The Fist of God

pictures trying so desperately to cover or rescue them?

It was not until the evening of the twenty-fourth that Simon Paxman, speaking from a phone booth, called Dr. Terry Martin at his flat.

“Care for another Indian meal?” he asked.

“Can’t tonight,” said Martin. “I’m packing.”

He did not mention that Hilary was back, and he also wished to spend the evening with his friend.

“Where are you going?” asked Paxman.

“America,” said Martin. “An invitation to lecture on the Abassid Caliphate. Rather flattering, actually. They seem to like my research into the law structure of the third caliph. Sorry.”

“It’s just that something else has come through from the south.

Another puzzle that nobody can explain. But it’s not about nuances of the Arabic language, it’s technical. Still ...”

“What is it?”

“A photo. I’ve run off a copy.”

Martin hesitated.

“Another straw in the wind?” he asked. “All right, same restaurant. At eight.”

“That’s probably all it is,” said Paxman, “just another straw.”

What he did not know was that what he held in his hand in that freezing phone booth was a very large piece of string.

Chapter 17

Terry Martin landed at San Francisco International Airport just after three P.M. local time the following day, to be met by his host, Professor Paul Maslowski, genial and welcoming in the American academic’s uniform of tweed jacket and leather patches, and at once felt himself enveloped by the warm embrace of all-American hospitality.

“Betty and I figured a hotel would be kind of impersonal and wondered whether you’d prefer to stay with us?” said Maslowski as he steered his compact out of the airport complex and onto the highway.

“Thank you, that would be wonderful,” said Martin, and he meant it.

“The students are looking forward to hearing you, Terry. There aren’t many of us, of course—our Arab department must be smaller than yours at SOAS, but they’re really enthusiastic.”

“Great. I look forward to meeting them.”

The pair chatted contentedly about their shared passion, medieval Mesopotamia, until they arrived at Professor Maslowski’s frame house in a suburban development in Menlo Park.

There he met Paul’s wife, Betty, and was shown to a warm and comfortable guest room. He glanced at his watch: a quarter before five.

“Could I use the phone?” he asked as he came downstairs.

“Absolutely,” said Maslowski. “Do you want to phone home?”

“No, locally. Do you have a directory?”

The professor gave him the telephone book and left.

It was under Livermore: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Alameda County. He was just in time.

“Could you put me through to Department Z?” he asked, pronouncing it Zed, when the receptionist answered.

“Who?” asked the girl.

“Department Zee,” Martin corrected himself. “Director’s office.”

“Hold on, please.”

Another female voice came on the line.

“Director’s office. Can I help you?”

The British accent probably helped. Martin explained he was Dr.

Martin, an academic over from England on a brief visit, and would be grateful to speak with the Director. A male voice took the phone.

“Dr. Martin?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Jim Jacobs, Deputy Director. How can I help you?”

“Look, I know it’s terribly short notice. But I am over here on a quick visit to give a lecture to the Near Eastern studies department at Berkeley. Then I have to fly back. Fact is, I was wondering whether I might come out to Livermore to see you.”

The sense of puzzlement came right over the telephone wire.

“Could you give me some indication what this is about, Dr. Martin?”

“Well, not easily. I am a member of the British end of the Medusa Committee. Does that ring a bell?”

“Sure does. We’re about to close down right now. Would tomorrow suit you?”

“Perfectly. I have to lecture in the afternoon. Would the morning be all right?”

“Say ten o’clock?” asked Dr. Jacobs.

The appointment was made. Martin had adroitly avoided mentioning that he was not a nuclear physicist at all, but an Arabist. No need to complicate matters.

That night, across the world in Vienna, Karim took Edith Hardenberg to bed. His seduction was neither hurried nor clumsy but seemed to follow an evening of concert music and dinner with perfect naturalness. Even as she drove him back from the city center to her apartment in Grinzing, Edith tried to convince herself it would just be for a coffee and a good-night kiss, though deep inside she knew she was pretending.

When he took her in his arms and kissed her gently but persuasively, she just allowed him to; her earlier conviction that she would protest seemed to melt away, and she could not prevent it. Nor, deep inside, did she want to anymore.

When he swept her up and carried her through to her tiny bedroom, she just turned her face into his shoulder and let it happen. She hardly felt her severe little dress slip to the floor. His fingers had a deftness that Horst had never possessed—no pushing and shoving and snagging of zips and buttons.

She was still in her slip when he joined her beneath the Bettkissen, the big soft Viennese duvet, and the heat from his hard young body was like a great comfort on a bitter winter’s night.

She did not know what to do, so she closed her eyes tight and let it happen. Strange, awful, sinful sensations began to run through her unaccustomed nerves beneath the attentions of his lips and softly searching fingers. Horst had never been like this.

She began to panic when his lips strayed from her own and from her breasts and went to other places, bad, forbidden places, what her mother had always referred to as “down there.”

She tried to push him away, protesting feebly, knowing the waves beginning to run through her lower body were not proper and decent, but he was eager as a spaniel puppy on a downed partridge.

He took no notice of her repeated “Nein, Karim, das sollst du nicht,”

and the waves became a tidal flow and she was a lost rowboat on a crazy ocean until the last great wave crashed over her and she drowned in a sensation with which she had never once in her thirty-nine years needed to burden the ears of her father confessor at the Votivkirche.

Then she took his head in her arms and pressed his face to her thin little breasts and rocked him in silence.

Twice more during the night he made love to her, once just after midnight and again in the blackness before dawn, and each time he was so gentle and strong that her pent-up love came pouring to meet his in a way she had never envisaged could be possible. Only after the second time could she bring herself to run her hands over his body while he slept and wonder at the sheen of the skin and the love that she felt for every inch of it.

Although he had no idea his guest had any interest in the world other than Arab studies, Dr. Maslowski