marathon heelers

Laurence Olivier as the fugitive Nazi is drinking tea with CIA agent Roy Scheider.
Neither is sure what the other knows.
Their conversation is the verbal circling of sharks.
The most deadly intent, hid in trivialities.
"We must talk," says Laurence Olivier his eyes cold and hard. "We must talk truthfully. Are you to be trusted?"
Roy Scheider doesn't break his gaze.
"No," he answers.
The ghost of a smile touches Laurence Olivier's mouth.
"Was that the truth?" he muses. "Or are you trying to upset me?"
Roy Scheider doesn't turn a hair.
"I know why you're here," he bluffs. "And I know that sooner or later, you're going to have to go to the bank."
Laurence Olivier's eyes are drowning pools.
"Perhaps I've already been," he murmurs.

***

My entire relationship with Amal (known to scholars of my work as Miss Arabia) was like this scene from the film Marathon Man.
Our most tender encounters, walks by moonlight, trysts on Grafton Street, feeding the pigeons in the park, were imbued with all the warm hearted elegiac sweetness of Nazi Laurence Olivier trying to outmanoeuvre CIA man Roy Scheider.
Only at the very beginning of our two month encounter did the odds favour me.
Right at the beginning I ambushed her.
Played all my cards.
Which was just a single card.
I knew she was a spy.
But I had no idea who for.
And so one evening, in the midst of one of our early Laurence Olivier/Roy Scheider type tea drinking sessions, I proffered: "Amal, old pal, what's it like being a spy?"
She rewarded me by nearly falling off her chair.
Her eyes, her manner, her posture, everything betokened shock.
I knew I had hit gold.
But I knew nothing else.
She mightn't even have been Arab.
Her hair was dyed.
Her eyes were blue.
So what was she?
She wasn't as good looking as your usual Russian agents.
She was more threatening than I've come to expect of the CIA.
And Al Qaeda don't normally allow their women near me in case I'd ride them.
Surely she can't have been Irish.
Ireland doesn't really have a secret service of its own.
We do have Guinness 16, an underfunded civil service department that tries to get foreign agents drunk.
But that's it.
Which leaves the Israelis, the Brits or the French.
And the frogs and the Brits would hardly be bothered.
And she was too bitchy to be an Israeli.
I don't believe there's an Israeli agent alive who would be capable of feigning dislike for me as intensely as this lady appeared to do it for real during moments of tender intimacy. (Before, during and after tiffin.)
The clue was in the leery look of repulsion which crept across her regal features whenever she thought I wasn't looking.
Although that might have been tradecraft too.
I mean when it comes to it, who could really dislike me?
What's not to like?
Tradecraft.
Yes.
Right along with the books she'd carried when meeting me for the first time.
Books like Understanding Israel, UFO's For Beginners, and a Carl Watergate biography of the Bushwhacker.
Too much of a coincidence.
I'd long had a strong and public sympathy for the Israelis.
I was very much interested in American politics and supported President Bush.
And I'd photographed Ireland's most dramatic and most widespread UFO sighting The Kilcullen Incident in 2006.
The day we first met, Amal had books under her arms which just happened to relate to all of these obsessions.
Everything into my bailiwick.
But two months after that first ambush, where I'd turned the tables on her, I still knew nothing more.
And she knew everything.
Her manner of communicating involved lots of questions about me, and thoroughly inconsequential throwaway comments about her.
She verily communicated in interrogatives.
If you knew nothing about tradecraft, you'd hardly notice it.
I'm no Roy Scheider.
I talked.
And when she'd heard enough she walked.
She may be a Laurence Olivier.
But truth be told.
Even now.
I don't know what the hell she is.