Tongues of Fire (6 page)

Because of all that Krebs didn't understand why they had brought him to New York to ride herd on a ragged little mob of Israelis who sometimes threw Molotov cocktails into the offices of airlines they didn't like. They had no money, no support, foreign or domestic, no safe base. It was a step backwards, and it worried him. He had thought they might send him to Islamabad, or even Warsaw. What had he done wrong? He had been over the past year fifty times, and he couldn't think of a single mistake. He sometimes thought of asking Armbrister—“Look, Armbrister, just tell me what it is, I'll make up for it”—but would never give Armbrister that pleasure. He would make up for it without knowing what it was. He would work harder, do more push-ups, learn another quick way of killing a man with his bare hands. He turned to the square green face of the computer screen on his desk.

He was trying to match suspected terrorists with their previous lives in Israel. It was very difficult. Immigration had been very sloppy—they had just let them roll in wave after unsorted wave. Names were wrong, ages were wrong, they weren't arranged by family or profession or even military rank, which should have been easy, since by the end almost the whole population was in uniform.

Hunched over his desk, Krebs tapped questions on the plastic keys. After a short pause the screen flickered and gave its usual answer in square white letters: “Negative.” Krebs tapped more questions. Sometimes the screen fed him a scrap or two of information. He made short notes on a writing pad. Outside, the rain softened into snow. Krebs didn't notice.

The telephone rang. “Mr. Armbrister would like to see you in his office,” a woman said. It was Armbrister's secretary. She had trouble with her
r
's. The way she pronounced Armbrister always reminded him of Elmer Fudd. Krebs thought Elmer Fudd was very funny; he still sometimes watched the cartoons on Saturday morning for half an hour or so, while he cooled down from his run, and Alice fixed his breakfast. Or didn't.

“Right now?” Krebs asked, but she had hung up.

Krebs shut off the computer terminal. He made a symmetrical arrangement of his pens, pencils, and writing pads. From the bottom drawer of his desk he took out a small round mirror. He studied his reflection closely: to be sure that his short sandy hair was neatly parted, that his eyebrows, much thicker and darker, were straight, that the aviator-style glasses really did make his square face seem longer and thinner, that there were no bits of food between his teeth or blackheads on his nose. He was about to put the mirror away when he noticed one tiny hair poking out his right nostril. He gripped it between thumb and index finger and yanked, immediately feeling a sharp pain surprisingly deep in his nose. He examined the hair: It was easily an inch and a quarter in length, perhaps an inch and a half. There was no time to measure. He blew it into his paper shredder.

Krebs locked his door and walked quickly to the end of the corridor. He ignored the elevator and took the stairs, climbing them two at a time—better for his legs and usually faster as well. He always used the stairs, except when he was with other people.

In the outer office Armbrister's secretary sat bent over a typewriter. Her limp black hair hung forward like blinders. “Go right in,” she said without looking up. Krebs paused for a moment to catch his breath, and entered Armbrister's office.

Armbrister was on the phone. He was listening carefully and writing notes on a piece of paper. With exaggerated fishlike movements of his face Armbrister mouthed something at him, probably “Hello. Sit down.” Krebs sat. Armbrister resembled a fish in any case, with his thick red lips and slightly bulging eyes, always bloodshot because the central heating dried his contact lenses. He made a very poor physical impression, Krebs thought. It was one of the reasons he disliked Armbrister—he preferred his superiors to look more distinguished.

“Of course I won't forget,” Armbrister was saying. He picked up the sheet of paper and read from it. “Four salmon steaks, butter, eggs, parsley, and a bottle of Aligoté.” He listened, nodded, kissed the mouthpiece, and hung up.

He turned to Krebs. “It's a new code,” he said with a laugh. He laughed a little more in case Krebs wanted to join him. Krebs tried to smile.

Armbrister stopped laughing and began pushing papers around his desk. “I've got something here that should be right up your alley.” He opened a drawer and rummaged inside. “If I can ever find it.” He loathed Armbrister. They had been in the same class at MIT.

“Here we go.” Armbrister held up a yellow file. “There was a bit of contact last night.”

“Serious?”

“Probably not. But there might be some interesting angles. It seems they were after a man named Fahoum.” Armbrister turned his red fish eyes on Krebs. He was waiting for Krebs to say something.

“I've never heard of him.”

Armbrister smiled. “Abu Fahoum,” he said. “He was a commando leader. British educated. Also a cultured and witty man. Right now he's attached to the Palestinian legation at the UN.”

“But he's in the business?”

The fish eyes opened wide in puzzlement. “The business?”

“Our business,” Krebs said.

“Oh, very much so.” If Armbrister had heard the impatience in his tone he chose to ignore it. He handed Krebs the file. “Give him a call. I'm sure he'll have a few ideas.”

“How much can I tell him?”

“As much as you like. We're allies, after all. Just make sure he gets the impression that this job is very high priority.”

Krebs stood up.

“One more thing,” Armbrister said. “It might make things smoother if you mention my name.”

Krebs spent the rest of the day working on the yellow file. It was a thin file: no identification of the body, no autopsy results, no suggestion of who the young woman was, or where she had gone. There was a police report that included a diagram of the restaurant showing two
X
s, almost touching, and a statement of the blood types of the young woman and the busboy. They were both O positive.

Krebs began making telephone calls. He tapped the keys of the computer terminal, wrote on the note pad. He didn't go to lunch. Once the girl brought him sandwiches, later a pot of coffee. Both times he watched her closely as she turned and walked away, but he recovered his concentration quickly and returned to work.

Snow turned to rain and back to snow. Deep shades of pink and orange blended into the gray light, meaning night had fallen on the city. Krebs had made the file much thicker, but he hadn't learned anything he wanted to know. The dull ache from cheap sandwiches and too much coffee descended slowly through his intestines. He stared for a while at the diagram of the restaurant. Then he sat back, stretched, cracked his knuckles one at a time, and telephoned Abu Fahoum.

The man who answered spoke a few harsh sounds in a language Krebs didn't know.

“Mr. Fahoum, please,” Krebs said.

“This is he,” said the man. In English the voice sounded smooth and fancy, like the voices of British actors on educational television.

Krebs introduced himself, and asked if they could meet.

“I'm very busy,” Abu Fahoum said. “I've told everything I know to the police. Why don't you talk to them?”

“I have,” Krebs said. He wanted to add: “Do you think I'm a goddamned amateur? We taught you everything you know.” But he remembered that Abu Fahoum had probably learned from a Russian teacher. He mentioned Armbrister.

“The name means nothing to me. Now if you don't mind—”

“Just answer one question, Mr. Fahoum,” Krebs said quickly. “It may be important: Did any of the staff behave strangely, or do anything unusual?”

There was a brief pause. Krebs felt a powerful mind on the other end of the line. It seemed to intensify the electronic connection between them. “Staff?” Abu Fahoum said.

“The maître d'. The waiters.”

Krebs heard a spitting sound in his ear. “I am not in the habit of noticing waiters,” Abu Fahoum said very coldly. “Now I really must say good-bye.”

Krebs leaned forward, squeezing the phone tightly. “I wish you would think a little more about this, Mr. Fahoum. Don't you want us to find the people who tried to kill you?”

Abu Fahoum laughed. “For that, Mr. Kreb—”

“Krebs.”

“—I am happy to rely entirely on your expertise.” The line went dead.

Krebs banged the receiver into its cradle. He glared at the telephone, picked the receiver up, and banged it again. He stood up and paced around the office. Krebs was an easy name to get right.

After a while he approached the desk and gazed again at the diagram. The two tables were so close together. Sixteen was on a slightly higher level than twenty-three. That allowed someone sitting at sixteen who wanted to shoot someone sitting at twenty-three to fire down on him. It was very convenient. He decided he needed the names of everyone who worked at La Basquaise. He filled a Styrofoam cup with cold coffee and reached for the telephone.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was a city of wind and stone. No one roasted chestnuts on the corner, or stepped out for a quick cigarette, or walked his dog. No one made a sound. There was nothing to hear but the wind cutting its way through the stone canyons. And no one to hear it except Isaac Rehv, huddled in the little car, waiting for the night to be over. The wind had long ago found him hiding there, and worked through the cheap body of the car to blow its cold breath in his ears and up his pant legs.

“Don't worry,” Harry had said. “I'll help you.” He had helped: He had lent Rehv his car; he had shown him the apartment hotel on the Upper East Side where Abu Fahoum lived; he had given him a gun. “Wait for nighttime,” Harry had told him: “He likes to go for walks at night.”

“How do you know?” Rehv had asked.

“Joel,” Harry had explained. “He watched him for a month.” That didn't make Rehv feel more confident. Joel was the boy with the deep red hole in his forehead.

On the first night of grace Abu Fahoum did not appear. Perhaps it had been the snow. Perhaps he didn't like going for walks after all. Rehv had waited. From time to time he had stepped out of the car to clear snow off the windows. Once he had made a snowball and thrown it at a tree. It had stuck to the bark of the trunk like a round white birthmark.

Now, on the second night of grace, he waited again. He kept his eyes on the gray stone building on the other side of the street. Warm lights glowed through heavy curtains in the windows. Behind the thick glass doors walked the doorman, back and forth, back and forth, in his chocolate brown uniform. He had nothing to do. No one came in. No went went out.

Rehv rehearsed all the reasons he had to kill Abu Fahoum. Abu Fahoum had tried to kill him. He would try again. At the very least he would send the police after him. Tomorrow. And there was Haifa. He had reasons. They were sound and logical, but his heart wasn't in it. Rehv wasn't sure he could bring himself to kill Abu Fahoum without his heart being in it. He hadn't told any of this to Harry, but the little man had sensed it all the same.

“You wouldn't have had any trouble killing him during the war, would you?” Harry had asked.

“Probably not.”

“Good. This is the war. We're still fighting.”

But so far from the front. Rehv wore gloves, but his hands were still cold; he squeezed them between his thighs. The front. Where was it? A year ago in time, and gone forever in space, unless you counted the space inside Harry's mind, and the minds of a few others. The cold sank its teeth through his thin nylon jacket. It made his back ache. He waited. He wasn't waiting for Abu Fahoum; no one went for walks in weather like this. He was waiting for the night to be over.

Rehv stamped his feet a couple of times and wriggled his toes. He wanted to start the car and turn on the heater, but he remembered the silvery billows that cars exhale on cold nights, and thought the doorman might notice. Parked silently in the shadows it was just another empty car. He tried singing: “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “La Cucaracha,” “Hava Nagila.” His voice sounded harsh and brittle and somehow frightening in the confined space. The notes shriveled into tuneless muttering.

In the distance Rehv saw a patch of yellow light run across the faces of the stone buildings. A taxi turned off one of the broad avenues and onto the deserted street, pointing its headlights at Rehv. He slid lower in the seat, watching from behind the steering wheel. The taxi approached slowly, almost haltingly. Rehv could sense the driver scanning the brass or wrought-iron numbers on the doorposts. The taxi stopped in front of the thick glass doors.

The doorman in the chocolate uniform came forward and looked outside. He turned his face back toward the lobby; his lips moved. He pushed hard against one of the doors and held it open. The wind must have been pushing the other way, Rehv thought. A man walked through. He was tall and dark, and wore a thick black leather coat that almost touched the ground. He seemed to shrink inside it as he felt the wind. It made him hurry toward the taxi. The doorman was quicker: He got there first to open the door. To reach into the pocket of his trousers the dark man had to undo most of the buttons of his coat. The doorman waited patiently. Money changed hands. The dark man sat down inside the taxi. He wasn't wearing a white robe or a black-and-white checked keffiyeh, but he was still Abu Fahoum. The doorman closed the door.

The taxi pulled away. Rehv started the motor of Harry's car, made a sharp U-turn, and followed. He felt the cold and heavy gun tucked inside his shirt: a Smith & Wesson .38 with a silencer attached. The silencer reminded him of condoms, although there was no analogy at all.

The taxi headed downtown. There was very little traffic. Rehv followed closely. He had seen that New York taxi drivers were often unpredictable, and he expected this one at any moment to run a red light or push the accelerator to the floor. Instead he drove almost sedately through the empty midtown streets. When he reached the middle forties he turned west, onto a street of garish signs and gaudy lights. After he had gone a block or two the driver drew over to the curb. Rehv slowed but kept going, careful to keep his face hidden as he passed. In the rearview mirror he saw Abu Fahoum pay the driver and enter a seedy cinema. Sheba said the sign in red neon.