But he was moving again away from the veranda. He stopped in the middle of the room and raised his hand once more as if addressing an invisible congregation, his obsessed eyes staring into the distance, glittering and fixed.
Don't you see them? Can't you see them? . . . They're beautiful jewels, they're precious stones. . . .
Belle watched Joe's eyes, her face filled with sorrow.
What jewels, Joe? What do you mean?
Look at his eyes, whispered Alice, terrified.
What jewels? repeated Belle, loudly.
Joe murmured, his hand raised, his voice gathering strength.
Precious stones, settings of stones. . . . A sardius and a topaz and a carbuncle, an emerald and a sapphire and a diamond, a ligure and an agate and an amethyst, a beryl and an onyx and a jasper. . . . These precious stones, beautiful and ancient. And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names. Every one with his name shall they be, according to the twelve tribes. . . .
Joe dropped his hand and turned away, his eyes shining. In despair, Belle shook her head. Alice was ready to break into tears. Belle made a gesture and immediately Alice rose and fled to her sister, holding her tightly.
I'm frightened, whispered Alice. He looks ghastly and it frightens me the way he moves his hands, the way his mouth keeps working. What's the matter with him?
He's ill, whispered Belle. He's not himself.
But his eyes, Belle, the way they shine and the way they stare, it frightens me. What does he see? What does he think he sees? Why are his eyes so strange? Whom is he speaking to?
He may have a concussion, whispered Belle. He may have been struck on the head or been near some kind of explosion.
Shouldn't we call a doctor, Belle?
In a moment. We can't leave him alone now.
Belle tried to comfort her sister, but she was just as disturbed by Joe's strange appearance and his even stranger behavior. Much more than mere physical exhaustion had to be involved, she knew that. It was his jerky movements that disturbed her, the spasms that seemed to seize him every few moments and spin him around, sending his disconnected thoughts careening off in some new direction. And above all there were his eyes, as Alice had said. There was a wholly unnatural luster to Joe's eyes, a feverish glow that was much too bright and seemed to devour everything his gaze fell upon.
Suddenly Belle raised her head. What's that? she whispered.
It was the sound of an automobile stopping nearby. In front of the houseboat perhaps. On the road beside the river.
Belle stiffened.
It's no use. There's no time to try to hide him and he wouldn't go with us anyway.
Joe wandered among the pale white wicker shapes, the ghostly furniture that crowded the room with wispy shadows of other lives and other eras. Again he raised his hand, whispering.
For I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land. . . .
A car door closed, another. Whoever was out on the road in front of the houseboat seemed to be making as much noise as possible, although Joe's wounded mind was too far away to hear it. He stopped again, turned again, moving more slowly now. He looked out at the river, taking a step toward it.
Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. . . .
The front door to the houseboat banged open. Another door banged and a sharp voice barked an indistinct order. Footfalls could be heard in the corridor, hurried footsteps growing louder. Alice buried her head in Belle's shoulder. Belle stared straight ahead at Joe.
He was smiling now, smiling for the first time, wandering among the ghostly wicker shapes and talking to himself. And the jerky movements seemed to have passed for the moment, the spasms to have subsided.
Once more he was moving toward the open French doors but calmly now, gracefully now, the Joe they remembered, calmly drawn to the edge of the water.
He smiled as he gazed out over the river, his voice strong, the words spoken as if to someone he loved.
A golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about. . . .
He uttered a cry of joy, his hand raised to the river . . . then everything happened very quickly. The door to the room burst open and men were shouting and rushing forward. Joe turned in the open doors to the veranda and looked back, smiling, a mysterious joy lighting his face.
The first shots ripped into his side and fluttered his jacket, spinning him around so that he was facing the room when the next bullets hit him, before a submachine gun roared and exploded into the middle of him, ending it all and nearly cutting him in half, collapsing his small thin body and sending it flying back through the doors to the edge of the river . . . a twisted heap of old clothes on the wooden slats of the little veranda, one hand trailing in the water.
The men went quickly about their business. They gathered up the body in a canvas sack and in another moment there was no one in the airy sunroom but the two tiny ancient women, alone once more with the haunting wicker shapes of memory.
Little Alice quietly sobbing in the stillness. . . . Big Belle gazing steadfastly at the shattered glass doors and the silent river, at the huge empty vista where Joe had been . . . desolate now and passing.
-20-
A Gift of Faces, a Gift of Tongues
Early evening, the day after Stern had been killed.
The Major stood behind his desk in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works, the headquarters of the intelligence unit referred to as the Waterboys. He had just returned from a meeting in the Colonel's office, where the two of them had discussed the information acquired that afternoon in a Cairo slum by one of their better local agents, code name Jameson, an Egyptian blackmarketeer with yellowish teeth and a bad liver.
From conversations with the Arab owner of the bar where Stern had been killed, Jameson had been able to elicit a surprising amount of information on the behavior of Stern and his unidentified companion, prior to the explosion of the hand grenade at midnight. This information, in turn, had led the Colonel to make a number of intriguing suppositions about the case. And since the Colonel had known Stern personally and had worked with him in the past, it was only to be expected that his questions would follow certain lines.
Why had the Monastery been running an operation against Stern?
What had been the nature of the operation?
Bletchley had given the agent working against Stern a Purple Seven designation, the most sensitive of all the categories. Why the need for this extraordinary secrecy? What made the case so important it had required a Purple Seven agent?
Further, the agent in question had been brought in by Bletchley from the outside, although a Purple Seven designation was so sensitive it was almost never assigned to someone from the outside. Why had it been done in this case? How had Bletchley been able to convince London that it was necessary?
Was it true, as the Colonel suspected, that this Purple Seven agent had to be someone who had known Stern well in the past? Again, that he must be someone who had also once been closely involved with an employee of the Waterboys who had been a longtime friend of Stern, the American woman Maud?
And finally and most intriguing of all to the Colonel, what events from the past lay behind the unlikely connections that had existed among these three people?
For the connections did seem unlikely.
Maud. An American who had lived in Greece and Turkey before the war. A likable hardworking woman, trusted and thoroughly commonplace to all appearances, a translator in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works.