Outram also fixed it so his allies had less trouble getting their property back. The Party’s holdings were dutifully inspected, approved, and returned. Furthermore, with many former proprietors occupying unmarked mass graves, it was no surprise that many wonderful opportunities became available to discriminating investors. The Party’s portfolio burgeoned, sprouted, and put forth leaves and buds.
As Wrench said to Lessing, “Who says history is fair? The top dog gets the early worm. Let the rest eat cake.” No one had ever accused Wrench of unmixed metaphors.
The luggage carousels were swamped. Over to the left, Lessing spotted a clump of brown and black: the D-170’s passengers, mostly Party members and trainees of the Cadre. That was Mulder’s name for the Party’s new military arm — a better choice than Goddard’s “Special Service,” the initials of which would have been disastrous for publicity purposes. Lessing would have preferred still less visibility. He rarely wore the black uniform Jennifer Caw had designed; it said too much and — as yet — lacked authority.
There.
Lessing, taller than his comrades, saw Jameela first: slender, graceful, long-legged, and at ease, even in this deafening bustle. Her dark-grey slacks and white, short-sleeved blouse were meant to be inconspicuous, but many turned to look at her, and some of the younger Cadre males stared with open interest.
“Happy now that Mulder didn’t let you resign?” Wrench purred in Lessing’s ear. “Kept his promise, didn’t he? Satisfied?”
He was.
Mulder was a great matchmaker, he actually looked like the paintings of Cupid. All he needed was a bow and arrow. Lessing hadn’t had to go to India after all. Not much was going into or coming out of that tormented country, but Mulder’s Indian friends had managed to find Jameela. They carried Lessing’s letters in to her, and her answers back to him. They also gave her Mulder’s job offer: “liaison supervisor,” a way for the Party to keep its fingers on the increasingly erratic pulse of Asia. Her duties would be similar to those she had performed for Indoco in India.
Her real task would be to keep Alan Lessing, Mulder’s chosen Commander-in-Chief, deliriously happy. And herself as well.
That suited Lessing perfectly.
Anneliese Meisinger receded into the background. After the New Orleans conference she had joined Mulder in Virginia, while Lessing and Wrench were assigned to the more critical Los Angeles post.
Lessing let her go. He had known — and loved — Jameela. Liese remained very much of an unknown.
Lessing did not learn until later of Mulder’s other offer, the one to Jameela’s father: leave India and join one of the movement’s overseas corporations. Lucknow was on the way to becoming a bloodbath. Ramanujan’s B.S.S. had begun its promised all-India purge of non-Hindus, and purges tended to turn into pogroms. Jameela’s father had other children besides Jameela. He accepted, therefore, and opted for the personnel department of a German cruise-ship line in the Canary Islands. The family had relatives there. Diplomatic passports and airplane tickets magically appeared, and Ramanujan’s mobs found only an empty house and neighbors who had no idea where the Husainis had gone. Jameela stayed with her people in Tenerife only long enough to see them comfortable; then she flew on to join Lessing.
At some point during this process he proposed, and she accepted.
The airport crush literally threw them into each other’s arms. She squeezed his hand but did not kiss him: still the prudish Muslim-Victorian! He had no memory of what he said, how they got outside, who took her baggage, or what the pollution-fogged freeways looked like on the way back to the hotel the Party had acquired as its headquarters in this hostile city. Cadre security men waved their car through the barricades, and they dived into the oil-smelling, echoing darkness of the garage.
Faces surrounded them, hands clapped Lessing on the shoulder, other hands reached out to help with suitcases, and words flowed over and past them, as unintelligible as the wind. Then he and Jameela were together in a large room with pink walls and pale-ivory furniture. Doors opened and shut, somebody proffered a bottle wrapped with a gaudy, red ribbon, somebody else loaded Jameela’s slim arms with crushed-looking, dark-red roses, and other somebodies smiled and mouthed more words and shook their hands. Lessing was popular with these people, even though he had made it clear that he “only worked there.” For his sake — and probably on Mulder’s orders — they would accept Jameela.
Faces appeared, and others went away. After an eternity they were alone.
He didn’t speak then. Nor did she.
Later it was night, then dawn again.
At 0700 hours one of Lessing’s trainees, a hawk-nosed Kansan named Bill Ensley, tapped on their door with breakfast. Only then did they realize they had missed dinner. They sat crosslegged on the rumpled, magenta bedspread to wolf down toast, poached eggs, and fruit. Being Muslim, Jameela did not touch the bacon, and out of respect for her Lessing didn’t eat his either. Cold, greasy, cardboard-stiff bacon had been one of his parents’ breakfast rituals; giving it up was no sacrifice!
He didn’t want to raise the blinds. He found himself hoping that when he did, he would see Indoco’s jungle of metal towers and conduits, the sere, grey-green landscape, and the dust-white sky of India outside. If only Pacov and all that came afterward had never happened! His father’s remedy for many of the hurts of childhood came back to him: “Rub it, say ‘magic-magic!’ over it, and it’ll go away.” Absently he massaged the bridge of his nose.
He grimaced and tugged his fingers away. This was like the cancer patient who wakes from a dream in which he finds his tumor miraculously gone: a wish-fantasy! Lessing always tried to be realistic. Look the enemy in the eye; then shoot, if you had to.
The Venetian blinds clattered open as he yanked savagely at their cord. Jameela squinted over at him in the flooding, yellow sunlight. Last night’s rain had gone; today the sky was blue — as blue as the city’s pollution-blanket ever let it get.
“Nothing,” he apologized vaguely. “Just fumbling.”
Jameela had a talent for healing. She let the lacy, white robe he had bought her slide open to display a smooth, wheat-golden thigh. Her bodice seemed to part of itself, revealing the curve of a breast and hinting at greater delights within. She bent her head, and her raven mane tumbled down over her shoulders.
He laid the breakfast tray carefully aside.
It was noon when they arose. Jameela showered and changed while Lessing squatted naked upon the sweat-dampened bedding. He poked the room TV’s remote button and watched a sleek, blonde woman present the news roundup. His mood of drowsy, animal warmth quickly drained away to be replaced by frigid reality.
Black Pacov stalked Africa, slaying those of Negroid blood. Much of the Israeli army in Egypt and North Africa was of European descent, but the Izzies were taking no chances: they were falling back into the Sinai. Pacov’s friends — typhus, typhoid, cholera, and bubonic plague — killed Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately. Other Israeli contingents were advancing into the Pacov-decimated regions of southern Russia, however, and Jerusalem’s mere units were probing north and east into the Urals and beyond, working in cooperation with the Americans and whatever various battered European nations could provide.