Free The Last Testament by Sam Bourne Page B

her strange encounter with the Guttman widow, the previous night. His message was urgent, Miss Costello. A matter of life and death . Maybe it would sound flaky to bring that up here. On the other hand—
    It was too late. Miller was getting up out of his chair.
    ‘OK, people, I think that’s enough Oliver Stone for one session.
    Mr Secretary, we’re going to keep pushing the talks at this end as if none of this other stuff was happening. Is that OK with you?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And shall I leave you to brief the President?’

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    ‘Sure. Yes.’ Everyone in the room, including the Secretary of State seven thousand miles away, knew this was an empty courtesy: Miller and the President spoke a dozen times before breakfast, no matter how many time zones stood between them. If there was any briefing to be done he would be doing it, probably within minutes.
    Miller looked up. ‘Anything else?’ He looked towards Maggie, who shook her head, and then to the consul who did the same.
    ‘OK.’
    The room broke up, every official eager to show the man from the White House that they were hurrying to return to their duties. Maggie filed out behind Davis.
    They all left too fast either to see Miller pull out his cellphone or to hear the three short, staccato words he whispered into it once he was connected to Washington: ‘Everything’s on track.’

    C H A P T E R N I N E
    JERUSALEM, TUESDAY, 3.17PM
    Maggie headed to the room Davis had set up for her, a work space for all State Department visitors. Just a desk, phone and computer. That’s all she would need. She closed the door.
    First, she checked her email. One from Liz, in response to a message Maggie had left on her phone, telling her of the sudden trip to Jerusalem. Subject: You go, girl!
    So my serious sister, you’ve finally made it into my crazy world.
    You know you’re now a character in Second Life? You know, the online thing where I waste WAY too much of my time. Seriously.
    You’re in some Middle East peace talks simulation thing. It even looks like you: though they’ve given you a better arse than you deserve. Here’s a link: take a look . . .
    Maggie clicked on it, intrigued. Liz had mentioned Second Life to her a couple of times, insisting it was not just another dumb game but a virtual addition to the real world. Liz loved it, evan-gelizing about the way you could travel and meet people – not orcs or dragon-slayers but real people – without ever leaving 64
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    your computer. It sounded horrendous to Maggie, but her curiosity was piqued. What did Liz mean, that Maggie was now a ‘character’ in it? A ‘peace talks simulation thing’ she understood: there were several of those online, where graduate students would role-play their way through the latest round of Middle East negotiations. Impressive that they already knew she was in Jerusalem. She guessed there had been a paragraph in one of the Israeli papers.
    The computer eggtimer was still showing, before eventually freezing in defeat. A message popped up saying something about a security block on the consulate network. Never mind, thought Maggie. Some other time.
    She went back through the inbox. Still nothing from Edward.
    She wondered if that would be it, if they would ever speak again, other than to arrange the removal of what was left of her stuff.
    Which, thanks to him, was not much.
    She clicked her email shut then, out of habit, brought up the New York Times and Washington Post websites. The Times had a story about the Israel shooting on Saturday night, including a profile of the dead man. Happy for the distraction, she read through it.
    Shimon Guttman first came to prominence after the Six Day War in 1967, in which he was said to have performed with military distinction. Seizing the chance to make the most of Israel’s new control of the historic West Bank territories of Judea and Samaria, Guttman was among the group of activists who famously found an ingenious