the long night to come. She knows me better than I know myself. And yet, I hold my tongue. I bite my lip. I consider whistling and then think better of it. This is a decision you should make without me sticking my oar in.



[ 19 ]

But you should know. There is a piece of jigsaw not a hair's breadth from the tips of your fingers, a piece of jigsaw that will allude to an event that took place in the Hindu Kush, along the highway that links Kabul with Peshawar. An ancient young girl - ancient because she has seen much too much in her short life, young because she is still a girl and not yet a woman, for all that - sits at a roadside cafe listening to two old men argue about who is the greater poet, Bait Neka or Khushal Khan Khattar. They bicker and squabble over Shorba and beans, shovelling food up into their parched mouths with crusts of nihari as they spit, back and forth, Bait Neka, Khushal Khan Khattar, Bait Neka, Khushal Khan Khattar. A small cup of Sabz chai - which is black tea to you and me - sits going cold beside her. Her mind is elsewhere. An hour goes by before she nods, as if coming to an understanding with herself. She has a look on her face, a look that the Pashto would say was equal parts shortness, sense and salt. This is the look she wears as she unlatches the satchel and removes a box. This is the look she wears as she unclasps a knife and opens the box. This is the look she wears as she transfers the contents of the box from the box to a greasy brown paper bag. With such ease is history made.



[ 20 ]

A day or so later, the girl's body is found just shy of Dakka, where the Kabul River flows back to Peshawar through the Loe Shilman Gorge. Sprawled naked, with her throat cut, in the very spot where Alexander the Great crossed over into Asia in 326BC when he attempted to invade the Indus Valley, her murder is unpleasant but accidental. The contents of the satchel are left, in their greasy paper bag, not half a mile from where she is abandoned to invite the company of the birds. Steve McQueen finds them, rescues them, skips with something approximating glee into Peshawar, where he makes a deal with a band of gypsy in order to travel unimpeded through Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. He leaves them in order to pass through the Tian Shian, a celestial mountain range in China, before veering north across the Taklamakan Desert where he finds shelter among some of the Turkic Uyghur peoples of the area in order to ride out a terrible dust storm that can be seen from space. The Uyghur tell him that the desert is known as the Desert of Death, that Taklamakan means if you go in you will not come out but Steve McQueen doesn't listen.He can't. He has waited too long. He clutches the bag to his chest like a talisman to ward off evil, steals a horse and rides into the night.



[ 21 ]

Many, many months go by. Steve McQueen makes his way along the legendary Silk Road, through the commercial centres of North China. His route passes through Bulgar and Kypchak. Although it isn't always possible he attempts to maintain a northerly route. Eventually he finds himself on the shore of the Black Sea and he knows he is being followed. The bag is heavy in his hands. His palms sweat. He charters a boat, pays a captain of low standing to take him across the Marmara Sea, via the Balkans and into Venice. It is here, La Serenissima, that Steve McQueen plays his hand too soon. He takes a room at the Hostel Antico Capon. Makes three phone calls. Is visited by a person whom he regards as something of an old friend. She ties him up, at his request, and beats him unconscious, again at his request. At this point the room is turned upside down. The bag is nowhere to be found. Steve McQueen is carried from the room by the elegant lady's associates. He is driven to a small damp cellar where he is tortured. But don't worry. He is prepared. A lifetime of training has led here, to this point. He tells them nothing. Nothing. They torture him until there is nothing left to torture. But then the torturers find themselves in something of a quandary.



[ 22 ]

Their immediate superior - a man we will soon come to know somewhat intimately, as much, say, as it is ever really possible to know someone intimately - has no truck with failure. Their immediate superior is famous, if one so enamoured of secrecy can be said to be famous, in certain circles, for his relentless and unforgiving nature. Their immediate superior always blames the messenger for the message and many messengers have met grisly ends at his hands. And so these people start to dig, start to ask around, do their utmost to discover what happened to the brown paper bag Steve McQueen was seen bringing into the city. They act fast. They are, after all, highly trained assassins, thieves, killers, madmen. If they ask, you tell and many tell. But no matter. No matter how fast they act, the parcel travels faster. A gondolier named Alfredo, a motorbike courier named Jimmy, a greengrocer, a Chinese laundry house, a gossippy landlady. All do their bit. The parcel is taken out of the country. Over the course of three days, the parcel touches down in Albania, Kiev Borispol, Warsaw, Shannon and, finally, London. Unbeknownst to a rotund German tourist named Horst P Horst, the package makes its way via hand luggage in a National Express coach all the way to Manchester. In Manchester, it is raining.


© Peter Wild 2006

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Peter Wild is the co-founder of Bookmunch. He is the editor of a forthcoming series of books for Serpent's Tail, the first two of which - Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth - will be published in 2007. His writing and fiction have appeared in various outlets including Scarecrow, NOO Journal, Word Riot, Laura Hird, Nude Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Dreams That Money Can Buy and Eyeballkid.