Looking on a map of Jerusalem, McCabe also saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site of Christ’s burial place. That was as important a shrine as existed in the whole Christian world, and it was just a few hundred yards away, in the heart of the Old City, well within range of any nuclear blast.
Suddenly the pain and fear of his disease was replaced by a glow of true contentment. Temple Mount was the flashpoint he’d been looking for. Nuke that, and all hell would break loose. Oh, yeah, that would do the trick, all right.
24
He was standing in the middle of the road and a black car was driving straight toward him. Its headlights were blazing right into his eyes, blinding him. He tried to close his eyes but his eyelids wouldn’t move. He struggled to turn away, but no matter how hard he wrenched his neck, his head was held fast. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t move. Now the roar of the engine was filling his head and he couldn’t lift his hands to cover his ears and his brain was about to explode with noise and light and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t because his mouth was gagged and his teeth seemed loose against the leather strap. And he was cold, so terribly, terribly cold…
Carver came to, his pulse racing and his throat constricted by a pervasive, unfocused panic. For a while, he could not focus his eyes, so he reached out blindly for her hand… and felt nothing.
He frowned and shook his head quickly from side to side, banishing the last bad fragments of his nightmare from his brain. Then he opened his eyes… and Alix wasn’t there.
Now he really had something to panic about. Carver told himself to calm down. There were very few things he knew for sure anymore, but one of them was that Alix came to see him every day. She had been there earlier, he was sure, and she’d be back again. It was just a matter of waiting. Maybe she was getting a meal or something to read. She did that sometimes, when she thought he was asleep. Yes, that was it. She would be back soon.
“Hello, Samuel.” There was a woman at the door of the room. She was smiling at him and her voice was friendly. But she wasn’t Alix. She was Nurse Juneau, bringing him food and medication.
She looked around as she came into the room, frowned to herself, then gave Carver another smile.
“Alix not here?” she asked perkily, then her voice took on a huskier tone: “At last, Samuel, we’re all alone.”
She looked at him over one shoulder teasingly. “After all this time-now what shall we do?”
She picked up one of his hands and stroked it.
Carver flinched at her touch. He found people confusing. He didn’t always understand what they meant by the things they said. He couldn’t work out what they were feeling when they spoke. Their intentions were unclear. He could see that Nurse Juneau was flirting with him, but he had the sense she was mocking him, too. He didn’t like that.
He decided to ignore her and concentrate on what was on his mind.
“Where’s Alix?” he croaked.
Nurse Juneau put the tray down across his bed and shrugged.
“I don’t know, Samuel.”
“Where has she gone?”
“I don’t know. Samuel,” Juneau repeated, with a little more emphasis, holding out a little paper cup in which sat three brightly colored capsules. “She’s just not here.”
She meant nothing by the remark. Nurse Juneau couldn’t see anything wrong with Alix giving herself a break. The poor girl deserved it, the amount of time she spent in this room.
But her words hit Samuel Carver like a shock from the belt that had tortured him. He gasped. His eyes widened in shock. He gripped his sheets. Then he flung his arms upward, throwing off his bed linens and sending the tray flying as plates, glasses, and cutlery clattered down onto the floor.
Nurse Juneau was used to Carver’s tantrums, his infantile fear of abandonment. But this time, she suddenly realized, his reaction to Alix’s absence had a whole new intensity.
As she screamed in alarm, Carver got out of bed, with an energy she had never seen in him before, his eyes blazing, his face twisted with a primal, unfettered rage. She backed away, but he came after her. He wrapped his fists around her upper arms, gripping them so hard she winced in pain, then he stuck his face right up close to hers and hissed, “Where is she?”
His voice had lost any trace of childlike innocence. It carried the threat of real fury, ready to tip into violence.
Nurse Juneau shook her head. “I don’t know,” she pleaded. “I promise I’m telling the truth. I don’t know where Alix has gone. But don’t get upset-you know she always comes back. Always.”
Carver threw her away from him, across the room. She crashed into the door frame, crying out with the pain of the impact.
“Alix!” shouted Carver, standing beside his bed. “Al-i-i-i-x!”
He stumbled across the room, almost tripping on the nurse’s dazed body, and headed out into the hallway.
Stabbing bolts of pain cut through Carver’s skull. His heart was palpitating. Images from his dreams were flashing before his eyes. But now, in this waking nightmare, everything was different. He knew where and when he had fought in that desert: a mission deep into Iraq in the midst of the Desert Storm campaign in 1991. He knew that he and his men had blown the cables and returned safely to base. And the woman in the dream was Alix. She’d been there, in that chalet outside Gstaad. But what else had happened there?
The memory would not come. Just another stab behind his eyes.
