The Hunted Page 18

  "I would like to hear that," Tali said. "Learn what to do with my life before I get old."

  "It's simple," Rosen said. "It's not easy, but it's simple."

  When Tali rose and moved away he could hear the Marine talking to her. Then the Marine cam e over--feeling his steps on the floor--and crouche d down next to him. He could see the Marine's fac e in the light from the window as the Marine stare d outside. Looking down at him, the Marine's features vanished in the dark.

  "You want to know something?"

  "What?" the Marine said.

  "I never told anybody this before and you may not believe it, but I'm part Jewish."

  "Yeah?"

  The Marine didn't seem impressed.

  "I don't mean I'm a convert. I mean I was born part Jewish, on my father's side."

  "Is that right?"

  "You don't believe me."

  "I never thought you weren't Jewish," the Marine said. "Listen, I'm going out again. I looked around back, there's nobody there, like they don't think we'd try to leave that way. I don't know if i t does us any good, I've got to see if we might us e your car first. Or see if I can catch them asleep o r looking the other way. I don't think they're muc h for watch-standing. You hang in there and we'll ge t this thing done soon as we can."

  "Why'd you think I was Jewish?" Rosen said.

  It was not the same darkness as Indochina. The sky seemed wider and closer here because of the desert.

  The shadows seemed different, or there were fewer shadows because there was less vegetation. He would have to get used to the shadows. Then h e hoped he wouldn't be here long enough to learn a new set of shadows.

  Going out of the doctor's house was not the same as going out of a helicopter after sitting wit h his eyes closed during the fifteen-or twenty-minut e flight, opening his eyes and going out blackface d with a recon patrol. It was different. But he was no t afraid of being alone in dark places. The differenc e here was that he knew what the enemy looked like.

  They had faces. And they knew what he looked like and could be expecting him, even dressed in Dr.

  Morris' black coat sweater and dark gray trousers.

  He had taken his cap off for the first time in two days.

  It was three-twenty a. M. when he left the house.

  He moved around back, past the dry stock tank that might have been used at one time for goats o r sheep. Or maybe the doctor had kept horses. Th e blades at the top of the windmill structure stoo d motionless. The desert was empty, its shadows motionless. People were close, but there were no sounds and nothing moved. He had said to Tali , "Don't shoot me when I go by a window or when I c ome back."

  From the side of the house he moved into the carport, working his way along between the tarpcovered Camaro and the cement wall. He thought about going under the tarp to get the C4 on th e back seat. But what would he do with it if h e couldn't run out a line and explode it? Shooting th e plastic with a bullet wouldn't set it off. It took a n electrical charge. Or what would he do if he got under the tarp and they knew he was there? They'd wrap him up in it. So leave the C4.

  The black Mercedes was down the drive about twenty meters, almost halfway to the gate in th e stone fence. (He remembered Tali stopping ther e when they arrived, wondering why she hadn't driven up to the house. But then he remembered sh e had seen Rosen coming from the patio and ha d stopped abruptly and jumped out to run to mee t him.) From the carport he studied the black Mercedes gleaming in the darkness, about forty thousand dollars' worth of car in Israel. Rosen had a pretty good life. It wouldn't be hard to get to th e car. Davis slipped his hand into the unbuttoned to p of the coat sweater and drew his Colt.

  On his belly now, using elbows and knees, he moved from the carport to the front bumper of th e Mercedes. He listened. He rolled to his back an d inched under the car, using his heels now, movin g close to the wheels on one side because the spine o f the driveway was high between the wheel ruts. Hi s hand moved over the underbody and frame. He didn't think he would find anything. The one wit h the hair hadn't had time to get underneath. The gu y hadn't opened a door, Davis was pretty sure of that.

  He pulled himself out on the desert side of the Mercedes, remained low, and felt along the rocker panel to the rear-wheel housing, feeling inside th e fender above the left rear wheel and there it was, a hunk of plastic with the wire coming down an d trailing out to the side. The guy hadn't tried to hid e the wire; he hadn't had time. The wire was wedge d beneath the tire and led off across the gravel to th e edge of the property, where the detonator woul d be. Or else the wire made a turn there, around th e base of a tree, and continued down toward th e front of the property, to the stone fence. That wa s more likely, so the guy would be there with his buddies and not have to sit off in the scrub. They'd be nervous and want to be together. They were from a city. They'd sit out here in the bush and see thing s and have to be cool in front of one another.

  They were somewhere behind the stone fence.

  Davis had to assume that. The fence was protection. They weren't spread out the way they shoul d be--the way he would have positioned them--s o they were back there. He hoped they were close behind the fence, near the gate. If they were, there was a good chance of finishing it.

  He holstered the Colt, then pried the C4 from beneath the curve of the wheel housing and pulle d out the blasting cap attached to the wire. Bellydown again, with the end of the wire in one hand and the hunk of plastic in the other, he began inching along the driveway toward the stone fence. He hoped there was enough wire. He wouldn't have t o go all the way. . . .

  Get close enough. Stick the cap in the plastic again and throw it against the stone fence.

  They might hear it, they might not.

  He'd be moving then, back to the Mercedes.

  Reach in and turn the key.

  They'd hear the engine start.

  The one with the hair would run to his detonator.

  The other two would come to the stone fence.

  Davis got to within ten meters of the fence. He waited, listening, pulled the wire toward him , slowly, bringing it across the gravel and coars e grass, then planted the blasting cap in the ball o f plastic. Rising to his knees, he again drew the Col t out of the sweater. He threw the ball of plastic underhand and watched it arc toward the fence. It disappeared in darkness against the stones.

  He was moving back toward the Mercedes when he heard the sound, a faraway groaning sound---a car laboring in low gear--coming from somewher e in the desert. He looked back. Beyond the fence an d past a stand of trees, a beam of light was reflectin g off the rocks.

  ALL THAT TIME being Jimmy Ross had been a long time. It seemed longer than the twenty-five years o r more he was just Ross. He had been Rosen hardl y any time at all.

  Growing up, it was a matter of always looking into the future for something, always hoping o r planning for something, never knowing when yo u would get there and not knowing it when you did.

  Jimmy Ross to Ross to Rosen. He wondered what the real Al Rosen was doing, if he was still i n Cleveland.

  All right, this Rosen was here. He had finally made it. It had taken him fifty years to learn tha t being was the important thing. Not being something. Just being. Looking around you and knowing you were being, not preparing for anything.

  That was a long time to learn something. He should have known about it when he was seven, but nobody had told him. The only thing they'd told him was that he had to be some thing. See, if he'd know n it then, he'd have had all that time to enjoy being.

  Except it doesn't have anything to do with time, he thought. Being is an hour or a minute or even a moment. Being is being, no matter where you are. In a house in the Sinai desert at night. But if you have t o be somewhere, why not be somewhere good?

  Sitting by the pool at the Laromme. In another few weeks it would be too hot, unbearable, in Eilat.

  Netanya, on the Mediterranean.

  Or go over to one of the Greek islands. See if
there was a difference between Hydra tourist ladie s and Mykonos tourist ladies.

  No, he had done that, the tourist-lady comparing. Do something else.

  Or don't do anything. Sit. You don't have to do anything, he told himself. You don't have to prov e anything.

  "Avoid running at all times. And never look back. Something might be gaining on you." Rule s for success and happiness courtesy of Satchel Paige , who had missed playing with the Original Al Rose n by a couple of years.

  Make sense?

  Yes, of course. Tali said that. Yes, of course. Tali was nice and it would be nice to tell her things an d watch her nod seriously and then laugh when sh e saw he was kidding. But that was planning and h e wasn't going to plan. He was going to do nothing.

  He began to think that it would be better to do nothing in the sunlight than in the dark. Thinkin g was doing something. He wished he could sto p thinking. He wished it wasn't dark. He wished h e wasn't nailed to the floor and could move. He wished he could swallow some water. He wished h e wasn't cold. He wished he didn't feel as if he wer e drowning. He wished he hadn't talked to the government lawyers. No, he thought then, you had to have done all that to be where you are and kno w what you know. Unless he could have learned th e same thing serving a one-to-five at Lewisburg fo r conspiring to defraud the United States Government. With time off for good behavior. Yes, he was pretty sure he could have learned it at Lewisburg.

  The point being that learning required a change of attitude and sometimes, usually, pain. He kne w that but wasn't sure how he knew it. He wondere d if it would do any good if he called out for hi s mother. Shit, Rosen thought. Just when he was getting there.

  (TWO THINGS WERE HAPPENING at the same time.)

  The wheels of the gray Mercedes, Mati driving, had skidded off the wadi trail into deep sand. Th e left rear wheel was spinning as Mati gunned it an d as Rashad and Valenzuela grunted, trying to pus h the car out with their hands. Valenzuela was askin g Rashad why he had let the Arab kid drive, fo r Christ's sake, and Rashad said because he was a driver, it's what he did, and had driven fine all th e way from Tel Aviv. Then Valenzuela blew up, realizing Mel was sitting on his fat ass in the front seat with Mati while he and Rashad were doing th e work. He yelled at Mel to get his ass out here, the n said to Mati okay, hold it, turn it off for a minute.

  They were down the wadi trail a short distance.

  Around the next bend and past the stand of trees was the stone fence. Valenzuela looked up to se e Teddy, his submachine gun slung over his shoulder , standing in the low headlight beams.

  (The other thing that was happening, in the yard of the desert house, was that Davis was reachin g into the black Mercedes to turn on the ignition.) Valenzuela said, "Hey, would you like to come help us?"

  "I thought I heard something," Teddy said.

  They all heard it then: the sound of a car engine starting.

  Teddy turned and was gone.

  Valenzuela had to stop and look around for his Uzi lying on the ground and pick it up. And Rasha d hesitated a moment, looking at Mel standing ther e and thinking about Mel's attache case in the bac k seat of the car. So the two of them started off wel l behind Teddy.

  They got to the bend in the road and saw Teddy reach the gate and cut left, over into the scrub wher e he had hidden his detonator box. They saw th e black car up in the yard and could hear the engin e rumbling and in that moment Rashad saw something else, a figure, something, moving across the yard toward the patio. He paused to pull his Berett a and began firing as Valenzuela saw the movemen t and opened up with the Uzi, spraying bursts at th e front of the house. The pause saved their lives.

  Teddy, looking at the black Mercedes, turned the switch on his detonator box.

  A twelve-foot section of the stone fence exploded in a black shower of sand and smoke and rock fragments.

  Valenzuela was hit by bits of rock and took Rashad with him over the edge of the cutbank int o the wadi. They tried to cover their heads as th e hard fragments pelted down on them.

  Rashad was up first. He found Teddy in the bushes with blood coming out of his dusty hair , streaming down his face, still holding the detonato r box. Now Valenzuela was partway out of the wadi , firing over the bank at the front of the house, raking the windows until the clip was empty.

  Rashad said to Teddy, "Say you the explosives expert, huh? Say shit."

  Davis waited on the patio until the machine-gun fire stopped. He rose by the tipped-over couch an d reached into the darkness of the room.

  "Tali, hand me the rifle." She sat looking down at Rosen and began to turn only when he said , "Come on, give me it!" and reached for the Mause r leaning against the front windowsill.

  Handing it to him, she said, "David--"

  "Stick the shotgun out and keep watching. I'm gonna try and scare something up, see if we got an y of them."

  "David--" Her voice low, subdued.

  But he was gone, across the patio and moving in a low crouch into the desert, still hearing her voice , the sound of it--no excited questions about th e explosion--and then she was gone from his min d as he reached patches of scrub growth and made hi s way down to the stone fence, to the place where i t ended and wire strung between posts continued ou t into the desert.

  He went over the wall crouched, looking down the length of wedged, fitted stones to the rubble o f broken stones he could see as an outline, a moun d in the darkness. There were shapes he did not wai t to study, something moving. Davis opened fire , squeezing off five solid rounds, hearing them sin g off the rocks, and went over the wall into the yar d and crouched low again as he reloaded the Mauser.

  He waited, but there were no sounds, only what was left of a ringing sensation close to his head. He waited a quarter of an hour for some sign fro m them, but heard nothing.

  Davis returned to the house the way he had come, crossed the cement patio, and stepped ove r the sofa barricading the doorway.

  Tali rose from the corner, coming to him out of deep shadow.

  "I try to tell you about Mr. Rosen," Tali said.

  Davis looked down, seeing only Rosen's legs in the faint light from the window.

  "How is he?"

  "He died," Tali said.

  MAYBE THEY'D USED TO WAIL and pull their hair. The Marine thought of that. The girl was making herself feel responsible, punishing herself, not crying much but making sounds as though she were i n pain. It wasn't a reasonable laying of blame, it wa s more like a rite: working herself up to feel guilt an d anguish.

  The Marine held her and stroked her gently, feeling a little self-conscious, staring out the window and across the yard to the stone line, the boundary.

  Finally he sat her on the floor by the window and looked at Rosen, his hands one over the other holding the clean compress bandage. He felt Rosen's throat for a pulse, then closed his eyelids, listening t o the girl string if s together: if she had realized . . . if she had gone to the police instead of the hotel . . . i f she had been alert and not led them here . . . Th e Marine was patient for a while; he gave her time. He sat with her and put his arm around her, bringing he r close to him, as he would comfort a child, occasion--a lly making his own sounds--"I'm sorry . . . I kno w how you feel, but . . . no, don't say that . . ."--tryin g to ease her sounds of pain. She would say things t o him in Hebrew in the mournful tone and it woul d sound even more ceremonial to him, from a tim e thousands of years ago when a man had died in th e desert and the women huddled by a fire. He tried t o think of things to say to her that would help. He r eyes were closed, squeezed closed. He wondere d how long she would keep it up, if she would sto p abruptly or just wind down from exhaustion and fal l asleep. He didn't know what to say that would hel p or what to do other than hold her. She told him sh e wanted to die. She told him Mr. Rosen would b e alive if it weren't for her. She told him Mr. Rosen ha d trusted her and she had failed him and now sh e couldn't live with herself anymore.

  He said to her, "He's dead. What you do to
yourself doesn't change it."

  She wasn't listening to him. She said, "He was going to be safe. Go to Sharm el Sheikh or Sant a Katarina and stay there and be safe with me to hel p him. He said to me, he called me to come and said , 'Atalia, I want you to have something.' He said i n his billfold was the key to the safe box of his bank.

  He said he wanted me to have it, to sign his name the way he signed it, with the initials, and take ou t the money. I said, 'Why? It's your money.' He said , 'No, now it's yours.' I said, 'But why?' He didn't say anything more. I went away to look out th e windows--"

  "Then he knew it," Davis said.

  "I came back . . . I felt him, I breathe in his mouth . . ."

  He took her face in his hand and raised it to look at him and waited until her eyes opened.

  "He's dead," Davis said. "They killed him." Her eyes closed and she tried to turn her head. "Look a t me. They killed him."

  "But it wouldn't have happen . . ."

  "Look at me!"

  Her eyes opened--her face close enough to see into her eyes and what she was feeling, the little gir l experiencing something beyond her imagination, i n a place she had never been before.

  "They killed him," Davis said. "But they don't know it."

  She was listening now, beginning to come back into the world. "We tell them?"

  Davis shook his head. "No, we don't tell them."

  "But if we say we want to take his body with us for burial, they would understand. Everyone respects that."

  Davis' hand relaxed and brushed her cheek as he let it drop to her shoulder.

  "I think if they knew he was dead they'd leave and wouldn't bother about us. Mr. Rosen said i t was like a business with them. They don't have personal feelings about it. If it's done, then they're no t gonna sit out there in the heat just to get at us. See , I don't think they care. I don't think they're afrai d of what would happen if we told on them. They'd already be gone."

  "I don't understand," the girl said. "We don't do anything?"

  "I don't want them to leave yet," Davis said.

  "Why?"