Tongues of Fire (11 page)

Rehv gazed at her feet and his feet pointing at each other across the rug: two square naked feet with ten red faces and two long narrow ones in golf ball socks. There was something unhappy about both pairs.

“Are you happy?” Dr. Lanze asked.

“Happy?”

“Do you know how it feels to be happy?”

“Yes.”

“You've been happy before?”

“Yes.” Something rose from his chest and filled his throat; he had trouble getting the word out.

“That's good. Many of the people I see have never been happy, not since they were babies.” That made sense to him. Happy was a silly word: It had a nonsense sound like syllables babbled by a baby; like baby talk it was soon outgrown. He knew enduring words for it in other languages.

“What were you thinking, just then?” Dr. Lanze asked quickly.

“Nothing.”

“Something.”

“I was thinking you should clean the aquarium. The fish will die with all that algae in there.”

“You're avoiding me, Isaac.” She wriggled forward on the pillow. “It's hard to talk about, but you have to talk. I know you lost your wife and child.”

“I didn't lose them.” He looked at her angrily. The green eyes looked back with an expression he didn't understand: patient, knowing, professional, and something else. Fear? He wasn't sure. His anger died away.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There's nothing to tell. It happened to lots of people. You must have read it in the papers.”

“I'd like to hear you talk about it.”

“I don't think you would.” He was growing more uncomfortable sitting on the pillow. His back hurt.

“How do you expect to adjust to it if you won't talk?”

“I will never adjust to it.” He heard the fierceness in his own voice, and saw again the odd look in her eyes. It was not fear, but some other kind of excitement, partly suppressed.

“I can understand why you say that,” Dr. Lanze said. “But there are many other refugees—”

“I'm not a refugee. I am an Israeli.” Again he saw the look.

“There are many other Israelis who are beginning to adjust,” she continued in a quiet, almost husky voice. “Why not Isaac?”

Rehv thought of the prime minister, Harry, and the young woman with the tear gas. “Is shooting Arabs in the streets adjusting?”

“Everyone knows that the terrorists are a tiny minority, and they're being rounded up very quickly,” she said patiently. “The majority is learning to accept the world as it is. Why not Isaac?”

“I don't know.” He really didn't know. He decided he would tell her about the screaming.

“I'll be frank with you, Isaac,” Dr. Lanze said before he had a chance. “I've been working with a number of other Israelis in the past few months, and most of them were much worse off than you are. You're young, you're highly trained, you're smart, you're even good-looking. And you were happy before. All your problems come from one traumatic incident. So there is no need for us to ferret about in your childhood or early sexual escapades.” Dr. Lanze smiled. She had sharp, even white teeth. “All we have to do is find ways to deal with that trauma. But first you must accept the world as it is.”

He thought he would like very much to deal with the trauma, but never under that condition. “Maybe there is another way.”

“No,” Dr. Lanze said. “There isn't.” Her lips were still slightly parted, lips the color of her toenails, the tips of the white teeth showing behind. “Let me tell you about a study that was made after the war, the Second World War. It's about this same subject, coping with trauma, adjusting. It was done on German housewives, women who had lost their husbands, children, everything. The study found that many of them almost immediately began having sex with the occupying troops.” Dr. Lanze wriggled farther forward until her plump buttocks rested on the edge of the pillow. Her voice became huskier. “But more interesting, of these women a very large percentage, quite spontaneously and voluntarily, had a strong desire to perform analingus on the men of the occupying army. The study found that the women who gave in to this desire were generally the quickest to adjust and start building new lives. It was a symbolic acceptance of things as they were.”

The green eyes moved very close to his, narrowed like slits in a pillbox. Now Rehv understood those eyes. He knew that one word from him, a look, and the suede trousers would be off, and he would be on his back on the floor, her heavy buttocks spread across his face: on his back, building a new life.

Rehv stood up. He saw Dr. Lanze's hand go to her waistband. He thought the screaming would start, but it did not. Instead he felt very tall, very controlled, very strong, stronger than he had felt in a long time. He looked down at her and quietly said: “I will never adjust.” She shrank back on the pillow.

Rehv slipped on his shoes and walked out of the room, down the stairs, and outside into Greenwich Village. An old African trader shuffled slowly by in floppy yellow sandals, carrying an ivory camel that seemed very white in his blue black hands.

Rehv crossed the street. He did not need the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the government-in-exile, or men like Harry. He could do it all by himself. It might take a long time, even a lifetime, but it would be the life that was Isaac Rehv. He walked quickly down the street, thinking about the boy who could do what had to be done.

In a parked car sat a sandy-haired man with dark eyebrows. He was reading the comic page of the newspaper.

CHAPTER TEN

Armbrister packed the perforated silver ball with tea. “Keemun,” he said. Carefully he lowered the ball by its thin silver chain into a white china mug, and filled the mug with boiling water from the kettle. Steam rose. Armbrister inhaled some of it and closed his bloodshot fish eyes with pleasure. Krebs waited while he removed the silver ball, said, “I really shouldn't,” and stirred in two spoonfuls of clover honey. While Krebs waited he drank instant coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

Armbrister sat back in his padded chair and sipped the tea. Krebs saw that he was putting on weight: The roll that strained the lower buttons of his Tattersall shirt had grown in diameter from a French stick to a double rye. He rested the mug on it, and glanced over his untidy desk; probably in search of a tidbit, Krebs thought. Their eyes met.

“Let's hear it,” Armbrister said, in the weary tone he used to indicate that being badgered was his lot in life.

Krebs opened the yellow file on his knees. “I want to go after a man named Rehv,” he said. “Isaac Rehv. First you'll need some background.” He opened his mouth to begin, but Armbrister interrupted.

“Let's see what you've got,” he said. He put the mug on the desk and reached across for the file. He didn't like being told what he didn't know; he preferred to see it on paper, like a teacher grading essays.

Krebs watched him read. Armbrister read slowly, moistening the pad of his index finger on the tip of his tongue before turning each page. Nothing he read changed the expression on his face, which was that of an old city editor who knew there was no such thing as a new story. Armbrister closed the file. He set it on the desk and gave it a little push, like a child bored with his dinner.

“Why?” he asked, reaching for his tea.

“Why what?”

Armbrister sighed. “Why do you want to go after this man Rehv?” He put “go after” in quotes. “He's a waiter. Someone paid him some money to see that Abu Fahoum sat at a certain table. Maybe he did it for nothing. Maybe he didn't even do it at all. But, accepting for the sake of discussion that he did, that's all you've got.” He looked at the file with something like pity. “Small beer.” Armbrister was fond of British expressions.

“What about the maître d'?”

Armbrister began rubbing his eyes very hard, as though in a frenzy of disbelief. Krebs knew that his contact lenses were bothering him. “Maybe someone poisoned him as you say,” Armbrister replied, mauling his eyes. “Nothing here says your man was involved.”

“He's not my man.”

Armbrister stopped rubbing and lowered his hands. His eyes had swollen to red bulbs: Looking at them made Krebs's own eyes start to water. “Let's not argue, Krebs,” Armbrister said. He made it sound like a threat. “Whether or not he had anything to do with the poisoning, the fact remains he is a very little fish. A minnow. You know we don't want minnows.”

“I don't think he's a minnow.”

Armbrister blinked at the file. “Why not?”

Krebs leaned forward. “First of all, he faced down Abu Fahoum at the restaurant.”

Armbrister laughed the laugh of a man-about-town. “They learn that from day one at waiter's school.”

Krebs hated that laugh. He gulped his anger back down. “He's smart—a professor of Arabic.”

“Assistant.”

“And he has military experience.”

“In the reserve.”

Krebs rose and walked across the room. On the wall hung a photograph of Armbrister playing croquet with his family. He walked back and stood in front of the desk. He felt better looking down at Armbrister. “This is what I think happened,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “Rehv is a high-ranking terrorist. He works in a fancy restaurant, not a bad cover and a useful place to be. He looks at the reservation list and sees Abu Fahoum's name. He knows who he is. He sets him up. It fails only because he didn't have time to round up better people. Abu Fahoum is smart—he knows what Rehv is. He sends his goon to kill him. Abu Fahoum waits. He doesn't know what's going on. When I talk to him he's very evasive. Why? Why shouldn't he be helpful?”

“Did you mention my name?” Armbrister asked.

Krebs ignored him. “The reason he's not helpful is that he's waiting to hear from his goon. But the goon disappears. Rehv doesn't. Before Abu Fahoum can decide what to do next, Rehv gets him too.”

Armbrister pulled the top off the silver ball and dumped the damp tea leaves on a sheet of paper. “You haven't got any evidence,” he said, poking about in the tea leaves as if he might find some there.

Krebs leaned over him. “What would you say if I told you Rehv paid a little visit to Vermont last week?”

Armbrister looked up, his eyes very red. “Are you telling me?”

“Yes.”

“Why wasn't it in the report?”

“Because I just got the information this morning.” They looked at each other for a moment: Both men knew it wasn't the whole truth.

Armbrister poked at the tea leaves with his index finger. “It still doesn't mean anything,” he said. “We have nothing at all to connect Vermont with any of the terrorists.”

“Not yet.”

Armbrister pushed the tea leaves into a little pile. Then, taking, care not to spill, he rolled the paper into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. “What do you want?”

“Twenty-four-hour surveillance, three-man team.”

“For five days. No more.”

“And something else.”

“What?”

“He sees a psychiatrist. I'd like a look at her files.”

“No.”

“Very discreet.”

Armbrister made an odd, puckering face, as though he had just tasted sour milk. “No,” he said again.

It was a dark, moonless night. Krebs had dressed discreetly in a heavy black sweater, blue jeans, worn tennis shoes dyed black, and black leather gloves. He walked silently along the quiet street, the kind of street in Greenwich Village where the three- and four-story town houses are renovated every ten years. In a few windows he saw the cold flickering blue light of the last late movie; but the windows of the house he wanted were dark.

Krebs mounted the steps of the cement stoop and stood before the door. He had three keys in his pocket. The first one fit the lock. He turned it, heard the tumblers shift, and pushed. The door remained firmly closed, bolted from the inside. Krebs put the key back in his pocket and went down to the sidewalk. He knelt in front of the basement window: It was small, with four dirty panes, and seemed to be hinged at the top. He pressed it gently with his fingertips to discover whether the latch was closed. It was. He sat down on the sidewalk and put his heels against the lower part of the frame. He pushed hard. There was a sharp splitting sound, almost a squeak, as screws were torn from wood. It sent little waves of adrenaline down his arms and legs. He looked around. No lights went on in any of the windows; nobody screamed. Krebs placed his hands on the edge of the frame, twisted around, and lowered himself into the basement.

He crouched on the cold cement floor and listened. Two machines were humming: a refrigerator somewhere above and a hot water heater nearby. A car honked far away. Krebs took a small flashlight from his pocket and examined the remains of the latch. He saw a narrow bolt that would fit into a curved piece of metal attached to the wall. He found this piece on the floor, and the two screws that had held it. Using his multibladed Swiss Army knife, he screwed it back into the wall, changing its position slightly to hide the cracks in the wood. He closed the window and shut off the flashlight.

He stood in the basement waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. In a few moments he could see the washer and the dryer, and a row of five or six old toilets against one wall. Then he made out a little bicycle with fat tires, a hula hoop in the corner, and the stairs along the side wall. He had excellent night vision: It had been noted during his training. He started toward the stairs very quietly. Something soft fell across his nose and mouth. He jumped back, switching on the flashlight. Three pairs of silk panties hung on a line in front of his face. He turned off the flashlight and went up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs Krebs came to a closed door. He could hear the refrigerator on the other side. He put his hand on the knob and pulled and twisted at the same time, to prevent the catch from scraping. The door opened silently.