Then the ground thudded beneath his feet. There was a cacophony in his ears and a force slammed against his chest. It was like hitting a concrete wall in a car, only he hadn’t been moving—the wall had come to him. All three of them went down, Grover flying backward into Ed Hinkle and Calder slamming onto slick pavement. He must have blacked out momentarily. The next thing he was conscious of was a ringing in his ears and then, coming muffled through that, distant sirens.
He lifted his head, wobbling, and saw the brick building in front of them blackened from the ground up, flames rising to the upper levels. The basement had just exploded.
Calder’s reactions were a tiny bit slow. It took him a moment to grasp the significant point here. Then he grabbed the lapels of Grover’s coat, noting dully that his hands were scratched and bleeding. He shook the physicist until his yellow teeth rattled. He shouted, and his voice came from very, very far away.
“Where’s Talcott’s lab?”
Grover pointed—to the conflagration.
10.2. Aharon Handalman
Aharon Handalman did not watch television. He did not even allow it in the house. Yet it just so happened that lately he had varied his route to work. Instead of seeking out the most ancient pathways, he had, once or twice, cut straight from the Jaffa gate to the temple wall, down Hashhalshelet, where the modern world was no stranger.
And if he stopped, on his way to and from work, at a little corner store that had television sets in the window? If he watched the news for a few minutes at a time? Was that such a crime?
He didn’t know what he was looking for. They say, “He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he’ll know it when he sees it,” and this was the case. When he walked up to the store this morning, it was there on the screens, all twenty of them. CNN international news, Hebrew edition. A newswoman’s voice was being piped from inside the store. To her right was an imposed video of a burning building. The heading said: “Seattle, Washington.” The video was replaced by a photograph of a slight, intelligent-looking woman. Underneath the photograph was a name: Dr. Jill Talcott.
Aharon stared at the name for a moment, feeling he had seen it somewhere.
“…so far missing. The fire is believed to have started in the physicist’s lab, where Dr. Talcott was conducting experiments of an unspecified nature. Police…”
Aharon turned and began running toward home.
When he arrived, Hannah was just getting up. She stood in the hallway in her robe as he opened the door.
“Aharon?”
He hesitated, the enormity of what he was doing striking him for the first time. He gulped a breath. “Hannah… if I had to go to America… We have some savings. Half of that is yours, Hannah.”
She studied him, her pretty face serious. “This has to do with Kobinski?”
He nodded.
“What about your work, your classes?”
His classes? The thought gave Aharon pause. He had been “talked to” twice more by Dean Horowitz. But what could he do? Horowitz would do what he had to do, Aharon also.
“Tell them… there was a family emergency.” He colored at how easily the lie came.
She said nothing.
“It’s only for a day or two.”
She gave him a measured look, long and sad. It was a look he would carry with him to America and far beyond. It said, And maybe you’ll never come back at all. And maybe you’ve already been gone so long this is only a formality.
“I’ll pack your bag.” She headed for their room.
Hannah put the sleepy children in the car and drove him to the airport. When he got out he kissed each of the little ones on the head. Devorah asked, “Where are you going, Papa?” and he said, “I have some business. I’ll be back soon.” Yehuda turned his head away when Aharon kissed him.
Hannah managed both worry and coldness as she hugged Aharon good-bye. She took a paper from her pocket and pressed it on him.
“Samuel got this through a chat room for survivors. The address and phone number are there.”
Aharon took it, frowning, and put it in a pocket for later. He stood, awkwardly, knowing he should say something more, much, much more, but not knowing where to start.
“You’ve tried so hard to shut me out, Aharon,” Hannah said. “So I guess I have no right to know where you’re going.”
“I never shut you out.”
“I hope you can find something that will let you put all this behind you.”
He did not like what he saw in her face. He patted her arm reassuringly. “I’m going to Seattle, Hannah. Why wouldn’t I tell you? And it will only be for a few days. You’re my wife, the mother of my children. You don’t have to worry.”
She pecked him on the cheek and drove away. Aharon opened the note.
Hannah had found Anatoli Nikiel.
10.3. Jill Talcott
There was a loud battering in her head that Jill took for just another new and fun-filled phase of her massive headache. She had been so sick all night. Now she was in a place that wasn’t so very bad. The pain was still there, but she felt detached, as though it were happening to someone else, as though she were in a cage and there was a tiger prowling around outside, but he couldn’t get in. She floated in this space, slept. She thought the phone might have rung, several times. She could ignore that, but the battering noise disturbed her. And it gradually dawned on her that someone was calling her name.
Nate.
She managed to get her head off the pillow and look at the clock. It was almost ten. She’d slept in. Lifting her head was a major effort and she would have gone back to sleep, but the banging continued. She wanted to tell him to knock it the hell off, but she’d have to get to the door first.
Her feet perhaps hit the floor by the bed. She couldn’t feel them and she wasn’t quite sure. She stumbled forward. When she finally pulled the front door open, Nate was on the doorstep, his face wild.
“My god! I saw your car and I hoped… ! Christ!”
He assaulted her, black leather arms wrapping her in a child’s hug. He squeezed and it felt like she was a tube of toothpaste—all the blood rushed from her middle to her head, making the dull pain scream.
“S-stop!” she gasped, pushing him away. She lurched to the couch and collapsed there. He came and knelt beside her, provoking a dim, heart-thudding memory of that day their positions were reversed.
“You’re burning up!” he claimed, though she barely felt his hand on her head. “Oh my god. You turned it up, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“You didn’t call in sick today. Everyone thinks you were in the lab.”
“ ‘sonly ten o’clock,” she said crankily. Then she recalled that when she’d opened the door it had been night. Ten o’clock at night? She must have gone to bed leaving all the lights burning. She’d slept through an entire day.
“Jill…” The look on his face was scaring her.
“What?”
He turned on the TV, flipped to the local news.
“…terrible scene. The explosion occurred at approximately seven o’clock this evening. Fortunately, no classes were in session at the time.”
Despite the sense of floating detachment and her pounding headache, this brought Jill to as much consciousness as she was capable of.
“Nate?”
“Smith Hall.”
“No.”
Tears were on his face. “There was a massive explosion.”
“The police will not comment, but sources at the university have estimated that there were at least twenty to thirty people in the building.”
“Ohmigod.” It was too much to grasp—that she might have been in there, that those poor people were in there, that her lab was gone.