Dimiter (31 page)

He had remembered Dimiter’s letter about his “special thinking.”

But forgotten his mention of the sudden strong wind

M
eral entered his room, slipped off his uniform jacket, hung it up, and then sat on the edge of his bed where, as he did every night of his life, he stared lovingly and long at each of the photos on the top of his desk, the last of them a new one. Mayo’s. Then his gaze dropped down to the slim center drawer of the desk. He leaned forward and pulled it open, reached in a hand, and then lifted out a single sheet of paper on which the love that
had created the beauty of things had now written a letter of its own. It was Dimiter’s last letter to his wife. Meral had withheld it.

He was certain it had been written for him.

Dearest Jean,

You’re alive! Oh, my joy! You live! And you’ve confessed to me all that you have done, what you and Stephen have done, and still mean to do, which is to kill me. And now you want me to meet you in secret and away from Stephen. You now hate him, you say. You fear him. And you want me to help you escape him. You want to come back to me, you say, and that you are filled with remorse, which, if true, is surely the only thing you’ve told me that is, for you have sent me an invitation to my death. Although I think there’s something else you said that’s true. That you still love me. Oh, I know you don’t think so. But in that part of your soul still untouched and unstained by this fallen place, the part that remains the Jean I’ve loved for so long, I believe that you do.

I am coming to your meeting. I’ll be there. And I will make no resistance. I am coming to tell you and to show you I forgive you, for who knows then what blithe and unexpected grace might one day beckon your heart to where it’s always belonged.

And then finally allow you to forgive yourself.

I will love you forever, my Jean.

Your Paul

 

Meral’s head was bent, his gaze still clinging to the letter.

“Yes, ‘Forgive yourself,’ ” he murmured softly.

Besides the fact it had been written for Meral, the letter differed from the others in another way as well. This one had been delivered.

A
dry sherry, please, Patience.”

“ ‘If it were done when it were done.’ ”

“Yes, precisely. And kindly don’t put anything in it.”

Meral stood at the counter in the Casa Nova bar. It was the end of another day of work and he had changed into a blue linen jacket, khaki pants, white shirt, and a summery pale blue tie. It was the pre-dinner hour. Meral turned and looked around. There were only two other people in the bar and therefore many free chairs, all with camel-leather seats and backs
and hollow shiny black metal legs. Meral turned one around so he could keep an eye on Patience, and then he sat down.

“Oh, well, hullo there, old chap!” Meral turned his head. It was Scobie with a folded-up newspaper clutched in his hand. He looked over at the bar. “My usual, please!” he called out, and then he sat in a chair one away from Meral’s.

“Don’t mind if I sit with you, old chap?”

“No, not at all. You’re quite welcome.”

Scobie squinted at him dubiously. “I am?”

“Well, of course, you are, Scobie. Please sit.”

Scobie continued to stare for a moment, then at last turned away and unfolded his paper. “Oh, well, you’ve heard about the latest bit of bloody tomfoolery at bloody Shin Bet, I suppose.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“No? Misplaced the dead body of a secret agent and a bloody damned famous one at that. You know that Dimiter fellow? Silly twits. First they give me a pranging about misinforming them. And now this. This country is becoming unlivable.”

Meral turned to him. Scobie was holding up the newspaper wide in both hands and with his nose only inches away from the text while his eyes scanned about for some item of interest.

“What are you talking about, Scobie?”

Scobie turned to him.

“You really mean you haven’t heard?”

“They’ve lost his body?”

“Oh, well, they had him iced up in the morgue and all ready to ship him to the States, and now they’re saying that his body’s disappeared! They can’t find it!” He turned back to his paper.
“Bloody twits. Can you imagine? What a bloody balls-up! Misplaced a body!”

Meral looked off in a reverie of thought and wonder while, as if from some minor and distant planet lost in the tumbling, silent swirl of the galaxies, he heard the voice of Scobie.

“Well, now, this Dimiter, you know. Ever meet him?”

“Yes. He gave me a sunflower once.”

“Okay, I’m here.”

Meral turned to look up at Samia.

“This okay?” she asked. “What I’ve got on?”

She was wearing a pale blue dress, pink sandals, and a red and white Beethoven T-shirt. “I mean, Beethoven wasn’t Catholic,” she went on, “he was Protestant. They’re not snots about that kind of stuff here, are they, Meral?”

“No, they aren’t,” Meral told her.

He stood up.

“And your attire is lovely,” he added. “First a drink and then dinner? The chef is doing Mexican tonight at my request. What’s wrong? You’re not pleased?”

Samia’s eyes had been searching his face with concern.

“You look distracted,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“
Me
?”

Meral smiled.

Toward the end of the 1960s I attended a modest New Year’s Eve gathering at the home of my friend, the wonderful novelist and screenwriter, Burton Wohl, and it was there that I met Marc Jaffe, then Editorial Director of Bantam Books. Familiar with my work as a comic novelist, he asked me quite casually what I was working on lately. My answer involved mention of the State Unemployment Office but then, after debating whether or not to risk losing Jaffe’s respect, I talked for no more than a minute or two about my idea for a serious novel, prudently withholding
the fact that I had shopped it around to various publishing entities and several Hollywood film studios, all of whom eyed me with pity. But not Marc Jaffe. When I’d finished talking, and without a moment’s hesitation, he looked me in my eye and said—his exact words—“
I’ll
publish that!” And he did. It was
The Exorcist.
Now, forty years later, a period of time during which we’ve had virtually no contact, Marc Jaffe has done it again, having made it a crusade to find a publisher for this, the most personally important novel of my career.

I have no way of adequately thanking him. The gift is too great.

My thanks also to Vivienne Jaffe who, along with Marc, gave invaluable help in the editing and preparation of the manuscript, as did also my wife, Julie.

Among others I would wish to thank—U.S. Army Colonel William R. Corson, personnel of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, the Israeli National Police, and Isser Harel, the “father of Israeli Intelligence,” who masterminded the capture of Adolph Eichmann and gave me invaluable research assistance—all have passed away, but I thank them here nevertheless, confident that their mortal deaths will not keep them from knowing that I have done it.

I would be most appreciative if readers of this novel in Jerusalem were to be so kind as to resist the impulse to write and inform me that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a “Remle Street.” I know that. But only the name is fictitious, not the place, which is Hativat Jerushalayim, the usage of which utterly destroyed the rhythm of any sentence in which I attempted to use it. I didn’t even try with Orthodox Armenian Patriarchate Road.
Shalom.