Automobiles and trucks ignored him as they roared by on the road. Alone beneath the rain, his own host, he conceded that Abie was right, Felix Maldonado was a nobody, the kind of man who achieves certain outward signs of prosperity, without being rich. But that is the secret of modern societies: to make the greatest number believe they have something when they have nothing — because the few have everything. He looked across the highway at Abie Benjamin’s market, a modern-day cathedral. Again he thought of Sara Klein, of her enormous faith in the egalitarian society of Israel and the efforts of its people, in the democracy of that land where a Communist lawyer could defend a poor man like Jamil. Sara herself had compared all this to the inequality, the injustice, the tyranny of Arab countries.
Now that he was alone in the rain, facing the red and yellow and blue columns of the Ciudad Satélite, he remembered my warning: no one has a monopoly on violence in this business, much less truth or morality. All systems, whatever their ideology, generate their own injustice; perhaps evil is the price of life, but you cannot stop living because you fear evil, and for Felix on that night, at that hour, in that place, that awareness was truth. He bestowed that truth upon those who demanded life above every other thing, even if the price were eviclass="underline" upon the boy Jamil, who’d loved Sara more than Felix had; upon the Palestinians, who, because they had no life, countered with evil the lives that denied theirs.
A long, low, black Citroen stopped before Felix. A black door opened and a pale hand beckoned. Automatically, Felix got in. The Director General glanced at him, smiling ironically. He gave an order in Arabic over the intercom, and the coffin-on-wheels drove away.
“I’ve been looking for you, Licenciado Velázquez, mmh? But you’re soaking wet. I’ll take you to your hotel; have a warm bath and a good rubdown and a glass of cognac. You’ll get pneumonia. That would be ironic, after surviving so many dangers.”
The dry laugh was a spider’s thread cut suddenly by invisible scissors.
“Why were you looking for me?” said Felix, again defeated, thinking how much he preferred his freedom beneath the rain to the warm comfort of the Director General’s automobile.
The Director General laughed, stopped laughing, and spoke with grave deliberation. “You were very unwise to say the Mustang was yours. The police found twenty kilos of M & C, morphine and cocaine, in the trunk. They immediately contacted me, since you’d identified yourself as an official in my Ministry. But it worked out well. The matter’s settled; they attribute the contraband to a certain Sergio de la Vega; the car was registered to him.” He gazed at Felix with an intensity ill-disguised by the dark pince-nez, and smiled with an expression appropriate to the skull-shaped candies of the Day of the Dead.
“Yes, it worked out very well, n’est-ce pas? Now you’re identified forever with Licenciado Diego Velázquez, Chief of the Bureau of Cost Analysis. And such good will must be rewarded, mmh? A very special invitation for day after tomorrow awaits you at your hotel. Please be there.”
“I’m not going to a hotel. I’m going to see my wife. At last, I can do that.”
“Of course, Licenciado. First, I shall take you to your home.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m going to stay there. I live there, with my wife.”
The Director General issued a new order, then immediately turned to Felix. “Your invitation awaits you at the Hilton.”
“You’re not making any sense. My things are at the Suites de Génova.”
“They’ve been moved to the Hilton.”
“With what right?”
“The right of the person whose influence saved you from a charge of trafficking in drugs, mmh?”
“I don’t want to hear another word about influence.”
“But it’s the supreme law in Mexico, n’est-ce pas? You will return to the Hilton. The same room. It’s a perfect front.”
“You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying,” said Felix, with the irritation of exhaustion. “The matter’s finished. I did what I had to do. I did it, without anyone’s help.”
“I just came from the market, mmh? You have too much faith in the fatal powers of refrigeration. Señor Benjamin is growing cold. But forever this time. He’s resting comfortably with a bullet in his skull.”
Felix felt sick; he doubled over, nauseated. He didn’t want to choke to death on his own vomit. The nausea subsided as the Director General spoke again with the velvety voice of a snake charmer. “I don’t know what motives you attribute to the dear-departed Benjamin. You’re a very passionate man, I’ve always said that. How I laughed at the mischief you played on poor Simon, and Señora Rossetti in the swimming pool, and Professor Bernstein! That takes much culot, n’est-ce pas? Come, Licenciado, the time for violence between us is past. Let go my lapels. Let us be calm, mmh?”
“Are you telling me that Abie didn’t kill Sara because he thought she was Mary? Jealousy wasn’t the motive for the murder?”
For once, the Director General’s laughter ran its course. He laughed so hard he had to remove the pince-nez and wipe his eyes with his handkerchief.
“Sara Klein was murdered because she was Sara Klein, my dear friend. No one confused her with anyone else. What is it Nietzsche says about women? That man fears a woman in love because she is capable of any sacrifice, because anything not related to her passion is despicable? That is why a woman is the most dangerous creature in the world. Sara Klein was one of those truly dangerous ones. The name of her love was justice. And this woman enamored of justice was prepared to suffer everything for justice’s sake. But also to reveal everything. Yes, the most dangerous creature in the world.”
“Her love was named Jamil; you killed him.”
The Director General shrugged off the commentary with belligerent indifference, as if to say, anything goes. He spoke with no attempt at self-justification. “When I visited Sara at ten o’clock that evening in the Suites de Génova, I warned her to be on her guard. I told her that Bernstein had killed the man called Jamil as Jamil attempted to kill Bernstein. In itself, this was credible; there was more than sufficient reason for Jamil to murder Bernstein, and vice versa. But I nailed down my version by asking Sara to call the professor. She did so. Bernstein admitted he’d been shot that evening, following the ceremony in the Palace. Someone had attempted to kill him but had succeeded only in wounding him in the shoulder. Sara cursed Bernstein and hung up the telephone, shaken with sobs. She believed what I had told her.”
“But Jamil was already dead and as good as buried in a military cell in my name. Who shot Bernstein?”
“But of course, he was superficially wounded by Ayub, who was following my instructions. It was to exacerbate Sara, to force her to break the last threads of her shattered fidelity to Israel, and to get her to talk. Quel coup, mon ami! A militant Israeli like Sara Klein passing over to our side and making sensational revelations about torture and concentration camps and the military ambitions of Israel. Just imagine, mmh?”
“She was planning to return to Israel. She had the tickets. She told me on the recording.”
“Ah, a true biblical heroine, that Sara, a modern Judith, no? She told me, too. She would denounce Israel, but from within Israel. Such was the morality of this unfortunate but dangerous woman. I gave her some cachets of sleeping drugs and told her to rest. I would come by for her the following morning to take her to the airport. I arranged a guard in front of the Suites de Génova. My agents took note of everything, the serenade, the nun. But no one suspicious entered. The Israelis deceived us. Their agents were already inside the hotel. Their names were Mary and Abie Benjamin.”