by Dan Simmons
Harod had remembered that. Until now. “Come here,” said Barent. His voice was still soft, well modulated, but it seemed to reverberate until it filled Harod’s skull, filled the room, filled the universe so that the stars shook to the echo of it. “Come here, Tony.”
Harod, on his knees, arms, neck, and body straining, was jerked onto his back like some stuntman being pulled off his horse by an invisible wire. Harod’s body spasmed and his booted feet beat on the carpet. His jaws clenched and his eyes bulged in their sockets. Harod felt the scream build in his throat and knew that it could never be released, that it would grow there until it exploded, throwing shards of his flesh across the room. On his back, legs stiff and spasming, Harod felt the muscles of his arms contract and expand, contract and expand, his elbows digging into the carpet, fingers hooked into claws, as he slid backward toward the seated shadow. “Come here, Tony.” Like a palsied ten-month-old learning to crawl on its back, Tony Harod obeyed.
When his head touched the low coffee table, Harod felt the vise of control release him. His body spasmed in such release that he almost urinated.
He rolled over and got to his knees, his forearms on the black glass of the tabletop.
“Aim the gun at me, Tony,” Barent said in the same conversational tone as before.
Harod felt a killing rage surge through him. His hands shook wildly as he felt for the gun, found the grip, raised it . . .
The barrel had not been leveled when the sickness struck. Years ago, his first year in Hollywood, Harod had suffered a kidney stone. The pain had been incredible, unbelievable. A friend later told Harod that he imagined it was like being knifed in the back. Harod knew otherwise; he had been knifed in the back while running with a Chicago gang as a kid. The kidney stone hurt more. It was like being knifed from the inside out, like someone dragging razor blades through your entrails and veins. And along with the incredible pain of the stone itself had come instant nausea, vomiting, cramps, and fever.
This was worse. Far worse.
Before the barrel came level, Harod was curled on the floor, vomiting on his silk shirt and trying to wrap himself in a knot. Along with the pain and sickness and humiliation there was the overwhelming knowledge that he had tried to hurt Mr. Barent. The idea was insupportable. It was the saddest thought Tony had ever suffered. He wept as he vomited and groaned with pain. The pistol had fallen out of his limp fingers onto the black glass tabletop.
“Oh, you don’t feel well,” Barent said softly. “Perhaps Ms. Chen should aim the weapon at me.”
“No,” gasped Harod, curling into a tighter ball. “Yes,” said Barent. “I want her to. Tell her to aim the gun at me, Tony.”
“Aim the gun!” gasped Harod. “Aim it at him!”
Maria Chen moved slowly, as if underwater. She lifted the revolver, steadied it in her small hands, and aimed it at Tony Harod’s head.
“No! At him!” Harod doubled over as the cramps struck him again. “At him!”
Barent smiled. “She does not have to hear my orders to obey them, Tony.”
Maria Chen pulled the hammer back with her thumb. The black opening was aimed directly at Harod’s face. Harod could see the terror and sorrow building behind her brown eyes. Maria Chen had never been Used before.
“Impossible,” gasped Harod, feeling the pain and illness recede and knowing that he might have only seconds to live. He staggered to his knees and held his hand up as a useless shield against the bullet. “Impossible . . . she’s a Neutral!” He almost screamed it.
“What is a Neutral?” inquired C. Arnold Barent. “I have never encountered one, Tony.” He turned his head. “Pull the trigger, please, Maria.”
The hammer fell. Harod heard the solid click. Maria Chen squeezed the trigger again. Again.
“How careless,” said Barent. “We forgot to load it. Maria, could you help Tony to his seat, please?”
Harod sat shaking, sweat and vomit plastering his shirt to his stomach, his head bowed, forearms on his knees.
“Debra will take you below and help you clean up, Tony,” said Barent, “and Richard and Gordon will clean up in here. If you would like to come up later and have a drink in the Orion Lounge before we land, do feel free. It is a unique place, Tony. But please remember what I said about the temptation others will have to . . . ah . . . rearrange the natural order of things. It is at least partially my fault, Tony. It has been too many years since most of them have experienced a . . . ah . . . demonstration. Memory fades, even when it is in the best interest of the individual for it not to.” Barent leaned forward. “When Joseph Kepler comes to you with an offer, you will agree to it. Is that understood, Tony?”
Harod nodded. Sweat fell onto his stained slacks. “Say yes, Tony.”
“Yes.”
“And you will contact me immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy,” said C. Arnold Barent and patted Harod’s cheek. He turned his tall chair so that only the back of it was visible, a black obelisk against the star field. When it swiveled back, Barent was gone.
Men came in to clean and disinfect the carpet. A minute later the young woman came with a flashlight and took Harod’s elbow. He thrust her hand away. Maria Chen tried to touch him on the shoulder, but he turned his back on her and staggered down the stairs.
Twenty minutes later they landed at LAX. A driver and limousine met the plane. Tony Harod did not look back to watch the ebony 747 taxi and take off.
FORTY
Tijuana, Mexico Monday,
April 20, 1981
Shortly before sundown, Saul and Natalie drove the rented Volkswagen northeast out of Tijuana. It was very hot. Once off Highway 2 the suburbs turned into a maze of dirt roads through villages of tin shacks and lean-tos sprawled between abandoned factories and small ranches. Natalie read from Jack Cohen’s hand-drawn map while Saul drove. They parked the VW near a small tavern and walked north through a cloud of dust and small children. Fires were burning on the hillside as the last of the blood-red twilight faded. Natalie checked the map and pointed to a path down a hillside littered with junk and small groups of men and women sitting by open fires or squatting in the dark under low trees. Half a mile north across the valley a tall fence glowed white against a black hillside.
“Let’s stay here until it’s really dark,” said Saul. He set down his suitcase and lowered a heavy knapsack to the ground. “There are supposed to be bandits working both sides of the border these days. It would be ironic to come this far and be killed by a border bandit.”
“It suits me to sit awhile,” said Natalie. They had walked less than a mile, but her blue cotton shirt was plastered to her skin and her sneakers were caked with dust. Mosquitoes whined past her ears. A single electric light glowing by a bar on the hill behind them had attracted so many moths that snow appeared to be falling in front of it.
They sat in exhausted silence for half an hour, worn out by thirty-six hours of flying by jet and commuter airline and by the constant tension of traveling under false passports. Heathrow Airport had been the worst— three hours’ layover under the gaze of security people.
Natalie was dozing despite the heat, insects, and her uncomfortable position squatting next to a large rock when Saul awoke her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “They’re moving,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”
At least a hundred illegals were heading toward the distant fence in small shuffling groups. More bonfires had appeared on the hillside behind them. Far to the northwest were the twinkling lights of an American town; ahead lay only dark canyons and hillsides. A single pair of headlights disappeared to the east on some unseen access road on the American side of the fence.
“Border patrol,” said Saul and led the way down the steep trail and then up another hill. They were both panting audibly within minutes, sweating under their rucksacks and struggling with their large suitcases weighted with papers. Although they tried to remain separated from the others, they soon had to join a long line o
f sweating men and women, some speaking softly or swearing in Spanish, others plodding along in stolid silence. Ahead of Saul, a tall, thin man carried a seven-or eight-year-old boy on his back while a heavier woman carried a large cardboard suitcase.
The queue came to a stop in a dry riverbed twenty yards from a culvert that ran under the border fence and the gravel road beyond. Groups of three or four would spring across the streambed and disappear into the black circle of the culvert. There were occasional shouts from the other side and once Natalie heard a scream that must have come from just beyond the road. Natalie realized that her heart had been pounding for minutes and her skin was clammy with sweat. She took a grip on her suitcase and forced herself to relax.
The entire line of fifty or sixty people hid behind the rocks, bushes, and each other when a second border patrol vehicle came by and stopped. A bright spotlight swept across the arroyo and passed within ten feet of the pitiful thorn tree Natalie and Saul were trying to use for cover. Shouts and the slap of a gunshot from the northeast sent the car away at high speed, radio blaring in police English, and the line of illegals began its steady progress into the culvert once again.
Within minutes Natalie found herself crawling on all fours behind Saul, shoving the heavy suitcase ahead of her while her backpack banged against the corrugated roof of the tunnel. It was pitch black. The culvert smelled of urine and excrement and her hands and knees encountered moist softness interspersed with broken glass and bits of metal. Somewhere behind her in the stifling dark a woman or child began to cry until a man’s sharp voice bullied them into silence. Natalie was sure that the culvert led nowhere and that it would grow narrower and narrower, the rough ceiling coming down to crush them into the mud and excrement, the water rising over their faces . . .
“Almost there,” whispered Saul. “I see moonlight.”
Natalie realized that her ribs hurt from the panicked pounding of her heart and because she had been holding her breath. She exhaled just as Saul tumbled forward two feet to a rocky streambed and helped her out of the stinking pipe.
“Welcome back to America,” he whispered as they gathered their bags and ran for the darkened safety of an arroyo where murderers and thieves undoubtedly lay in wait for some of the night’s hopeful immigrants.
“Thanks,” Natalie whispered back between gasps for air. “Next time, I’m going direct even if it means flying People’s Express.”
Jack Cohen was waiting for them at the top of the third hill. Once every two minutes he had blinked the headlights of the old blue van he had parked there and that had been the beacon that brought Natalie and Saul in. Cohen shook hands with Saul and then Natalie and said, “Come, we must hurry. This is not a good place to park. I brought the things you asked for in your letter and I have no wish to explain them to the Border Patrol or the San Diego police. Hurry.”
The rear of the van was half filled with boxes. They threw their luggage in back, Natalie took the passenger’s seat, Saul sat in a low crate behind and between the two front seats, and Jack Cohen drove. They bounced along dirt ruts for half a mile, turned east onto a gravel road, and found an asphalt county road headed north. Ten minutes later they were descending an access ramp to an Interstate highway and Natalie felt displaced and dis-oriented, as if the United States had changed in various and subtle ways during the three months of her absence. No, it was more like I’ve never lived here at all, she thought as she watched suburbs and small shopping malls pass her window. She stared at the streetlights and cars and wondered at the incredible fact that thousands of people here were going about their evening business just as if nothing was happening— as if men and women and children were not crawling through shit-filled culverts ten miles from these comfortable middle-class homes, as if sharp-eyed young Sabras were not right at that minute riding armed guard on the boundaries of their kibbutzim while masked PLO killers— boys themselves— oiled their Kalashnikovs and waited for dark, as if Rob Gentry was not dead, murdered, dead and buried, as finally unreachable as her father who used to come in every evening to tuck her in bed and tell her stories about Max, the inquisitive Dachshund who was always . . .
“Did you get the gun in Mexico City where I told you to?” asked Cohen.
Natalie startled awake. She had been dozing with her eyes open. She felt the novacaine high of total fatigue. There was the muted roar of jet engines in her ears. She concentrated on listening to the two men.
“Yes,” said Saul. “No problem, although I was worried about what would happen if the federales found it on me.”
Natalie worked to focus her eyes to better see the Mossad agent. Jack Cohen was in his early fifties but seemed older, older even than Saul, especially now that Saul had shaved his beard and let his hair grow. Cohen’s face was thin and pockmarked, set off by large eyes and a nose that obviously had been broken more than once. He had thin white hair that looked as if he had tried to trim it himself and given up before the job was done. Cohen’s English was fluent and idiomatically correct but overlaid with an accent that Natalie could not place— it was as if a West German had been taught his English from a Welshman who had learned his from a Brooklyn scholar. Natalie liked Jack Cohen’s voice. She liked Jack Cohen.
“Let me see the gun,” said Cohen.
Saul pulled a small pistol from his waistband. Natalie had had no idea that Saul had a weapon. It looked like a cheap cap pistol.
They were alone in the left lane of a bridge. No one was behind them for at least a mile. Cohen took the pistol and threw it out the window, over the railing toward the dark ravine below. “It would probably have exploded the first time you tried to use it,” said Cohen. “I was sorry I suggested it, but it was too late to wire you. You’re right about the federales— papers or no papers, if they found that gun on you they would have hung you up by the cojones and checked in every second or third year to make sure you were still moaning. Not pleasant people, Saul. It was the damn money that made me think it was worth the risk. How much money did you end up bringing in?”
“About thirty thousand,” said Saul. “Another sixty is being wired to a bank in Los Angeles by David’s attorney.”
“Is it yours or David’s?” asked Cohen. “Mine,” said Saul. “I sold a nine-acre farm I’ve had near Netanya since before the War of Independence. I figured that it would be foolish to try to get to my New York savings account.”
“You figured correctly,” said Cohen. They were in a city now. Mercury vapor lamps passed lighted rectangles over the windshield and made Cohen’s ugly-handsome face look yellow. “My God, Saul,” he said, “do you know how hard it was to get some of those things on your shopping list? One hundred pounds of C-4 plastique! Compressed air gun. Tranquilizer darts! Good God, man, do you know that there are only six suppliers in the entire United States that sell tranquilizer darts and that you have to be a certified zoologist to have the foggiest idea of where to find these places?”
Saul grinned. “Sorry, but you can’t complain, Jack. You see you’re our resident deus ex machina.”
Cohen smiled ruefully. “I don’t know about deus,” he said, “but I’ve certainly been run through the machina. Do you know that I’ve used up two and a half years of accumulated leave in running your little errands?”
“I’ll try to make it up to you someday,” said Saul. “Have you had further problems with the director?”
“No. The call from David Eshkol’s office settled most of that. I hope that twenty years after my retirement that I have pull like that. Is he well?”
“David? No, he’s not well after two heart attacks, but he is busy. Natalie and I saw him in Jerusalem five days ago. He told us to give you his best.”
“I only worked with him once,” said Cohen. “Fourteen years ago. He came out of retirement then to direct the operation where we snatched an entire Russian SAM site right out from under the Egyptians’ noses. It saved a lot of lives during the Six Day War. David Eshkol was a brilliant tactician.”
&nbs
p; They were in San Diego now and Natalie watched with a strange sense of detachment as they turned onto Interstate Five and drove north.
“What are your plans for the next few days?” asked Saul.
“Get you installed,” said Cohen. “I should be back in Washington by Wednesday.”
“No problem,” said Saul. “Will you be available to give advice?”
“At any time,” said Cohen, “providing you answer one question.”
“What is that?”
“What’s really going on here, Saul? What is the bottom line connection between your old Nazi, this group in Washington, and the old woman in Charleston? No matter which way I put it together, it makes no sense. Why would the U.S. government harbor this war criminal?”
“They’re not,” said Saul. “Groups in the government are trying to find him as hard as we are, but for their own purposes. Believe me, Jack, I could tell you more, but it would do little to enlighten you. Much of this affair goes beyond logic.”
“Wonderful,” Cohen said sarcastically. “If you can’t tell me more, there is no hope of my getting the agency involved, no matter how much everyone respects David Eshkol.”
“That is probably for the best,” said Saul. “You saw what happened when Aaron and your friend Levi Cole became involved. I have finally realized that there will be no trumpet blast and charge of cavalry over the hill in the nick of time. In a real sense, I have deferred action for decades while waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Now I realize that this is something I must do . . . and Natalie feels the same.”
“Bullshit,” said Cohen. “Yes,” agreed Saul, “but all of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit. Zionism was blatant bullshit a century ago, but today our border— Israel’s border— is the only purely po liti cal boundary that is visible from orbit. Where the trees end and the desert begins, there ends Israel.”
