When Same finally woke up he found that the woman he had slept with had gone without saying goodbye. He also found he was massively, ravenously hungry. During the course of the morning he discovered that he had been asleep not for one night, as he had imagined, but for two nights and the day in between. He had an insistent feeling in the back of his mind that there was something remarkable he had forgotten, but he never found out what had happened to him during that lost twenty-four hours.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, November 17, 1968, the Coparelli had sailed.
Chapter Fourteen
What Suza should have done was phone any Israeli embassy and give them a message for Nat Dickstein. This thought occurred to her an hour after she had told her father that she would help Hassan. She was packing a case at the time, and she immediately picked up the phone in her bedroom to call Inquiries for the number. But her father came in and asked her whom she was calling. She said the airport, and he said be would take care of that. Thereafter she constantly looked for an opportunity to make a clandestine call, but there was none. Hassan was with her every minute. They drove to the airport, caught the plane, changed at Kennedy for a flight to Buffalo, and went straight to Cortone's house. During the journey she came to loathe Yasif Hassan. He made endless vague boasts about his work for the Fedayeen; he smiled oilily and put his hand on her knee; he hinted that he and Eila had been more than friends, and that he would like to be more than friends with Suza. She told him that Palestine would not be free until its women were free; and that Arab men had to learn the difference between being manly and being porcine. That shut him up. They had some trouble discovering Cortone's addressSuza half hoped they would fail-but in the end they found a taxi driver who knew the house. Suza was dropped off; Hassan would wait for her half a mile down the road. The house was large, surrounded by a high wall, with guards at'the gate. Suza said she wanted to see Cortone, that she was a friend of Nat Dickstein. She had given a lot of thought to what she should say to Cortone: should she tell him all or only part of the truth? Suppose he knew, or could find out, where Dickstein was: why should he tell her? She would say Dickstein was in danger, she had to find him and warn him. What reason did Cortone have to believe her? She would charm him-she knew how to do that with men his age-but he would still be suspicious. She wanted to explain to Cortone the complete picture: that she was looking for Nat to warn him, but she was also being used by his enemies to lead them to him, that Hassan was half a mile down the road in a taxi waiting for her. But then he would certainly never tell her anything. She found it very difficult to think clearly about all this. There were so many deceits and double deceits involved. And she wanted so badly to see Nathaniel's face and speak to him herself. She still had not decided what to say when the guard opened the gate for her, then led her up the gravel drive to the house. It was a beautiful place, but rather overripe, as if a decorator had famished it lavishly then the owners had added a lot of expensive junk of their own choosing. There seemed to be a lot of servants. One of them led Suza upstairs, telling her that Mr. Cortone was having late breakfast in his bedroom. When she walked in Cortone was sitting at a small table, digging into eggs over and homefries. He was a fat man, completely bald. Suza had no memory of him from the time he had visited Oxford, but he must have looked very different then. He glanced at her, then stood upright with a look of terror on his face and shouted: "You should be oldl" and then his breakfast went down the wrong way and he began to cough and sputter. The servant grabbed Suza from behind, pinning her arms in a painful grip; then let her go and went to pound Cortone on the back. "What did you do?" he yelled at her. 'Vhat did you do, for Christ's sake?" In a peculiar way this farce helped calm her a little, She could not be terrified of a man who had been so terrified of her. She rode the wave of confidence, sat down at his table and prepared herself coffee. When Cortone stopped coughing she gaid, "She was my mother." ,'My God," Cortone said. He gave a last cough, then waved the servant away and sat down again. "You're so Me her, bell, you scared me half to death." He screwed up his eyes, remembering. "Would you have been about four or five years old, back in, um, 1947?" "That's right" "Hell, I remember you, you had a ribbon in your hair. And now you and Nat are an item." She said, "So he has been here." Her heart leaped with joy. '!Maybe," Cortone said. His fxiendliness vanished. She realized he would not be easy to manipulate. She said, "I want to know where he is." "And I want to know who sent you hem" "Nobody sent me." Suza collected her thoughts, struggling to hide her tension. "I guessed he might have come to you for help with this ... project he's working on. The thing is, the Arabs know about it, and theyll kill him, and I have to warn him . Please, if you know where he is, please help me." She was suddenly close to tears, but Cortone was unmoved. "Helping you is easy," he said. "Trusting you is the hard part." He unwrapped a cigar and fit it, taking his time. Suza watched in an agony of impatience-- He looked away from her and spoke almost to himself. "You know, there was a time when I'd just see something I wanted and I'd grab it. It's not so simple anymore. Now I've got all these complications. I got to make choices, and none of them are what I really want I don't know whether it!s the way things are now or if it's me." He turned again and faced her. "I owe Dickstein my life. Now I have athance to save his, if you're telling the truth This is a debt of honor. I have to pay it myself, in person. go what do I do?" He paused. Suza held her breath. "Dickstein is in a wreck of a house somewhere on the Mediterranean. It's a ruin, hasn't been lived in for years, so theres no phone there. I could send a message, but I couldn't be sure it would get there, and Me I said, I have to do this myself, in person." He drew on the cigar. "I could tell you where to go look for him, but you just might pass the information on to the wrong people. I won't take that risk." "What, thenT'Suza said in a high-pitched voice. "We have to help him!