by Joan Hess
“I deserve to know. He was my son.”
“I know,” he said with great gentleness. He picked up Judith’s package and stood up. “I must find Hershel at once. I’m worried that the violence is not yet concluded.”
“More violence?’ Miriam said, turning gray. “How can there be more violence?”
“I’m not sure that there will be, but I fear that Ilana has taken on Gideon’s megalomania. It may force Hershel into doing something drastic.”
“Did Hershel—cause Essie’s fall?”
“He’s the odd man out in this whole scheme. Judith’s analysis of him is probably close to the truth. He’s shy, uncomfortable, and repressed, but capable of passion. The problem is that his passion is aimed in a tangential direction. He never wanted to bomb Arabs; he wanted recognition in his field. One chance has already passed, but he may believe he has a second chance for glory.”
“Do you believe he killed Gideon?” she demanded.
“I don’t know yet. But it is possible that we shouldn’t have been referring to Jonathan and David,” Theo said, looking down at her with a grave expression. “We may discover the story of Cain and Abel to be more fitting.”
23
Miriam told him that Hershel was at her house. The manila envelope clutched to his side, Theo left the lobby and walked down the sidewalk while he considered how best to confront Hershel. If the hypothesis were correct, the young man was under a great deal of stress. It might be thorny.
But it wasn’t, for no one answered Theo’s persistent knocks. He took the metal strip out of his pocket and entered Miriam’s house. Once inside he stopped. The living room was strewn with magazines, papers, books from the shelves and pillows from the couch. The couch itself lay upended, its feet poking out. A table had been smashed. Shards of glass from picture frames were scattered on the carpet like a flower girl’s droppings.
The kitchen had fared no better from what appeared to be a thorough but sloppy search. Flour lay in drifts along the wall; the refrigerator had been emptied, as had cabinets and broom closet. The bedroom and bathroom were equally disastrous.
Hershel was gone. Theo felt an urge to straighten up the house before leaving, if only to save Miriam from the dreadful sight, but willed himself to leave the evidence intact. Instead he sat down on the overturned sofa and pondered the scene with sober, unblinking eyes.
Someone still continued to search for something. Hershel was most likely the culprit, since he had been alone in the house. Theo could guess what Hershel might have been searching for—but not if he had found it.
Then again, Sitermann had been behaving oddly. Not oddly for a spy, perhaps, but oddly enough to arouse Theo’s curiosity. However, Sitermann was capable of a more professional search—unless he had preferred it to look amateurish. He was not available for comment. Nor was Hershel, for that matter. And Ilana had left her post at the registration desk—if one were, in a manner of speaking, counting noses.
Despite his previous intentions, Theo straightened up the papers on the floor, returned the sofa to its feet, and clucked over the smashed end table. Then he locked the door behind him and walked slowly toward the lobby to tell Miriam about the destruction.
As he reached the building where the guest rooms were, he felt a sudden twinge of unease. He veered up the stairs and hurried along the balcony to Dorrie’s room, scolding himself that he was behaving like an old maid who nightly checked under the bed for rapists. He knocked on her door, waited several minutes, then knocked once again in an increasingly heavy cadence.
After a quick glance over his shoulder, Theo let himself into the room. Which was empty of nieces, but not of clothes trampled on the floor, suitcases emptied and agape, Guccis tossed in corners, and plastic bottles on their sides like beached whales. In Miriam’s house, it had been simple to determine there had been a search. In Dorrie’s room, it did take a minute to determine that the chaos was not an intentional part of an obscure packing strategy.
He concluded that her room had been searched. Dorrie would never have permitted it, had she been in any condition to protest. Where was she now? Theo hurried to his room, this time utilizing the room key. His suitcases had been stacked near the door, but now they had fallen victim to the same, insane search. His pale brown suit, left in the closet for the following day, had been kicked into a corner. The mattress hung drunkenly over the bed frame, the covers pulled back to expose a slashed ribbon of cotton stuffing.
It was quite enough to produce a pained noise from Theo’s throat. He picked up his trousers and rehung them in the closet, although the crease was forever ruined. His jacket had lost a button. The one dress shirt carefully set aside to wear on the airplane had been wadded into a ball and left on the bathroom floor. It was too much, it really was.
The expletive (twice repressed, but via great inner control) finally slipped out as he glowered at the contents of his suitcase, which had been neatly arranged to survive the simian treatment of airport employees. The word startled him back to reality. He realized he had been clutching Judith’s present tightly enough to leave a wrinkle and hastily put it down as he hurried out of the room.
After a quick peek at Sitermann’s room to see if it too had been searched (it hadn’t), he went to Judith’s room in the apartment house and banged on her door with an un-Bloomerish fist. Unlike the other players in the rapidly disintegrating drama, she opened the door at once.
“Mr. Bloomer, how nice of you to come by,” she said. In spite of her smile, she looked very unhappy. Theo had presumed she would.
“Have you seen Dorrie?” he demanded.
“No, we were going to do lunch tomorrow before she left. Her idea of a meaningful farewell, I suppose. Isn’t she in her room packing?” Judith stepped back and began to play with the hem of her shirt. “She brought an awful lot of clothes with her,” she added in a thin voice, “and—”
“She has disappeared. Her room was searched, as was mine and Miriam’s house. Where is Hershel?”
“I don’t—I don’t know. I saw him earlier. We talked for a few minutes, but he didn’t say where he was going when he left.” She looked up abruptly. “Why do you think Hershel knows where Dorrie might be?”
“Tell me again what happened the night Gideon was killed by a PLO agent from Jordan. You and Hershel had wine.”
“We—uh, we talked about the socialist structure of the—of the kibbutz. I told you about that.”
“And you and Hershel were together every minute? He never once left the room and all you did was talk politics?” He advanced slowly, stalking an admission.
She retreated, her head bobbling in small jerks. “No, we talked all night. That’s all we did. I mean, we have—well, kissed each other a little bit, but we—we didn’t—I wouldn’t normally allow things to get out of hand, but—but …” She ran out of protests as she backed into the kitchen table. Her eyes filled with tears and her chin began to quiver helplessly. “It’s nobody’s business what we did that night, Mr. Bloomer. You have no right to insinuate that Hershel and I indulged in premarital cohabitation!”
“What happened afterward?” Theo persisted politely, if a shade remorselessly.
“I felt terribly guilty that we had allowed ourselves to be distracted by sexual desires,” she said through a hiccup. “Hershel felt badly, too, and went to his room to find an aspirin for me. When he came back, he brought a bouquet of orange flowers. It was so sweet of him, and he’s been a perfect gentleman ever since then.”
Except when he dumped suitcases and slashed mattresses, Theo thought to himeself. “How long was he out of your room, Judith?”
“I don’t know. I was crying,” she said, crying. “He was very gentle when he returned, though, and told me that he would always love and respect me, even though we had …” A wet, tremulous sigh served to describe the unspeakable. The tears eased to a steady dribble.
“And you have no idea where Hershel is now?”
“No,” she sniffled.
“We talked about what you said. He’s not a terrorist. Gideon was the one who insisted that they do those terrible things, and Ilana always had to be the one to plant the bomb. Hershel said there was still a way to salvage his reputation, and I believed him.”
If he could find what he needed … After a moment of thought, Theo ironically realized where the desired object was. “Then why did you steal the manila envelope from him and pretend it was a farewell card for Dorrie, not to be opened until she was in the airplane?”
“But I didn’t steal that from Hershel. Gideon gave it to me the day after the bombing in Hebron, and asked me not to tell anyone, including Hershel and Ilana. He said it was an insurance policy.”
“Why did you give it to me?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and dug her fingers into her shoulders. “Because I think it has something to do with the cave where Essie’s body was found, but I was too frightened to tell anyone about it. Gideon’s eyes were on fire when he made me promise not to say anything. He was cursing under his breath and saying terrible things, as if he were one of those crazy zealots from the Bible. Then he was murdered, which terrified me even more. I decided to get rid of it.”
“By giving it to me?”
“I needed time to make a decision about it, but I was going to tell you before you left tomorrow. I wouldn’t have let the envelope leave Israel.”
“When Hershel was here earlier, did he demand to know if you had anything that belonged to Gideon?”
She nodded.
“And you told him about the manila envelope?”
She nodded.
“And when he got angry, you had to tell him that you gave it to me for safekeeping?”
She nodded.
He could get nothing more from her other than a series of hiccups and a few moistly inarticulate words.
24
Theo rushed back to the lobby. To his relief, Miriam was sitting on the sofa where he had left her earlier. She looked frail and tired, as if she were a biennial in its third year.
“Dorrie has disappeared,” he said. “I need the keys to a jeep.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he added, “I must insist on haste, Miriam. The keys and a description of the road that leads to the cave, please. Dorrie may be in danger.”
“The keys are behind the desk, but I don’t know how to describe the road. It’s an unpaved road, like a dozen others. Shall I go with you?”
Minutes later, with Theo at the wheel, the jeep squealed through the kibbutz gate and roared down the highway. He tried to answer her questions, but the wind seemed to tear the words from his mouth to scatter behind them. They had passed several unpaved roads when Miriam tugged at his arm and pointed. “That’s it,” she shrieked over the wind. “I’ll tell you when to park.”
It was not necessary, for there were two red jeeps blocking the road above the cave. Theo shut off the engine and took out his handkerchief to wipe the dust off his bifocals.
“What is going on?” Miriam demanded. “Why are two of our jeeps already here, and why do you think Dorrie would drive one of them into the desert? Why is she in danger?”
He settled his bifocals in place. After he had blotted his forehead and refolded the handkerchief, he said, “Dorrie didn’t drive; Hershel brought her, and under protest. The other jeep was—ah, borrowed by Sitermann, if I am correct in my assumptions. He was following the others to see what was happening and to ascertain if there were anything of interest in it for him. It’s a very bad habit of his.”
“Hershel forced Dorrie to come with him, and Sitermann stole a jeep to follow them? Theo, are you—”
“I fear I’ll have to delay the explanation until I fetch Dorrie and see that she’s unharmed,” he said apologetically. “It would be better if you waited here, just in case there’s a spot of trouble. Hershel may not agree to release Dorrie without some persuasion.”
“Then I’m the one who ought to talk to him,” she said. “You seem to think he murdered Gideon. A mother has some rights, one of which is confronting her son’s murderer. I’m coming with you.”
They slid down the path to the ledge above the cave, wincing as pebbles bounced ahead of them like pinging announcements of their imminent arrival. There was nothing to do about it, however, except wince. Theo stopped for a moment to take a small handgun out of his pocket, then motioned for Miriam to wait where she was.
“You have a gun,” she whispered in a stunned voice.
“A little one, and only for emergencies,” he said primly. “It really would be better if you waited here, Miriam. If you happen to hear any peculiar noises or shouts, you might consider the wisdom of returning to the kibbutz to telephone Lieutenant Gili.”
“This is a dream, right?” She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “You don’t really have a gun, and Dorrie’s in her room with black mud on her face and avocados in her hair.”
“I wish it were,” he answered as he inched toward the edge of the massive overhang, “but I do believe I hear Dorrie’s voice. She would only come here in her worst nightmare, so we may have to accept the reality of it for the moment. If you’ll excuse me …?”
He dropped to a prone position and wiggled to the far edge to peer down at the entrance to the cave. He found himself looking at the tops of two heads, but neither belonged to his niece. The black hair was Hershel’s; the sandstorm-and-split-ends was Ilana’s. Frosted ash blond was not in sight.
“I have to find another scroll!” Hershel said, breathing heavily enough to blow down anyone’s house—straw, sticks, or bricks. “The other one is gone—stolen—I don’t know! I looked for it in Essie’s room, and in Gideon’s. I even looked at Miriam’s house, in case Gideon had hidden it there. He knew I had to have it. Judith finally admitted that she gave it to the Bloomer guy. While I was searching his room, the girl must have heard me and come over to investigate. I grabbed her and made her let me in her room, but it wasn’t there, either. Maybe he mailed it away or something! But it’s gone and I have to find another one. I can still be famous.” He choked on the final word and bent over in a paroxysm of coughs.
“Fame does not matter,” Ilana said with a scornful laugh. “Forget the stupid scroll. We can get thousands of dollars from the rich little girl’s uncle. This time I shall go to Athens to buy the explosives, and I won’t come home with some princess who turns out to be a pauper.”
Hershel groaned. “She told me she had two houses, a big car, a wealthy family. She lied to me, just like you and Gideon did. Everyone has lied to me, everyone! You made me sell the scroll to that arms dealer, but the next one was to be mine!” He again broke out in painful spasms of coughing, as if his throat were constricted by a brutally tight collar. “I want my scroll,” he managed to say in a pitifully weak croak.
“Well, I certainly don’t have it,” came a righteous voice from the interior of the cave, “and it will take weeks for Uncle Theo to arrange a ransom payment. I am not a troglodyte who delights in nasty, cramped, filthy holes in mountainsides, and I have no intention of sitting in one while you wait for the money. It is time for all of us to behave in a more adult fashion. Why don’t I just write you a check right now, and then you can drive me back to the kibbutz?”
Ilana and Hershel turned to stare into the cave. Theo himself felt rather taken aback by Dorrie’s suggestion. Behind him Miriam muffled a laugh, albeit a semihysterical one.
Ilana was the first to recover. “Shut up, you spoiled child. We are soldiers, and if we want to hold you for three months in the cave, then we shall do it. And if you open your mouth again, you will find a dirty, greasy rag stuffed into it.”
“I beg your pardon,” Dorrie countered contemptuously. “That sort of thing went out with the Flintstones. Anyway, you haven’t even got a dirty, greasy rag, and I wouldn’t open my mouth in any case. This entire thing is too melodramatic for words.”
Ilana growled, but managed to restrain herself as Hershel said, “I must go into the cave. The first two ma
nuscripts dealt with the Essene sect’s agricultural inventory, but there may be others with historical implications. I could find an early copy of a book of the Bible, I really could.” He was pleading, his voice hoarse with raw emotion. He seemed to lean toward the entrance of the cave as though the hoped-for manuscripts held a magnetic pull on him.
“Essie and sex, Essene sect,” Miriam whispered in a wondering tone.
Theo turned to nod at her. “My ‘great aunt’s crypt’ is a ‘great manuscript.’ The reason for the ‘trip’ to Athens.” Ignoring her bewildered look, he held a finger to his lips and returned his attention to the scene below him.
“Forget this petty desire for personal glory,” Ilana snapped. “We must fight a war against one hundred million Arabs. There is no time for this childishness. The scroll you took Popadoupolis bought only enough plasticine for two bombs.” Her head swiveled as she peered into the cave. “I have a brilliant idea how to utilize what we have left.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Dorrie said from her invisible vantage point. “I hate firecrackers on the Fourth of July; they give me an absolute migraine. I refuse to be around real explosives.”
Hershel followed Ilana’s eyes, and apparently her mind. “No, Ilana, you aren’t going to rig some kind of bobby trap until I’ve explored the cave. I won’t let you do it.”
“Right on,” encouraged the unseen voice from the cave.
Ilana snorted, then ducked her head and disappeared from Theo’s view as she entered the cave. After a startled gulp, Hershel also disappeared, howling for her to stop. The ledge in front of the cave was, Theo realized, propitiously empty. Cautioning Miriam to remain still, he scuttled around, dangled his legs over the lip of the overhang, and let himself slither down.
He landed on the ledge with a muted thud. When nothing happened, he bent down to wave at Dorrie, who was tied up rather prettily and sitting just inside the entrance to the cave. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice.
She nodded, then wiggled around to show him her wrists, which were ringed with knots. “Not my idea of a bracelet,” she whispered. “Cheap polyester rope!”
