past.
I jerked awake in a panic, certain that we had waited too late to make our call. The glow of the television illumi¬nated the motel room. The bedside clock read 11:30 P.M. Rachel lay on her back beside me, one arm thrown over her face, the other lying along my body.
She was a different woman to me now. After three months of professional distance, she had given herself to me without reservation. My memories of what we had done before giving in to sleep seemed more like halluci¬nations than any of the visions I'd had during my narcoleptic episodes. Yet they were real.
Rachel needed sleep, but I had to wake her. I sat up and drank a bottle of Dasani in one long series of swal¬lows, then gently shook her upper arm. I was afraid she would awaken in a panic, as she had in the truck, but this time she stirred slowly, then reached out and squeezed my wrist.
'Hey,' I said. 'How do you feel?'
She opened her eyes but did not speak. Instead, she took a deep breath, then sat up and hugged me. I hugged her back, wishing that this had all happened long before, in some other place.
'We have to try to call your friend again,' I said.
'Can't I just do it from here?'
'No. If you were that close to this guy in medical school, the NSA could know. And if they've tapped his line, they can trace our location in seconds. If we do reach your friend, we should stake out the phone booth we used and wait to see if anyone shows up. That will tell us if his line's safe or not.'
'Okay.' She leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. 'Let's get it over with.'
Five miles west of the motel, I saw a pay phone outside a gas station on the Columbia Pike that looked private enough. I parked so that I could watch the road while Rachel made her call.
She went straight to the phone, carrying the phone card we'd bought at a Quik Stop near the motel. After a few moments, she smiled, gave me a thumbs-up sign, and began talking. The conversation lasted a long time, but I thought it must be going well, because I saw her reading our fictional names off the motel stationery. Mr. and Mrs. John David Stephens. Rachel's 'maiden name' was Horowitz, and her passport would list her as Hannah Horowitz Stephens. As she talked, I thought about how deeply this doctor must have loved her, that he would do this for her after fifteen years. She hung up and came back to the truck.
'Well?' I said.
She closed the door. 'No problem. He'll make reser¬vations for everything. The plane, the hotel, even a cou¬ple of sight-seeing tours.'
'Out of New York?' We couldn't risk staying in Washington an hour longer than necessary.
'JFK.'
'Who is this guy?'
'Adam Stern. He's an OB in Manhattan. He has four kids now.'
'He must have liked you a lot in the old days.'
She gave me a sly smile. 'They never get over me.'
I drove a hundred meters up the road, parked, and left the engine running. I could still see the pay phone Rachel had used.
'Adam says this is the busiest week of the year for tourism in Israel,' she said. 'Easter in Jerusalem is like Mardi Gras in New Orleans.'
'That may be good for us.'
'If we can get a flight at all. He's going to try for something besides El Al, but there are no guarantees.'
'Anything's good. They don't seem to be hunting us publicly yet.'
We sat awhile in the drone of the idling engine, but no one approached the pay phone. I slid my hand across the seat and closed it around hers.
'Are you okay?'
She nodded but didn't look at me. 'It's been a long time since I felt good about doing what we did.'
I squeezed her hand, and she turned to me. Her eyes were wet. I knew then how long she had lived without real intimacy. Probably about as long as I had.
'I'm glad you're here,' I said. 'And I'm glad you're coming with me to Israel. I couldn't do it without you.'
She took back her hand and wiped her eyes.
I glanced at the phone. There was no one near it. 'I think we're okay. You ready to get some real sleep?'
'I'm ready for a cheeseburger. Then sleep.'
At nine-thirty the next morning, we were crossing Memorial Bridge, rolling toward the Lincoln Memorial. I'd last visited Washington to film part of the NOVA series based on my book. The contrast between that visit and today did not bear thinking about.
We found a Kinko's copy shop southeast of Capitol Hill and in twenty minutes had the passport photos we'd been instructed to drop off at the Au Bon Pain cafe in Union Station. As I drove toward the station, pedestrian traffic increased, and I began to get nervous. With Washington topping the list of terrorist targets, there were bound to be surveillance cameras near all impor¬tant public buildings. They might not be visible, but they would be there. And the NSA had the computing power to do visual searches of those surveillance tapes. I kept well clear of the Mall and parked in a lot on the east side of Union Station.
As we walked toward the massive white granite building, we moved quickly toward the main entrance. Rachel kept abreast of me all the way, a Kinko's bag swinging from her right hand. She didn't know that I was carrying my revolver in the small of my back, beneath my shirt. If there were metal detectors at the sta¬tion's entrance, I would have to return to the truck. Dozens of people were lined up at the entrance, but after watching the flow of visitors, I breathed a sigh of relief. They were moving too quickly to be passing through serious security.
Once through the doors, we joined the throngs moving through the renovated beaux arts rail station. We passed an elevated restaurant standing in the middle of the floor, then moved farther into the cavernous main hall. This led into a multilevel mall area where tour groups, travelers, and shoppers jostled each other on walkways and curving staircases, marveling at the statuary and pointing into store windows. I could tell by the rumbling under my shoes that trains were running nearby, yet my surround¬ings looked as pristine as a museum.
'There's the Au Bon Pain,' Rachel said, pulling me to the left.
A huge B. Dalton bookstore anchored this end of the mall, and the Au Bon Pain cafe was on its right. People moved quickly in and out of the cafe, and I could see that our contact had chosen well.
Rachel walked through the wide entrance and joined a queue before some coffee urns on a marble table. I joined her, casually scanning the tables to our right. She'd been instructed to look for a woman carrying a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. I figured I would be able to guess which woman would carry that book by appearance alone.
At a table near the back I saw a red-haired woman of fifty with no makeup and a hard line of a mouth. She kept her eyes on the table, as though afraid she might be accosted by a stranger. I was preparing to wager a hun¬dred dollars that this was our contact when Rachel pulled at my arm and pointed at a fortyish African- American woman standing by the pastry racks and read¬ing The Second Sex. Rachel left the queue and approached her.
'I haven't seen that book in years!' Rachel said. 'Not since college. Is it still relevant today?'
The woman looked up and smiled, her eyes bright and welcoming. 'It's a bit dated, but valuable from a historical perspective.' She offered a brown hand bejeweled with rings. 'I'm Mary Venable.'
'Hannah Stephens,' said Rachel. 'Very nice to meet you.'
I was amazed by how easily she slipped into her role. Maybe psychiatrists were natural liars. As I walked for¬ward, I heard Mary Venable say softly, 'It's an honor to meet you. Doctor. You've helped so many.'
'Thank you,' Rachel replied. Then, much louder, she said, 'I never knew how Simone stood being Sartre's lover. The man looked like a frog. And that's no slur on the French. He truly did!'
Mary Venable laughed so naturally that I almost didn't see her take the Kinko's bag from Rachel's hand and drop it into a big woven African purse at her feet.
'If I finish this tonight,' Venable said, 'I'll lend it to you tomorrow. I'll be here about this time.'
'I might see you then,' Rachel said.
Mary Venable leaned in close and said, 'Tell your man he needs to hide his piece a little better.'
While Rachel stood puzzled, Mary Venable squeezed her hand with affection, then picked up the purse and walked away. As she passed me, she caught my eye for only a moment, but in that moment I read her message
