Her gaze was distant. “I couldn’t understand what you were feeling, the strength of the obsession.”
“Spoken in the past tense because something’s changed you. That Iranian urchin we brought with us from the barricade no doubt.”
“You took care of him once we reached Israel?”
“He’s in a state-supported children’s home … waiting for you to get well enough to pick him up.”
Evira’s face almost brightened. “It’s strange, but at first I thought it was gratitude. After all, he did save my life. Then I saw it was something much more. He needed me, and realizing that made me need him.”
“Ah, so now we come to the crux of the issue. You and I live in a world where we can’t get close, can’t reach out, can’t touch. So when those moments come when we’re forced to, when we’re allowed to, we prove ourselves to be as inept in the normal world as normal people would be in ours. It makes us vulnerable, not to others so much as ourselves.”
“Difference is you’re at least free to make a choice while I — Well, the Israelis you saw outside my door aren’t doctors.”
“You’ll be freed as soon as you’re well enough.”
“What?”
“Governments have this thing about embarrassment — Americans, Israelis, even the Soviets. They fear it more than anything. They may have killed Rasin, but they missed their chance at me, which means I’m the only one who can expose the truth of how close the Israeli government came to bringing about the world’s untimely end. Only I have no plans to as long as my terms are met.”
“My … freedom?”
“Among other things. Did promise them that your underground and commando days were over, though.”
“Because you knew I’d seen enough….”
“Not really. I just knew you didn’t have the stomach for it. I could tell by the questions you asked me when we first met, the way you reacted to my responses. I wasn’t what you expected, and it was easier emulating a fantasy.”
Evira grimaced. “I learned that in Tehran.”
“For sure. You’ll make a great politician. You care too much about causes to keep operating out of flea markets.”
“And you don’t?”
“Nope. My thing is people. To me every single individual life is as precious as a homeland for your people or peace for the Middle East in general.”
Evira looked at him like an old, trusted friend. “You’ve made my decision easy. I suppose I owe you an even greater debt now than I did before. ‘Evira’ is finished. No more shadows, no more crevices, no more … flea markets. I’m taking my fight public, into a different arena.”
“Beware, my lady. The rules are different, too. Less bullets. More lies.”
“Not more. Just increasingly difficult to separate from the truth.” She hesitated. “And what about you?”
“That depends on Paris.”
Johnny Wareagle made no move to leave the car after Blaine had pulled into the no-parking zone in front of the Paris hotel Evira had sent him to.
“Worried about us getting towed, Indian?”
“You won’t need me in there, Blainey.”
“Why is it everyone knows more about what I’m going to find upstairs than I do?”
“The patterns are there for all of us to see; they have been from the beginning.”
“What am I going to find in that room, Indian?”
“Truth.”
“A popular word lately …”
“A journey must come to its own end. We can choose our path, and with luck find another after it has ended. Without luck we become immobile, afraid to go back because we know what’s there. Unable to go forward because our way is blocked.”
“Like me these past few months?”
“Perhaps. The key is to seek out that next road, Blainey, and accept the transition it offers from the last.”
McCracken left the car wordlessly and entered the hotel. In the elevator out of habit he touched his gun, despite sensing he would not need it. His heart was pounding when he reached the door in question and found it already partway open. His guard up again, he lunged through it into a combat stance that was already half-hearted before his eyes found the single figure seated by the window.
“Bonjour, mon ami,” said Henri Dejourner.
Blaine didn’t lower the pistol, not right away.
“Do I need this or not, Henri?”
“That will be up to you to decide.”
“You bastard! You set me up!”
The Frenchman shrugged. “Regrettable, but necessary.”
McCracken looked at him with a strange calm. “Then the boy …”
“Not your son. Lauren’s yes, but not yours. I created the fiction out of reasonable fact.”
“To make me work for the Arabs, because you already were working for them.”
“Not for — with. The difference is crucial, mon ami. Their concerns, Evira’s specifically, mirrored my own. You were the only one who could help us.”
“It was your idea, goddamn it!” Blaine exclaimed.
“Both of ours. We needed you, had to have you.”
“And when I refused to listen to the messenger boys you sent, you cooked this up.” He shook his head. “You violated principles, Henri, and that makes you a rat.”
The Frenchman shook his head deliberately. “No, mon ami, principles were only a part of it; practicality was a far greater part. We needed the McCracken of a decade ago, a year ago. Not the McCracken I found on that island off Portland, Maine. The fabrication of a son was meant to assure your services, oui, but it was also meant to insure we were getting a man who would stop at nothing, who would accept nothing, until the affair was satisfactorily brought to a conclusion.”
“Is that how you would explain it to John Neville, or doesn’t his life matter either? No, don’t bother answering. I can’t stand any more of your bullshit. You broke every unwritten rule in the book and I ought to kill you just for that.”
Much to Blaine’s surprise, the Frenchman reared back his head and laughed. “I see my plot has accomplished exactly what it was supposed to. Tell me you don’t feel better standing there now. Tell me that gun in your hand does not feel different than it did when I came to you on the island. Tell me a flame you may have throught extinguished forever has not been rekindled.”
Blaine lowered the pistol. “Fuck you, Henri.”
“He’s not your son, mon ami. He is nothing to you. It is over.”
“You know it’s not like that. You know, damn it!”
The Frenchman rose with a knowing gleam in his eye. “You’re involved, mon ami, with the boy and his life. You told him simply you were a friend, mentioned nothing of what you perceived to be the truth, and on that basis your relationship with him was founded.”
“Get to the point.”
“He is my niece Lauren’s son, and she is dead, making him an orphan. That much is true. So what has changed? Plenty in your eyes, yes, but nothing in the boy’s. Everything is perspective. I wanted to meet you like this to be sure at least this one point was presented to you.”
Blaine found himself wanting to be angry but not succeeding. “You’re still a rat, Henri.”
“But it was your needs that led you to take the cheese, mon ami.”
“You knew,” Blaine said to Johnny from behind the wheel of the car.
“The spirits provided indications I could not ignore, Blainey.”
“You know the worst thing, Indian? I knew too. From the first time I saw the boy, I felt he wasn’t my son. But I wouldn’t face up to it because I wanted him to be. Make sense?”