He was not a drinker, she could see that. He nursed his whisky and water as if it were a rare and precious liquid that had to be observed, rather than consumed. Her own stylea quick knock-back and then ordering a refilllooked positively uncouth by comparison.

'So what about this film-making then?' she said, removing her shoes under the corner table they had taken and enjoying the relief that coursed through her feet and upward.

'What about it?'

'How come you're good at it?'

He smiled, recognizing the return of his own inquiry. 'You don't know if I'm good at it.'

'Oh, I think I can tell. You hold yourself like a successful man.'

'Well, it's kind of you to say so. Did you see The Truth about Boys The Truth about Boys?'

'The one that followed those four teenagers? I saw that last year: it was brilliant.'

'Thank you.'

'That was you?'

'That was me.'

'Jesus. I couldn't believe what those lads said on camera. I thought there were hidden cameras or something, they were so honest. How on earth did you get them to do that?'

'No hidden cameras. There is a big secret though. Which you mustn't let on. It's commercially sensitive.'

'I'm good with secrets.'

'The one thing you have to do, and this is really the key to the whole thing. You have to...No, I can't.' He screwed his eyes into a look of mock suspicion. 'How do I know if I can trust you?'

'You know you can trust me.'

'The secret is listening. You have to listen.'

'And where did you learn that?'

'From my father.'

'Really? I didn't imagine him as the listening type.'

'He wasn't. He was the talking type. Which meant we had to listen. We got really good at it.'

He smiled and took another sip of the amber liquid. Maggie liked the glow it made around his mouth and eyes. He had, she told herself, one of those faces that you wanted to look at.

'Anyway, you only answered half my question before. I get how you're a mediator, but not really why.'

'You asked me "how come".'

'Right. And that's part how and part why. So tell me the why.'

Maggie looked at this man, leaning back in his chair, also relaxing now for the first time since they'd met. She was aware that this was some kind of respite for him, a break from mourning, a chance for lightness after the weight he had been carrying around for four days. She was aware that it was a fleeting mood, that it could not possibly last. Yet she couldn't help herself: she was enjoying this moment between them. She wouldn't just swat aside his question with a joke or a change of subject, as she had learned to do with the countless men who had come on to her in late-night bars in foreign capitals. She would be honest.

'The why sounds so corny no one ever talks about it.'

'I like corny.'

Maggie looked at him hard, as if she was handing him a fragile object. 'The very first time I'd been abroad was when I volunteered in Sudan. While I was there, a civil war was raging. One day we were driving back and we saw a village that had been razed to the ground. There were bodies on the roadside, limbs, the whole thing. But the worst of it were these children, alive, but wandering around aimlessly, stumbling really. Like zombies. They had seen the most awful things, their parents killed, their mothers raped. And they were just dumbstruck. After that, I thought if I could do anything, anything at all, to stop a war lasting even one day longer, then it would be worth it.'

Uri said nothing, just kept his eyes locked onto hers.

'Which is why I couldn't bear to be kept away from it all this time.'

He furrowed his eyebrows.

'I haven't told you, have I? This is my first a.s.signment for over a year. I've been brought back out of retirement.' Maggie drained her gla.s.s. 'Forced retirement.'

'What happened?'

'I was in Africa, again. Mediating in the Congo: the war no one ever talked about. No one gave a f.u.c.k, even though millions died there. Anyway, it had taken eighteen months, but we finally had all the parties on board for a deal. We were days away from a signing, maybe weeks. But very close. And I made-' She looked up at him, to see if he was still with her, and he was, his concentration absolute. 'I made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.' Her voice was cracking now. 'And because of that mistake, because of me me, the talks broke down. The deal was off.

'I had to leave the Congo a few days later and when I did, when I took the main road out to the airport, I saw them again. Those faces, those kids, teenagers, young girls, that same stunned look in their eyes. And I realized that they were like that because of me, because I had f.u.c.ked up so badly.' A tear trickled down her cheek. 'And those faces will haunt me for the rest of my life, no matter what I do.'

Only then did Uri put down his gla.s.s and lean forward out of his chair to touch Maggie's hand. He held it tightly, until he eventually stood up and brought Maggie up with him, so that her head was resting on his chest. Without saying a word, he stroked her hair, over and over, which only made the tears come faster.

They moved upstairs, to her room, in silence. Once the door was closed, they stood together for a while until, without any act of volition either of them could remember, their lips touched. They kissed slowly, shyly, their tongues making the lightest possible contact with each other.

Her hands were the first to move, placing themselves on his chest, feeling its muscled hardness. He moved gently, his right palm only grazing the side of her breast, a touch which made her shudder with pleasure.

When his left hand found the s.p.a.ce between the top of her skirt and her shirt, his fingers tingling across her naked skin, she pulled away.

'What? What is it?'

Maggie stumbled backwards, until she was sitting on the bed. She leaned across and found the light switch, dazzling them both and breaking the spell between them.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she said, shaking her head and avoiding Uri's eye. 'I just can't do it.'

'Because of the man at home.'

It should have been because of Edward, she realized with a guilty start; but it wasn't. 'No. No, it's not that.'

Uri turned his face away from her. The look in his eyes changed, as if a protective cover was being drawn over them.

'Uri, please. I want to tell you.'

He let his eyes meet hers, then lowered himself into the chair at the desk.

'You see, I didn't tell you everything about my mistake. Back in Africa. It wasn't a-' She struggled to find the right word. 'It wasn't a...professional error. I didn't screw up the negotiations.' She gave a bitter smile, realizing the linguistic trap she had just walked into. 'I screwed one of the negotiators. That was my mistake. A leader of one of the rebel groups.' She looked up at Uri, expecting the disapproval to be etched into his face. But he just listened. 'Of course, everyone found out. And when they did, they said I could no longer be impartial. And that therefore the United States was no longer impartial. The talks were suspended.'

Uri sighed. 'And that's why they sent you into exile, away from your job. To punish you.'

'No, not really. That was me who did that. Punishing myself.' She offered him a wan attempt at a smile, but she could barely see his reaction: her eyes were too blurred with tears. It was such a relief to be telling him. 'You know, people keep telling me I should move on. Edward would say it again and again. Move on. But I just can't. Do you understand that, Uri? I can't move on. Not until I've made things right. And I won't do that if I make the same mistake again.'

'But, Maggie.' He smiled. 'I'm just some guy you met. I've got nothing to do with the peace talks.'

'No, but you're an Israeli. And you know how crazy this place is: that counts as taking sides.'

'You're a.s.suming people would find out.'

'Oh, they'd find out.' She was trying not to look at him for too long, her eyes darting back and forth to the floor instead. She feared that if she saw him as she had seen him just a few moments ago, her resolve would crumble.

She got up off the bed and opened the hotel room door, wide enough so that both of them could see the corridor outside. Uri rose to his feet. Her eyes still wet, Maggie said quietly, 'I'm sorry, Uri. I really am.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

JERUSALEM, THURSDAY, 7.15 AM AM.

Maggie bolted upright, her heart thumping. She was confused, taking a second or two to look around the room and realize where she was. It was the phone that had done it, shocking her out of deep sleep. No matter that she had arranged a wake-up call from the hotel operator for this hour. Any sudden sound, whether an alarm clock or a telephone, always came as a shock.

'Yerrrr.'

'Maggie? This is the Deputy Secretary.'

Jesus. Maggie pushed the phone away from her mouth and cleared her throat. 'Yes. h.e.l.lo.'

'I need to see you in fifteen minutes. Meet me downstairs.'

Over coffee, Robert Sanchez set out just how bad things were. Both sides seemed to be trying to keep the lid on the violence, though there had been armed clashes in Jenin and Qalqilya and Israel had reoccupied whole swathes of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians meanwhile claimed a dozen children had been killed in the last two days of fighting, while word was coming through of a minibus full of Israeli school pupils that had been blown up that morning by a suicide bomber just outside Netanya.

Worse, the whole region seemed to be preparing for war. Not only was Hizbullah hurling rockets from Lebanon onto Israel's northern towns and villages, but now Syria was mobilizing its troops around the Golan Heights. Egypt and Jordan had both recalled their amba.s.sadors from Tel Aviv. Sanchez held a clutch of printouts from the American press: both the New York Times New York Times and and Washington Post Washington Post were drawing comparisons with 1967 and 1973, wars that engulfed the entire Middle East. 'This time it will be worse,' said Sanchez. 'Half of these countries have got nukes now. They'll soon suck in the whole d.a.m.n world.' were drawing comparisons with 1967 and 1973, wars that engulfed the entire Middle East. 'This time it will be worse,' said Sanchez. 'Half of these countries have got nukes now. They'll soon suck in the whole d.a.m.n world.'

The prognosis could not have been gloomier. Yet Maggie found it comforting to be sitting with Robert Sanchez again. He was one of the very few people in the current State Department she knew at all, and certainly the only familiar face in the US team in Jerusalem. His reappointment as number two had surprised Washington; he was a holdover from the previous administration. Press consensus said he was there to hold the hand of the new Secretary, an immediate vote of no confidence from the President in his own choice for the top job. But Maggie couldn't have cared less about all that. She had worked with Sanchez twice before and come to respect and, even rarer in this business, trust him. He had led the second string US team on the Balkans to which Maggie was attached when she was a novice and she had watched his patient, deliberate method of working. No grandstanding, no media leaking, dogged preparation. He had slipped quite naturally into the role of mentor then and later, when they met again during the north-south talks in Sudan.

He was a doubly unusual fixture on the Washington diplomatic landscape. For one thing he was a real diplomat, not just some high-dollar donor to the party in power, rewarded with a juicy amba.s.sadorship. As a career officer rather than a political appointee, he had gone as far as he could go: he could never be Secretary of State. That he had become the deputy was rare in itself.

More relevant, at least to Maggie, was that Sanchez was one of the few Hispanic-Americans to be found at the upper reaches of the US government. They made an unlikely pair, the big, bear-like guy from New Mexico and the slender girl from Dublin, but among the b.u.t.toned-up white males of the State Department, they were both outsiders. That much they had in common.

'It's only lucky we're not in Camp David or somewhere,' Sanchez was saying. 'If we were, the parties would have gone home by now. As it is, Government House is virtually empty.'

Maggie forced herself to wake up, glugging back the coffee. 'Don't tell me: the two sides have pulled back their negotiators for "consultations"?'

'Exactly.'

'And this started with the killings?'

'Yep. First it was Guttman, then Nour. To say nothing of the Jenin raid on the kibbutz last night-'

'Sorry, Jenin raid?'

'Yep. Turns out it was some kind of Palestinian cell from Jenin. They crossed over and got through to Bet Alpha.'

'The Israelis know that for sure?'

'Yeah, the terrorists sprayed some slogan on the wall. No sleep for Bet Alpha till there is sleep for Jenin No sleep for Bet Alpha till there is sleep for Jenin.'

'And the Israelis are saying that's grounds to break off talks.'

'Well, they haven't gone that far yet.'

'Just "consultations".'

'Right. But what's got them freaked is that they thought they had stopped attacks from Jenin. Ever since they built the wall-'

'I think you mean the "security barrier", Robert.' Maggie was smiling.

'Whatever you want to call it, it's been keeping out attacks from the West Bank. Yariv's got the right wing killing him, saying that he's been so busy sucking up to the Palestinians that he's left the country exposed, so now he's negotiating under fire.'

'And does Yariv know how they got through?'

'That's the thing, Maggie. Even our intel guys are stumped by it. The Israelis say they've checked the length of the wallexcuse me, the barrierand they can't find a breach.'

'So what could it be?'

Sanchez lowered his voice. 'The Israelis are worried it represents some kind of escalation. That maybe the Palestinians are stepping up the degree of sophistication. As a warning.'

'Have the Israelis responded?'

'Only a statement. Unless you count the killing last night.'

'What killing?'

'Didn't you get the CIA note?'

Doubtless sent at 6am, thought Maggie. When the rest of the State team in Jerusalem were already up, showered and briefed she was sleeping off a light night in the bar with- 'There was a stabbing in East Jerusalem last night. In the street market. Some trader.'