Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (13 page)

She remained very still, her eyes straining to see into which tent the two girls disappeared: second from the right, she decided, unless the moonlight deceived her. Only then did she slide cautiously down the hill to Farrell. “I saw her,” she whispered. “I
saw
her.”

“I didn’t hear any voices,” he protested.

“They didn’t speak, but it was Amanda. Two girls, one of them Arab, one of them Amanda.”

“So she’s still alive,” he said in amazement. “And here of all places. Hell, that does it, Duchess, let’s get back to the Land Rover and to the flashlight. I borrowed Joe’s compass—we’ll want to take our bearings very carefully so we can report exactly where she can be found.”

“Where she can be—” She stopped. He meant a report to the State Department, and she gave him a quick glance but said nothing, suddenly realizing that Farrell’s wounds might be quickly healing on the outside, but that he was carrying them with him inside, buried deep. Farrell was afraid.

As I ought to be, too
, she thought, wondering how on earth
they’d ever get back to Damascus, but she was remembering Amanda Pym’s face in the moonlight, thinner now, cheekbones sharpened into gauntness, looking younger in her camouflage suit than she’d appeared on film in that ill-fitting thrift-shop suit. It was apparent that for Farrell this was enough, but Farrell was refusing to remember what Carstairs had said: he had very clearly stated that he wanted Amanda Pym back if she could be found.

And now they had found her.

W
hen they returned to the camp there was still a light in the tent that Joe shared with Farrell. They found him seated on his cot, leaning over a small tray table covered with sheets of paper, a jar of paste and the jigsaw scraps from the fire collected into a bowl. He glanced up, glad to see them. “Any luck?” he asked, and his eyeglasses glittered in the light from the kerosene lamp.

“We found her,” Mrs. Pollifax told him eagerly. “She’s there, I
saw
her.”

“Wow,” said Joe. “But that’s great—wonderful—congratulations!”

“We found her,” Farrell said, nodding, “so I think we can leave here in the morning.”

Mrs. Pollifax said sharply, “Farrell—”

“Leave? You can’t leave,” Joe said angrily. “You can’t leave
now.”

“Of course we can leave,” Farrell told him stiffly. “We found her. I’ve taken the compass bearings of where the camp is, they can find it on their satellites—”

Mrs. Pollifax said coldly, “Yes and what, send paratroopers down for her? In
Syria
?” To Joe she said in a quiet aside, “He
had a rough time when he was captured, he’s thinking of those men who must be looking for him now.”

“Of course they’ll be looking for him,” Joe said indignantly. “They don’t want you to find Amanda Pym, and now you’ve outwitted them and found her, and you’re just going to
go
?”

“Farrell,” she said gently, “you’re tired.”

“I’m not tired,” he snapped. “Obviously you think we should try to get her out of that camp but you must realize it’s impossible. My God, it’s a sniper camp; they don’t just learn camouflage and how to hide—they have guns and know how to use them. We’ve found her, that ought to be enough. We owe her nothing.”

If Farrell startled Mrs. Pollifax by turning into a stranger, Joe startled her even more by saying, “You owe her a
life
, damn you. I know a lot about her, and you can’t just leave her there, it’s too cruel.”

Abruptly Mrs. Pollifax sat down on the opposite cot. “You’ve pieced together scraps from her journal, haven’t you. What is it you know about her? There were certain doubts in the department.…”

“I didn’t tell you before, I hadn’t finished—still haven’t,” he said, “but to hear you say you found her and are going to leave her there is more than I can stomach.”

“Why?” demanded Farrell.

“It’s only guessing on my part but I think I know now why she was so reckless to disarm that hijacker at the risk of her life.”

“Then tell us,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

He looked at her doubtfully. “I’d rather show you … show you
both,”
he added with an angry glance at Farrell.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Farrell said crossly.

“You can look for yourselves at what I pieced together,” he
told them. “There’s still a pile but I went through them piece by piece until I found matches.”

“To what?”

“Look for yourselves. I’ve lined them up chronologically, because after a lawyer was mentioned her mother wasn’t, so I think her mother died recently. But decide for yourself.”

Both she and a reluctant Farrell took their places at the table and looked at what he’d pieced together.

Mother furious about
 …

 … more hand-me-down clothes from
 …

 … explained why no money for college, I can’t
 …

Mother said the meat cost
 …

Mother insisted I
 …

Mother said I couldn’t
 …

 … to poorhouse, she always brings up poorh
 …

 … tired, so tired. Of scrimping, scrimping, scrimping and
 …

 … she died at 3
A.M.
,
and
 …

 … a safe-deposit box tomorrow, the lawyer so kind and
 …

They lied, lied, lied, LIED!!!! All these years!

 … what do I do with … it all?

 … a fool, wearing new … clothes, where would I … wear them?

More stocks sold, another check today … $83,000, I wanted to tear … it up, it’s so meaningless
.

 … was taught to be incons … picuous, I end up invisible
.

Invisible
, thought Mrs. Pollifax, jarred by the word.
She seems to have moved through life not being noticed at all
, Carstairs had said. And if Amanda Pym had been invisible in Roseville, Pennsylvania, what would have been her experience in Egypt, shabby and timid, traveling alone?

Farrell said dryly, “A lot of mothers there.”

“Certainly a demanding one, perhaps an invalid,” suggested Mrs. Pollifax.

“I’d say a tyrant,” said Joe fiercely. “There are others that I can’t match up yet, a lot about her longings to go to college but—”

“Couldn’t afford it,” put in Mrs. Pollifax, nodding.

“Yes. The last one I patched up are lines torn from an Emily Dickinson poem called ‘I Was Hungry.’ ”

“It’s not one I’m familiar with,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

“Care to hear the lines of what’s left of it?”

“Another Babylonian prayer?” asked Farrell cynically.

Joe paid him no attention. “There are lines missing, but they’re in print, not copied. She must have torn it from a book to carry in her journal.” Picking up the third sheet of paper, he read:

“The rest of that is scorched but there are two other lines,” Joe said.

“The only remaining line not scorched was,” said Joe, “ ‘The plenty hurt me, ’twas so new, Myself felt ill and odd.’ ” A thoughtful silence followed these words.

“So what’s your conclusion?” asked Farrell reluctantly.

Joe said angrily, “I think her parents lived like misers; I think she had a very depressed and depressing life. I think what made her a ‘heroine’ at the hijacking was suddenly realizing that she didn’t know how to live—nobody had ever shown her how—and suddenly she didn’t care. She may even have hoped they’d kill her.”

Shocked, Farrell said, “You mean … suicide?”

“People do reach that point in life,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax softly. “When there’s no hope. It happens.”
As it did to me once
, she remembered.

Farrell’s glance had fallen to his bandaged wrists and Mrs. Pollifax guessed that he was looking, not at his wrists, but at his fear of being captured and in pain again, probing and examining his fears, and admitting to them at last. With a twisted smile he said, “All right, you’ve made your point, Joe. We can’t leave her, but how the hell we get her out of here is beyond me.”

Joe said eagerly, “I’d help. The camp closes in ten days; I could quit early.”

“To do what?” growled Farrell, and turning to Mrs. Pollifax, he added, “Well, Duchess? Imagination, inventiveness, resourcefulness, remember? Just how do you think two people—”

“No,
three,”
put in Joe.

“—could invade a camp of snipers, find Amanda Pym, and get her, and all of us, out alive.”

“I’d have to think,” she said calmly.

“Then
think
, damn it.”

Mrs. Pollifax began thinking. Her thoughts had a tendency
to move in a straight line, and with a simplicity that often startled other people. It would be folly, of course, to attempt to storm a camp full of snipers when they had no weapons, and she did not bother to consider this: one had to work with the tools available. She crisply divided the problem into three: how to get into the camp, how to snatch Amanda Pym and get out, and how to get away without being followed. It would have to be at night, of course. In her mind’s eye she pictured the camp, its length, its breadth and the height of the wire fence, and she nodded.

Joe said eagerly, “You’ve thought of something?”

“Yes,” she said. “Sheep.”

“S
heep?” said Joe blankly.

“Sheep?”
repeated Farrell. “You said
sheep
?”

She nodded. “Sheep,” and turning to Joe, “You have to think carefully before you offer help, Joe, this would
not
be risk-free, it’s not a matter of researching the Umayyads or the Babylonians, or digging up bones and pottery.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. “This is real. It feels time I get involved in something real. I could be useful, couldn’t I?”

“Very useful,” she said, “since you speak Arabic and we don’t. Do you know if anyone in the camp has wire cutters?”

“Barney brings a tool kit with him every summer; we always kid him about being Mr. Fix-It. He
must
have wire cutters.”

Farrell, listening to this, said again, “But sheep, Duchess? What on earth—”

“It’s quite simple,” she told him. “If a fair-sized hole can be cut in their fence, what could be more overwhelming and confusing than a herd of sheep moving into and through the sniper camp? Baaing all the way, I hope,” she added. “And in the dark.”

Farrell shook his head. “What you’re thinking of is a stampede, Duchess, but it’s cattle that stampede.
Not
sheep.”

She said coldly, “They’ll stampede if pushed. Joe, Amy told me the village people who bring water every few days raise sheep. She said at least a hundred, did she exaggerate?”

“No, not at all,” said Joe eagerly. “A hundred at least. What they raise here are fat-tailed sheep, because they store fat in their tails and rump. They raise them for milk and for their wool.”

“So there you are,” she told Farrell triumphantly, and with a glance at her watch, “You said the village is about fifteen miles away?”

“Roughly yes,” Joe said.

“Sheep move slowly,” she added regretfully, “and if they stop to graze it would take most of tomorrow for them to arrive, so we’ll have to get to work right away.”

“No rest for the weary?” murmured Farrell.

“Sleep can be snatched, but we must have wire cutters. Joe, see if Barney’s awake, and if he isn’t, wake him up and ask if he has wire cutters. After that it’s vital the two of you get to the village, even if you have to walk—and
now
, tonight, to get the sheep moving by dawn. We can’t take any chances, they’ve got to be here by sunset tomorrow. Where’s our money?” She reached for her purse and drew out a wad of Syrian bills. Handing them to Joe she said, “Would this be enough?”

“For what?”

“To rent a suitable number of sheep for two days. You speak Arabic, thank God. Tell them their sheep will be returned to them—or most of them, one must assume. Hire one or two of their boys, too, they can help you herd the sheep and return them. But the sheep
must
be started no later than tomorrow at dawn.”

Joe laughed. “This is crazy, really crazy. I’ll wake up Barney now.”

At once he was gone, leaving Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell to observe each other with interest. “Well, Farrell?” she said.

“I give up,” he said, and grinned. “All I can say is, I wish your Garden Club could see you now, Duchess, sitting in a canvas tent in the middle of the Syrian desert, wearing somebody’s djellaba, or whatever it’s called, and plotting an attack on a sniper’s camp with a herd of sheep. Incidentally,” he added, “they can shoot at sheep as well as people.”

Mrs. Pollifax said calmly, “I have always found that most people, awakened from a sound sleep at night, tend to lack their usual reflexes, at least for a few minutes. Besides which, the sheep will be well inside their compound before they’re heard at the far end of it where the tents are.” She hesitated and then, “Farrell, how are you
really
?”