my jailers’ visits to beat and torment me. Even if you threatened to send me back to Gaza, I would rather die. So pull the trigger. Please.’
Raz could only stare at him. He wanted to tell the young man that he not only believed him, he also understood. For in many ways, he had lived the pain with his son.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Abed asked, raising his voice. ‘Are you afraid? Let me make it easy for you.’
Abed took a step towards Raz who tightened his grip on the gun.
‘Wait,’ Stratton said. ‘Wait,’ he repeated, then broke into a painful cough.
Abed paused to look down at Stratton who was raising a hand as if asking them to hold on while he got through his choking session.
‘He . . . he works for us,’ Stratton finally said after taking a deep breath.
Raz was initially thrown by the revelation, but then it explained some recent events. The two of them being here together did certainly raise a question, and Stratton was no doubt a member of MI6. He would certainly not be trying to save Abed’s life otherwise, who was now obviously the man seen running from the hotel with Stratton.
‘He works for British intelligence?’ Raz asked.
‘Yes. We need him,’ Stratton said.
Raz suspected the last comment, but then why else was Stratton trying to help Abed? He could not have known him for very long. In fact, if it was Abed who Stratton had met in Ramallah the night before, it would have been for the first time. That was also why there was no report of Stratton leaving the town, because he never went through any of the checkpoints. He couldn’t because he was with Abed who could not take the risk. No doubt they went through the old quarry. Shin Bet deliberately left that area unguarded for the times when they needed to monitor specific characters moving through it so that they could mount surveillance operations from a solid start point inside Ramallah, or entering Jerusalem. The only reason Stratton could possibly be helping Abed was loyalty. It was that warped British sense of fair play; even though Abed was a wanted terrorist, he was in the old city helping Stratton and therefore did not deserve to be captured. He would be fair game only when he was off and running again.
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ Abed said to Stratton. ‘You don’t know his kind. He wants to take me away and interrogate me, for weeks if necessary, until they have every piece of information they can get out of me, and then, if I survive, they’ll toss me into a stone room and leave me there until I can find a way to kill myself. He will kill me. He just needs a little help.’
Abed took another step towards Raz.
‘Stand still,’ Raz commanded. But Abed did not obey him.
Raz stepped back. ‘Stand still, I said,’ he shouted, but Abed ignored him, his expression calm, his hands moving out from his side ready for the shot that he hoped would kill him.
‘I’ve saved your life too many times to want to kill you now,’ Raz said, standing firm, the gun levelled at Abed’s heart.
Abed did not understand, and although the comment slowed him, he took another step closer to Raz, who was now within reach of him.
‘I am your father,’ Raz said.
Abed froze.
Stratton was equally stunned.
Raz stared at Abed, shaking with the effort to control his finger on the trigger, desperate not to have to pull it. ‘Do you remember the time you were hit by a car leaving your university?’ Raz said. ‘You thought you had damaged your hip so badly you would have a limp. Did you ever wonder why you received better care than all the other patients in your ward?’
Abed remembered it well, but he never thought he had a mysterious benefactor.
‘And during the many incursions into Rafah, the times you were released while others were taken away. You were on a list of people not to be harmed. Did your mother ever tell you where the money came from each month while you were growing up? And do you remember that day in your metal shop, when you were shot at by the soldier who had threatened one day to kill you? The last shot you heard came from the building beside you. That shot killed the soldier, fired by me.’
Abed was rocked to his very foundations, even more so than the night his mother