“Incredible.” Bill looked dazed. “In one day you’ve nailed probably the two biggest instigators of terrorism in the world.”
“One day?” Ellis smiled. “It took a year.”
“It was worth it.”
“The young guy is Rahmi Coskun,” Ellis said. He was hurrying on because there was someone else to whom he wanted to tell all this. “Rahmi and his group did the Turkish Airlines firebombing a couple of months ago and killed an Embassy attaché before that. If you round up the whole group you’re sure to find some forensic evidence.”
“Or the French police will persuade them to confess.”
“Yes. Give me a pencil and I’ll write down the names and addresses.”
“Save it,” said Bill. “I’m going to debrief you completely back at the Embassy.”
“I’m not going back to the Embassy.”
“John, don’t fight the program.”
“I’ll give you these names. Then you’ll have all the really essential information, even if I get run down by a mad French cab driver this afternoon. If I survive, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning and give you the detail stuff.”
“Why wait?”
“I have a lunch date.”
Bill rolled his eyes up. “I suppose we owe you this,” he said reluctantly.
“That’s what I figured.”
“Who’s your date?”
“Jane Lambert. Hers was one of the names you gave me when you originally briefed me.”
“I remember. I told you that if you wormed your way into her affections she would introduce you to every mad leftist, Arab terrorist, Baader-Meinhof hanger-on and avant-garde poet in Paris.”
“That’s how it worked, except I fell in love with her.”
Bill looked like a Connecticut banker being told that his son is going to marry the daughter of a black millionaire: he did not know whether to be thrilled or appalled. “Uh, what’s she really like?”
“She’s not crazy although she has some crazy friends. What can I tell you? She’s as pretty as a picture, bright as a pin, and horny as a jackass. She’s wonderful. She’s the woman I’ve been looking for all my life.”
“Well, I can see why you’d rather celebrate with her than with me. What are you going to do?”
Ellis smiled. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine, fry a couple of steaks, tell her I catch terrorists for a living and ask her to marry me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jean-Pierre leaned forward across the canteen table and fixed the brunette with a compassionate gaze. “I think I know how you feel,” he said warmly. “I remember being very depressed toward the end of my first year in medical school. It seems as if you’ve been given more information than one brain can absorb and you just don’t know how you’re going to master it in time for the exams.”
“That’s exactly it,” she said, nodding vigorously. She was almost in tears.
“It’s a good sign,” he reassured her. “It means you’re on top of the course. The people who aren’t worried are the ones who will flunk.”
Her brown eyes were moist with gratitude. “Do you really think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
She looked adoringly at him. You’d rather eat me than your lunch, wouldn’t you? he thought. She shifted slightly, and the neck of her sweater gaped open, showing the lacy trimming of her bra. Jean-Pierre was momentarily tempted. In the east wing of the hospital there was a linen closet that was never used after about nine thirty in the morning. Jean-Pierre had taken advantage of it more than once. You could lock the door from the inside and lie down on a soft pile of clean sheets. . . .
The brunette sighed and forked a piece of steak into her mouth, and as she began to chew, Jean-Pierre lost interest. He hated to watch people eat. Anyway, he had only been flexing his muscles, to prove he could still do it: he did not really want to seduce her. She was very pretty, with curly hair and warm Mediterranean coloring, and she had a lovely body, but lately Jean-Pierre had no enthusiasm for casual conquests. The only girl who could fascinate him for more than a few minutes was Jane Lambert—and she would not even kiss him.
He looked away from the brunette, and his gaze roamed restlessly around the hospital canteen. He saw no one he knew. The place was almost empty: he was having lunch early because he was working the early shift.
It was six months now since he had first seen Jane’s stunningly pretty face across a crowded room at a cocktail party to launch a new book on feminist gynecology. He had suggested to her that there was no such thing as feminist medicine: there was just good medicine and bad medicine. She had replied that there was no such thing as Christian mathematics, but still it took a heretic such as Galileo to prove that the earth goes around the sun. Jean-Pierre had exclaimed: “You are right!” in his most disarming manner and they had become friends.
Yet she was resistant to his charms, if not quite impervious. She liked him, but she seemed to be committed to the American, even though Ellis was a good deal older than she. Somehow that made her even more desirable to Jean-Pierre. If only Ellis would drop out of the picture—get run over by a bus, or something . . . Lately Jane’s resistance had seemed to be weakening—or was that wishful thinking?
The brunette said: “Is it true you’re going to Afghanistan for two years?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because I believe in freedom, I suppose. And because I didn’t go through all this training just to do coronary bypasses for fat businessmen.” The lies came automatically to his lips.
“But why two years? People who do this usually go for three to six months, a year at the most. Two years seems like forever.”
“Does it?” Jean-Pierre gave a wry smile. “It’s difficult, you see, to achieve anything of real value in a shorter period. The idea of sending doctors there for a brief visit is highly inefficient. What the rebels need is some kind of permanent medical setup, a hospital that stays in the same place and has at least some of the same staff from one year to the next. As things are, half the people don’t know where to take their sick and wounded, they don’t follow the doctor’s orders because they never get to know him well enough to trust him, and nobody has any time for health education. And the cost of transporting the volunteers to the country and bringing them back makes their ‘free’ services rather expensive.” Jean-Pierre put so much effort into this speech that he almost believed it himself, and he had to remind himself of his true motive for going to Afghanistan, and of the real reason he had to stay for two years.
A voice behind him said: “Who’s going to give their services free?”
He turned around to see another couple carrying trays of food: Valérie, who was an intern like him; and her boyfriend, a radiologist. They sat down with Jean-Pierre and the brunette.
The brunette answered Valérie’s question. “Jean-Pierre is going to Afghanistan to work for the rebels.”
“Really?” Valérie was surprised. “I heard you had been offered a marvelous job in Houston.”
“I turned it down.”
She was impressed. “But why?”
“I consider it worthwhile to save the lives of freedom fighters; but a few Texan millionaires more or less won’t make any difference to anything.”