Dante’s Equation

He handed her the wallet and the tickets. He panicked as the things left his fingers. What the hell was he doing?

It was terrible not to be able to trust oneself, not to fathom the reasoning of one’s own limbs. He told himself he was testing her. He was giving her enough rope to hang herself. If she said, or did, one wrong thing, he would break her neck. This time he would lie on top of her, heavy and deadly, and would look in her eyes as he choked the life from her body.

“Paris,” she said, reading the tickets. “Where is it you want to go, Lieutenant?” If she was laughing at him, he couldn’t see it in her green eyes.

“Washington, D.C.,” he heard himself say. He stiffened in horror.

She nodded. “We can get a co

His fists clenched at his thighs to keep them under control. Inside, he was churning like the eye of a storm. He did not understand what was happening. She seemed to be implying that she was going with him. It was a trick. She was milking him.

What was frightening was how horribly tempted he was by the ruse. The idea of help—the mere idea of it—filled him with desperate longing. It made him realize how heavy the burden was that he carried, how close he was to complete collapse. But at the same time, he felt enraged. He was a warrior. He would not be nursed, by the blood, and particularly not by her.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said, pleased to remember the words. His lip curled in a disdain broad enough to fill the seas.

She shied away from the look on his face, licked her lips nervously, but didn’t run. She gazed down at the passport again. “You, um, picked a good one. The passport’s four years old. The security guards will just assume you had a haircut. Otherwise you match him quite well.”

Go to the devil, I said!

“Lieutenant Farris?” she asked cautiously.

“Do what you want,” he snarled. He grabbed the papers from her and headed for the airport.

By eight o’clock that evening Mr. and Mrs. Goldman from New Jersey were installed in the small i

Ha

Ha

What on earth was he going to say when they got back to Jerusalem?

Now they were lying on a wooden floor, with only a knotted rag rug between their bodies and the hard surface. Ha

Foolishness, Aharon thought again, with a mental snort. Such a thing as a glass against a wall was good for cartoons, maybe, but not for real life. Aharon himself had tried his ear against the wall, but though he could hear murmuring, he could tell nothing that was being said.

“That’s not going to work,” he said quietly to Ha

“Shhh!” Ha

He could not believe he was talking about drilling holes and stealing medical apparatus. He could not believe that he, he and his wife, were in Auschwitz spying on the Mossad.

On the other hand, after his experiences on Fiori nothing seemed as frightening or as crazy as it ought to. He could even feel delighted to be lying on the floor on Earth, spying on the Mossad.

He sighed contentedly, watching his wife. “So what are they saying?” he asked her teasingly.

“They’re talking about the Americans,” she whispered.

Of course they were. What else would they be talking about?

It was ridiculous. Because right now they were in a life-and-death situation. Not only their life and death, the latter of which was extremely likely, but some huge, apocalyptic potentiality, and still he was getting warm thoughts about his wife.

But he’d learned on Fiori that sometimes it served not to think too closely about what you had to do. Better to allow himself to lie here on his side watching Ha

“Ha

“They’re arguing about whether or not the woman can get inside the house,” she said, her voice conspiratorial.

“Of course they are.” Aharon took her small fingers and brought them to his lips.

Ha

“I can think of some advantages to those soft, bare cheeks of yours,” she whispered.

“Ha

“Hush!” Her voice went distant again as she strained at the glass. Even he could hear the rising voices, though he still couldn’t make out words. Probably because his ears were filled with pounding blood. His fingers reached out of their own volition, smoothing over that crazy sweatshirt of hers.

Ha

“Good,” Aharon murmured, raising up the hem of her sweatshirt. “You listen for both of us.”

Denton approached the back of Anatoli’s house, wary of the early-morning sunlight. Ha

Just now Denton had seen that the only person who appeared to be awake in the house was the younger of the two agents, or Marines, or whatever they were. The big, hulking one must be asleep. Although the big, hulking one was probably the dimmer bulb of the two, Denton was reassured. He would be watching the house for quite a while today, bundled up like a snowman in every stitch of clothing he could find. But his immediate agenda was to talk to Anatoli.

The younger agent was in the little kitchen sipping coffee. It wasn’t far enough away from Anatoli’s room for comfort, but then, no room in Anatoli’s house was.