Dante's Equation Part 55

"She'll be all right," Denton said, patting Nate's knee.

"Um, she took off in the middle of the night. On foot. In ruralPoland . With a hundred dollars, no ID, and my credit card." "She can handle it. She's a brain." "I used to think so," Nate said with disgust. Hannah and Aharon were in the front seat, talking softly together. Nate looked at them to make sure they weren't listening before turning to Denton with a flush. "We haven't been apart in nine months. I'm acting totally p.u.s.s.y-whipped, aren't I?" Denton grinned. "Maybe a little." "It's just that when Jill wants something she can be so . . .oblivious . I'm worried about her." "If it's any help, I think she's right about Farris. I don't think he'll hurt her." "Gee, I must have imagined that he almost killed her yesterday," Nate said dryly, but he sounded like he wanted to believe it.

"There!" Hannah whispered loudly.

A man and a woman were coming out of the hotel. Nate watched them, wishing he had a closer

view. The woman wore a wool hat, navy pea coat, and scarf in the cold, the rest of her clothes ordinary. She was slim and attractive. The man's head was bare. He was speaking to the woman, looked around the street casually, turning to face them.

Denton let out a groan. He sank down in the seat, pulling Nate with him. "I know that guy! He calls himself 'Mr. Smith.' "

"See!" Hannah exclaimed, triumphant. "I told you! Aharon-didn't I say he was Mossad? I told you the Mossad was here." "Yes, Hannah, and I'm so happy you've been spending your time following such people."

Nate was being crunched in Denton's grip.

"You guys need to look like you're doing something," Denton whispered urgently to Aharon and Hannah. "Look natural."

"It's fine. They're going the other way; he's not even looking," Aharon said dismissively.

Nate sat up cautiously, taking a look for himself. "He's right. They went around the corner."

Denton sat up, looking a bit chagrined. "Sorry. I'm trying not to be a wimp these days; it's just that

my body has a very real memory of being pummeled by that guy." "So he is Mossad?" Nate asked. "Well, he never actually introduced himself as such, but I think so." "What about the woman?" Aharon asked Denton. "Did you recognize her?" "No." "She's here to make them look like acouple ," Hannah explained. "She's akatsa ." "Yes, thank you, Mata Hari," Aharon said with mock enthusiasm. "So now what?""Someone should check into the hotel," Hannah suggested, "pretend to be vacationing. We might be able to overhear them or even get into their room."

Nate nodded. "That's smart. There are four of us. We should spread out. Two can cover these guys and two can take the guys at Anatoli's house." Aharon shrugged as if to say he couldn't argue. "Fine, someone will check in here. But notyou , Hannah." "Who then?" she asked. "It can't be me," Denton said regretfully. "Smith would recognize me in a heartbeat." "I'll do it," Nate volunteered. "Do you speak Hebrew?" Hannah asked. "Um . . . not last time I checked." She gave her husband an "I told you so" look. "Hannah, you're not going in there." "Not alone . . ." she said leadingly. "It would be more convincing if a husband and wife checked in."Aharon grunted. "Then that settles it. Look at me!" He ran an open hand to indicate his countenance.

"You think they wouldn't be a little suspicious? You think they don't have my picture?"

Hannah studied his face. "You know, I'm looking forward to seeing what you look like under that beard after all these years."

"Hannah, are youcrazy ?" Aharon was aghast.

Nate couldn't stop a smile.Welcome to my world, he thought.

It was mid-morning and Pol waited outside the airport in the cold. He stood still, almost like one at attention. But his mind was not at attention. Most of it was shut down. He was functioning with the mindless automation of a mortally wounded soldier crawling away from the enemy's bayonet. He hated this place, with its snow and trees and strange little villages. Even the people did not strike a chord. He did not recognize their language. He was more lost here than he'd ever been in Centalia.

That could overwhelm him if he allowed it to. Instead, he allowed himself a goal: to find the familiar. He had to find Lt. Calder Farris.

Last night he'd followed the road signs toward Krakow because it was the largest name on those signs and must, therefore, be a city of good size. He'd gotten a ride, sitting in the front seat with a farmer who'd had a truck bed full of birds in cages. As they'd approached Krakow, Pol had seen a commercial jet plane in the air. He'd recognized it at once, understood it down to the basic principles of its aerodynamics-wingspan ratios and quant.i.ties of fuel-even though he knew very well that this particular type of aircraft did not exist in the world he'd just come from. He'd pushed aside all the ways that wanted to screw with his head. The plane could take him to Washington, D.C. He would ride the devil's tail if it took him to Washington, D.C.

But he could not remember how one got onto the plane. So he'd sat inside the airport until past daybreak, observing the security guards, observing the buying of tickets, taking it in through a heavy filter, discarding everything that wasn't need-to-know.

Need-to-know: He'd need ident.i.ty papers and money to get on a plane.

Now he waited outside the airport. It was cold, almost as cold as Centalia. After a long time a man got out of a car. He was blond and of the right age and he was alone. Before the man could enter the terminal, Farris approached him.

"Can you tell me which is the road to Budapest?" Pol asked him in his old language.

The man tried to converse with him, pointing toward the city and speaking carefully in English. Pol wore a chilly smile. He grabbed the man's arm and pushed the neck of a bottle in his pocket into the man's side.

"Come with me," Pol said.

The man looked around for help, but no one was paying any attention to them.

"What do you want? Please-"

Pol led the man away, quickly, before he could overcome his surprise. Around the terminal they went, to a place scoped out in advance, a small park.

In the trees, the man grew desperate. His face tightened as images of what Pol might want to do to him crossed his mind. Pol was operating swiftly and with deadly certainty, yet part of him was curious; part of him wished the man would fight back. But it was clear this creature was no warrior. His first instinct was not to fight but to offer money. He did so, pulling out a packet full of bills and the ident.i.ty papers Pol needed. The man pleaded for his life in Polish and English.

It was time to act. Pol hesitated. He hesitated so long, the man sensed his weakness and tried to run. Before he had taken two steps, Pol brought the bottle from his pocket and down hard on the back of the man's head. The man cried out in surprise and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

Pol took the man's wallet, pa.s.sport, and plane tickets. He put the things in his pockets. He stripped the man of his shirt and tie and put them on, taking the man's heavy outer coat as well. He dumped out the contents of the man's bag and put his old clothes in there. He did not think he would need them again, but he did not want them to be found here.

Kneeling down, he wrapped the scarf around the man's throat, pulled it tight, prepared to pull it tighter. And knelt there.

He should kill this man. If the man was left alive, he would be able to describe his attacker. He would be able to give the name on Pol's new ident.i.ty papers, a name the authorities might otherwise take days to track down. Still, Pol hesitated.

He could not get the images out of his mind, images of the night he killed the Silver, Pol 137, how he had to hack and hack, how the blood had flowed like burgundy wine. Or of Gyde standing over the body of the Bronze rare book owner, putting out his cigarette in the blood.

Sweat dripped down Pol's back inside his new shirt. His hands gripped both ends of the scarf tightly. They shook as if the scarf were alive with a current.

He couldn't do it. He dropped the scarf.

There was a cracking branch behind him. He spun, a snarl on his lips, guilt and fury over his own weakness d.o.g.g.i.ng him.

"Lieutenant Farris?"

The blond woman stepped closer. For a moment he was sure he was hallucinating completely now, his enfeebled senses finally giving in to delusion. But she looked nervous and she looked cold. A glisten of moisture on her red nose testified to her reality.

She looked at the man on the ground, then at him. Pol hated the approval in her eyes. She should be afraid of him. He would make her afraid.

She rubbed her arms to warm herself. "Did you get his pa.s.sport?"

Pol took it out of his pocket and looked at it.

"Credit cards?"

He handed her the wallet and the tickets. He panicked as the things left his fingers. What the h.e.l.l was he doing?

It was terrible not to be able to trust oneself, not to fathom the reasoning of one's own limbs. He told himself he was testing her. He was giving her enough rope to hang herself. If she said, or did, one wrong thing, he would break her neck. This time he would lie on top of her, heavy and deadly, and would look in her eyes as he choked the life from her body.

"Paris," she said, reading the tickets. "Where is it you want to go, Lieutenant?" If she was laughing at him, he couldn't see it in her green eyes.

"Washington, D.C.," he heard himself say. He stiffened in horror.

She nodded. "We can get a connection in Paris, but I'll need tickets. It looks like there's enough cash here." She pulled some bills from the wallet. "And we'll need to get me a pa.s.sport." She looked again at the man on the ground, her face softening. "I'd prefer to steal one without knocking someone out if possible. Maybe in the ladies' rest room? I'm not too good at this kind of thing. You'll have to advise me."

His fists clenched at his thighs to keep them under control. Inside, he was churning like the eye of a storm. He did not understand what was happening. She seemed to be implying that she was going with him. It was a trick. She was milking him.

What was frightening was how horribly tempted he was by the ruse. The idea of help-the mereidea of it-filled him with desperate longing. It made him realize how heavy the burden was that he carried, how close he was to complete collapse. But at the same time, he felt enraged. He was a warrior. He would not be nursed, by the blood, and particularly not byher .

"Go f.u.c.k yourself," he said, pleased to remember the words. His lip curled in a disdain broad enough to fill the seas.

She shied away from the look on his face, licked her lips nervously, but didn't run. She gazed down at the pa.s.sport again. "You, um, picked a good one. The pa.s.sport's four years old. The security guards will just a.s.sume you had a haircut. Otherwise you match him quite well."

Go to the devil, I said!

"Lieutenant Farris?" she asked cautiously.

"Do what you want," he snarled. He grabbed the papers from her and headed for the airport.

By eight o'clock that evening Mr. and Mrs. Goldman from New Jersey were installed in the small inn's upstairs bedroom-right across from Mr. and Mrs. Dolman, the name Aharon had peeked at in the register as he signed in.

Hannah-that is, Ruth Goldman-had chatted with the innkeeper, a rosy-faced Polish matron, about wanting to be upstairs and wanting something that faced the lovely view in the back, and Mrs. Sochetzchi had given them the room next to the Dolmans. They were the only other guests in the inn.

Hannah had smiled at Aharon triumphantly. And he, Aharon Handalman, had run a hand over his face, as he had been unable to stop doing for the past two hours, still shamed and nauseated by the lack of hair there. He felt like Samson. He felt unmanned. At last, Hannah had managed it.

What on earth was he going to say when they got back to Jerusalem?

Now they were lying on a wooden floor, with only a knotted rag rug between their bodies and the hard surface. Hannah lay on her side facing him, a clear water gla.s.s pressed to her ear, its other end on the wall.

Foolishness,Aharon thought again, with a mental snort. Such a thing as a gla.s.s against a wall was good for cartoons, maybe, but not for real life. Aharon himself had tried his ear against the wall, but though he could hear murmuring, he could tell nothing that was being said.

"That's not going to work," he said quietly to Hannah, watching her intensely focused face. "We're going to have to make a hole when they go out. Tomorrow I'll buy a drill." He thought about it some more. "Or maybe one of those doctor's things would work-you know what I mean? I could go see the doctor in town about some complaint or other. It's not like I don't have plenty of complaints."

"Shhh!" Hannah said.

He could not believe he was talking about drilling holes and stealing medical apparatus. He could not believe that he, he and hiswife , were in Auschwitz spying on the Mossad.

On the other hand, after his experiences on Fiori nothing seemed as frightening or as crazy as it ought to. He could even feeldelighted to be lying on the floor on Earth, spying on the Mossad.

He sighed contentedly, watching his wife. "So what are they saying?" he asked her teasingly.

"They're talking about the Americans," she whispered.

Of course they were. What else would they be talking about?

It was ridiculous. Because right now they were in a life-and-death situation. Not onlytheir life and death, the latter of which was extremely likely, but some huge, apocalyptic potentiality, and still he was getting warm thoughts about his wife.

But he'd learned on Fiori that sometimes it served not to think too closely about what you had to do. Better to allow himself to lie here on his side watching Hannah pretending to be able to hear and allow his mind to wander to greener pastures. They were in the hotel, they had gotten in, he and Mrs. Goldman, and that was good enough for tonight. After all, he could hardly drill holes in the wall with their neighbors in the room, even if he had a drill, which he didn't. And if the Mossad was there, in the next room, they weren't out doing anything worse.

"Hannah," he said, his voice soft so as not to be heard in the next room and also a little husky. "This is the first time we are alone, you and me."

"They're arguing about whether or not the woman can get inside the house," she said, her voice conspiratorial.

"Of course they are." Aharon took her small fingers and brought them to his lips.

Hannah flushed, her eyes focusing on him for the first time-finally seeing the kind of mood he was in. She smiled and frowned at the same time, a halfhearted rejection, yet her hand unfurled to close the brief distance to his cheek. She rubbed her fingers over its smoothness. Her eyes ignited playfully.

"I can think of some advantages to those soft, bare cheeks of yours," she whispered.

"Hannah!" he gasped, shifting on the floor. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Hush!" Her voice went distant again as she strained at the gla.s.s. Even he could hear the rising voices, though he still couldn't make out words. Probably because his ears were filled with pounding blood. His fingers reached out of their own volition, smoothing over that crazy sweatshirt of hers.

Hannah's eyes widened. "Aharon, this is important! They're arguing over ways to get her into the house." She made a cease-and-desist motion with her hand.

"Good," Aharon murmured, raising up the hem of her sweatshirt. "You listen for both of us."

Denton approached the back of Anatoli's house, wary of the early-morning sunlight. Hannah had left some of her "spy gear" in the hostel, including a small pair of binoculars. Denton had to chuckle at that, thinking about how crazy she made Aharon.

Just now Denton had seen that the only person who appeared to be awake in the house was the younger of the two agents, or Marines, or whatever they were. The big, hulking one must be asleep. Although the big, hulking one was probably the dimmer bulb of the two, Denton was rea.s.sured. He would be watching the house for quite a while today, bundled up like a snowman in every st.i.tch of clothing he could find. But his immediate agenda was to talk to Anatoli.

The younger agent was in the little kitchen sipping coffee. It wasn't far enough away from Anatoli's room for comfort, but then, no room in Anatoli's house was.

Denton slipped up to the window.

He could see better in the thin light of day. The window had been made escape-proof by nailing two two-by-fours in a cross shape on the inside of the window frame. That left gaps for light and air, but nothing bigger than a cat could crawl through. The window itself was indented from the window frame and was not affected by the boards. And it was not locked. It eased up under Denton's fingers-and stuck at about two inches.

"Anatoli?" Denton whispered. "Anatoli!"

A shape loomed up against the gla.s.s. Anatoli's bed was just inside the window and when he sat up his face popped into view like that of a ghost. He looked frailer than ever, his wispy hair in a staticky dance around his head, his eyes large and popping, like the eyes of a drowned sailor.

Denton had the feeling the old man was about to scream and put his fingers against his lips urgently."Shhhhhhh!"

The old man's mouth opened into the shape of a scream, but no sound came out. He blinked at Denton.

"Anatoli, it's me, Denton Wyle!"