Rahmi liked the idea and asked Ellis if he would collaborate with Pepe Gozzi on making the bomb.
Sure, said Ellis.
Then there was one more snag.
I’ve got a friend, Rahmi said, who wants to meet you both, Ellis and Pepe. To tell the truth, he must meet you; otherwise the whole deal is off; for this is the friend who gives us the money for explosives and cars and bribes and guns and everything.
Why does he want to meet us? Ellis and Pepe wanted to know.
He needs to be sure that the bomb will work, and he wants to feel that he can trust you, Rahmi said apologetically. All you have to do is bring the bomb to him and explain to him how it will work and shake his hand and let him look you in the eye—is that so much to ask, for the man who is making the whole thing possible?
It’s all right with me, said Ellis.
Pepe hesitated. He wanted the money he would make on the deal—he always wanted money, as a pig always wants the trough—but he hated to meet new people.
Ellis reasoned with him. Listen, he said, these student groups bloom and die like mimosa in the spring, and Rahmi is sure to be blown away before long; but if you know his “friend” then you will be able to continue to do business after Rahmi is gone.
You’re right, said Pepe, who was no genius but could grasp business principles if they were explained simply.
Ellis told Rahmi that Pepe had agreed, and Rahmi set up a rendezvous for the three of them on the following Sunday.
That morning Ellis woke up in Jane’s bed. He came awake suddenly, feeling frightened, as if he had had a nightmare. A moment later he remembered the reason why he was so tense.
He glanced at the clock. He was early. In his mind he ran over his plan. If all went well, today would be the triumphant conclusion to more than a year of patient, careful work. And he would be able to share that triumph with Jane, if he was still alive at the end of the day.
He turned his head to look at her, moving carefully to avoid waking her. His heart leaped, as it did every time he saw her face. She lay flat on her back, with her turned-up nose pointing at the ceiling and her dark hair spread across the pillow like a bird’s unfolded wing. He looked at her wide mouth, the full lips that kissed him so often and so lusciously. Spring sunlight revealed the dense blond down on her cheeks—her beard, he called it, when he wanted to tease her.
It was a rare delight to see her like this, in repose, her face relaxed and expressionless. Normally she was animated—laughing, frowning, grimacing, registering surprise or skepticism or compassion. Her commonest expression was a wicked grin, like that of a mischievous small boy who has just perpetrated a particularly fiendish practical joke. Only when she was sleeping or thinking very hard was she like this; yet this was how he loved her most, for now, when she was unguarded and unself-conscious, her appearance hinted at the languid sensuality that burned just beneath her surface like a slow, hot underground fire. When he saw her like this, his hands almost itched to touch her.
This had surprised him. When he had first met her, soon after he came to Paris, she had struck him as typical of the kind of busybody always found among the young and the radical in capital cities, chairing committees and organizing campaigns against apartheid and for nuclear disarmament, leading protest marches about El Salvador and water pollution, raising money for starving people in Chad, or trying to promote a talented young film-maker. People were drawn to her by her striking good looks, captivated by her charm, and energized by her enthusiasm. He had dated her a couple of times, just for the pleasure of watching a pretty girl demolish a steak; and then—he could never remember exactly how it happened—he had discovered that inside this excitable girl there lived a passionate woman, and he had fallen in love.
His gaze wandered around her little studio flat. He noted with pleasure the familiar personal possessions that marked the place as hers: a pretty lamp made of a small Chinese vase; a shelf of books on economics and world poverty; a big soft sofa you could drown in; a photograph of her father, a handsome man in a double-breasted coat, probably taken in the early sixties; a small silver cup won by her on her pony, Dandelion, and dated 1971, ten years ago. She was thirteen, Ellis thought, and I was twenty-three; and while she was winning pony trials in Hampshire I was in Laos, laying antipersonnel mines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
When he had first seen the flat, almost a year ago, she had just moved here from the suburbs, and it had been rather bare: a little attic room with a kitchen in an alcove, a shower in a closet, and a toilet down the hall. Gradually she had transformed it from a grimy garret into a cheerful nest. She earned a good salary as an interpreter, translating French and Russian into English, but her rent was high—the apartment was near the Boulevard St.-Michel—so she had bought carefully, saving her money for just the right mahogany table, antique bedstead and Tabriz rug. She was what Ellis’s father would call a classy dame. You’re going to like her, Dad, thought Ellis. You’re going to be just crazy about her.
He rolled onto his side, facing her, and the movement woke her, as he had known it would. Her large blue eyes stared at the ceiling for a fraction of a second; then she looked at him, smiled, and rolled over into his arms. “Hello,” she whispered, and he kissed her.
He got hard immediately. They lay together for a while, half asleep, kissing now and again; then she draped one leg across his hips and they began to make love languorously, without speaking.
When they had first become lovers, and they had started to make love morning and night and often midafternoon too, Ellis had assumed that such horniness would not last, and that after a few days, or maybe a couple of weeks, the novelty would wear off and they would revert to the statistical average of two-and-a-half times a week, or whatever it was. He had been wrong. A year later they were still screwing like honeymooners.
She rolled on top of him, letting her full weight rest on his body. Her damp skin clung to his. He wrapped his arms around her small body and hugged her as he thrust deep inside her. She sensed that his climax was coming, and she lifted her head and looked down at him, then kissed him with her mouth open while he was coming inside her. Immediately afterward she gave a soft, low-pitched moan, and he felt her come with a long, gentle, wavy Sunday-morning orgasm. She stayed on top of him, half asleep still. He stroked her hair.
After a while she stirred. “Do you know what day it is?” she mumbled.
“Sunday.”
“It’s your Sunday to make lunch.”
“I hadn’t forgotten.”
“Good.” There was a pause. “What are you going to give me?”
“Steak, potatoes, snow peas, goat’s cheese, strawberries and Chantilly cream.”
She lifted her head, laughing. “That’s what you always make!”
“It is not. Last time we had French beans.”
“And the time before that you had forgotten, so we ate out. How about some variety in your cooking?”
“Hey, wait a minute. The deal was, each of us would make lunch on alternate Sundays. Nobody said anything about making a different lunch each time.”
She slumped on him again, feigning defeat.
His day’s work had been at the back of his mind all along. He was going to need her unconscious help, and this was the moment to ask her. “I have to see Rahmi this morning,” he began.