When the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, Gabriel was greeted by the comforting sight of a tall, blond Israeli wearing a two-piece suit and a wire in his ear. At the entrance of the intensive care unit stood another security man. A third, small and dark and dressed in an ill-fitting suit, was outside the door of Eli’s room. He moved aside so Gabriel and the diplomat could enter. Gabriel stopped and asked why he wasn’t being searched.
“You’re with Zvi. I don’t need to search you.”
Gabriel held up his hands. “Search me.”
The security man tilted his head and consented. Gabriel recognized the frisk pattern. It was by the book. The crotch search was more intrusive than necessary, but then Gabriel had it coming. When it was over, he said, “Search everyone who comes into this room.”
Zvi, the embassy man, watched the entire scene. Clearly, he no longer believed the man from Jerusalem was Gideon Argov of Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Gabriel didn’t much care. His friend was lying helpless on the other side of the door. Better to ruffle a few feathers than to let him die because of complacency.
He followed Zvi into the room. The bed was behind a glass partition. The patient didn’t look much like Eli, but then Gabriel wasn’t surprised. Like most Israelis, he had seen the toll a bomb can take on a human body. Eli’s face was concealed behind the mask of a ventilator, his eyes bound by gauze, his head heavily bandaged. The exposed portion of his cheeks and jaw showed the aftereffects of glass exploding into his face.
A nurse with short black hair and very blue eyes was checking the intravenous drip. She looked into the visitors’ room and briefly held Gabriel’s gaze before resuming her work. Her eyes betrayed nothing.
Zvi, after giving Gabriel a moment to himself, walked over to the glass and brought him up to date on his colleague’s condition. He spoke with the precision of a man who had watched too many medical dramas on television. Gabriel, his eyes fastened on Eli’s face, heard only half of what the diplomat was saying-enough to realize that his friend was near death, and that, even if he lived, he might never be the same.
“For the moment,” Zvi said in conclusion, “he’s being kept alive by the machines.”
“Why are his eyes bandaged?”
“Glass fragments. They were able to get most of them, but he still has a half-dozen or so lodged in his eyes.”
“Is there a chance he’ll be blind?”
“They won’t know until he regains consciousness,” Zvi said. Then he added pessimistically, “Ifhe regains consciousness.”
A doctor came into the room. He looked at Gabriel and Zvi and nodded once briskly, then opened the glass door and stepped into the ward. The nurse moved away from the bedside, and the doctor assumed her place. She came around the end of the bed and stood before the glass. For a second time, her eyes met Gabriel’s, then she drew the curtain closed with a sharp jerk of her wrist. Gabriel walked into the hall, followed by Zvi.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a minute to myself.”
The diplomat went back inside. Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back, like a soldier at ease, and drifted slowly along the familiar corridor. He passed the nurses’ station. The same trite Vienna streetscape hung next to the window. The smell was the same, too-the smell of disinfectant and death.
He came to a half-open door bearing the number 2602-C. He pushed it gently with his fingertips, and the door swung silently open. The room was dark and unoccupied. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. There were no nurses about. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
He left the lights off and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Soon the room came into focus: the empty bed, the bank of silent monitors, the vinyl-covered chair. The most uncomfortable chair in all of Vienna. He’d spent ten nights in that chair, most of them sleepless. Only once had Leah regained consciousness. She’d asked about Dani, and Gabriel unwisely told her the truth. Tears spilled onto her ruined cheeks. She never spoke to him again.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Gabriel, startled, turned quickly around. The voice belonged to the nurse who’d been at Eli’s side a moment earlier. She spoke to him in German. He responded in the same language.
“I’m sorry, I just-”
“I know what you’re doing.” She allowed a silence to fall between them. “I remember you.”
She leaned against the door and folded her arms. Her head fell to one side. Were it not for her baggy nurse’s uniform and the stethoscope hanging around her neck, Gabriel would have thought she was flirting with him.
“Your wife was the one who was involved in the car bombing a few years back. I was a young nurse then, just starting out. I took care of her at night. You don’t remember?”
Gabriel looked at her for a moment. Finally, he said, “I believe you’re mistaken. This is my first time in Vienna. And I’ve never been married. I’m sorry,” he added hastily, heading toward the door. “I shouldn’t have been in here. I just needed a place to gather my thoughts.”
He moved past her. She put her hand on his arm.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Is she alive?”
“Who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, “but you have me confused with someone else.”
She nodded-As you wish.Her blue eyes were damp and shining in the half-light.
“He’s a friend of yours, Eli Lavon?”
“Yes, he is. A very close friend. We work together. I live in Jerusalem.”
“ Jerusalem,” she repeated, as though she liked the sound of the word. “I would like to visit Jerusalem sometime. My friends think I’m crazy. You know, the suicide bombers, all the other things…” Her voice trailed off. “I still want to go.”
“You should,” Gabriel said. “It’s a wonderful place.”
She touched his arm a second time. “Your friend’s injuries are severe.” Her tone was tender, tinged with sorrow. “He’s going to have a very tough time of it.”
“Is he going to live?”
“I’m not allowed to answer questions like that. Only the doctors can offer a prognosis. But if you want my opinion, spend some time with him. Tell him things. You never know, he might be able to hear you.”
HE STAYED FOR another hour, staring at Eli’s motionless figure through the glass. The nurse returned. She spent a few minutes checking Eli’s vital signs, then motioned for Gabriel to come inside the room. “It’s against the rules,” she said conspiratorially. “I’ll stand watch at the door.”
Gabriel didn’t speak to Eli, just held his bruised and swollen hand. There were no words to convey the pain he felt at seeing another loved one lying in a Viennese hospital bed. After five minutes, the nurse came back, laid her hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and told him it was time to leave. Outside, in the corridor, she said her name was Marguerite. “I’m working tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ll see you then, I hope.”
Zvi had left; a new team of guards had come on duty. Gabriel rode the elevator down to the lobby and went outside. The night had turned bitterly cold. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and quickened his pace. He was about to head down the escalator into the U-Bahn station when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned around, expecting to see Marguerite, but instead found himself face to face with the old man who’d been talking to himself in the lobby when Gabriel arrived.
“I heard you speaking Hebrew to that man from the embassy.” His Viennese German was frantically paced, his eyes wide and damp. “You’re Israeli, yes? A friend of Eli Lavon’s?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My name is Max Klein, and this is all my fault. Please, you must believe me. This is all my fault.”