With the food served, the atmosphere warmed up a little in the kitchen. Ms. Jacobsen’s pot roast was superb and I made a pig of myself-I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good meal. Mary was cheerful and her mother managed to converse without savaging me. I learned that the old woman had been a legal secretary in Portland and had moved up here when she retired recently. There was a map of Maine on the kitchen wall and I was finally able to orient myself. Unfortunately, the northern part of the state seemed to be mainly trackless forest and, despite the bearings I’d taken with the compass, I didn’t have much idea where the camp might have been.
After coffee and a very good homemade blueberry cheesecake, Ms. Jacobsen said she was going to bed. Mary and I cleared up the dinner things and went back into the sitting room.
“You really haven’t told me much about yourself, Matt,” she said, her eyes on me.
“Well, I-”
“It doesn’t matter. I can see you need some time to get perspective.”
“No, it’s okay. You’ve taken a big chance for me.” I told her I’d been chased through the forest by the people whose uniform jacket I’d given her. I didn’t say why-not that I was too clear on that myself. I said that I’d taken the uniform after I’d come round and found myself naked. I didn’t feel up to telling any more lies and my memory was steadfastly refusing to provide any more information.
“So,” Mary said, “what’s our plan?”
Her mother’s warning was still ringing in my ears. “We haven’t got a plan,” I said, keeping my eyes off her. “You stay here with your mother.”
“Matt!” she said irately. “The troopers are looking for me, too, remember?”
“Like I said, go back and say I threatened you. You’re a schoolteacher. Why should they think you’re lying.”
“No chance! I’m helping you and that’s final.”
I thought about it. I could certainly do with help, especially with the FBI doing their best to frame me. Besides, my journey though the forest had made me keen to avoid being alone again. But why was Mary so desperate? A few seconds later I got the answer-suddenly her lips were on mine, her body crushing against me. I had a flash of the woman with blond hair, and a feeling of guilt; I was sure the woman meant a lot to me, and tried to detach myself. But Mary was like a force of nature and pinned me against the couch.
“Stop,” I gasped, managing to twist my mouth away. “You don’t even know me.” I could have added that I didn’t know myself.
“I know this is right,” she said, getting her lips back on mine.
I was going to have to distract her. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, after I’d slipped aside again. “I don’t want to involve your mother in this.”
“Don’t worry,” Mary said, smiling. “They won’t link her to us. No one in Sparta knows where she lives-she doesn’t go into town.”
“But they’ll find her soon enough. The FBI is after me, not just the local idiots.”
“Mom can look after herself,” Mary said.
I had a feeling she was right on that count. “Can I borrow her pickup? You can say I made you give me the keys.”
“Forget it, Matt. If you want the pickup, I’m coming too.” She nudged me in the ribs. “You’ll need me-I know the back roads.”
Shit. I didn’t really have any option but to take her. She would be a big help and there was no time to argue.
“All right, Mary. But we have to go now.”
She kissed me hard on the lips. “I take it Washington, D.C., is the final destination? You need to find out who thinks you’re a murderer.”
I nodded. “I don’t suppose there are any old clothes I could borrow?”
Mary laughed. “That’s how an Englishman asks politely, is it? Yeah, one of my old boyfriends was about your size. He left a suitcase behind.”
I wondered if Ms. Jacobsen had made him an offer he’d decided to accept, her shotgun pointed at his groin. She went out of the room and returned with a pair of jeans, a checked shirt and a padded jacket.
“Here you are. I told Mom we’re leaving.”
“What about your work?”
“I’ll call in sick.” She didn’t bother looking away while I undressed. “Won’t be the first time. Hey, you could do with a shower, English.”
She was right. I followed her to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. The hot water felt great and when I’d finished, I almost felt human again. Then I remembered how many people were on my tail.
To my surprise, instead of feeling helpless, I found that I was ready to take anyone on. I didn’t know why I was being targeted, but I was going to find out. It occurred to me that it might be the last thing I did. Too bad. I would go down fighting.
Mary was waiting for me in the hall, a cooler bag beside her. “I took the rest of the pot roast,” she said, her eyes glinting, “since you seemed to like it so much-and various other things. Where we’re going, there aren’t too many malls.”
We went out to the pickup. I transferred the rifle and other weapons from her car, stowing them under the seat.
“I’ll drive,” I said.
She pushed me out of the way. “Me first. You can look at the scenery.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“So it is.” She laughed. “You can tell me all about London, then.”
“Right.” I wondered how much I would be able to remember.
A few minutes later, we were heading up a narrow road, back into the Maine woods that I loved so much.
Twenty-Two
Abraham Singer pushed his glasses above his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He had been examining the medieval text since seven in the morning. Getting up from his office desk, he went over to the window. The lights of Georgetown spread out beneath him, those of central Washington visible in the distance.
The university had put him on the top floor of the building. At first he’d considered complaining, as there was no elevator and his knees weren’t as good as they had been, but he’d quickly realized the benefits. He got the daily exercise that Naomi had been nagging him about since the bypass operation, plus-even more important-there was very little noise up here. Not that it mattered. He’d be retiring from the department in under a year.
The elderly scholar ran his fingers through his beard and looked at his watch. He should have gone home hours ago, but the text promised some new insights into the kabbalah, and he couldn’t resist working on it to the exclusion of every other consideration. Naomi would be annoyed, but she’d have gone to bed already. He’d get an earful at breakfast.
Abraham looked at one of the photographs on his desk-him and Naomi on their wedding day all those years ago in Jerusalem. He had been doing his military service and hardly recognized his young self, his face fleshless and his body rake-thin. Naomi’s cheeks dimpled and her dark hair glowing in the sunlight, even in black and white. There weren’t many people at the celebration as both their families had been ravaged by the Holocaust. The Singers had lived in Nuremberg and had been sent to the camps early in the war. Abraham’s parents survived, but both had been taken by cancer soon after they’d arrived in the home country. Naomi’s mother had also returned from Auschwitz, but she never spoke of it. She had still managed to be the most cheerful person Abraham ever met.
He took in the shots of their children-David, a lecturer in film at Berkeley, and Judith, a journalist in Miami. They had given him great joy, as did the five grandchildren, but, if he was truthful, he would have to admit that his work had always taken priority.
Abraham Singer was that rare bird, a scholar of Jewish religion with serious misgivings about the ancient faith. The easy answer would have been that the fact of the Nazi horrors had created an entirely justifiable skepticism. He knew that wasn’t the whole story. He needed to believe, he needed to maintain a link with the past that was creative and fertile, but he found much of the ritual primitive and obscurantist. That was why he had established lines of academic debate with Christian and Muslim scholars who harbored similar attitudes about their own faiths. But it wasn’t enough. He was still haunted by the suspicion that somewhere in the mass of manuscripts and texts was hidden the key to an intellectually rigorous traditional belief. He knew that feeling was as deeply rooted in Jewish tradition as the orthodoxy he distrusted, but it was irresistible.