Both were surprised at its proximity to the monastery. Mercer lit a candle and spread the sheets and blankets on the cavern floor. She motioned for him to stretch out and watch as she undressed.
He expected a hint of self-consciousness from Selome, but there was none. She pulled her shirt over her head in one fluid motion, her high breasts bouncing as they came free. Her nipples looked painfully erect, and his body reacted. Her pants fell around her ankles with just the tiniest bit of urging. She kicked out of them and hooked her thumbs in the waist band of her panties. With deliberate slowness, she slid them down her thighs, bending deeply until they lay at her feet in a rippled puddle of silk.
She stood proudly, a dusky Venus, her body taut and perfect, her skin so flawless and waxy smooth in the candlelight that she looked like marble. Mercer couldn’t help but stare at the shallow cleft that rose from the juncture of her thighs, her body’s most secret place veiled by only a thin down. His heart pounded and his breath matched the shallow heaving of Selome’s chest. Her arousal perfumed the air.
Mercer began shedding his clothes, but Selome dropped to her knees next to him, brushed away his hands, and began working at the buttons and zippers, her fingers stroking each newly exposed section of his body until he was nude and she held him firmly in her palm. She squeezed him every so slightly, and his hips bucked involuntarily. It was only then that she kissed his mouth again.
“You are so beautiful,” Mercer said, and Selome smiled.
“So are you.”
She would not let him do any of the work that first time, not even sheath himself with one of the condoms Mercer’s doctor made him stash in his wallet. For Mercer, it felt incredibly decadent not to have to worry about his partner’s pleasure, for her expression told him that her arousal came solely from his enjoyment. For the ten minutes they were joined, they freed each other from the world as Selome rocked her body on his, drawing him in deeper and deeper. Mercer’s climax left him dizzy and gasping. Then, in a feat he hadn’t been capable of since college, they made love again almost immediately. Mercer had only seconds to put on another condom before Selome drew him on top of her. Her orgasmic screams echoed far outside their intimate cave.
They were so lost in their lovemaking, neither heard the convoy of trucks approaching from the east. Half an hour after the vehicles passed, they were packing up the bedding and adjusting their clothes for the walk back to the monastery when distant machine-gun fire shattered the night. The crashing explosion of sound stripped away the euphoria they had just built and brought them back to the ugliness of reality.
Tel Aviv, Israel
Danny Silver was twenty-three years old, an American by birth who had moved to the Jewish state with his parents when he was sixteen. He liked Israel well enough so long as he stayed in the country’s largest city. A few years ago, he’d tried kibbutz life for a summer and found the back-to-nature, communal living to be a bore. He liked the action of Tel Aviv with its late-night discos and cosmopolitan aura. Besides, being a bartender at one of the big hotels on the beach ensured he could get laid almost any night he wanted. American girls on break from college or spending time in Israel to discover their “Jewishness” were invariably fascinated by his stories, especially the ones he made up about his compulsory tour in the army.
But it was a Tuesday night, not yet eight, and the cocktail lounge was slow. His only customers were a group of Israeli businessmen in one corner and two old women from a New Jersey tour group near the bar’s entrance. Danny busied himself behind the long bar, polishing glasses that were already spotless and wiping down bottles that didn’t need to be cleaned. Sara, the waitress, stood casually at her station, one eye on her customers and the other on a college textbook. Danny really didn’t like her. She did nothing to hide her disdain for any Jew not born in Israel.
A crash from the lobby turned Danny away from Sara’s cleavage. An old guy had toppled a sign board in the lobby, sending it to the floor, but the fool didn’t stop to right it again. He charged into the bar like a Merkava battle tank, his hard eyes drilling through Danny to the display wall of liquor behind him.
The man resembled a scarecrow, thin and wrinkled. He looked almost comical, but there was nothing funny about his expression. Had the guy been Arab, Danny would have run for his life. But he was white, probably American, and certainly nuts. He rushed straight for the bar, heaving himself onto a stool with an explosive grunt. Hunching his shoulders like a vulture, he glared at Danny until the Israeli sauntered over to ask what he wanted.
“Drink.” American, for sure.
“What kind of a drink, sir?”
“Give me anything with alcohol or so help me Christ, I’ll tear you apart and get it myself.”
Normally, Danny would have laughed at him, but the customer spoke with such force that he believed the crazy old bastard would have tried it. “Sure thing, sir, anything you say.”
Danny poured a measure of brandy into a snifter, but before he could set the drink on the bar, the American lunged for the bottle. The man snapped off the speed pourer with a practiced twist and upended the bottle to his lips. Three swallows vanished in as many seconds before the geezer set the bottle carefully on the bar top.
“Sorry about that, son,” Harry White rasped. “But you were taking too damn long. If you knew what I’ve been through in the past couple weeks, you would’ve done the same thing.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Danny backed away.
“Tell you what, kid, if you’ve got any bourbon back there, Jack Daniel’s preferably, I promise not to bite. Deal?” The expression of madness was transformed into a smile that was almost grandfatherly.
Danny poured a shot of bourbon and wisely left the bottle on the bar. Stealing a glance at Sara, he saw her watching the whole bizarre exchange with a smirk. She looked as if she expected such repulsive behavior from Americans.
Harry gulped down the bourbon and helped himself to another, pouring until the glass could not hold one more alcohol molecule. When he brought it to his lips, he didn’t spill a drop. “You’re a lifesaver, my friend. A goddamned lifesaver.” The liquor filed the sharper edges off Harry’s voice. “Eight or ten more of these and I might feel human again.”
“Mr. White?” a female called from the lobby. She was poised at the entrance to the bar with a startled look. Her chest heaved because she had been forced to run into the hotel, chasing after the octogenarian. Wearing a conservative gray suit with an off-the-rack blouse and a ridiculous bow, to Danny she was the picture of a government employee. She trod across the marble lobby floor, her sensible shoes clacking with a horse-like clomp. “Oh, thank God, Mr. White. I was afraid I’d lost you for a second.”
Harry nodded at his drink. “A second was all I needed.”
The harried young woman was Jessica Michaelson. She worked for the CIA under the cover of a cultural attache and had been assigned the job of minding Harry White until his flight back to the United States. As the lowest-ranking CIA agent at the embassy, she had been saddled with Harry for nearly a week now. While not involved with his debriefing, she had to keep the curmudgeon occupied when he was not in meetings with the more senior officers, including the station chief.
Jessica had read the report of what Harry had been through in the past couple of weeks, and even in its sanitized version his experiences were harrowing. But after a week with him, she felt her pity wearing thin and was hoping the terrorists would come and take him away again.
From a portion of the report that Jessica Michaelson had read, Harry’s own words from a stenographer’s transcript described what had happened to bring him to the care of the CIA:
I’d just escaped the gun fight and was real tired. I smelled like hell and my whiskers were itchin’ something fierce. I think I picked up some critters in that cell too. Anyway,
I was walking along, looking for something, anything that I could recognize, but all the signs were written in squiggly letters that looked like they were done by a blind two-year-old. Then I saw one sign I could read, and damned if fate isn’t one cruel bitch. It was on a church bulletin board, and it was for an Alcohol Anonymous meeting that was going to start a half hour after curfew had been lifted. I hid out for the night in an alley a couple blocks
