The Fury of Rachel Monette

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PETER ABRAHAMS

“Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.” —Stephen King

“The care with which Abrahams brings his characters to life sets him apart from most thriller writers working today.” —
The New Yorker

Hard Rain

“A good thriller needs style, atmosphere and a surprising plot, and
Hard Rain
… has all of these and something extra: depth of feeling.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“A class-A thriller.” —James Ellroy

“A riveting tale of betrayal and vengeance set against a backdrop of sixties craziness and enriched by some wonderfully wicked observations on the way we live and love.” —
Jonathan Kellerman

The Fury of Rachel Monette

“A roller coaster of a novel.” —
Los Angeles Times

“Visual, frightening, fast-paced and mesmerizing. [Abrahams] is a natural-born artist, a brilliant young writer who has a truly remarkable talent for writing psychological thrillers of enormous power, depth and intensity.” —
The Denver Post

Pressure Drop

“[A] gripping tale … Maintaining suspense throughout, Abrahams sets his scenes with evocative details.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Thrillers aren't generally known for sharp social observation, or for sympathetic examination of career women caught with their biological alarm clocks set to go off and good men a scarce commodity.
Pressure Drop
supplies both, along with the requisite amount of nasty villains and brave deeds.” —
Booklist

Tongues of Fire

“Israel as a nation has ceased to exist. Israel and the Israeli [people] have been driven from their land into the sea by Syria, Iraq and other Arab states. Thus begins
Tongues of Fire
.… This fascinating story relates very plausibly to our age and time. It is gripping.” —
Bestsellers

The Fury of Rachel Monette

Peter Abrahams, also known as Spencer Quinn

T
O
D
IANA

PROLOGUE

It was one of those winds that have a name. The
chergui
they called it, a hot summer wind that blew from the east. At dawn it was already gathering strength, picking the crests off the dunes and driving the sand through the air like sparks from a grindstone.

There was no escaping it. The sand forced its way up the soldier's pant legs, stung his wrists and neck, filled his ears. Hunched over the steering wheel he guided the jeep slowly south, seeking the firm rocky patches which provided the only traction in the ocean of loose sand. You will be back in time for lunch, the French liaison officer had promised. How far can a pregnant woman go in the desert? Farther than I want to, thought the soldier.

He stopped the jeep and stood on the seat to look ahead. He was a big man with thick shoulders and the kind of beard that can never be shaved into invisibility no matter how sharp the blade. His eyes were tearing, leaving muddy tracks on his dark cheeks. There was nothing to see, nothing except dunes and rocks. Nothing was what he expected to see: that was why all the others had been sent north. It is improbable that she will go south, the Frenchman had explained rather superfluously—it was almost three thousand kilometers to the next town. Still, she does not know where she is to begin with. We must consider the irrational.

He had driven south.

The wind blew harder, darkening the sky with sand, screening out all color. The sand was gray, the sky was gray, the sun was gray. For a while the wind made the soldier forget the heat, but the wet stains under his arms spread quickly to join those on his back and across his chest. His undershorts clung damply to his groin. The Frenchman loved the desert; he said he found something fascinating about it. The soldier drank from his canteen and drove on.

In the early afternoon he thought he saw a movement on the horizon. It made him try to go faster and that was a mistake. Rounding a dune the jeep slid suddenly into a large expanse of deep sand. There was nothing to do but press the accelerator to the floor, hoping that speed would carry him through. He saw firm ground to his right and turned toward it. As he did the front wheels bit into the sand, and the rear ones at first spun wildly and then not at all, as the jeep sank to its axles. The soldier got out and drank more water. Again he saw something moving to the south. He could free the jeep—he had a shovel, sand ladders, a jack—but hours would be lost, and perhaps the woman too. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder he started after her on foot.

Two walkers in the desert. The small one moved slowly, sometimes stumbling. The big one had a long steady stride and drew nearer with every step. The wind didn't care. It threw sand in both their faces.

She reached the edge of a
sebkha,
a large dry salt lake depressed fifty or sixty feet below the desert floor. As she walked she kept looking at the blue light that shimmered in the center of the lake bed. She is wondering whether it's water, thought the soldier behind her. He was near enough now to see that she wore a dark blue robe, the hood pulled over her head. Again she stumbled, and drew away from the edge. She's ready to collapse, the soldier thought. That's why she doesn't hear me. She'll probably be glad to go back.

He removed the canteen from his belt. Stop, he called to her. She turned quickly. The veil she wore hid everything but the fear in her eyes. She was breathing heavily: the robe stretched taut over the swell of her stomach. He held out the canteen. Without hesitation she took a step and jumped off the edge of the sebkha. There was no attempt to land feet first, or in any other way. It was a random fall and a random landing. She lay broken and still in the lake bed.

The soldier ran along the top of the depression until he found an incline. Scrambling down toward the bottom he lost his balance and slid the rest of the way on his back. He reached the body, turned it over and pulled aside the veil.

She seemed to be grinning at him. That was because someone had cut off her lips. Her nose was gone too, and there were other things. The soldier looked away and vomited until his stomach muscles ached.

After, with the toe of his boot, he rolled her over so that she lay face down. It was then that he noticed the rings on her fingers. There were five, all diamond. The soldier knew nothing about diamonds, but a few of them seemed very big. The woman had hidden them somehow, he thought. She had been given the diamonds because she was going to be free.

The soldier sat on the lake bed until nightfall. There was no wind in the depression, no sound at all. Finally he rose and took off all his clothing except the boots: he would chance the boots. Then one by one he removed the rings from her fingers. One would not come; he left it. Trying not to look, not to see anything, he stripped off her robe. With his hands he dug a shallow grave, and gripping the ankles pulled the body inside. He threw sand on top until she was gone.

The moon, a golden crescent, glided slowly across the sky, not standing straight, as it did in northern latitudes, but lying on its back. The sky was full of stars, millions of lights without heat. Suddenly it was very cold. The soldier put on the blue robe, slipped the rings in an inner pocket, and began walking north, north to the mountains and the cities beyond.

I

1

Outside it was still dark. Snow was falling heavily. The individual flakes seemed bigger than usual and they descended in dense hordes as if they were in a hurry to get the driveways blocked before anyone woke up. The Eskimos have more than a hundred words to describe the different kinds of snow. Rachel Monette, née Bernstein, hated them all.

With a loud click that wasn't mentioned in the brochure the clock radio signaled it was ready to talk: “… instead think of the fun you can have building snowmen with the kids. And remember folks—today is the first day of the rest of your life. Think about it. Sports, Jim?” “Right, Bob. First action last night in …”

Rachel shut it off but it hadn't finished communicating. Its red fluorescent digits, shaped in the style computers like, were relaying the news from the fourth dimension. Six fifty-six they declared, thought about it and switched to 6:57. The black modular oblong didn't harmonize with the old New England pine furniture in the room, but try to find an antique clock radio. So few of the shoppes are making them these days.

Rachel got out of bed and stood before the full-length mirror as she did every morning. She saw a tall big-boned healthy female who in a ten-years-earlier and ten-pounds-lighter version had played some good basketball for Bryn Mawr. The strength of her nose and jaw had always kept people from calling her face pretty, but in the last few years others had begun to see in it what she had almost given up hope they would: a kind of beauty.

Rachel fought another battle with her thick dark hair until it submitted grudgingly and temporarily to the will of her comb. She pinched here and there at her flesh trying to determine what was fat and what was muscle. Deciding that the fat was hard and the muscle soft, she gave it up. Goose bumps began to roughen the texture of her skin. She poked through a pile of clothes on the floor until she found a worn terry-cloth robe. She put it on, inserted a small gold ring in each earlobe and turned to leave the room.

“I wanted to hear what happened in last night's action,” her husband called from the bed.

“Tie ball game.”

“No overtime?”

“After what you had to drink?”

Adam, or Adman as he often called himself, wasn't in his room. He had already made the bed, smoothing away the wrinkles on the duvet that showed woolly sheep hovering over red fences. Adam had tidy habits like his father. Parked with precision in the corner was a fleet of huge yellow trucks, ready at a moment's notice for a wildcat walkout.