Scorpion's Advance (20 page)

They came to the foot of the hill near the hospice that they had climbed on the previous day. 'Do we go up again?' asked Anderson.

'Yes, we'll have to observe the place for a while before we make a move.'

At night the climb did not prove as unpleasant as it had the first time in the blistering sun. Anderson found that he actually enjoyed it. If nothing else it took his mind off
things. They got to the top and looked down on the hospice, its tiny cluster of lights in the black sea of the desert at night made it seem the loneliest place on earth. The drive was lit as were three of the buildings. Anderson looked at his watch and rolled over to lie on his back. Mirit continued to keep watch. 'Shouldn't be too long,' she said quietly.

At midnight there were still three lights burning in one of the buildings.

'Come on ... go to bed,' urged Mirit.

'
Sssh,' said Anderson. 'Listen.'

They both listened and heard the sound. 'A car is coming,' said
Mirit.

'Sounds too heavy,' said Anderson.

The noise grew louder and headlights came into view along the winding track. 'It's a truck,' said Anderson as the vehicle passed below them and stopped at the gates of the hospice. A man ran down the drive from the lit building and opened them.

'Strange time for deliveries,' said Anderson.

Mirit, who had the glasses to her eyes, said, 'They are not delivering. They’re collecting . . . people.'

Anderson took the glasses and saw a single file of robed inmates emerge like penitent monks from the lit building and get into the back of the truck. The man who had opened up the hospice gates closed them again as the vehicle lumbered out into the night. Shortly afterwards all the lights in the hospice were extinguished.

'What was all that about?' whispered Anderson. Mirit shook her head.

'How long do we wait?'

'An hour.'

At a quarter to one the wind got up. At first it was a gentle breeze that flitted across the dunes but, within minutes, it had risen to whip up the sand in its fury and throw great clouds of it across the moon.
Mirit signalled that they should make for the fence for speech was impossible. They stopped for a few moments at the foot of the hill to rest in the shelter of a boulder before crossing the final scrub to reach the wire, wriggling up the last few metres on their stomachs.

Mirit
clipped the bridging cable on the bottom strand and the sound of the cutters on the wire was lost in the maelstrom. Another few minutes and they had cleared away enough sand for Anderson to get in. Mirit kissed her fingertips and placed them on Anderson's lips before he gathered the folds of his robe and crawled under the wire.

He stayed on his stomach and crawled round the edge of the dense scrub between him and the huts to reach the shadow of the first building. The wind dropped as suddenly as it had risen, its scream becoming a low moan that was still sufficient to cover any sound that Anderson's feet and robe made as he crept along the sides of the dormitory huts, hugging the contours of the walls. He knelt at the corner of the bottom hut and looked over to what he felt must be the main building. There was no safe way of approaching it; he would have to take the risk and run across the open compound.

He gritted his teeth, sprinted over the sand to the veranda and pressed himself into a corner, looking back for any sign that he'd been spotted. Nothing stirred. He sidled along the front of the building and tried the door; it was unlocked and creaked back on its dry, sand-filled hinges. He stepped inside and closed it quickly behind him, searching in the folds of his robes for the torch that Mirit had given him.

The first room he searched was an office. He sifted through papers and files but, finding that most of them were in Hebrew, he cut the search short and moved on to the next room which turned out to be a well-organized dispensary. He ran the torch beam down the labels but found nothing out of the ordinary and moved on again. Anderson recognized the smell of dusty books in the darkness. He was in a small library of mainly medical and religious books although his torch beam did fall on a red leather-bound edition of
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens. He recognized Manson's book on tropical diseases and the
Manual of Clinical Mycology,
both books he had himself.

At the end of his search Anderson had found only one room in use as a laboratory. It was about two metres square and was equipped for elementary urine
and blood analysis, the sort of work that would be done in a side ward back home. He had been wrong. Utterly wrong. There was no way on earth that sophisticated genetic engineering experiments were being carried out in this place. The hospice was exactly what it purported to be, a refuge for some of the most unfortunate people in the world.

Anderson let himself out and flitted quickly back across the compound and into the shadows of the dormitory huts, feeling depressed. He had only a few moments to contemplate his failure, however, before the compound lights were switched on. He flattened himself against the hut wall like a rabbit caught in headlights and felt sure that he had been discovered. But there was no sound to be heard. No anxious cries, no running feet. He recovered from the paralysis of fright and dived into the patch of scrub nearest the hut. He heard the sound of an engine approaching and realized that the lights had been switched on for the benefit of the truck they had seen earlier. It was returning.

Anderson lay still in the scrub, pressing his body to the ground while he watched the sorry spectacle of the returning lepers disembarking and filing into one of the buildings. A brief word passed between the driver and one of the staff before the truck left and the gates were secured. It was another ten minutes before the compound was in darkness again.

Anderson got to his feet, realizing that he had lain in one position for a very long time without moving a muscle. His limbs were stiff. He stretched his arms but scarcely had time to feel good before an arm encircled his neck and drew him backwards into a miasma of foetid breath. Anderson gasped for air as he desperately tried to break the grip of the powerful man that held him, but the arm was huge, unnaturally huge, and covered in scaly skin. The thick, swollen arm of a leper held him fast.

Anderson let go of the arm and hammered back both elbows into his attacker's midriff. This was his last chance and he knew it. All his energy was channelled into the successive blows that he kept slamming into the man's stomach until at least he felt the grip weaken and he was free. He swung round, filled with fear and revulsion, the heavy torch held high in his right hand ready to strike. He didn't deliver the blow. In the thin silver moonlight he saw that his attacker was blind. There were no pupils to his eyes, just thick white cataracts which caught the light as he groped the air in his effort to find Anderson. The man made no sound and Anderson guessed that the disease had destroyed his larynx. He melted back into the shadows, leaving the awful spectre circling with outstretched arms.

To his shame, Anderson was sick in the scrub behind the huts. Inside he knew that it wasn't because of the fight or the violence but because of the man's disease. Here he was, a doctor, on his knees in the sand and vomiting because of the revulsion he felt at having been in close contact with a leper. Anderson was disgusted with himself. Once more, Israel had stripped him bare of veneer and shown him an inner self that he would rather not have known. He made for the perimeter fence and left the compound, knowing full well that his attacker would have no way of telling what had happened.

He lay in the sand for a moment outside the wire, trying to calm himself and rein his imagination. He was grateful that Mirit was not waiting there and assumed that she had probably moved further along when the compound lights had come on. He scooped out a hole in the ground and buried his robe in it. He was desperate for water, not to drink but to wash in. He wanted to scrub his skin till there was no trace left of the leper's horny touch, except for the guilt; that would remain for a long time. Mirit crawled towards him. 'Are you all right?'

'I'm fine,' said Anderson, 'let's go.' They returned to the car in silence. When they reached it Anderson said, 'Have you any water?'
Mirit handed him a canteen. 'No, more than that.'

'There's a can in the back,' said
Mirit, looking puzzled.

Anderson stripped to the waist and scrubbed himself with meticulous care while
Mirit watched in silence. She knew that something was wrong but didn't dare ask. Anderson finished his ablutions and put the can back in the boot of the car. He got in and looked straight ahead. 'OK,' he said. 'Let's go.'

Mirit
didn't speak until they had reached the highway. Then she said, 'Was that the place?'

'No,' said Anderson, 'I was wrong.'

Mirit sensed that he was still deeply upset about something but didn't feel that she could reach him. She said softly, 'Where shall I drive to?'

'Jerusalem,' said Anderson,
‘I want to sit in your garden.'

'Of course,' said
Mirit.

When they got to the house, Anderson showered and changed. He was sitting in the quiet of the walled garden when
Mirit came out and handed him a cold drink. 'Want to talk yet?' she asked softly.

'Yes,' said Anderson. He told her what had happened with the leper and of the revulsion he had felt.

'But that's natural,' Mirit said, to no effect.

'
I'm a doctor. I shouldn't feel like that about any disease. Don't you understand? I thought I was a good doctor, but I'm not. I'm a sham.'

Mirit
encircled him from behind with her arms. 'Don't be silly, Neil. Being a doctor doesn't make you superhuman. You just behaved like any normal human being in the circumstances.'

'No, I'm a coward.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Mirit firmly. 'What's really bothering you is that your own image of yourself has been dented. You've been forced to admit that you are vulnerable like everyone else. Macho man and little tin god have taken a bit of a knock.' She took his face between her palms and said, 'Look. It's the real Neil Anderson that I love, the vulnerable one, the one with doubts and fears. Don't play a part for me, Neil.'

Anderson held her tightly. 'God, I feel awful.' 'I know, I know,'
Mirit soothed. 'But let me tell you this. If you had really been a coward you would have struck that man with the torch. You would have struck him over and over again and destroyed him for showing up your cowardice. But you didn't, you were in control, you backed off, and what's more, you showed compassion . . . real compassion when you were filled with fear and revulsion and your animal instincts screamed at you to kill him. You did the right thing, Neil. You were in control and you did the right thing.'

Anderson managed to raise a wan smile. As they held each other tightly in the peace of the Jerusalem garden, it was
Mirit's eyes that showed a flicker of pain and doubt.

Mirit and Anderson spoke no more of the Klein affair for the rest of the day, but spent the time relaxing in the garden and recovering from the horrors of the night. At one point in the afternoon both of them fell asleep and didn't wake until the sun had sunk low in the sky and the garden was in shadow. Mirit woke first and decided to leave Anderson sleeping while she went inside to start dinner. She kissed him lightly on the forehead before she left him. She couldn't say so but she was delighted at Anderson's failure to find the secret laboratory. If he didn't find the source of the Klein gene she couldn't deceive him and that was all she now wanted. The mere thought that she might have to betray him had become an almost unbearable burden to her over the past few days, and she now knew that if it ever did come to the point where she had to hand over the gene to her superiors, she would never be able to see Anderson again. There was no question of doing it secretly behind his back and carrying on as before. She just couldn't do that.

Anderson came in from the garden yawning.

'I think that garden is enchanted,' he said. 'That was the best sleep I've had since I came to Israel.'

'I
know
the garden is enchanted,' said Mirit. 'The cares of the world just can't live in it!' Anderson watched her as she prepared the food. He leaned against the kitchen door and felt a lump come to his throat. He had never been in love with anyone the way he was with Mirit, but in the odd moments when he could think clearly he had to be honest and admit to himself that he couldn't see the proud, independent Israeli girl organizing summer fetes at St Thomas's. It wasn’t just that she had a career; Israel was at the very heart of her being.

Mirit
took a long time stirring her coffee. She was aware that Anderson was watching her and steeled herself to look him in the eye.

'Tell me,' said Anderson.

'We have to talk,' said Mirit quietly. Anderson waited for her to go on. ‘I think it's time,' said Mirit. Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

'Go on.
'

'It's time we said goodbye. We both knew that our time together was limited despite the talk of marriage. It just wouldn't work. You must leave Israel. Forget the Klein affair. Let the professionals get on with it. Go back to what you know.'

Anderson felt as if his insides were being removed without anaesthetic. 'Are you saying that you don't love me enough to make it work?' he asked quietly.

There was an agonizingly long pause before
Mirit said, 'Hurting you is the last thing in the world I would ever want to do, but . . . yes, I suppose that is what I am saying.'

Anderson stared down at the table for a moment before looking up and smiling broadly.
Mirit's eyes opened wide with surprise.

'Now I know you're lying,' said Anderson.

'What . . . ?'

'You love me as much as I love you. There's something else going on.'

'Of all the arrogant . . .'

'Not arrogant, just observant. You have been under some kind of strain since you were recalled from leave. Something happened up in
Hadera, something to do with me ... Is that it? They asked you to spy on me? Report back on what I did and said?'

Mirit
diverted her eyes and stayed silent.

'Something more serious than that?'

'I can't tell you,' said Mirit, still avoiding his eyes.

'Then I am right,' said Anderson in triumph. 'So what can it be? They want you to kill me . .
.’

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'But it's something important enough to make you feel so bad that ... I know. They want you to get the Klein plasmid for them!' Anderson saw by the look on Mirit's face that he was right. He leaned back in his chair. 'So that's it. The military have ordered you to get the plasmid for them when we find it and you couldn't bear the thought of betraying me. So rather than face that prospect you staged this touching little goodbye scene.'

Mirit
offered no argument.

'It didn't work,
Mirit.'

'No, it didn't, did it,' she said.

Anderson took both her hands across the table and said, 'I understand the problem and I can see how it's eating away at you. I will make a bargain with you. I think that the Klein thing is evil and should be destroyed, but if and when we find it you disagree and feel that you should hand it over to the authorities, I won't stop you.'

'Do you mean that?' asked
Mirit.

'I do.'

'Neil, I love you.'

'I just told you that.'

They sat and talked in the garden. There suddenly seemed so much to say now that the strain of Mirit's guilty secret had disappeared. 'Do you realize that the CIA have probably been scouring Israel for you?' she said.

'I'll go back to Tel Aviv tonight and confess all, say
I sneaked off to have a night of love with a beautiful Israeli lady.'

'Good thinking,' said
Mirit. 'They're Americans. They'll accept that without question. A man's got to do what a man's got to do and all that. What then?'

'I want to talk to Professor Strauss again. Now that he's had time to think after I told him that Cohen was innocent, he may have some ideas.'

'But he may be the guilty one, Neil.'

'I thought we'd agreed that he wasn't.'

'You
decided that he was innocent,' insisted Mirit. 'I've seen no proof.'

'All right, my decision,' conceded Anderson. 'What are you going to do?'

‘I’ll try to find out if the CIA told my people what they wouldn't tell you.'

They arranged to meet in Tel Aviv for lunch on the following day.

Anderson was walking up Einstein at seven-thirty when a car pulled up beside him and Dexter got out. 'Where the hell have you been?' he asked angrily. 'We thought they'd got you.' Anderson apologized for his 'thoughtlessness', saying that he'd 'been with a lady'.

'We can't protect you if you keep sneaking off like that,' Dexter lectured.

Anderson adopted what he felt was a suitably contrite expression, pleased that, just as Mirit had predicted, the American had accepted his explanation without question. ‘I’ll try to keep you informed of my movements. Any progress with your investigation?' he asked.

'No. Our man on the inside reports nothing unusual. You've told us that they're buying the stuff they need, but they don't appear to be using it.'

'Wouldn't it be a damn sight more sensible if you were to tell me where this place is and who it is that you suspect?'

'Can't do that.'

Anderson decided on the spur of the moment that he wouldn't wait till morning to contact Jacob Strauss. He would telephone him and suggest that they meet that same evening. The embarrassment at having been caught in Strauss's office was rekindled in Anderson as he dialled the number and he wondered if he would ever be able to think of the incident without getting that feeling. Perhaps that was his real reason for contacting Strauss again. He wanted to exorcize the ghost of that bad experience, seek absolution.

'Jacob Strauss,' said the voice in the earpiece.

'Professor? It's Neil Anderson.'

Strauss interrupted him before he could say anything else. 'Dr Anderson! I've been trying to reach you. I must speak with you.' Strauss sounded agitated.

'That's just what I was calling about,' said Anderson. 'Perhaps we could meet this evening?'

'Yes, yes. I think I know what's been going on. Come round to my house, Doctor.'

‘I’ll be there about nine.'

Anderson put down the receiver and faced his next problem. What did he tell the CIA man? If Strauss really had come up with something he didn't want any button-down collars around to steal the advantage. He'd go out over the roof again.

A cat was scratching away at a corner of the roof when Anderson left his apartment. It was trying to get at a large cockroach that was sheltering in a crack in the parapet wall. He watched it for a moment, fascinated by its appearance. It was an alley cat, very lean, almost scrawny, its hair ruffled and matted by its dustbin life. Anderson wondered how it would view the smooth, plump, tinkling tabbies of home. The cockroach stupidly left the safety of the crack and paid with its life.

'Bon
appetit,'
murmured Anderson, wondering if he himself were leaving the safety of a crack in the wall. He moved quickly and quietly across the flat roof in the starlight and descended via the stairs in the Italian Building to leave the compound by the side entrance. He found it easy to get a cab in the lull between people going out for the evening and coming home again, and gave the driver Strauss's address. He'd abandoned the T-shirted casualness of the day in favour of a proper shirt and a light jacket in deference to Jacob Strauss's unavowed, but none the less obvious, adherence to standards.

Anderson asked the driver to let him off at the beginning of the avenue where Strauss lived. He wanted time to get his thoughts in order, stretch his legs,
and feel the night air before he sank back into the Klein affair. As he got to the gate of the Strauss villa he thought that he could hear music and paused to listen. It was coming from the house across the street. A teenage girl was sitting at an electric organ in a ground-floor room. She was playing from music and kept leaning forward to study the score in her halting progress through some vaguely familiar pop tune. Anderson walked up the path and knocked on Strauss's door. There was no answer. He tried again and this time he heard someone coming. It was Jacob Strauss.

Anderson smiled and stepped inside, but immediately began to feel uneasy as Strauss seemed surprised that he had done so. A bad start, he thought, feeling as if he'd eaten with the wrong fork. He turned in the hallway and waited for Strauss to direct him to a room. '
Eeer . . . you'd . . . eer . . . better come in here,' said Strauss, opening a door and fumbling on the wall for the light switch. Anderson was confused. Why was Strauss behaving as if he'd just turned up out of the blue. Dammit! He'd been invited.

Strauss indicated a chair. 'Please sit down,' he said, while crossing to a writing bureau and closing the lid. Anderson took the gesture personally. Just in case I start prying, he thought. Strauss was now standing in front of the bureau, rubbing his hands t
ogether nervously. He said, 'I’m afraid I have asked you here on a false errand, Doctor.'

'False errand?'

'Yes.' Strauss attempted a smile but failed. The imagination of an old man, I'm afraid. I thought that I had deduced something but I had not . . .’

'What did you think you had discovered, Professor?'

‘It’s now irrelevant.' Strauss said it finally and stared at Anderson, making him feel uncomfortable. It was as if the old man was attempting to move him by telekinesis. 'Well, in that case, Professor . . .’

'Yes, indeed, I'm sorry to have troubled you, Doctor.' Strauss was already herd
ing him towards the door. Anderson found himself back out on the avenue breathing the warm, humid air and listening to a halting rendition of 'If I Were a Rich Man' from across the street.

So what the hell was that all about? thought Anderson as he started out down the avenue. Talk about the bums' rush! He didn't believe for one moment that Strauss had changed his mind about what he had deduced. The only logical explanation that Anderson could see was that Strauss had changed his mind about trusting him with the information. He had had second thoughts about trusting a man who would rifle through his desk drawers. Anderson added depression to the embarrassment that he already felt over the deterioration of his relations with Jacob Strauss. He had nourished a hope that his meeting with Strauss would have
done much to repair the damage done by the break-in, maybe even have restored the possibility of a friendship which Anderson would have liked.

But now the hope was so remote as to make it seem ridiculous, ridiculous enough
to make him wince when he thought of it in the green Mercedes taxi that took him back to Einstein. He was still thinking about it when he got out at the foot of Einstein and started walking up to the side entrance of the university residency. Was there any need for Strauss to have been so rude? Even if he didn't trust him any more he could at least have been civil; in fact, it didn't seem like Strauss at all. He had never seen the old man like that . . .

'Well, it's nice to be home again,' said a sarcastic American voice behind him, interrupting his line in self-pity. Anderson turned to find Hiram there; he was still wearing sunglasses.

'You followed me?' asked Anderson.

'Sure did. You don't catch us that way twice. We now cover all the exits.'

'I just went to visit your target,' said Anderson, hoping for a lucky break.

'No shit,' said Hiram, not giving him one.

Anderson smiled. Maybe Hiram wasn't that dumb after all. 'Goodnight,' he said.

"Night.'

Anderson returned to thinking about Jacob Strauss as he climbed the stairs. The last time he had visited the house, the old man and Miriam had been the very essence of good manners. Anderson stopped on the steps as if he'd walked into a wall. He hit the heel of his hand into his forehead in frustration at his own stupidity. 'You fool!' he said out loud. Miriam Strauss! He hadn't seen Miriam Strauss! Strauss's odd behaviour and his anxiety to be rid of him had nothing to do with whether he could be trusted or not. If he hadn't been such a self-centred clown he would have seen that earlier. There was something wrong in the Strauss household. The time he had taken to answer the door, his strange manner, his reluctance to say anything. God! It all seemed so obvious now. Strauss hadn't been alone in the house. There had been an intruder somewhere in the background and it was now his belief that he had been holding Miriam Strauss hostage.