Ashford said, 'The trouble is, I don't suppose Cortone will tell you anything, whatever he knows." .Would he tell you?" "Why should he? HaT hardly remember me. Now, if Eila were alive, she could have gone to see him and told him somestory... Vell . . .- Hassan wished Eila would stay out of the conversation. ITU haveto try myself." They entered the house. Stepping into the kitchen, they saw Suza; and then they looked at each other and know they had found the answer.
By the time the two men came into the house Suza had almost convinced herself that she had been mistaken when, in the garden, she thought she heard them talk about killing Nat Dickstein. It was simply unreaclass="underline" the garden, the river, the autumn sunshine, a professor and his guest ... murder had no place there, the whole idea was fantastic, like a polar bear in the Sahara Desert. Besides, there was a very good psycbological explanation for her mistake: she had been planning to tell her father that she loved Dickstein, and she had been afraid of his reaction-Freud could probably have predicted that at that point she might well imagine her father plotting to kill herlover. Because she nearly believed this reasoning, she was able to smile brightly at them and say, "Who wants coffee? rve just made some." Her father kissed bw cheek. "I didn't realize you were back, my dear." "I just arrived, I was thinking of coming out to look for you." Why am I telling these lies? "You don't know Yasif Hassan-he was one of my students when you were very small." Hassan kissed her hand and stared at her the way people always did when they had known Eila. "Yotere every bit as beautiful as your mother," he said, and his voice was not flirtatious at all, not even Battering: it sounded amazed. Her father said, "Yasif was here a few months ago, shortly after a contemporary of his visited us-Nat Dickstein. You met Dickstein, I think, but you were away by the time Yasif came."
"Was there any oonnee-connectionr she asked, and silently cursed her voice for cracking on the last word. The two men looked at one another, and her father said, "Matter of fact, there was." And then she knew it was true, she had riot misheard, they really were going to kill the only man she had ever loved. She felt dangerously close to tears, and turned away from them to fiddle with cups and saucem "I want to ask You to -do something, my dear," said her father. "Something very important, for the sake of your mother's memory. Sit down." - No more, she thought; this ean!t get worse, please. She took a deep breath, turned around, and sat down fac. ing him. He said, "I want you to help Yasif here to find Nat Dickstein." From that moment she hated her father. She knew then suddenly, instantly, that his love for her was fraudulent, that he had never seen her as a person, that he used her as he had used her mother. Never again would she take care of him, serve him; never apm would she worry about how he felt, whether he was lonely, what he needed ... She realized, in the same flash of insight and hatred, that her mother had reached this same point with him, at some time; and that she would now do what Ma had done, and despise him. Ashford continued, 'Mere is a man in America who may know where Dickstein is. I want you to go there with Yasif and ask this man. She said nothing. Hassan took her blankness for incomPrehension, and began to explain. "You see, this Dickstein is an Israeli agent, working against our people. We must stop him. Cortone-the man in Buffalo-may be helping him, and if he is he will not help us. But he will remember your mother, and so he may cooperate with you. You could tell him that you and Dickstein are lovers." "Ha-hah!" Su2Ws laugh was faintly hysterical, and she hoped they would assume the wrong reasons for it. She controlled herself, and managed to become numb, to keep her body still and her face expressionless, while they told her about the yellowcake, and the man aboard the Coparelli, and the radio beacon on the Stromberg, and about Mahmoud and his hijack plan, and how much it would an mean for the Palestine liberation movement; and at the end she was numb, she no longer had to pretend. Finally her father said, "So, my dear will you help? Will you do it?" With an effort of self-control that astonished her, she gave them a bright air-hostess smile, got up from her stool, and said, "TVs a lot to take in in one go, isn't it? I'll think about it while rin in the bath." And she went out.
It all sank In, gradually, as she lay in the hot water with a locked door between her and them. So this was the thing that Nathaniel had to do before be could see her again: steal a ship. And then, he had said, he would not let her out of his sight for ten or fifteen years . Perhaps that meant he could give up this work.- But, of course, none of his plans was going to succeed, because his enemies knew all about them. This Russian planned to rain Nat's ship, and Hassan planned to steal the ship first and ambush Nat. Either way Dickstein was in danger; either way they wanted to destroy him. Suza could warn him. If only she knew where he was. How little those men downstairs knew about herl Hassan simply assumed, just like an Arab male chauvinist pig, that she would do as she was told. Her father assumed she would take the Palestinian side, because he did and he was the brains of the family. He had never known what was in his daughter's mind: for that matter, he had been the same with his wife. Eila had always been able to deceive him: he never suspected that she might not be what she seemed. When Suza realized what she had to do, she was terrified all over again. There was, after all, a way she might find Nathaniel and warn him. "Find Nat" was what they wanted her to do. She knew she could deceive them, for they already aisumed she was on their side, when she was not. So she could do what they wanted. She could find Natand then she could warn him. Would she be making things worse? To find him herself, she had to lead them to him.