come up with. As he climbed, his thoughts returned to Cassidy.
Pathetic young woman. She'd entered the session spitting defiance, still believing Al Biyadi intended to marry her, that their relationship had something to do with love.
Shmeltzer had torn into her, stripped away those fantasies in no time at all.
It opened her up fast. The tape recorder was gorging itself on names, dates, and numbers by the time the brass stormed in. Laufer, his boss, high-ranking tight-lipped boys from Mossad and Shin Bet. Taking over. The case was now national security, Shmeltzer and Daniel allowed to stay but relegated to observer status.
Priorities were clear, Laufer's attitude an excellent barometer. Since the Amelia Catherine covert, the deputy commander had abandoned his hands-off stance, insisted upon receiving daily progress reports, copies of the medical charts, the Sumbok list, the logs of the surveillance from the law building. But this morning he had no time for any of it, showed not the slightest curiosity about the case.
Fine, fine, Sharavi. Rushing past Daniel in order to question the terrorists.
Daniel watched, too, sitting behind one-way glass, as a Mossad investigator walked the soil Shmeltzer had plowed.
Three interrogations proceeded simultaneously. A marathon.
Al Biyadi in one room; next door his cousin, the phony charwoman. Both of them toughing it out, silent as dust.
But Cassidy had spilled to Nahum. He'd ignored her insults, the anti-Semitic slurs, kept picking and tearing at her resistance until he made her see that she'd been used and demeaned.
When the insight hit her, she did an immediate about-face, turning her wrath upon Al Biyadi, vomiting out her shame and hurt, talking so fast they'd had to slow her down, tell her to speak so that the recorder picked up more than mush.
And talk she did: How Hassan Had seduced her, strung her along with promises of matrimony, a big house back in America, back in Huntington Beach, California. Children, cars, the good life.
Just one more assignment before settling down to eternal domestic bliss. A dozen one mores; a score.
She'd started by composing and distributing PLO literature for him in Detroit, typing and proofreading the English versions, delivering boxfuls at out-of-the-way night drops. Meeting men in cafes, smiling Arab men. In retrospect she realized they'd had no respect for her, had been mocking her. At the time she'd thought them mysterious, charming.
Running errands. Picking up parcels at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Making coded phone calls and taking down incomprehensible messages. Side trips up to Canada, delivering packages to a row house in Montreal, returning with other packages to Michigan. Serving coffee and donuts to Hassan's friends as they met in the basement of a Black Muslim mosque. All of it in her spare time-going off shift at Harper Hospital and heading straight for her unpaid second job. But reimbursed by love, freeing her lover to complete his medical studies. The lack of romance sometimes painful. But telling herself that he was a patriot with more important things on his mind than movies and dinner dates. A patriot in jeopardy-the Zionists were watching him; he needed to maintain an apolitical stance.
He made love to her infrequently, told her she was a warrior-heroine, the kind of woman he wanted as mother of his children.
They signed up for the U.N. job together, planned to carry their activism to Palestine. Here, too, he doctored while she did the dirty work.
She composed twenty different propaganda pamphlets, found a printer in Nablus who could make them up in English, French, and Arabic. Made contact with the PLO operatives who came to the Amelia Catherine disguised as patients, growing close to one of them-Hassan's cousin, Samra. A pretty, dark girl, also trained as a nurse but working full-time for the liberation of Palestine. Hassan introduced them to each other in one of the examining rooms; an easy bond of friendship followed soon. The two women became confidantes, tutor and student.
Samra coached, Peggy performed well.
In February she was promoted to more important functions: serving as a conduit between Hassan and arms smugglers in Jordan, making payoffs, overseeing early morning transfers of the wooden crates to the big house on Ibn Haldoun.
Samra lived in a flat in Sheikh Jarrah, but the house was hers, deeded to her family-a rich family, like Hassan's. Her father had been a judge in East Jerusalem before escaping to Amman in '
Good friend, Cousin Samra.
In reality she was no cousin at all, but a wife. The one and only Mrs. Hassan Al Biyadi. A Jordanian marriage certificate found in her purse proved it, complete with signature by her father the judge.
Shmeltzer had waved the dogeared piece of paper in Cassidy's face, told her she was a gullible idiot, a stupid, stupid girl who deserved to be deceived.
She screamed denial. The old detective slapped her out of her hysteria and continued to attack her verbally, savagely, to the point where Daniel thought of intervening. But he didn't and finally the denial gave way to a new grasp on reality. Peggy Cassidy sat in her chair, shaking, gulping water, bubbling at the mouth, unable to spill her guts fast enough.
Yes, she'd known the first two Butcher victims were Amelia Catherine patients-Hassan's patients. Had wanted to tell someone-Mr. Baldwin, at least. But Hassan forbade it, said their cover was more important, they couldn't afford police probing around the hospital.
She began weeping: 'Those poor women!' Hassan hadn't cared, didn't care about anyone! He was a pig-the Arabs were all pigs. Filthy, sexist pigs, she hoped they all rotted in hell, hoped the Jews killed every single one of them.
One extreme to the other.
An unstable girl. Daniel wondered how she'd cope with prison.
Amos Harel was waiting outside his office, pacing and smoking. Unlike him to show nervousness; something
