Robbie spirited a smile from somewhere. “You don’t know how stupid I feel,” he said in a low voice. “Oh, God—when I think how I’ve got to come back here tomorrow and face the other kids—”
“Don’t worry about that.” Colin glanced up at Wainwright, who nodded understandingly and left the room.
After a longish period during which Robbie failed to meet his eye, Colin said, “Tom mentioned something about Mummy.”
“This morning, when she left, she sounded so … strange.”
“In what way, strange?”
“She talked about miracles. And about not feeling herself. I … I don’t know why, Dad, really I don’t"—the words were coming out in a rush now—"but I can’t get it out of my head that she’s in some kind of trouble. Please say she’s all right,
say it!”
Colin stared at his son. For a twelve-year-old, Robbie was altogether too much of a worrier. Leila knew that. Yet this morning she’d apparently said something that had ruined his day.
“Mother’s all right,” he said aloud. “Of course she’s all right.” He clapped Robbie on the back. “I think you and I deserve an early night.”
They walked out to the car. This afternoon the boy, usually so voluble, seemed subdued and distant. While Colin was fumbling for his car keys they heard a bell sound in the school, and the rumble of chairs being pushed back.
A long black limousine with tinted windows and a boomerang-shaped aerial on its trunk turned into the quiet street.
“It’s possible,” Colin said as he opened the door, “that your mother’s not well, or maybe she was feeling depressed.”
Robbie shrugged.
The black limousine was accelerating now, still almost silent. In the schoolyard, just behind the twelve-foot wall, hundreds of pupils were flooding out from class. The street echoed with their pleasure.
Colin slid into the driver’s seat and reached across to open the nearside door for Robbie. Behind them, the driver of the black limousine suddenly put his foot on the gas, hard, and the huge car’s tail dropped with the force of acceleration, its boomerang aerial dipping like an aileron. From less than twenty yards away, it covered the distance to where Robbie was half in and half out of the car in no more than a couple of seconds.
The limo drew level with Colin’s Ford. Two men flung themselves out, one running behind the Ford, the other in front, so that Colin saw the latter’s face and knew him for an Arab. A flicker of movement in the rearview mirror showed him the second man, also heading for the pavement, moving so fast that the message penetrated Colin’s brain with the immediacy of an electronic display: Robbie in danger!
Colin hurtled from the front seat of his car, shouting, “Hey! Back off!” And at that moment, in the very second the Arab laid hands on Robbie’s sleeve, a great, vital wave of children came crashing around the corner where the street intersected with Riverside Drive, whooping and hollering; Robbie jerked away from his attacker with a squeal; the second man, Arab also, looked over the first man’s shoulder and shouted; Colin, too, shouted.
“Help!”
he roared at the top of his voice.
“Murder, help!”
The amorphous child wave did not falter, but it changed upon the instant from a gaggle of innocent youngsters to a hungry mob. The Arabs sensed it. They hesitated—just for a second, but enough to tell the children through invisible antennae that they had the upper hand. The man who’d been clasping Robbie’s sleeve released his grip. He backed away.
Suddenly the two of them were racing for the limo.
Colin ran around the front of his Ford in pursuit. The
crowd of roaring teenagers at his back gave him courage;
he never stopped to think whether the men might be
armed. He was gaining on them, mere feet away
But the two Arabs threw themselves into the limo, which shot off with a screech of tires that seemed to hang in the air long after it had thrust its way into Riverside Drive.
Robbie ran to his father. “Are you all right?” he cried, while hosts of curious children swarmed up and down the street, wondering what it was they had seen, what they had unconsciously taken part in.
“I’m all right,” Colin said, but he continued to stare after the stretch limo, even though nothing remained on the street to prove it had ever been there at all.
“Did they have guns, Dad? Is that why you stopped? Were they armed?”
A pause. “Yes, that’s right, son. That’s why I stopped chasing them.”
Robbie had been traumatized enough today. Better not to tell him that he’d seen Halib Hanif sitting in the back of the stretch car, or that upon his face had been an expression of murderous rage.
Sharett and Neeman pushed through the heavy door and found themselves in darkness broken only by a pink flashing sign warning of two steps down. As they moved forward it became lighter; not much, but enough to show them a slice of Temple Emanu-El’s interior. Raful groped his way toward the nearest of the stark wooden pews and lowered himself into it. He sat there with his hands on his knees, gazing around, and his head shrank farther into his shoulders until by the time he’d made a complete survey he looked almost deformed.
He hated this place. It was full of empty spaces, and shadows, and darkness, and the somber half-light of a funeral parlor. He had never seen such an enormous synagogue: its main hall could contain over a thousand people, and on the northern side was a side hall with room for still more.
At the back, dominating the gallery, a lofty window of blue-and-gold stained glass admitted shreds of natural light. The only other illumination came from electric bulbs suspended so far up this enormously high edifice that Raful couldn’t even see how they were fixed to the ceiling. Aisles ran along each side of the main hall, and they were scarcely lighted at all. Above those aisles were galleries, arches of stone framing deep black empty spaces that afforded perfect cover for a marksman, for a whole company of marksmen.
Ahead of him Raful could see the Ark, framed between intricate mosaics, with two seven-branched menorah candlesticks on either side, their red flames fueled by cunning electric lamps that appeared to flicker naturally. It was Gothic, medieval, fit for the playing out of a tragic opera’s final act. A jealous God lived here, a God of wrath and vengeance, and he was waiting in the shadows, waiting for what would be. Sharett looked again at the distant stained glass—"stained,” somehow so appropriate to this place—the faded strips of red carpet along the aisles, the vapid lights, the arches, the shadows, the brooding, majestic Ark, the shadows, the shadows, the shadows; and he turned to Neeman and said, “Dannie. Dannie, tell me just one thing. If you wanted to kill an ambassador, where would you chose to do it?”
And Dannie Neeman screwed up his mouth to one side before saying quietly, “Here.”
Raful sighed. “Katz says they’re using the smaller synagogue for the bar mitzvah this evening, over on that side,” he said, pointing north. “So let’s go take a look.”
They slid along the pew and made a half circuit of the synagogue until they reached the side hall. This seemed darker yet. The Ark was less ornate, but there was a presence here, something unmistakable, almost tangibly real. Outside, New York sweltered in the high eighties, but Raful could feel goose bumps on his flesh, along with the chilly sensation that heralds the onset of flu.
“We’re going to bring Moshe in here?” Neeman asked Sharett. “Seriously?”
“I got his personal security people to report on this synagogue, and the answer came back No Problem.” But Raful’s chill deepened.
“Raful.” Neeman’s voice was hushed. “Are we going through with this?”
Raful had the grace to hesitate. He thought of Sara, of Esther, of Ehud Chafets, who had failed but who had been a good man. He remembered what happened to human flesh, even,
especially,
to firm young female flesh, when you fragmented a bomb in close proximity to it. He made one last inspection of the synagogue, seeking to penetrate the ubiquitous multishaped shadows that shrouded everything and everywhere, like a cloth of black velvet.
He had to lure the Hanifs out into the open. Had to!
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
Colin had been looking forward to a showdown with Leila, so her absence from home came as a disappointment. It also meant that he had nothing to distract him from the shock of seeing Halib after the assault on his son.
He must report the incident to the police, but first he sent Robbie upstairs to do homework. Mentally squaring himself, he approached the telephone extension on the kitchen wall and lifted the receiver. Oh, shit! Answering machine on.
He marched into the hallway and was about to click the machine off when he saw that someone had left a message, so he pressed PLAYBACK instead.
“Hello, Leila?” A deep, throaty woman’s voice. “Elaine Cohen. I can’t come pick you up, I’m sorry. So see you in shul. Oh, listen, if you need to speak, I’m at Geula’s, but don’t dial her usual number, it’ll be ringing off the hook; here’s her personal direct line, she won’t mind if I give it you. …”
Colin turned off the machine and started thumbing through the pad on which they kept their most-used phone numbers. Police…
Slowly the significance of what he’d just heard filtered through, and he straightened up. Shul? What on earth would Leila be doing in a synagogue? Wrong number … no, the caller had definitely said “Leila"; the name wasn’t
that
common.
Who was Geula? He didn’t know any Geulas. Or any Elaine Cohens. Columbia’s Dean of Law was called Cohen, but…
Colin replayed the message, this time noting down the number at the end, Geula’s number. He dialed.
“Katz residence.”
“Uh … is my wife there, please? Mrs. Leila Raleigh.”
Many voices in the background; other vague sounds that might have been glasses, or cutlery, being humped about in large quantities.
“Hello?” A new voice, a woman. “Geula Katz speaking.”
“May I speak to my wife, please? Mrs. Raleigh?”
“Oh, you must be Colin? Hi, there! I’ve been dying to meet you for so long now. When are you going to be here?”
“Here?”
“The
sendah.
Leila told me you won’t be able to make synagogue, that’s too bad, but never mind, you just come on to the party whenever you’re ready. Look, I really must fly, shul is due to begin any minute. … Your wife isn’t here, but the minute I get to Emanu-El I’ll tell her you called.”
“Can you—”
But the line had fallen silent. Colin put down the receiver, a frown on his face. His heart was not so much beating as jolting.
Did Leila have a lover? He lowered himself into the nearest chair and gazed at the phone. He’d wondered for ages. A thousand little signs, all of which he’d deliberately ignored. Unexplained phone calls, lied about afterward. Strange messages jotted on the phone pad: “Oh, I can’t think why I wrote that, now.” And he’d desisted, because you didn’t cross-examine your wife, not unless you were prepared to recess and then take it up again in a divorce courtroom.
So. This, it seemed, was the night he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Emanu-El synagogue, followed by a party at the Katzes’ place. Wherever that might be. It seemed he had an invitation, however, so he might as well go. Who
were
these people? They couldn’t all be wives, sisters, mothers of Leila’s lover. Suddenly he knew he had to go wherever Leila was, and he had to do it now. No, it couldn’t wait. No, it wouldn’t be better to discuss this thing in private.
Now, now, now!
In their bedroom upstairs was a wardrobe. On its top shelf Leila kept various old papers and scraps scattered around in and out of shoeboxes. Since they shared the study desk drawers equally, it was the nearest thing she had to a private place. He’d seen her check old addresses from a book she kept on that top shelf. Instinct told him this was where the treasure lay.
As he climbed the stairs he wondered if she really would be so stupid as to leave the evidence lying around. Yes, she would, but not out of stupidity—part of her
wanted
him to know. And part of her needed to test the extent to which he trusted her. There would be something for him to find.
Colin peeped in on Robbie. The boy lay on the bed asleep, still fully clothed, his face flushed. Colin passed on down the corridor to the bedroom he shared with Leila. He closed the door soundlessly before pulling a chair up to the wardrobe and opening it.
He arranged the chair in such a way that it would keep the wardrobe door propped open and hauled himself up. She must have done a spring-cleaning lately, because everything had been stashed away in three boxes. He lifted them down, placed them on the bed, and commenced his search.
There was nothing to prove she had a lover on the side. As he burrowed down toward the bottom of the third and last box he felt a twinge of some strange emotion he couldn’t at once identify, only to realize, with a start, that it was disappointment. Equipped with proof of her infidelity, he would have beaten her down to nothing and then they might have started again. Now he was left only with doubt: a slow, arsenic-like pellet that would worm its way toward his heart until it killed him.
The last thing in the last box was an old gray purse. He opened it and knew he’d found the time bomb.
Colin sat down on the bed. His heart was doing extraordinarily unpleasant things. Sheets of paper, quite small, folded in three. As he opened them out, a clipping fell onto the bed. It was old and faded. TWELVE DEAD proclaimed the headline and, underneath that, in lesser type: MAYFAIR BOMB OUTRAGE.
It wasn’t until Colin had read halfway through the clipping that it dawned. On the first night of their honeymoon a bomb had exploded not far from their hotel, killing a dozen people. Their names were given in this shred of newspaper. Someone had marked each surname, lightly, with a blue ballpoint pen. Why on earth would Leila keep such a thing?
Colin gazed into space. Perhaps she wanted a reminder of how fragile happiness was. On the night of her marriage, at a sublime moment, other people were being