“Leon,” Mihai said gently, “maybe it’s a little fast, all this. So much talk.” He paused. “Altan said, the Russians. People saw them. It’s still a little confusing, maybe. All the drugs-”
“Not the last shot,” Leon said. “That was me.” He lay back. As if it made any difference now. Altan already shaping the way it happened. You couldn’t fight the next war until you’d lied about the last one.
“Yes?” Mihai said, humoring him.
“It was the right thing to do,” Leon said, his voice trailing off, vague.
“Maybe you should rest now. I’ll tell the nurse-”
“No,” Leon said, gripping his hand. “Talk. I want to know. Tell me-”
“What?”
“Fool.”
Leon smiled. “Yes. That makes sense. He would think that.”
“Who?”
“Melnikov. He said it before he shot me. And I was. But not then. Before.” He lifted his hand slightly, brushing the air. “Wrong about Tommy. Everything.
“Not from Istanbul. It’s not so easy now. Italy.”
“More typhus?” Leon said.
“No. Getting out of Romania. It’s safer from the west. Through Vienna, away from the Russians. Istanbul’s finished for us. The office-I don’t know how long.”
“You’re going to Italy?”
“No. Palestine. Home.” He looked up, tentative, his voice casual. “You too. Why not?”
“To do what? Grow oranges?”
“Fight. The British are going to make a mess. The Arabs hate us. Like the Poles. There’ll be-”
“Another war,” Leon finished.
“But this one we don’t lose. You like all this so much.” He waved his hand over Leon’s bandages. “Come to Palestine.”
“With one lung.”
“We’re not so picky. We take anyone who’s with us.” He took a breath. “There are other ways to fight.”
Leon turned. “I’m not with anybody.”
“And that’s why you buy the
“I saw Phil too.”
Mihai cocked his head.
“My brother. Who was shot down. I used to think, sometimes, I was doing this for him. Helping. Working for Tommy. But that’s just something you tell yourself. To make it okay.” He turned to face Mihai. “How do you help somebody who’s dead? So who would I be helping this time? Anna?”
Mihai looked away, uncomfortable. “No. Four hundred, still alive. And more coming.” He hesitated. “It could be useful with the British. Not being a Jew.” Another pause. “What’s here for you?”
“I can’t take her there,” Leon said quietly. “Do you want me to leave her? Is that what you’d do?”
Mihai sat back, at a loss, then got up and walked over to the window. “Me? No.” He looked out. “You’d better sleep.” The room confining now.
“I’m awake.”
Mihai started fingering some plants on the windowsill, restless. “So who is this woman. She comes every day.”
“Kay? She was Frank’s-”
“I know who she is. Who is she to you?”
Leon said nothing. We’ll see.
“She knows about Anna?”
Leon nodded.
“Not just a friend, I think.” He held up his hand before Leon could say anything.
“She’s here?”
Mihai looked at his watch. “Soon. Every day.” He made a half smile. “Shifts. Me, then her.” He looked up. “She was afraid she’d miss you. That you wouldn’t wake up. Before she left.”
“Before she-” Seeing her walking across the bridge in her hat, Melnikov’s shield, not stopping this time, leaving. “When?” All he could say.
“I don’t know. She has a priority. They arranged it.”
They. Trying to think, his mind fuzzy, sorting this out.
“So tell me. What’s what.” Mihai looked over. “I don’t judge.”
But what was there to tell? Nothing decided. And then it was.
“When is she here?” Beginning to move, one hand on the sheet.
“Relax,” Mihai said, coming over to stop him. “You’ve got tubes coming and going. You’ll knock this over.” He nodded to the drip. “Let me see. This probably isn’t good for you, you know. The commotion, I mean. Head back. Come on. I don’t leave until I see-okay, better.”
So much better that Leon felt his eyes begin to close, seeing Mihai leave in a narrow strip, like watching someone through a venetian blind.
There was a voice in the back of his head, anxious, then another farther away, a man’s voice, German.
“Only a few minutes, yes? He goes in and out. If you see that, let him go. He needs the sleep.”
“All right.” Kay’s voice, the smell of her perfume.
“He may not know you.”
“Mihai said-”
“Mihai. Now Mossad is giving out medical degrees.”
At the door, heads bent toward each other, but Kay restless, shifting her feet, looking back at the bed. The way she had been that first morning in Tunel, having her cigarette, jumpy, not sure of things.
“Kay,” Leon said, the sound sticking a little in his throat.
“You see,” she said to Obstbaum, hurrying over to the bed. “He does.”
Obstbaum nodded, tapping his wristwatch at her, and left.
“Thank God,” she said to Leon, taking his hand. “I’ve been so worried.”
“You’re leaving,” he said, the scratchiness clearing.
She took her hand away. “Mihai told you. He said. I wanted to tell you myself.”
“Altan’s making you go.”
“Why would he do that?”
“No witnesses. He’s making up some story. Not what happened.”
“Leon,” she said, soothing. “People were there. On the bridge. It was-public.”
“He got you a priority.” Trying to put things one after the other, assemble them. “He wants to get you out of the country. Did you give them a statement?”
She looked at him, disconcerted. “Don’t. Please. You almost died on the bridge. And you’re still-” She stopped. “It was me. I want to go.”
“Why?”
“I can’t stay here,” she said, picking at the sheet. “I had time to think-while you were out. I never did before. It was always-later, let’s talk about it later. But then I did.” She grazed his hand. “I want to go home.”
“But you can’t-”
“I’ll stay with my sister for a while,” she said, ignoring him. “Until we drive each other crazy. The way we always do. And then-something. Frank’s insurance isn’t going to go very far.” She looked up. “This isn’t what you want to know, is it?”
“No.”
She went over to the night table, busying herself. “I’ve been thinking how to say this and now-” She handed
