Carrion Comfort (73 page)

Saul had pulled over a low bench and now sat cross-legged on it. He set a stack of dossiers on his left and a small, battery-powered stroboscope on his right. “Lohame HaGeta’ot is dedicated more to the idea of resistance than to the memory of the Holocaust,” he said.

Natalie stood gazing at the photograph of a family disembarking from a cattle car, their possessions lying in a heap on the ground near them. She turned quickly. “Could you hypnotize
me
, Saul?”

Saul adjusted his glasses. “I could. It would take much longer. Why?” Natalie shrugged. “I guess I’m curious to find out what it feels like. You seem to do it so . . . easily.”

“Years of experience,” said Saul. “For years I used a form of autohypnosis to fight migraine headaches.”

Natalie picked up a folder and looked at the photograph of the young woman inside it. “Can you really make all this part of your subconscious?”

Saul rubbed his cheek. “There are levels of consciousness,” he said. “On some levels, I’m simply trying to recover memories that are already there by trying to . . . block out the blocks, I guess you’d say. In another sense, I’m trying to lose myself to some extent by empathizing with others who shared a common experience.”

Natalie looked around. “And all this helps?”

“It does. Especially in subliminally absorbing some of the biographical data.”

“How much time do you have?” she asked.

Saul glanced at his watch. “About two hours, but Shmuelik promised that he would turn tourists away until I was done.”

Natalie tugged at her heavy shoulder bag. “I’ll take a walk and start collating and memorizing some of this Vienna stuff.”

“Shalom,” said Saul. When he was alone he read the first three dossiers through carefully. Then he turned sideways and switched on the small strobe, setting the timer. A metronome ticked in beat with the pulsing light. Saul relaxed completely, emptied his mind of everything except the regular throb of light, and opened himself to another time and another place.

On the walls around him, pale faces stared down through smoke and flames and years.

Natalie stood outside the square building and watched the young kibbutzniks going about their business, a final truckload of workers heading out to the fields. Saul had told her that this kibbutz had been settled by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and concentration camps set in Poland, but most of the workers Natalie saw were Sabra—native-born Israelis— as lean and tan as young Arabs.

She walked slowly to the edge of the field and sat in the shade of a single eucalyptus tree as a tall sprinkler pulsed water toward the crops with a beat as hypnotic as Saul’s metronome. Natalie pulled a bottle of Maccabee beer from the bottom of her shoulder bag and used the can opener on her new Swiss Army knife to pop the lid. It was warm already but tasted very good, blending nicely with the unseasonable warmth of the day, the sound of sprinklers, and the smell of wet earth and growing plants.

The thought of returning to the United States made her stomach constrict and her pulse race. Natalie had only the haziest of memories of those hours and days after the death of Rob Gentry. She recalled flames and darkness and flashing lights and sirens as if from a dream. She remembered cursing Saul and striking him for leaving Rob’s body behind in that cursed house, remembered Saul carrying her through the darkness, the pain in her leg making her shift in and out of consciousness like a swimmer rising and falling beneath the surface of a rough sea. She remembered— she thought she remembered— the older man named Jackson running beside them with the limp body of Marvin Gayle strung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Saul had later told her that Marvin was unconscious but alive when the two pairs of survivors parted company in that night of dark alleys and screaming sirens.

She recalled lying on a park bench while Saul made a phone call from an open booth and then it was daylight— almost daylight, a cold, gray twilight— and she was lying in the back of a station wagon filled with strange men, Saul in the front seat with someone she later learned was Jack Cohen, Mossad station chief at Israel’s embassy in Washington.

Natalie could not sort out the forty-eight hours that followed. A motel room. Shots of painkiller for her fractured ankle. A doctor setting it with a strange inflatable cast. Sobbing for Rob, calling his name in her sleep. Screaming as she remembered the sound the bullet made striking the roof of the honky monster Vincent’s mouth, the gray and red smear of brains on the wall. The old woman’s mad eyes burning into Natalie’s soul. “Good-bye, Nina. We shall meet again.”

Saul said later that he had never worked harder in his life than during those first forty-eight hours of talking with Jack Cohen. The scarred, white-haired agent could never have accepted the whole truth yet had to be convinced of the essence of that truth through lies. In the end, the Israeli believed that Saul and Natalie and Aaron Eshkol and the missing cipher chief named Levi Cole had become enmeshed in something large and lethal, something involving high figures in Washington and an elusive ex-Nazi colonel. Cohen had received little support from his embassy or his superiors in Tel Aviv, but early on Sunday, January 4, the station wagon with Saul, Natalie, and two American-born Israeli agents passed over the Peace Bridge from Niagara Falls, New York, to Niagara Falls, Canada. Five days later they flew from Toronto to Tel Aviv with their new identities.

The following two weeks held few referents for Natalie. Her ankle grew inexplicably worse her second day in Israel, fever flared, and she was only semi-aware of the short flight by private plane to Jerusalem where Saul called in favors from old medical acquaintances to find her a private room in the Hadassah-Hebrew Medical Center. Saul himself underwent surgery on his arm during that week. She was there five days and during the last three days she used crutches at dawn and dusk to visit the synagogue and to stare at the stained glass windows created by Marc Chagall. Natalie felt numbed, as if her entire body had been given a massive dose of Novacaine. Each night she closed her eyes and saw Rob Gentry staring back at her. His blue eyes were filled with that terrible second of temporary triumph before the blade appeared and slashed sideways . . .

Natalie finished the beer and set the bottle back in her handbag, feeling vaguely guilty about drinking so early while others worked. She drew out the first stack of folders: clusters of photocopied pictures and written information about Vienna in the twenties and thirties, police reports translated by Wiesenthal’s assistants, a thin biography of Nina Drayton, typed by the late Francis Harrington and added to in Saul’s wild, hard-to-read script.

Natalie sighed and began to work.

They drove south in the early afternoon and stopped in Haifa for a late lunch before everything closed down for the sabbath. They picked up falafels at a stand on HaNevi’im Street and munched them as they walked down to the busy port. Several black market entrepreneurs hovered close, trying to sell toothpaste, blue jeans, and Rolexes, but Saul snapped something in Hebrew and they backed away. Natalie leaned on a railing and watched a large freighter moving out to sea.

She said, “How long until we go back to America, Saul?”

“I will be ready in three weeks. Perhaps sooner. When do you think you will be prepared?”

“Never,” said Natalie.

Saul nodded. “But when will you be willing to return?”

“Any time,” said Natalie. “The sooner the better, actually.” She let out a breath. “Jesus, the thought of going back makes my legs go weak.”

“Yes,” agreed Saul, “The feeling is mutual. Let us review our facts and assumptions to see if there is a weak point in our plan.”

“
I’m
the weak point,” Natalie said softly. “No,” said Saul. He squinted out at the water. “All right, we assume that Aaron’s information was accurate and that there were— at a minimum— five of them in the central cabal: Barent, Trask, Colben, Kepler, and the evangelist named Sutter. I watched Trask die at the Oberst’s hands. We will assume that Mr. Colben perished as a result of Melanie Fuller’s actions. That leaves three in that group.”

“Four if you count Harod,” said Natalie. “Yes,” said Saul, “we know that he appeared to be acting in concert with Colben’s people. That is four of them. Perhaps Agent Haines, but I suspect that he is an instrument rather than initiator. Question: Why did the Oberst kill Trask?”

“Revenge?” said Natalie. “Perhaps, but I got the impression that there was a power play under way. Let us assume for the time that the entire charade in Philadelphia was aimed toward finding the Oberst rather than the Fuller woman. Barent allowed me to live only because I was to be another weapon aimed at the Oberst. But why did the
Oberst
allow me to live . . . and introduce you and Rob into the equation?”

“To confuse the issue? A diversion?”

“Possibly,” said Saul, “but let us return to a former assumption and say that he was indirectly using us as instruments. There is no doubt that Jensen Luhar was William Borden’s assistant in Hollywood. Jack Cohen has confirmed Harrington’s notes on that. Luhar identified himself to you on the plane. There was no need for that unless the Oberst wanted both of us to know that he is manipulating us. And the Oberst went to great lengths to convince Barent’s and Colben’s surrogates that I had died in the explosion and fire in Philadelphia. Why?”

“He has further use for you,” said Natalie. “Exactly. But why did he not use each of us directly?”

“Perhaps it was too difficult for him,” said Natalie. “Proximity seems to be important for these mind vampires. Maybe he was never in Philadelphia at all.”

“Only his conditioned proxies,” agreed Saul. “Luhar, poor Francis, and his white assistant, Tom Reynolds. It was Reynolds who attacked you outside the Fuller home on Christmas Eve.”

Natalie gasped. She had not heard this assumption before. “Why do you say that?”

Saul took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirttail. “What reason did the assault have except to set you and Rob back on the right track? The Oberst wanted both of you on the scene in Philadelphia when the final showdown with Colben’s people occurred.”

“I don’t understand,” said Natalie. She shook her head. “Where does Melanie Fuller come in?”

“Let us continue with the assumption that Miss Fuller is in collaboration with neither the Oberst nor his enemies,” said Saul. “Did you get the impression that she was aware of either group?”

“No,” said Natalie. “She mentioned only Nina . . . Nina Drayton, I assumed.”

“Yes. ‘Good-bye, Nina. We shall meet again.’ Yet, if we are to follow Rob’s logic . . . and I see no reason not to . . . it was Melanie Fuller who shot and killed Nina Drayton in Charleston. Why would Fuller think you were the agent of a dead woman, Natalie?”

“Because she’s as crazy as a goddamned bedbug,” said Natalie. “You should have seen her, Saul. Her eyes were . . . sick.”

“We hope this is the case,” said Saul. “Even though Melanie Fuller may be the most deadly viper of all, her insanity might yet serve us. And what of our Mr. Harod?”

“I wish he was dead,” said Natalie, remembering his clammy, insistent presence in her mind.

Saul nodded and put his glasses on. “But Harod’s control was interrupted— much as the Oberst’s was with me four decades ago. As a result, each of us has some memory of the experience and an impression of the other’s . . . what, thoughts?”

“Not quite,” said Natalie. “Feelings.
Persona
.”

“Yes,” said Saul, “but what ever the transfer consists of, you came away with a clear sense that Tony Harod had an aversion to using his Ability with males?”

“I was sure of it,” said Natalie. “His feeling toward women was so
sick
, but I sensed that it was only women he . . . assaulted. It was like I was his mother and he had to have intercourse with me to prove something . . .”

“Conve niently Freudian,” said Saul, “but we will take a leap and accept your feeling that Harod has the ability to influence only women. If this is true, then this particular nest of monsters has at least two weak points— a powerful female who is not part of the group and who is as crazy as a goddamned bedbug and a male figure who may or may not be part of their group but who is unable or unwilling to use his Ability on men.”

“Great,” said Natalie. “Assuming all this is true, where does it leave us?”

“With the same plan we first discussed in February,” said Saul. “Which will get us killed,” said Natalie. “Quite possibly,” said Saul. “But if we are going to remain in the swamp with these poisonous creatures, do you want to spend the rest of your life waiting for them to bite you or risk being bitten while hunting
them
?”

Natalie laughed. “A hell of a choice, Saul.”

“It remains the only one we have.”

“Well, let’s go get the gunny sack and practice catching snakes,” said Natalie. She gazed up at the gold dome of the Baha’i shrine gleaming on Mount Carmel and looked back at the freighter disappearing out at sea. “You know,” she said, “it doesn’t make any sense, but I have a feeling that Rob would have loved this part. The planning. The tension. Even if it is all nuts and doomed, he would have seen the humor in it.”

Saul touched her shoulder. “Then let’s get on with our crazy planning,” he said, “and not let Rob down.”

Together they walked up toward the Jaffa Road and the waiting Lan-drover.

I
t was so nice to come home.

I had grown tired of the hospital, even with the private room, the wing closed off for my convenience, and the entire staff there to serve me. In the end, there is no place like home to raise one’s spirits and aid in the healing pro cess.

Years ago I had read about so-called out-of-body events supposedly experienced by dying patients, hapless individuals clinically dead on the operating table before resuscitation, and so forth, and I had put no stock in such stories— more absurd sensational journalism so common these days. But that is precisely the sensation I experienced upon regaining consciousness in the hospital. For a time I seemed to be hovering near the ceiling of my room, seeing nothing but sensing everything. I was aware of the shrunken, curled body on the bed, and of the sensors and tubes and needles and catheters attached to it. I was aware of the hustle and bustle of nurses, doctors, orderlies, and others as they worked to keep that body alive. When I finally reentered the world of sight and sound, I realized that I was doing so through the eyes and ears of these people. And so many at once! It had never been possible for me— or for Willi or Nina, I knew— so totally to Use someone that clear sensory data came from more than one person at a time. While it was possible, with experience, to Use a stranger while keeping control of a conditioned cat’s-paw, or, with even more effort and experience, to Use two strangers by alternating control quickly back and forth, access to such clear sight, sound, touch, and ease of control as I was now experiencing was simply unheard of. More than that, our Use of others invariably involved awareness of our presence by those Used, resulting in either destruction of the instrument or the blocking of all memories afterward— a simple enough pro cess but one which left an inexplicable gap in the subject’s memory. Now I watched from half a dozen viewpoints and knew that the observers had absolutely no awareness of my presence.

But could I Use them? Carefully I experimented with subtle exercises of control, having a nurse lift a glass here, an orderly close a door there, helping a doctor say a few words he would otherwise not have uttered. Never did I interfere so completely that their medical expertise was compromised. Never was my presence in their minds sensed by any of them.

Days passed. I found that while my body lay in an apparent coma, kept alive by machines and constant vigilance, apparently confined to the smallest space imaginable, in reality I roamed and explored with an ease never before approached or dreamed of. I would leave the room behind the eyes of a young nurse, feeling the animal strength and vitality in her, tasting the spearmint gum she was chewing, and at the end of the corridor I would transfer an additional tendril of awareness— never losing contact with my young nurse!— to the mind of the Chief of Surgery, ride down an elevator with him, start his Lincoln Continental, and drive six miles toward suburb and waiting wife . . . all the while still in intimate contact with my nurse, the candy-striper in the hallway, the intern looking at X rays on the floor below me, and the second doctor now standing in my room looking down at my comatose body. Distance had ceased to be a barrier to my Ability. For decades Nina and I had marveled at Willi’s power to Use his subjects over greater distances than we could, but now I was by far the more powerful.

And each day my powers grew.

On the second day, just as I was testing my new perceptions and abilities, the family returned. I did not recognize the tall, redheaded man or his thin, blond wife, but I looked out at the lobby through the receptionist’s eyes and saw the three children and knew them at once: the children in the park.

The redheaded man looked alarmed at my appearance. I was in the intensive care unit, a web of pie-shaped cubicles radiating from a central nurse’s station. Within that web I was tied into an even tighter web of intravenous tubes and sensor wires. The doctor moved the redheaded man away from the clear partition looking into what my nurse called I.C.

“Are you a member of the family?” asked the doctor. He was a skillful, precise man with a mane of graying hair. His name was Dr. Hartman and I felt the nurses’ plea sure, anxiety, and respect when they were in his presence.

“Uh, no,” said the large redhead. “My name is Howard Warden. We found her . . . that is, my kids found her yesterday morning, wandering in our . . . uh . . . our yard. She collapsed when . . .”

“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Hartman, “I read the report you gave the E.R. nurse. You have no idea who the lady is?”

“No, she only had on the bathrobe and a nightgown. My kids said they saw her walking out of the woods when they . . .”

“And no real idea of where she came from?”

“Uh-uh,” said Warden. “I was . . . well, I didn’t call the police. I guess I should have. Nancy and I waited around here for several hours and when it was obvious that she . . . the old lady . . . wasn’t going to . . . I mean, that she was stable . . . we went home. It was my day off. I was going to call the police this morning, but I thought we would see how she’s doing first . . .”

“We have already informed the police,” lied Dr. Hartman. It was the first time I had Used him. It was as easy as pulling on an old and favorite coat. “They came and took a report. They seemed to have no idea where Mrs. Doe came from. No one has reported a missing relative.”

“Mrs. Doe?” said Howard Warden. “Oh, like Jane Doe. Right. Well, it’s a mystery to us, Doctor. We live about two miles into the Park and from what the kids say, she wasn’t even walking along the access drive.” He glanced back toward the intensive care unit. “How is she, Doctor? She looks . . . well . . . terrible.”

“The lady has suffered a massive stroke,” said Dr. Hartman. “Perhaps a series of them.” At Howard’s blank look, the doctor went on, “She’s had what we call a CVA, a cerebrovascular accident, what used to be called a cerebral hemorrhage. There has been a temporary cutoff of oxygen to the brain. As far as we can tell, the incident seems to have been located in the right hemi sphere of this patient’s brain, resulting in disruption of cerebral and neurological function. Most of the effects are to be seen on her left side— drooping eyelid, limb paralysis— but in a sense this may be a welcome sign since aphasia . . . speech problems . . . generally are associated with accidents in the left hemi sphere. We’ve run both an EEG and a CAT scan, and, to be honest, the results are somewhat confusing. While the CAT scan has confirmed infarction and probable obstruction of the middle cerebral artery, the EEG readings are not at all what we would expect following an episode of this nature . . .”

I lost interest in the medical double-talk and returned my primary awareness to the middle-aged receptionist in the lobby. I had her rise and walk over to the three children. “Hello,” I had her say, “I bet I know who you’re here to visit.”

“We can’t visit,” said the six-year-old one, the girl who had sung “Hey, Jude” as the sun rose. “We’re too young.”

“But I bet I know who you would
like
to see,” the receptionist said with a smile.

“I wanna see the nice lady,” said the little boy. There were tears in his eyes.

“I don’t,” the oldest girl said adamantly. “I don’t either,” said her six-year-old sister. “Why not?” I asked. I was hurt. “ ’Cause she’s
weird
,” said the oldest girl. “I thought I liked her, but when I touched her hand yesterday, it was all funny.”

“What do you mean, funny?” I asked. The receptionist wore thick glasses and I found the view distorted. I had never needed glasses for anything besides reading.

“Funny,” said the girl. “Weird. Like a snake’s skin or something. I let go real fast, even before she got sick, but it was like I knew she was real mean.”

“Yeah,” said her sister. “Shut up, Allie,” said the oldest girl, obviously sorry she had spoken to me.

“I
liked
the nice lady,” said the five-year-old boy. It looked as if he had been crying before he came to the hospital.

I beckoned the two girls away from the boy, toward the reception desk. “Come here, girls. I have something for you.” I rummaged through the drawer and came up with two wrapped spheres of peppermint candy. When the oldest girl reached for one, I grasped her firmly by the wrist. “First let me tell your fortune,” I had the receptionist whisper.

“Leggo,” the girl whispered back. “Shut up,” I hissed. “Your name is Tara Warden. Your sister’s name is Allison. Both of you live in a big stone house on the hill, in the park, and you call it the castle. And some night soon a huge, green boogeyman with sharp yellow teeth is going to come into your room when it is dark and he is going to
chop you up into little pieces
— both of you—
and eat the pieces
.”

The girls staggered backward, their faces pasty white and their eyes huge as saucers. Their mouths hung slack with fear and shock.

“And if you tell anyone . . . your father, mother,
anyone
,” I had the receptionist hiss after them, “the boogeyman is going to come for you
tonight
!”

The girls staggered back to their seats, staring at the woman as if she were a snake. A minute later an elderly couple arrived asking directions to a room and I let the receptionist return to being her sweet, simple, slightly officious self.

Upstairs, Dr. Hartman had finished explaining my medical condition to Howard Warden. Down the hall, Head Nurse Oldsmith checked medication for the patients, taking great care in double-checking anything labeled for Mrs. Doe. In my room, the young nurse named Sewell was gently bathing me with cold compresses, massaging my skin almost reverently. The sensation was only a distant one at best, but I felt better knowing that all possible attention was being given to me. It was good to be back among family.

On the third day, the third night actually, I was resting . . . I never really slept anymore, merely allowed my consciousness to float, moving from recipient to recipient in a random, dreamlike way . . . when suddenly I became aware of a physical excitement I had not known for years, the presence of a man, his arms around me, loins thrusting against me. I felt my heart pounding, as the fullness of my young breasts pressed against him, my nipples erect. His tongue was in my mouth. I felt his hands fumbling at the buttons of my nurse’s uniform even as my own hands undid the clasp of his belt, tugged at his zipper, and grasped at his erect male member.

It was disgusting. It was obscene. It was Nurse Connie Sewell in a supply closet with some intern.

Since I could not sleep anyway, I allowed my consciousness to return to Nurse Sewell. I consoled myself with the thought that I was not
initiating
, merely
participating
. The night passed quickly.

I am not sure when I had the idea of returning home. The hospital had been necessary for those first few weeks, that first month, but by mid-February my thoughts turned more and more to Charleston and my home. It was only mildly difficult to stay in the hospital without drawing attention to myself; by the third week Dr. Hartman had moved me to a large private room on the seventh floor and most of the staff was under the impression that I was a very wealthy patient deserving special care. This was true.

There was a certain administrator, a Dr. Markham, who continued to ask questions about my case. He returned to the seventh floor daily, sniffing around like a hound on a scent. I had Dr. Hartman reassure him. I had Head Nurse Oldsmith explain things to him. Finally I entered the little man’s mind and reassured him my own way. But he was insistent. Four days later he was back, questioning nurses about the extra ser vice and care I was receiving, demanding to know who was paying for the additional medicines, tests, CAT scans, and specialist consultations. Markham pointed out that the business office had no records of my admission, no 26479B15-C sheets, no computer printouts of itemized costs, and no information on how payment would be met. Nurse Oldsmith and Dr. Hartman agreed to be present at a meeting the next morning with our inquisitor, the head of the Hospital board, the chief of the business office, and three other supernumeries.

That evening I joined Markham as he drove home. The Schuylkill Expressway was crowded and it brought back bad memories of New Year’s Eve. Just before we reached the junction with the Roosevelt Expressway I had our friend pull his car into the narrow shoulder, turn on the blinking emergency lights, and step out to stand in front of the Chrysler. I helped him remain standing there for over a minute, scratching his balding head and wondering what was wrong with his car. When the time came, it was obvious: All five lanes filled with traffic moving at speed. A large truck on the inner lane.

Our administrator friend jumped quickly in three long strides. There was time for me to record the roar of the air horns, to see the shocked expression on the truck driver’s rapidly approaching face, and to sense the disbelieving scurry of Markham’s thoughts before the impact sent me sliding back to other viewpoints. I sought out Nurse Sewell and shared her eagerness for the shift change and the arrival of her young intern.

Time meant very little to me during this period. I would shift backward and forward in time as easily as I slipped from one viewpoint to the next. I especially enjoyed reliving those summers in Eu rope with Nina and our new friend Wilhelm.

I remember the cool summer evenings, the three of us walking along the stylish Ringstrasse where everyone who was anyone in Vienna could be found parading in their finest livery. Willi had loved going to the Colosseum Cinema on Nussdorferstrasse, but the films there were invariably those boring German propaganda things, and Nina and I usually prevailed in coaxing our young guide to the Krüger-Kino where the new American gangster films were common. I remembered laughing until I cried one evening at the spectacle of Jimmy Cagney spitting words in ugly Austrian-German in the first dubbed talkie I had ever seen.

Afterward we frequently would have drinks in the Reiss-Barr off Kärntnerstrasse, greeting other groups of young merrymakers and relaxing in the chic comfort of the real leather chairs while enjoying the play of light off mahogany, glass, chromium, and the gilt and marble tables. Sometimes a few of the more stylish prostitutes from the nearby Kruggerstrasse would come in with their dates and add a daring, illicit feel to the evening.