The Fury of Rachel Monette Page 28

Not a bad price, Rachel thought, for wood from a tree Christ leaned on. Via Dolorosa read a grimy sign beneath an arch. And below it a number, four. Jesus meets his mother. The Virgin Mary. One of the many biblical figures Rachel found completely alien. Abraham headed the list, for what he had been willing to do to Isaac. Or perhaps God did, for asking him to in the first place.

  She shifted the weight of the tape recorder on her shoulder and crossed the street. Something made her look back. Two men were watching her, a short one and a tall one. They both had wrestler’s bodies. All over the world men find time to give unaccompanied women the eye. Rachel continued on her way. But not eyes like those, she thought: hard narrow eyes staring so coolly, with no heat of lust in their gaze. She walked a little faster, and heard the leather heels of their shoes clicking on the stones behind her.

  Rachel entered a crowded bazaar. Little shops lined an alley barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Butcher shops. Carcasses hung on hooks from the roofs. Bloody sides of beef swarming with brown flies, sheep by the dozen, by the hundred, chickens, rabbits, pigs skinned whole, their eyes sightless in their naked faces. Ask for white steak. Rachel walked still faster. She pushed past a plump specter—a veiled woman in a white robe that dragged on the ground. Through the veil came an angry protest, briefly joining the other noises that filled the stinking air: haggling of shopkeepers, cries of butchers, the snuffling oink of a pig, thudding of sharp knives on blocks of wood, the click of hard heels on stone. Rachel turned a corner, dropped the tape recorder and ran, clutching the guidebook in her right hand.

  She raced down another narrow alley. It branched into three more that looked the same. She took the middle one, which quickly degenerated into little more than a cleft between two buildings. She felt beyond the bounds of civilization, trapped in the Dark Ages.

  A man with his hands full of orange curry powder leaned aside to let her go by. Behind she heard two runners. One seemed to gain with every quick stride. The short one. The other was farther back, not gaining, not falling behind. Rachel ran faster.

  Suddenly she emerged in a small square packed with Japanese tourists. Ahead rose one of the massive gates in the Old City wall. The short man was very close. She heard him panting. Rachel ran directly at the Japanese tourists. Almost in one motion they parted like a pair of cymbals. Through the gap she went, through the gate, and into a busy modern street, sucking in air and straining with every muscle.

  But she wasn’t fast enough. He was right behind her, his footsteps and his panting as loud in her ears as her own. She heard him leave the ground, felt his hands around her waist, his shoulder in her back. They tumbled, rolling on the pavement.

  Even as they rolled he began to close her in an iron grip. She tried to jab an elbow into his stomach. He grunted. For an instant the power in his muscles ebbed. Rachel twisted free, jumped up and began running again. Her skirt came off in his hands.

  Without it she was faster. She lengthened her stride. People turned to watch her but she didn’t think of stopping. She was looking for a policeman, a soldier, someone with a gun.

  She ran. Down one street. Into another. And behind her two sets of footsteps she couldn’t shake. She found herself in a street where all the inhabitants seemed to have come intact from a nineteenth-century European ghetto. She ran by men in long black coats and fur hats, and skinny boys with side curls on their faces. Some yelled at her. They were angry, she made them angry. Why? A bearded old man rode by on a bicycle. He spat in her face. The yelling grew louder. She ran for her life.

  At the corner. A policeman, directing traffic. No. A policewoman. Rachel ran to her, threw her arms around her.

  “Help me.” She looked back. The two men were coming fast.

  The policewoman pushed her away to arm’s length. She was almost as tall as Rachel, but broader and more muscular. “You should not come here dressed like this,” she said in very good English. “This is a very pious district. They demand modesty.”

  “For God’s sake. Those men are trying to kill me.” She pointed down the street. The policewoman’s eyes followed her finger. They were less than half a block away.

  “Those men?”

  “Yes yes. Get out your gun.”

  The tall man opened his mouth and shouted something. Rachel did not understand the words, but she heard the commanding tone.

  The policewoman smiled at her. She had big white teeth. “Not those men,” she said.

  “Yes,” Rachel screamed at the top of her voice. The policewoman reached to her belt and unhooked her nightstick. With one fluid motion she brought it down hard on Rachel’s head.

  Yellow trucks in the playroom. A big fleet. They had CB handles. Adam was Mudslinger, she Coyote. “Mudslinger to Coyote, Mudslinger to Coyote. Come in, Coyote.”

  “I hear you, Mudslinger.”

  “Say Coyote here first.”

  “Coyote here. You’re coming in loud and clear, Mudslinger.”

  “Good. I just wanted to tell you that Smokey’s up the road.”

  “Much obliged, Mudslinger. Ten-four.”

  “Ten-four.” Adam drove a yellow truck into a garage. He had to stand on the seat to see where he was going.

  “Careful.”

  The door closed. She waited outside. She waited for a long time. He didn’t come out. “Adam.” She opened the garage door. There was nothing inside but concrete blocks.

  Her job was to remove the blocks from the garage and pile them inside a Greek temple. Ten blocks to a pile, they said at first. Then they changed it to seven. She had to lift three blocks from every pile she had finished and stack them again. Three three and one made a pile. Two three and two. One three and three. Three three and one. She carried the blocks on her head like an African. After a while her head began to hurt. It began to hurt badly.

  Click.

  “Testing testing one two three four. What’s so funny?”

  “Don’t you think testing testing one two three four sounds funny?”

  “I suppose.”

  “All ready?”

  “Yes, Mr. Victor Reinhardt, I’m ready. I want my son.”

  Click.

  “That’s all?” A midwestern accent.

  “That’s all.” Slightly guttural. Israeli.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Wait. Unless you know a way to bring her out of it.”

  “We don’t have much time.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “Sorry. Why did that Amazon have to bop her so hard?”

  Sigh. “She is a mean one.”

  “Or else it’s her period.” Laugh.

  Rachel opened her eyes. She looked through a small hole in a gray fog. She seemed to be in a small bare office. She was sitting in a steel chair. A strange chair she noticed: it had leather straps on the arms. They were tied tightly around her wrists. And her head was bound somehow to the back of the chair. She couldn’t move her head at all. In front of her was a long wooden table. On it she saw her reel-to-reel tape recorder, her open suitcase, her handbag, her skirt. She felt the air on her bare legs.

  Two men stood on the far side of the table. One had sandy thinning hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a tan suit. The other man, a tall very broad man, wore a beige uniform. He had thick black eyebrows. Neither of them was looking at her.

  “What would you know about a woman’s period?” Rachel said. She tried to make her tone nice and nasty. It brought them on the run.

  “I think she’s coming to,” the sandy-haired one said.

  “Did you understand her?”

  “No.” He leaned close to her. “Did you say something?” She vomited in his face. “The God-damned bitch,” he said incredulously. “She puked all over me.”

  The fog rolled in.

  She went back to work, carrying blocks from the garage to the temple and arranging them in piles of seven. They were heavy and there were so many of them. She worked until her head was pounding, but she wasn’t getti
ng anywhere.

  “Enough,” she said. She braced herself for a big effort, and lifted her eyelids. She was looking into a pair of dark sunken eyes, older than any eyes she had ever seen. But they were not the eyes of an old man: the eyebrows which hung over them sprouted with luxuriant vigor. “You’re not so old.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” the man said in a soft Israeli accent. “Who are you?”

  “Everyone keeps asking me that. It’s making me self-conscious.”

  “Who are you?” he repeated. His tone wasn’t as soft the second time.

  The sandy-haired man stepped out of the fog. “There’s no time to play games with her.” He was the same sandy-haired man, but he had changed from his tan suit into a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt. He seemed very uncomfortable in the new outfit.

  “That just isn’t you,” Rachel told him. She listened to what she had said. Perhaps it was rude. “But what do clothes matter? Take me for example. I’m very informal.” She laughed. She would have slapped her bare thigh, but her arm appeared to be strapped to the chair.

  “How much hop did they shoot into her, for Christ’s sake?” the American asked.

  “Nothing excessive,” the Israeli said sharply. “She is a big woman.”

  The American seemed to be taking her side. That was very courteous considering that she had once done something bad to him. She tried to remember what it was.

  “You’re an American, aren’t you?” He didn’t answer. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. I’m a whiz at accents.” She closed her eyes. “Minnesota,” she said finally. “I’d say you’re from Minnesota.” Her eyes stayed closed. It was good to talk to another American. She hadn’t seen another American, not to talk to, for a long time. It was a hopelessly provincial reaction, she realized, but what was wrong with wanting to be with people who spoke one’s own language?

  “Perhaps we should try walking her,” the Israeli suggested.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  The straps on her wrists and neck were loosened. Her head was free to loll wherever it wanted. She let it.

  “Jesus Christ,” the American said. She felt strong hands in her armpits, heard a grunt of effort, rose out of the chair. “She’s one solid piece of meat.”

  She went for a walk. It was very pleasant. For a while she bent her knees and kept both feet off the floor at once; when that grew boring she dragged them behind.

  “Mother, may I take three baby steps?” she asked.

  “Do whatever you want,” the American said. “Just keep walking.”

  She took them one, two, three, and got away with it. That was very funny. Two such alert-looking men and neither one had noticed that she hadn’t said may I again before taking the steps. She should have been sent back to the start. She began laughing. Laughing and laughing. She didn’t stop until something cool and sharp reached in her nostrils, right up to the back, and into her brain. It didn’t fool her for a second. She was just as good at smells as she was at accents. Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean was poking around inside her nose. The bald little devil. No. Wrong. It wasn’t Mr. Clean. Just ammonia. Pure. Her eyes opened fast.

  She was looking again into the dark sunken eyes. “Is she coming around?” she heard the American ask nearby.

  The eyes moved a fraction in their deep sockets. “I think so.” The breath that carried his words brushed her cheek. He stepped back, putting a stopper into a small glass bottle. The American came forward, stooped, stared into her eyes. Suddenly everything came sharply into focus: the red flecks in the American’s green irises, two in the left, one in the right, the simple office, two steel desks, a rectangular wooden table with her things on it, two fluorescent tubes which ran the length of the ceiling, the steel chair in which she sat, bound; and through the single window the night sky, yellow lights winking on a distant hill.

  “My head hurts.”

  The American smiled, or rather the corners of his mouth rose. The green irises with the red flecks remained the way they were. “It could have been worse,” he said unsympathetically. “You’ve got a skull like a rock.”

  “I don’t.”

  The two men pulled up chairs and sat opposite each other. The dark man opened the flap of his shirt pocket and took out a passport. Her passport. He thumbed through the pages. “Rachel Monette,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever been in prison?”

  “No. Of course not.” Could he know about Mhamid?

  “Then at least it will be a new experience. You are going to prison for a long time.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Terrorism,” he said coldly. “Against the state of Israel.”

  “That is an absurd suggestion. For one thing I’m Jewish.”

  “Are you, Rachel Monette?” he asked softly. “Say something to me in Hebrew. Or Yiddish, if you prefer.”

  She knew not much more than shalom in one, oy vay in the other. “I’m not the only Jew who can’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish. It’s quite common at home.”

  “I am sure it is.” The dark head leaned toward her, not much, no more than two inches, but she somehow felt she was in the presence of tremendous aggression. “And you are not the only Jew who is also an anti-Semite,” he added in the same quiet tone.

  “Garbage.”

  “Shut your dirty mouth.” The American was on his feet. Without turning the dark man placed a restraining hand on his arm. The American sat down.

  “Or the first American adventuress attracted to the Arab left. They love sending pretty western women on errands.” The Israeli continued as if there had been no unpleasantness. “Who are you working for? The P.L.O.? The P.F.L.P.?”

  “I won’t say another word until I know who you are and why you are holding me here.”

  Rachel saw blood rush to the American’s cheeks, as if she had slapped them. The Israeli held up his hand before he could jump to his feet again. “My name is Grunberg,” he told her calmly. “I am a major in Israeli army intelligence. This gentleman is Mr. Dorschug. He is a representative of the United States government. You are here because you are one of the team that has been running Simon Calvi for God knows how long as an enemy agent inside this country. Naturally, now that we have you, we want to find out more about what has been going on. We would like you to tell us soon. Before Mr. Calvi’s speech at the university, in fact.” He looked at his watch. “That gives you a little more than six hours.”

  “So talk,” Dorschug prodded her.

  She faced him angrily: “If you’re with the U.S. government you should be doing something to help me.”

  “You stupid bitch. Don’t you understand? You’re going to rot in jail. If you start talking now there’s a chance you won’t rot quite so long. It’s as simple as that.”

  “There’s no sense trying to protect Mr. Calvi,” Grunberg said. “We know all about him. We even know that he is planning to say something dramatic in his speech. Something that at this very moment has the Lebanese and Syrian armies on full and secret alert. We even got a report in the last hour of troop movements in Jordan. So we are far ahead of you, Rachel Monette. What we would like to hear from you are the details of the speech. How does he propose to start a war?”

  “I don’t know anything about it.” Rachel needed five minutes alone. Calvi was her only hope. Without his help she would never see Adam again. These men thought Calvi was working for the Arabs. They said they knew all about him, but they couldn’t know what she knew: if they did Calvi wouldn’t still be in business. And Munich. If Munich was true, and she believed it was, then Calvi could not be an enemy of Israel. Not willingly, she thought suddenly. Not willingly. Who else knows?

  She became aware that they were watching her closely. “I need to use the toilet,” she said.

  Dorschug snickered. “First you must talk,” Grunberg said. It was not a threat; more a reminder of the natural order, like you have to learn how to walk before you can run.

>   “All I can tell you is that you’re making a big mistake. I am a freelance journalist. I make documentaries for radio. This afternoon, yesterday afternoon, I suppose by now, I saw Mr. Calvi for the first time in my life. We did nothing illegal. I interviewed him for a documentary I am making on multi-ethnic cultures. That’s the whole story.”

  “Very good. That should be easy to prove. We have only to listen to the interview.” He turned to the tape recorder and switched it on.

  “Testing testing. One two three four,” she heard herself say. Pause. “What’s so funny?” She sounded frightened and suspicious. How could he not have heard?

  Calvi’s deep voice, amused, wordly. “Don’t you think testing testing one two three four sounds funny?”

  “I suppose.”

  “All ready?”

  Her voice shook. “Yes, Mr. Victor Reinhardt, I’m ready. I want my son.”

  They watched the reels go round and round. “There is no more on the tape. As an interview about ethnic cultures I find it rather brief and unsatisfying.” The opaque black eyes bored into hers. “As what it is, I find it too baroque.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Yes, you do. You see, I believe you when you say you never met Mr. Calvi before yesterday. It follows that you must have a method for identifying each other. Passwords, Rachel Monette. I am talking about passwords. This one is sillier than most of them, that’s all.”

  “Surely you can’t believe what you’re saying. Why would anyone put something like that on tape?”

  “I asked myself the same thing. It is not really as difficult a question as it seems. There are amateurs in every profession, including this one. I hope you won’t be too insulted if I tell you Sergeant Levy reported that you were one of the most amateurish he had ever seen. Sergeant Levy works for me,” Grunberg added in the tone he used for explaining the natural order. “Apparently you didn’t even hold up the microphone to make it appear as though you were recording an interview. And the excuse you used to get rid of him was laughable.”

  “It’s only laughable if you don’t believe I am who I say I am.”

  “How can I believe you?” He allowed his voice to rise very slightly. “You are clearly not a journalist: a journalist would have recorded an interview.”