“Robbie,” he whispered, “son … I’ve been talking to Sharett. He—”
“Your friend Sharett.” Robbie kept his chin cupped in his hands, distorting the words. “Old mates, yes?”
“We’ve met.”
“So I gather. In New York. Interesting talker, isn’t he?”
Robbie’s churlish tone coming on top of the burns made Colin want to lash out as he had done years ago, when his son was just a kid. But old solutions didn’t function here. Not that they ever had.
“Yes, New York. When I was teaching there. And he was tracking Halib.”
“And Mum. Don’t forget Mum. He never did.”
“Your mother got into trouble, but it was all Halib’s fault. Sharett’s from the Israeli secret service; of course he was after them both. That’s his job.”
“And you helped him.”
Colin was silent.
“Didn’t you?”
“I had to give certain information to stop a murder.” “Oh, God!”
Robbie slipped off his rock and took a few steps toward the wadi wall, keeping his back to Colin. After a moment of hesitation, Colin followed. It wasn’t easy, feeling a way through the blackness.
“Tell me about it,” Robbie said softly. “Tell me all the things you’ve never said before. Not just the bits you fancy serving up in a sauce. The truth. Everything!”
“Tall order,” Sharett said laconically from somewhere close, making the Raleighs jump.
3 JUNE 1982:
NEW YORK
ROBBIE couldn’t understand why his mother had tears in her eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked dolefully at the school gate.
“Nothing, darling. I’m just a bit overcome, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Oh …”
How she wanted to disobey Halib, then! It would have been so easy to say, I’ve got a surprise for you: you haven’t seen Uncle Halib for so long and this afternoon he’ll be coming to collect you from school; won’t that be nice?
But Halib had warned her that if she so much as hinted at what was about to happen, his guarantee of safety for Leila and Robbie would be worthless. So instead of speaking the words she longed to say she merely shrugged. “No reason.”
Robbie’s face had whitened. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he muttered, turning away.
“Robbie!”
He looked over his shoulder. She could see that he, too, was close to tears. “What?” he cried.
“I …” Surely it could do no harm? Surely? “I was wondering. …”
He came back to her, obviously upset. “Tell me,” he said in a small voice.
“I was thinkingRobbie, do you believe in miracles?”
“Miracles?” He seemed to think the notion very daring, not quite nice.
Seeing the look on his face she faltered, not knowing how to retrieve her mistake. “Forget it,” she said lamely. “Mummy’s only teasing, that’s all. I’m not quite myself.”
He stared at her as if she’d gone mad, and for an instant she felt mad.
“Come give Mummy a kiss.” She crouched down, spreading her arms.
After a second of hesitation he ran into them and she embraced him with her eyes closed, trying to keep the image of his dear face imprinted behind her eyelids, until at last he pushed her away, but gently, and ran in to join his friends.
“I love you, darling,” she said to empty space as, swallowing back salt tears, she walked off.
There came a blank in her mind, then; a blank that only dissolved when she found herself sitting on a bench overlooking the river without any sense of how she’d got there. Such a lovely day. … The roar of the traffic behind her mingled with the chaos inside her head, making it ache.
How had she come to this pass?
When Halib told her bluntly that the Mossad intended to wipe her out, her and her beloved son and her husband, the options had instantly narrowed down to one: she had to do whatever Halib told her, because then, only then, would he be able to protect them. But as time went by, and Halib told her to do more and more strange, terrible things, the rationale for her decision weakened, until now she could only sit on a bench, helpless, and cry for the chance to divert this tidal wave about to overwhelm her.
She had made a mistake, many mistakes. She ought to have told Colin the same night Halib had delivered his cruel message. He was her husband, the man she loved, had loved, still loved; oh, God! “Oh, God,” she murmured, “how can I have been such a fool?”
No answer. Leila made an effort to dry her eyes. She had things to do, vital things, and was in no fit state to do them. But one notion refused to leave her head: she would summon Colin to be with her and Robbie the minute they arrived in Beirut. She would call from the airport, after immigration but before they collected their bags. She knew the phone, had used it before; it was just by the baggage claim area. She would call New York and she would say, “Come, darling! Come now!” That’s what she would do.
She felt so confused. She’d been in such a mess these past few days and never dared show it, God knew how she’d gotten this far. Of the mental checklist that had been guiding her there was now no sign at all. Halib, a voice wailed inside her brain, Halib, help me. God refused to come to her aid, but Halib worked better than God: as she spoke her brother’s name, she remembered the first item on today’s list: Robbie delivered to school, check, damn you, check. And the second. And the third. …
3 JUNE 1982: AFTERNOON:
UPPER WEST SIDE
Robbie’s school, overlooking Riverside Drive, was just five blocks away from the Columbia Law campus. As soon as Colin received the call from Tom Wainwright, theschool’s principal, he hurried down, arriving well before classes finished for the afternoon.
“Robbie complained of stomach pains around lunchtime and he didn’t eat,” Tom told him. “Then he was found vomiting and one of the teachers took him under his care, and next thing the boy was having some kind of hysterical fit. He’s better now, though. I’ll call him in … but before I do, may I ask you something? Has there been any problem with his mother lately?”
“No. Why?”
“His trauma seems centered around her.” Colin stared at the wall. “I … I just don’t know what to say.”
“Well. I’ll call him, then.”
One look at Robbie’s face told Colin the worst. The boy was ill.
“What is it, son?” While Tom Wainwright looked on concernedly, Colin knelt down and hugged Robbie to him. “What’s up, now?”
Robbie spirited a smile from somewhere. “You don’t know how stupid I feel,” he said in a low voice. “Oh, God—when I think how I’ve got to come back here tomorrow and face the other kids—”
“Don’t worry about that.” Colin glanced up at Wainwright, who nodded understandingly and left the room.
After a longish period during which Robbie failed to meet his eye, Colin said, “Tom mentioned something about Mummy.”
“This morning, when she left, she sounded so … strange.”
“In what way, strange?”
“She talked about miracles. And about not feeling herself. I … I don’t know why, Dad, really I don’t"—the words were coming out in a rush now—"but I can’t get it out of my head that she’s in some kind of trouble. Please say she’s all right, say it!”
Colin stared at his son. For a twelve-year-old, Robbie was altogether too much of a worrier. Leila knew that. Yet this morning she’d apparently said something that had ruined his day.
“Mother’s all right,” he said aloud. “Of course she’s all right.” He clapped Robbie on the back. “I think you and I deserve an early night.”
They walked out to the car. This afternoon the boy, usually so voluble, seemed subdued and distant. While Colin was fumbling for his car keys they heard a bell sound in the school, and the rumble of chairs being pushed back.
A long black limousine with tinted windows and a boomerang-shaped aerial on it
s trunk turned into the quiet street.
“It’s possible,” Colin said as he opened the door, “that your mother’s not well, or maybe she was feeling depressed.”
Robbie shrugged.
The black limousine was accelerating now, still almost silent. In the schoolyard, just behind the twelve-foot wall, hundreds of pupils were flooding out from class. The street echoed with their pleasure.
Colin slid into the driver’s seat and reached across to open the nearside door for Robbie. Behind them, the driver of the black limousine suddenly put his foot on the gas, hard, and the huge car’s tail dropped with the force of acceleration, its boomerang aerial dipping like an aileron. From less than twenty yards away, it covered the distance to where Robbie was half in and half out of the car in no more than a couple of seconds.
The limo drew level with Colin’s Ford. Two men flung themselves out, one running behind the Ford, the other in front, so that Colin saw the latter’s face and knew him for an Arab. A flicker of movement in the rearview mirror showed him the second man, also heading for the pavement, moving so fast that the message penetrated Colin’s brain with the immediacy of an electronic display: Robbie in danger!
Colin hurtled from the front seat of his car, shouting, “Hey! Back off!” And at that moment, in the very second the Arab laid hands on Robbie’s sleeve, a great, vital wave of children came crashing around the corner where the street intersected with Riverside Drive, whooping and hollering; Robbie jerked away from his attacker with a squeal; the second man, Arab also, looked over the first man’s shoulder and shouted; Colin, too, shouted. “Help!” he roared at the top of his voice. “Murder, help!”
The amorphous child wave did not falter, but it changed upon the instant from a gaggle of innocent youngsters to a hungry mob. The Arabs sensed it. They hesitated—just for a second, but enough to tell the children through invisible antennae that they had the upper hand. The man who’d been clasping Robbie’s sleeve released his grip. He backed away.
Suddenly the two of them were racing for the limo.
Colin ran around the front of his Ford in pursuit. The
crowd of roaring teenagers at his back gave him courage;
he never stopped to think whether the men might be
armed. He was gaining on them, mere feet away
But the two Arabs threw themselves into the limo, which shot off with a screech of tires that seemed to hang in the air long after it had thrust its way into Riverside Drive.
Robbie ran to his father. “Are you all right?” he cried, while hosts of curious children swarmed up and down the street, wondering what it was they had seen, what they had unconsciously taken part in.
“I’m all right,” Colin said, but he continued to stare after the stretch limo, even though nothing remained on the street to prove it had ever been there at all.
“Did they have guns, Dad? Is that why you stopped? Were they armed?”
A pause. “Yes, that’s right, son. That’s why I stopped chasing them.”
Robbie had been traumatized enough today. Better not to tell him that he’d seen Halib Hanif sitting in the back of the stretch car, or that upon his face had been an expression of murderous rage.
3 JUNE 1982: AFTERNOON:
TEMPLE EMANU-EL
Sharett and Neeman pushed through the heavy door and found themselves in darkness broken only by a pink flashing sign warning of two steps down. As they moved forward it became lighter; not much, but enough to show them a slice of Temple Emanu-El’s interior. Raful groped his way toward the nearest of the stark wooden pews and lowered himself into it. He sat there with his hands on his knees, gazing around, and his head shrank farther into his shoulders until by the time he’d made a complete survey he looked almost deformed.
He hated this place. It was full of empty spaces, and shadows, and darkness, and the somber half-light of a funeral parlor. He had never seen such an enormous synagogue: its main hall could contain over a thousand people, and on the northern side was a side hall with room for still more.
At the back, dominating the gallery, a lofty window of blue-and-gold stained glass admitted shreds of natural light. The only other illumination came from electric bulbs suspended so far up this enormously high edifice that Raful couldn’t even see how they were fixed to the ceiling. Aisles ran along each side of the main hall, and they were scarcely lighted at all. Above those aisles were galleries, arches of stone framing deep black empty spaces that afforded perfect cover for a marksman, for a whole company of marksmen.
Ahead of him Raful could see the Ark, framed between intricate mosaics, with two seven-branched menorah candlesticks on either side, their red flames fueled by cunning electric lamps that appeared to flicker naturally. It was Gothic, medieval, fit for the playing out of a tragic opera’s final act. A jealous God lived here, a God of wrath and vengeance, and he was waiting in the shadows, waiting for what would be. Sharett looked again at the distant stained glass—"stained,” somehow so appropriate to this place—the faded strips of red carpet along the aisles, the vapid lights, the arches, the shadows, the brooding, majestic Ark, the shadows, the shadows, the shadows; and he turned to Neeman and said, “Dannie. Dannie, tell me just one thing. If you wanted to kill an ambassador, where would you chose to do it?”
And Dannie Neeman screwed up his mouth to one side before saying quietly, “Here.”
Raful sighed. “Katz says they’re using the smaller synagogue for the bar mitzvah this evening, over on that side,” he said, pointing north. “So let’s go take a look.”
They slid along the pew and made a half circuit of the synagogue until they reached the side hall. This seemed darker yet. The Ark was less ornate, but there was a presence here, something unmistakable, almost tangibly real. Outside, New York sweltered in the high eighties, but Raful could feel goose bumps on his flesh, along with the chilly sensation that heralds the onset of flu.
“We’re going to bring Moshe in here?” Neeman asked Sharett. “Seriously?”
“I got his personal security people to report on this synagogue, and the answer came back No Problem.” But Raful’s chill deepened.
“Raful.” Neeman’s voice was hushed. “Are we going through with this?”
Raful had the grace to hesitate. He thought of Sara, of Esther, of Ehud Chafets, who had failed but who had been a good man. He remembered what happened to human flesh, even, especially, to firm young female flesh, when you fragmented a bomb in close proximity to it. He made one last inspection of the synagogue, seeking to penetrate the ubiquitous multishaped shadows that shrouded everything and everywhere, like a cloth of black velvet.
He had to lure the Hanifs out into the open. Had to!
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
3 JUNE 1982: EARLY EVENING:
UPPER WEST SIDE
Colin had been looking forward to a showdown with Leila, so her absence from home came as a disappointment. It also meant that he had nothing to distract him from the shock of seeing Halib after the assault on his son.
He must report the incident to the police, but first he sent Robbie upstairs to do homework. Mentally squaring himself, he approached the telephone extension on the kitchen wall and lifted the receiver. Oh, shit! Answering machine on.
He marched into the hallway and was about to click the machine off when he saw that someone had left a message, so he pressed PLAYBACK instead.
“Hello, Leila?” A deep, throaty woman’s voice. “Elaine Cohen. I can’t come pick you up, I’m sorry. So see you in shul. Oh, listen, if you need to speak, I’m at Geula’s, but don’t dial her usual number, it’ll be ringing off the hook; here’s her personal direct line, she won’t mind if I give it you. …”
Colin turned off the machine and started thumbing through the pad on which they kept their most-used phone numbers. Police…
Slowly the significance of what he’d just heard filtered through, and he straightened up. Shul? What on earth would Leila be doing in a synagogue? Wron
g number … no, the caller had definitely said “Leila"; the name wasn’t that common.
Who was Geula? He didn’t know any Geulas. Or any Elaine Cohens. Columbia’s Dean of Law was called Cohen, but…
Colin replayed the message, this time noting down the number at the end, Geula’s number. He dialed.
“Katz residence.”
“Uh … is my wife there, please? Mrs. Leila Raleigh.”
Many voices in the background; other vague sounds that might have been glasses, or cutlery, being humped about in large quantities.
“Hello?” A new voice, a woman. “Geula Katz speaking.”
“May I speak to my wife, please? Mrs. Raleigh?”
“Oh, you must be Colin? Hi, there! I’ve been dying to meet you for so long now. When are you going to be here?”
“Here?”
“The sendah. Leila told me you won’t be able to make synagogue, that’s too bad, but never mind, you just come on to the party whenever you’re ready. Look, I really must fly, shul is due to begin any minute. … Your wife isn’t here, but the minute I get to Emanu-El I’ll tell her you called.”
“Can you—”
But the line had fallen silent. Colin put down the receiver, a frown on his face. His heart was not so much beating as jolting.
Did Leila have a lover? He lowered himself into the nearest chair and gazed at the phone. He’d wondered for ages. A thousand little signs, all of which he’d deliberately ignored. Unexplained phone calls, lied about afterward. Strange messages jotted on the phone pad: “Oh, I can’t think why I wrote that, now.” And he’d desisted, because you didn’t cross-examine your wife, not unless you were prepared to recess and then take it up again in a divorce courtroom.
So. This, it seemed, was the night he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Emanu-El synagogue, followed by a party at the Katzes’ place. Wherever that might be. It seemed he had an invitation, however, so he might as well go. Who were these people? They couldn’t all be wives, sisters, mothers of Leila’s lover. Suddenly he knew he had to go wherever Leila was, and he had to do it now. No, it couldn’t wait. No, it wouldn’t be better to discuss this thing in private. Now, now, now!
Blood Rules Page 36