The Fury of Rachel Monette

by Peter Abrahams

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT

  FREE AND DISCOUNTED EBOOKS

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PETER ABRAHAMS

  “Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.” —Stephen King

  “The care with which Abrahams brings his characters to life sets him apart from most thriller writers working today.” —The New Yorker

  Hard Rain

  “A good thriller needs style, atmosphere and a surprising plot, and Hard Rain … has all of these and something extra: depth of feeling.” —The New York Times Book Review

  “A class-A thriller.” —James Ellroy

  “A riveting tale of betrayal and vengeance set against a backdrop of sixties craziness and enriched by some wonderfully wicked observations on the way we live and love.” —Jonathan Kellerman

  The Fury of Rachel Monette

  “A roller coaster of a novel.” —Los Angeles Times

  “Visual, frightening, fast-paced and mesmerizing. [Abrahams] is a natural-born artist, a brilliant young writer who has a truly remarkable talent for writing psychological thrillers of enormous power, depth and intensity.” —The Denver Post

  Pressure Drop

  “[A] gripping tale … Maintaining suspense throughout, Abrahams sets his scenes with evocative details.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Thrillers aren’t generally known for sharp social observation, or for sympathetic examination of career women caught with their biological alarm clocks set to go off and good men a scarce commodity. Pressure Drop supplies both, along with the requisite amount of nasty villains and brave deeds.” —Booklist

  Tongues of Fire

  “Israel as a nation has ceased to exist. Israel and the Israeli [people] have been driven from their land into the sea by Syria, Iraq and other Arab states. Thus begins Tongues of Fire.… This fascinating story relates very plausibly to our age and time. It is gripping.” —Bestsellers

  The Fury of Rachel Monette

  Peter Abrahams, also known as Spencer Quinn

  TO DIANA

  PROLOGUE

  It was one of those winds that have a name. The chergui they called it, a hot summer wind that blew from the east. At dawn it was already gathering strength, picking the crests off the dunes and driving the sand through the air like sparks from a grindstone.

  There was no escaping it. The sand forced its way up the soldier’s pant legs, stung his wrists and neck, filled his ears. Hunched over the steering wheel he guided the jeep slowly south, seeking the firm rocky patches which provided the only traction in the ocean of loose sand. You will be back in time for lunch, the French liaison officer had promised. How far can a pregnant woman go in the desert? Farther than I want to, thought the soldier.

  He stopped the jeep and stood on the seat to look ahead. He was a big man with thick shoulders and the kind of beard that can never be shaved into invisibility no matter how sharp the blade. His eyes were tearing, leaving muddy tracks on his dark cheeks. There was nothing to see, nothing except dunes and rocks. Nothing was what he expected to see: that was why all the others had been sent north. It is improbable that she will go south, the Frenchman had explained rather superfluously—it was almost three thousand kilometers to the next town. Still, she does not know where she is to begin with. We must consider the irrational.

  He had driven south.

  The wind blew harder, darkening the sky with sand, screening out all color. The sand was gray, the sky was gray, the sun was gray. For a while the wind made the soldier forget the heat, but the wet stains under his arms spread quickly to join those on his back and across his chest. His undershorts clung damply to his groin. The Frenchman loved the desert; he said he found something fascinating about it. The soldier drank from his canteen and drove on.

  In the early afternoon he thought he saw a movement on the horizon. It made him try to go faster and that was a mistake. Rounding a dune the jeep slid suddenly into a large expanse of deep sand. There was nothing to do but press the accelerator to the floor, hoping that speed would carry him through. He saw firm ground to his right and turned toward it. As he did the front wheels bit into the sand, and the rear ones at first spun wildly and then not at all, as the jeep sank to its axles. The soldier got out and drank more water. Again he saw something moving to the south. He could free the jeep—he had a shovel, sand ladders, a jack—but hours would be lost, and perhaps the woman too. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder he started after her on foot.

  Two walkers in the desert. The small one moved slowly, sometimes stumbling. The big one had a long steady stride and drew nearer with every step. The wind didn’t care. It threw sand in both their faces.

  She reached the edge of a sebkha, a large dry salt lake depressed fifty or sixty feet below the desert floor. As she walked she kept looking at the blue light that shimmered in the center of the lake bed. She is wondering whether it’s water, thought the soldier behind her. He was near enough now to see that she wore a dark blue robe, the hood pulled over her head. Again she stumbled, and drew away from the edge. She’s ready to collapse, the soldier thought. That’s why she doesn’t hear me. She’ll probably be glad to go back.

  He removed the canteen from his belt. Stop, he called to her. She turned quickly. The veil she wore hid everything but the fear in her eyes. She was breathing heavily: the robe stretched taut over the swell of her stomach. He held out the canteen. Without hesitation she took a step and jumped off the edge of the sebkha. There was no attempt to land feet first, or in any other way. It was a random fall and a random landing. She lay broken and still in the lake bed.

  The soldier ran along the top of the depression until he found an incline. Scrambling down toward the bottom he lost his balance and slid the rest of the way on his back. He reached the body, turned it over and pulled aside the veil.

  She seemed to be grinning at him. That was because someone had cut off her lips. Her nose was gone too, and there were other things. The soldier looked away and vomited until his stomach muscles ached.

  After, with the toe of his boot, he rolled her over so that she lay face down. It was then that he noticed the rings on her fingers. There were five, all diamond. The soldier knew nothing about diamonds, but a few of them seemed very big. The woman had hidden them somehow, he thought. She had been given the diamonds because she was going to be free.

  The soldier sat on the lake bed until nightfall. There was no wind in the depression, no sound at all. Finally he rose and took off all his clothing except the boots: he would chance the boots. Then one by one he removed the rings from her fingers. One would not come; he left it. Trying not to look, not to see anything, he stripped off her robe. With his hands he dug a shallow grave, and gripping the ankles pulled the body inside. He threw sand on top until she was gone.

  The moon, a golden crescent, glided slowly across the sky, not standing straight, as it did in northern latitudes, but lying on its back. The sky was full of stars, millions of lights without heat. Suddenly it was very cold. The soldier put on the blue robe, slipped the rings in an inner pocket, and began walking north, north to the mountains and the cities beyond.

  I

  1

  Outside it was still dark. Snow was falling heavily. The individual flakes seemed bigger than usual and they descended in dense hordes as if they were in a hurry to get the driveways blocked before anyone woke up. The Eskimos have more than a hundred words to describe the different kinds of snow. Rachel Monette, née Bernstein, hated them all.

  With a loud click that wasn’t mentioned in the brochure the clock radio signaled it was ready to talk: �
��… instead think of the fun you can have building snowmen with the kids. And remember folks—today is the first day of the rest of your life. Think about it. Sports, Jim?” “Right, Bob. First action last night in …”

  Rachel shut it off but it hadn’t finished communicating. Its red fluorescent digits, shaped in the style computers like, were relaying the news from the fourth dimension. Six fifty-six they declared, thought about it and switched to 6:57. The black modular oblong didn’t harmonize with the old New England pine furniture in the room, but try to find an antique clock radio. So few of the shoppes are making them these days.

  Rachel got out of bed and stood before the full-length mirror as she did every morning. She saw a tall big-boned healthy female who in a ten-years-earlier and ten-pounds-lighter version had played some good basketball for Bryn Mawr. The strength of her nose and jaw had always kept people from calling her face pretty, but in the last few years others had begun to see in it what she had almost given up hope they would: a kind of beauty.

  Rachel fought another battle with her thick dark hair until it submitted grudgingly and temporarily to the will of her comb. She pinched here and there at her flesh trying to determine what was fat and what was muscle. Deciding that the fat was hard and the muscle soft, she gave it up. Goose bumps began to roughen the texture of her skin. She poked through a pile of clothes on the floor until she found a worn terry-cloth robe. She put it on, inserted a small gold ring in each earlobe and turned to leave the room.

  “I wanted to hear what happened in last night’s action,” her husband called from the bed.

  “Tie ball game.”

  “No overtime?”

  “After what you had to drink?”

  Adam, or Adman as he often called himself, wasn’t in his room. He had already made the bed, smoothing away the wrinkles on the duvet that showed woolly sheep hovering over red fences. Adam had tidy habits like his father. Parked with precision in the corner was a fleet of huge yellow trucks, ready at a moment’s notice for a wildcat walkout.

  She found him in the playroom at the end of the hall, building something post-modern with blocks, his tongue stuck out between his teeth. He had Scotch-taped his paintings all over the walls. When he first got the paint set he had done many versions of his parents, singly and together, or Garth. Now he was at the height of his hockey period and the gaudy uniforms of the players loomed at her from every side. He knew all their names because he and his father watched the games on television. Each figure was identified in large black letters, sometimes printed on the backs of the sweaters where they belonged, but also on the shorts, the stockings or even the blades of the sticks. Lupien, Schmautz, McIlhargey. They hooked, elbowed, speared, tripped, and slashed just as in real life.

  Rachel bent down and kissed the top of his head, feeling the impossibly fine blond hair on her lips. As she carefully picked the sleep from the corner of his eyes, Garth came in and knocked the blocks all over the floor.

  “Down, Garth, down.”

  “Don’t shout at Garth, Mummy. He won’t love you if you shout.”

  “He’s got to learn.”

  “Then say nice Garth, nice Garth. He’ll learn,” said Adam, stroking the animal’s tail. Garth picked up a block and trotted out the door.

  Rachel looked out the window, which gave a view of the backyard, the frozen pond, and the fields beyond. The daylight had brought a slight wind which was putting the snowflakes through their paces, directing them this way and that in a fanciful choreography. They were as synchronized as the June Taylor dancers.

  Rachel went downstairs to face the living room. It had borne the brunt of last night’s party the way the Carolina beaches had that of Hurricane Hazel. Someone had ground chocolate into her Persian rug while winding up to pitch spaghetti into the stone fireplace. It sounded like fun but it wasn’t.

  Rachel had planned it as a celebration of the announcement in Paris the day before that Dan’s book had won the Prix Gobert. She had remembered to invite the history faculty, the French faculty, spouses, Dan’s senior students, their girlfriends and boyfriends. She had remembered to buy a case of California Chianti, to hide the good wine in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, to pick up her black dress from the cleaners, and to make two sauces for the spaghetti since some of the guests were vegetarians. She had forgotten to reckon with envy, envy of the subspecies academicus, which had arrived uninvited at the party and goaded everyone into drinking too much, laughing too much, and spilling things too much.

  She had placed two copies of the book on a glass coffee table, one the English version, one the French. They looked nicely done up in their bright blue dust jackets. On the back of the English version was a photograph of Dan, his sandy hair rumpled in the breeze, wearing a plaid lumberjacket and playing with Garth. On the back of the French one he wore his glasses, a dark suit, and a sober face. It had become a minor cause célèbre in France and in other parts of Europe too, because it made some people recall what they wanted to forget and taught others things they didn’t wish to learn. The Dreyfus Disease: France and the Jews 1939 to 1945. La Maladie Dreyfus: Les Juifs en France 1939 à 1945. The media loved it: two film crews had already come from Paris to interview Dan and a speaking tour of French universities was in the works. It was an excellent piece of research but she didn’t understand the passion it aroused. It all seemed long ago. That bothered Dan. “You’re the one who’s Jewish,” he had said. And she was Jewish. The way Werner von Braun was American—for official purposes. She didn’t deny it, or feel badly about it, or wish to change. It wasn’t that important.

  Dawkins, head of French, who spoke it very correctly but with an Arkansas twang, had ferreted through the French copy querying some of the usages Dan had chosen when he did the translation. Holding the book at arm’s length in case it had germs he said, “Sorry, Monette, even if a Frenchman ever had that thought he’d never express it like this. He’d turn it upside down and use the reflexive—it’s the very essence of the way they see things, for Christ’s sake.” Ethel Dawkins, a plump, rich woman whose knowledge of French was confined to proper nouns like Givenchy and Louis Vuitton, nodded in support.

  “How the hell would you know how they think?” Dan replied in a pleasant voice, sipping armagnac. He was having a great time. The success of the book made him feel invulnerable. “I was born in Paris. I was speaking French before you emerged from your backwater and heard proper English for the first time.”

  “Dan,” Rachel said. “Don’t let Garth do that.” Garth was eating spaghetti off Ethel Dawkins’s plate. She raised a fleshy helpless forearm in defense.

  “No, Garth,” Dan said in the firm voice he used on Garth. Garth lowered his head and growled. Ethel Dawkins wound some more pasta around her fork and popped it into her mouth.

  “I’m grateful for my simple origins,” Dawkins resumed, running a big hand through his gray crewcut. He took pride in being the last surviving male in the western world with a crewcut, a quixotic sort of achievement, like being the last dodo bird. “You people with roots in two civilizations can never intuitively grasp either. You have to analyze, analyze, analyze. It’s the price that cultural mongrelization exacts.”

  “Bow-wow,” said Dan. Garth growled sympathetically and began to tear at the laces of Dawkins’s brogues. Dawkins kicked him away, not very gently. Garth looked cross and skulked behind a couch, overturning an ashtray en route.

  A chubby balding boy named Andy Monteith, who was one of Dan’s best students, cleared his throat. “What do the minutiae of the translation matter, compared to the content?” He had an expressive, porcine nose which now turned up to test the wind for the scent of danger. “Surely what the book says is what counts.”

  “Sensible boy,” Dan said.

  “Sensible?” said Dawkins. “Anyone who has taken grade two phenomenology knows you can’t separate the two.” He looked at Andy. “How did he get admitted to this college with ideas like that?” The boy blushed.

  �
��His father donated the French building,” Rachel said. “An illiterate, but he had a knack for applied phenomenology.” Everyone laughed, even Dawkins.

  “Okay then, Dan, in terms of the content,” said Henry Gates, his heavily bearded and rather unkempt colleague in European history: “I don’t see where you tackle the question of the lack of physical Jewish resistance.”

  “I thought Dawidowicz took care of that pretty thoroughly, Henry.” He sighed. “First of all, I think people who ask that question are really asking ‘Why aren’t Jews tough?’ like Gurkhas or something. I don’t mean you, Henry—you’re just asking it to bait me. But it’s a wholly spurious issue. Resistance movements all require a support system—money, supplies, safe houses, weapons, pockets of public sympathy—and if those don’t exist there is no resistance. You’ve got to have something to work with. So, what happened in France? In the majority of cases French Jews were protected. Their lives anyway, if not their property or dignity. But Jews living in France but born outside were handed to the Germans gift wrapped. A trade-off, as a sop to French pride, French sovereignty. Is that something to be proud of? Can they be proud that of the ninety thousand Jews in France who were killed, most weren’t born there?”

  “Easy, Dan,” said Henry Gates. “I was three years old when the war started.”

  “That’s not enough protection when you get Dan started on this subject, Henry. It’s his obsession,” Rachel said.

  “Right you are, Rachie. Every man needs one, like a five-cent cigar.” Dan held out his glass. “How about a weensy bit more?”

  “Number five, Dan?”

  “So who’s counting?”

  She poured him another. “I just don’t want you to suffer any tissue damage,” she said.

  “Oh, it takes years and years of drinking to reach that stage,” said Andy, who had the facts from family history. But Dan knew she was talking in code about erectile tissue, and he left his drink untouched.