Yes, they were both adults. Both of them,
antagonists ever since the forests of Poland, growing more alike
every hour. Mordecai refused to jolly himself along—he lied to
Itzhak about Esther and used them both because that was what the
builders of nations did. That was how politics on the grand scale
was played, which was precisely what men like Hagemann have been
telling themselves for the past thirty years, and doubtless even
longer than that. He wondered if Hagemann ever felt this way after
breakfast, but then Hagemann was probably more hardened to it.
In the next cross street a dark green car of
a make Leivick had never seen before slowed almost to nothing as it
approached the center of the intersection and then shot away,
almost as if the driver had been frightened.
“Itzhak, go over to the other side of the
road and lose yourself in a doorway. Go on, be a good boy. I think
we’re beginning to attract someone’s interest.”
“What do you want me to do if we have?” he
asked. He really was a good boy—all business when it came to
it.
“If they’re just looking, find your way
home. Forget you know me. If they want you, play the injured
tourist; but I’m afraid you’ll have to let them have you. If they
want me, don’t be heroic—just disappear.”
It was the standard drill, and Itzhak had
been trained. He ducked his head in a quick nod and cut across the
street. Within a few seconds not even Leivick knew where he had
hidden himself.
It was probably nothing, probably just
someone looking for a street number, a stranger like himself.
Probably, in the tail end of his middle years, he was simply
becoming paranoid. The decades wither you up, and you lose your
courage. It was a common enough phenomenon.
Leivick lit another cigarette, wondering if
he would have the opportunity to finish it in peace. He wished he
had brought his revolver and then was glad he had left it behind in
his suitcase. He might have been tempted to use it, and they had
had enough publicity of that kind lately. He was a docile old
Jewish gentleman, taking the sea air for his health. If they wanted
to kill him there was very little he could do about it.
No, he wasn’t paranoid. The stillness was
almost deafening. After ten years of fascist rule, the Spaniards
had learned about avoiding trouble. If it was the police, or
possibly even Hagemann’s people, who seemed to enjoy something like
the same status, probably the whole neighborhood knew about them
and had simply retired behind their locked shutters.
He didn’t turn around when he heard the
sound of automobile tires hissing on the wet street. He just kept
walking.
It was one of those rare moments when
experience takes on a peculiar, almost painful clarity. The pale,
paper-colored wall of the building next to him, with its water
stains and its peeling plaster. The damp air with its smells of
cooking and engine grease and sea salt. The scrap of newsprint that
jigged down the sidewalk, driven on by currents of wind too subtle
to make themselves noticed any other way. It was like the time at
Treblinka, the instant after the grenades had gone off, the
gasoline fires winding up the watchtowers—it was like that. The
heart stops. Only the senses live. These few seconds, perhaps all
that remains.
A car door slammed. Then another. They were
very close. Leivick turned around now—it was permitted. Even old
Jewish gentlemen interested in the sea air have a right to
look.
“Señor. . .”
They were big men, in dark blue overcoats,
clean shaven, with the hollow, uncaring eyes of professionals. They
moved toward him together, shoulder to shoulder, as if it was
something in which they had been schooled.
One of them grabbed for Leivick’s arm. He
pulled away, which turned out to have been a mistake. The second
man, with remarkable dexterity, caught him on the point of the
elbow with a small truncheon, hardly bigger than an after-dinner
cigar. The pain was exquisite, paralyzing. Leivick could feel it
all the way into his chest, so that he could hardly breathe.
A short, sharp blow to the abdomen—he had no
idea who had hit him this time—and he was helpless. He hardly
noticed when a handkerchief was held over his mouth and nose, its
sickly sweet smell blending in with a blunt, nauseating ache that
seemed to fill him up. He was slipping away. It was almost a
relief.
Itzhak, get the hell away from here. Go tell
them—Inar was smarter than any of us. Inar was. . .
. . . . .
He hadn’t really expected to wake up. He had
assumed they were murdering him, but that didn’t seem to be the
case. He was alive. He was conscious of that, merely that, even
before he began the excruciatingly painful process of opening his
eyes. He began to wish they had murdered him.
He was lying down, which was probably just
as well. He was quite sure he would die if he tried to move, so
there was no temptation to be anything else. They must have given
him something like chloroform, probably without being too terribly
precise about the dosage. It had left him with an appalling
headache that seemed to take up his entire body. When he finally
did manage to open his eyes he had to close them again immediately.
The light was blinding.
He could wait on finding out where they had
taken him. Just then it didn’t seem so very important.
And the worst of it was that he felt such an
idiot. Hadn’t he been warned? Now the trap had been sprung, but
only on himself.
After about five minutes he was able to
nerve himself up to an attempt at moving. His right arm, for some
reason, wouldn’t respond. He could bring the hand up only a few
inches, up to about his waist, and then something stopped it. It
was as if someone were holding him by the wrist.
The left arm was better. Finally he managed
to shade his eyes with his hand, and then it became possible to
open them. When at last he was able to focus, he wondered why he
should have gone to the trouble.
He was in a prison cell—brick walls, an iron
door, gray tile flooring. The war had made him an expert on
prisons. He knew all about them.
He was alone. It was a large room—the
Germans would have had thirty men in a cell this size. There was no
one else. Somewhere he could hear the drip, drip, drip of water,
but not another sound. It occurred to him that perhaps he ought to
feel flattered.
It was a plank bed they had him on. Just
boards, chained to the wall—an antique. Perhaps it hadn’t been
Hagemann at all. Perhaps he had run afoul of the Inquisition.
Enough games. It was time to do something
about sitting up. The idea itself was enough to floor him with
nausea.
It was while he was trying to sit up that he
discovered that his right hand was manacled, riveted by a short
chain to the end of the bed.
When finally he made it, he felt better. The
sum of his indispositions had reduced themselves to the sickening
throb in his head. Otherwise, he felt weak but intact. Time to
consider his position.
He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t dead.
Did Hagemann expect him to betray their plans for capturing him? It
seemed unlikely.
Anyone could be broken. No one dies with his
secrets inviolate, not if his interrogators care to go to the
trouble of digging them out. Leivick had seen enough people
questioned under torture to have lost his trust in heroism. But
that sort of thing took time. A determined man can’t be made to
talk with threats, and torture is a tedious process. Time was
something that Hagemann had very little of.
At any rate, he would have all the answers
he wanted soon enough. There was nothing to do in the meantime
except to wait, and gather strength against whatever was to
come.
They had taken his wristwatch. That was a
bad sign. Did they want to disorient him, to make him lose his
sense of continuity? No—there was a window in his cell. All he had
to do was look outside; the chain was long enough for that. Perhaps
someone had stolen it. Perhaps they were afraid he might break the
crystal and use the pieces to cut his wrists.
He was considering the implications of this
when he heard the sharp click of a key in the door lock. The door
swung open and Colonel Egon Hagemann himself walked in, just as if
it were something he did every day. Leivick had to control the
impulse to snap to attention.
“I trust you are feeling better, Herr
Leivick?” He smiled. He was a resplendent figure in his white suit,
tall and rather cruelly majestic. His face was tanned and hardly
lined by age. He was what every man wishes to be in the middle of
his life and hardly ever is: untouched. In his right hand he was
carefully balancing a heavy clay mug.
“I have been better. How long have I—?”
“Only about forty minutes. I was here when
you arrived and have only been waiting until you came round. Drink
this—it will take away some of the grogginess.” He held out the
mug, which contained what appeared to be very strong tea. “Go
ahead. There’s nothing in it except two spoonfuls of sugar.”
“Thank you.”
Leivick took the mug and drank from it.
Certainly if Hagemann planned to drug him again he had no need of
so roundabout an approach. And, yes, it did seem to be nothing
except sweetened tea.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
Perhaps it was only the lingering effects of
the anesthetic, but Leivick found himself empty of all the emotions
he might have expected to feel at this moment. Outrage, fear,
unreasoning hatred—they simply were not there. All the misery this
man had caused, this evil presence spreading back and forward in
time, this monster who had profaned and destroyed everything that
came in his way, who still might destroy the ragged remnants of a
nation before it was even born, all that was an abstraction. Only
the individual was real, standing here in the center of a prison
cell floor, asking permission to sit down. A man like other
men.
Very well then, let him sit down. Leivick
shifted himself to make room on the plank bed.
“Thank you.”
As if to establish a recognized border they
could both respect, Hagemann took the tan felt hat he had been
carrying and dropped it on the space between them. It was the sort
of gesture that established his humanity—no, he was not the god of
wickedness. There were no demons.
“I have been looking forward to this
meeting,” he went on.
“I can imagine. What is this place?”
“This?” Hagemann looked around appraisingly
at the brick cell. “This is the Burriana town jail. You were
arrested by the Spanish authorities—didn’t you know? You are being
held on a passport violation; they expect very shortly to be able
to prove that your documents are forgeries, since certainly the
British would never have issued travel papers to someone of your
reputation. In the meantime you can expect to be treated
decently.”
“And what happens when the authorities have
completed their inquiries?”
“You will be deported—to Syria.”
Hagemann had a way of reaching behind his
jacket lapel to smooth down his necktie that was expressive of
extreme uneasiness. To Syria, to the very door of one’s enemies.
And yet it was possible to wonder whose victory this was.
“We will be leaving rather quickly. Early
tomorrow morning, I should think.”
“Is there some particular hurry?”
Leivick forced himself to smile, and the
effort had an unpleasant effect on him. It compelled him to realize
that it was still possible, in the ordinary way of human beings, to
hate this man.
“Inar Christiansen is in town.” He said it
quite matter-of-factly, but anyone with eyes could see that Colonel
Hagemann was not pleased. His right hand slid inside his jacket and
the fabric of his necktie pulled smooth and straight. “But, of
course, I’m forgetting you must know that.”
“As it happens, I did not. I’ve never met
the formidable Mr. Christiansen.” Leivick found it easier to smile
now, pleased with his facility at lying. “But I can understand now
why you’re suddenly so unwilling to linger here. I imagine you
really would feel safer in Damascus.”
Hagemann glanced away suddenly, wiping his
hand on the knee of his trouser leg. He had a hunted look. It was
possible to know exactly how he must have felt.
“He has always been the wild card, hasn’t
he, Leivick,” he said, in a tone that suggested he wished to be
understood—that claimed that, after all, the two of them shared at
least a common appreciation of each other’s aims. “If he killed me,
would it simplify matters for you? At the moment, yes, probably—but
if you were not here in this cell? Perhaps not? You and I have
political objectives which give a certain clarity to our actions,
but what of Mr. Christiansen? Can I be sure you haven’t brought him
over to your side?”
“I doubt if you can be sure of
anything.”
For just an instant the phantom of a smile
played across Hagemann’s lips. Leivick took his point.
“You are on the verge of reminding me who is
the prisoner here?” he asked. He raised his free hand a little and
then let it fall dejectedly back into his lap. “No doubt you are
right, but I was not attempting to bargain with you—only to point
out the obvious fact that no matter what becomes of me, and even if
you and your Syrian masters win your war, this will not help you
against Christiansen. I think that, in the end, he will kill
you.”
He set the tea mug down on the cell floor,
and when he straightened up again and glanced at Hagemann he could
see easily enough that the man was struggling with the urge to
confess something. It was not to be, however.
“It shocks you that I am afraid of him,”
Hagemann announced finally—in place, it would seem, of saying
something else.
“No. It is only reasonable to be afraid of
him. Only a fool would be anything else.”