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The question
took Kesev completely by surprise. And she was staring at him, her narrowed
eyes boring into his, as if seeing something there.

"No . . .
no . . . it belongs to--"

"Who are
you?" she said.

"I told
you. Kesev, with--"

"No.
That's not true." Her eyes widened now, as if she were suddenly afraid of
him. "You're not who you say you are. You're someone else. Who are
you--really?"

Now it was
Kesev's turn to be dumbfounded. How did she know? How
could
she know?

Reflexively he backed away from her. Who was this woman?

"Excuse
me, Sister," said another voice. "Is this man bothering you?"

Kesev looked up
to see a tall priest rising from an aisle seat a few rows back, glaring down at
him as he approached.

"The poor
man seems deranged," Sister Carolyn said.

The priest
reached above the nun's seat and pressed the call button for the stewardess.
"I'll have him removed."

Kesev backed
away. "Sorry. My mistake."

The last thing
he wanted was a scene. He had no official capacity here and no logical reason
he could give his superiors for pulling this woman off the plane.

Besides, he was
looking for a man and a woman, not a nun. Especially not that nun.
Something about
her, something ethereal . . . the way she'd looked at him . . . looked
through
him.

She'd looked at him and she knew. She
knew!

He staggered
forward through a cloud of confusion. What was happening? Everything had been
fine until that damn SCUD had crashed near the Resting Place. Since then it had
been one thing after another, chipping at the foundations of his carefully
reconstructed life, until today's cataclysm.

Kuttner looked
at him questioningly as he reached the front of the cabin.

"Not
her," Kesev said. "But I want to check the cargo hold."

The head
stewardess groaned and Kuttner said, "I don't know about that."

"It will
only take a minute or two. The object in question is at least a meter and a
half in length. It can't be in a suitcase. I just want to check out the larger
parcels."

Kuttner
shrugged resignedly. "All right. But let's get to it."

Dan quietly
slipped into 12A. His boarding pass had him in 15D--they'd decided it was best
not to sit together--but Carrie had this half of row 12 to herself so he joined
her. But not too close.

When no one was
looking he reached across the empty seat and grabbed her hand. It was cold,
sweaty, trembling.

"You were
great," he whispered.

She'd been more
than great, she'd been wonderful. When he'd seen that little bearded rooster of
a Shin Bet man stalk down the aisle, he'd prayed for strength in the imminent
confrontation. But he'd stopped at Carrie's seat, not Dan's. And then Dan had
cursed himself for not realizing that their pursuer would be looking for
someone named Ferris. But
Carrie had stood up
to that Shin Bet man, kept her cool, and faced him down. Dan had only stepped
in to add the
coup de grace.

"I don't
feel great," she said. "I feel sick."

"What did
you say to him at the end?"

"What do
you mean?"

"Well, he
hadn't seemed too sure of himself in the first place, but--"

Carrie's smile
was wan but real. "We can thank your idea of getting into uniform for
that."

"Sure, but
you said something and all the color went out of him."

"I asked
him who he really was. As he was speaking to me I had the strangest feeling
about him, that he was an impostor--or maybe that isn't the right word. I think
he's truly from their domestic intelligence, whatever it's called, but he's
also someone else. And he's hiding that someone else."

"Whatever
it is, I'd say you struck a nerve."

"I didn't
really have a choice. I just knew right then that I was very afraid of the
person he was hiding."

"So am I,
though probably not for the same reason. Damn, I wish we'd get moving. What's
the holdup?"

Dan looked past
Carrie through the window at the lights of the airport and wondered what Mr.
Kesev was up to now. He wouldn't feel safe until they were in the air and over
the Mediterranean.

"And
yet," Carrie said softly, "there's something terribly sad about him.
He said something that shocked me."

"What?"

"He said
'please.' He said, 'Please give it back.' Isn't that strange?"

Kesev stood at
one of the panoramic windows in the main terminal and watched the plane roar
into the sky toward London.

Nothing.

He'd found
nothing in the cargo hold or baggage compartment large enough to contain the
Mother.

That gave him
hope, at least, that the Mother was still in Israel. And if she was still here,
he could find her

But where was
she?
Where?

He trembled at
the thought of what might happen if she were not safely returned to the Resting
Place.

15

The
Greenbriar--
Off
Crete

Second mate
Dennis Maguire was rounding the port side of the superstructure amidships when
he saw her.

At least it seemed
to be a her. He couldn't be sure in the downpour. The figure stood a good fifty
feet away in the center of the aft hold's hatch, wrapped head to toe in some
sort of blanket, completely unmindful of the driving rain as she stared
aftward. He couldn't make out any features in the dimness, but something in his
gut knew he was looking at a
she.

They'd run into
the squall shortly after dark the first night out of Haifa. Maguire was running
a topside check to make double sure everything was secure. A sturdy little
tramp, the
Greenbriar
was, with a 200-foot keel and thirty feet abeam,
she could haul good cargo in her two holds, and haul it fast. But any storm,
even lightweight Mediterranean squalls like this one, could be trouble if
everything wasn't secured the way it was supposed to be. And Captain Liam could
be hell on wheels if something went wrong because of carelessness.

So Maguire had
learned: Do it right the first time, then double check to make sure you did
what you thought you did.

And after he
wound up this little tour of the deck, he could retire to his cabin and work on
his bottle of Jameson's.

I'm glad I
haven't touched that bottle yet, he thought.
Because
right now he'd be blaming the whiskey for what he was seeing.

A
woman?
How
the hell had a woman got aboard? And why would any woman
want
to be
aboard?

She stood
facing aft, like some green-gilled landlubber staring homeward.

"Hello?"
he said, approaching the hatch.

She turned
toward him but the glow from the lights in the superstructure weren't strong
enough to light her features through the rain. And then he noticed something:
the blanket or cloak or robe or whatever she was wrapped up in wasn't moving or
even fluttering in the wind. In fact, it didn't even look
wet.

He blinked and
turned his head as a particularly nasty gust stung his face with needle-sharp
droplets, and when he looked again, she was gone.

He ran across
the hatch and searched the entire afterdeck but could not find a trace of her.
So he ran and told the captain.

Liam Harrity
puffed his pipe and stared out at him from the mass of red hair that encircled
his face.

"What have
we discussed about you hitting the Jameson's while you're on duty, Denny?"
he said.

"Captain,
I swear, I haven't touched a drop to me lips since last night." Maguire
leaned closer. "Here. Smell me breath."

The captain
waved him off. "I don't want to be smelling your foul breath! Just get to
your bunk and don't be after coming to me with any more stories of women on my
ship Get!"

Dennis Maguire
got, but he knew in his heart there'd been someone out there in the storm
tonight. And somehow he knew they hadn't seen the last of her.

Paraiso

"Charlie,
Charlie, Charlie," the
senador
said, shaking his head sadly.

Emilio Sanchez
stood at a respectful distance from the
father
and son confrontation. He had moved to leave the great room after delivering
Charlie here, but the
senador
had motioned him to stay. Emilio was proud
of the
senador's
show of trust and confidence in him, but it pained him
to see so great a man in such distress. So Emilio stepped back against the
great fireplace and stared out at the seamless blackness beyond the windows
where the clouded night sky merged with the Pacific. And listened.

"I thought
we had an understanding, Charlie," the
senador
said. He leaned
forward, staring earnestly across the long, free-form redwood coffee table at
his son who sat with elbows on knees, head down. "You promised me six
months. You promised me you'd stay here and go through therapy . . . learn to
pray."

"It's not
what you think, Dad," Charlie said softly in a hoarse voice. He sounded
exhausted. Defeated.

The fight
seemed to have gone out of Charlie. Which didn't jibe at all with his recent
flight from Paraiso. If he wasn't bucking his father, why did he run?

Two days ago
the
senador
had called Emilio to his home office in a minor panic.
Charlie was gone. His room was empty, and he was nowhere in the house or on the
grounds. Juanita said she'd passed a taxi coming the other way when she'd
arrived early this morning.

Emilio had sighed
and nodded.
Here we go again.

Fortunately
Juanita remembered the name of the cab company. From there it was easy to trace
that particular fare--the whole damn company was buzzing about picking up a fare
at Paraiso that wanted to be taken all the way to Frisco. The driver had
dropped his fare off on California Street.

Charlie had run
to his favorite rat hole again.

Over the years,
during repeated trips in search of Charlie, Emilio had been in and out of so
many gay bars in San Francisco that some of the regulars had begun to think he
was a
maricon
himself. To counteract that insulting notion, he'd made it
a practice to bust the skull anyone who tried to get friendly.

But this time
he hadn't found Charlie down in the Tenderloin. Instead, he'd traced him to the
Embarcadero. Charlie had taken a room in the Hyatt, of all places.

When Emilio had
knocked on his door, Charlie hadn't acted surprised, and he hadn't launched
into his usual lame protests. He'd come quietly, barely speaking during the
drive back.

That wasn't
like Charlie. Something was wrong. "What
am
I to think,
Charlie?" the
senador
was saying. "You promised me. Remember
what you said? You said you'd 'give it the old college try.' Remember
that?"

"Dad--"

"And you
were doing so well! Dr. Thompson said you were very cooperative, really
starting to open up to him. And you seemed to be getting into the spirit of the
prayer sessions, feeling the presence of the Lord. What happened? Why did you
break your promise?"

"I didn't break my promise." He didn't look up. He
stared at the table before him, seemingly lost in the redwood whorls. "I
was coming back. I needed--"

"You
don't
need that . . . sort of ... activity," the
senador
said.
"By falling back into that sinfulness you've undone all your months of
work!"

"I didn't
go back for sex," Charlie said.

"Please
don't make this worse by lying to me, Charlie." During the ensuing
silence, Emilio realized that normally he too would have thought Charlie was
lying, but today he didn't think so.

"It's the
truth, Dad."