“Did you like it there?”
“Hated it. Just hated it. Pretty girls everywhere and none of them interested in adorable little me. Seriously, though. Other than the total absence of sex it was great. I made some good friends. It’s refreshing to be around people who honestly don’t care about class or money or any of the usual bullshit. And Gilead’s beautiful. Ever gone hiking in the Lodi Range?”
“I did most of my dissertation research there.”
“Paradise, right? No other word for it.”
“No,” Arkady breathed.
Yusuf leaned forward, fixing those disconcerting eyes on Arkady. “Tell me true, one pre-citizen to another. Do you still want to stay here now that you’ve gotten to know Earth a little? Or would you rather go home?”
Yusuf was speaking English, Arkady realized suddenly. Not Hebrew. Not UN-standard Spanish. Not the bastardized English of the Trusteeships, but the pure, slightly archaic English of the Syndicates. And he had no accent that Arkady could hear.
“Is this the real interrogation?” he asked.
“What’s real? What’s an interrogation? I’m just passing time while the rich old farts are out of the room.”
“So when do they start asking me the real questions?”
“They already did. Or did you perhaps miss the part where they stuck the needle into you?”
“You knew about that?”
“I heard a rumor. There’s a proper epidemic of rumors making the rounds in this operation. Kind of makes you wonder if there isn’t someone managing the spin from behind the scenes.”
“If there is, it’s not me.”
Yusuf laughed. “That makes two for tea and tea for two of us.”
“So…Yassin isn’t going to question me at all?”
“He might beat you up some more. But that’d be pleasure, not business. And I’m not authorized to monitor his entertainment. Sorry. Only so far a guy can go to help a total stranger. And though I might seem young, I have my pension to worry about. Retirement can really creep up on you fast in my line of work.”
Arkady swallowed.
“Sorry.” Yusuf really did sound genuinely contrite. “I shouldn’t joke about it. I have an awful sense of humor. But the fact is I actually do have to turn into a pumpkin pretty soon. Decisions above my pay grade, et cetera, ad nauseam, et al., El Al, and so forth.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“An answer that unfortunately I doubt you’re in a position to give me. Because some of us on this side of the Line actually kind of desperately need to know, Arkady, if you’re really who you say you are. Or are you being used, with or without your knowledge, for some…excuse me if this sounds pretentious…deeper purpose?”
“If it’s without my knowledge, then what’s the point of asking?”
“Well. Right. Obviously that would be the problem. By the way, have you met Didi Halevy yet?”
“No,” Arkady said—and realized that the denial was itself an admission.
“But you know the name. Who told you about him? Korchow?”
Arkady pressed his lips closed, suddenly understanding the old phrase about locking the barn door after the horse has run off.
“And what about the cripple? Have you met Gavi Shehadeh yet? We’re laying bets back in the office about when Didi will decide to trot him out. And you can tell Didi that, too, when he gets around to questioning you in person. It’s good for his ego to be reminded that we don’t automatically scarf down every piece of garbage he tosses our way.”
Yusuf sighed, settled his chin more comfortably on his arms, and fixed Arkady with a gaze that was uncomfortably intense despite its obvious good humor.
Arkady inspected the scuffed toes of the desert boots that Osnat had given him. They were too wide. His feet, accustomed to soft spacer’s shoes, were developing blisters in places he’d never known feet could get blisters. He wondered where Osnat had gotten the boots. Actually, on second thought, he didn’t want to know.
“I hope this doesn’t sound rude,” Yusuf said at last, “but you’re really making a hash of this. I mean, forgive me for pointing out the obvious…but though you keep talking about how you want to talk to Absalom, what have you really done about it?”
Arkady couldn’t answer that.
“It doesn’t make sense, Arkady. You’ve got us and the Israelis all buzzing around like bees who’ve had their nest stomped on. But at some point someone’s going to wake up and start asking whether even a man who spends his adult life playing with ants can be as incompetent as you seem to be. You have no idea who Absalom is, or even which side he’s on. You’ve made no discernible effort to talk to him. And yet you keep babbling on about Absalom, Absalom, Absalom. Frankly, Arkady, I’m disappointed. I thought Korchow was smarter than that.”
Arkady shrugged.
“Do you actually know anything at all about Absalom?”
Arkady shrugged again.
“Well listen, pussycat. I’ll tell you about him. Just in case. You never know when it might come in handy.”
“You mean when the Israelis start torturing me?”
“Don’t be naive. The Israelis don’t actually torture people anymore. They just bore them into talking, same as we do.” His voice shifted into a different register, and he began to recite the story of Absalom as if it were a myth or a martyr’s life. “Absalom was a Jew and a hero of the last war. He was also, of course, a hero of Palestine.”
“Was. Is he dead, then?”
“We have no idea. In fact, we never knew who he was. He used unorthodox lines of communication. And one of the conditions of his assistance was that we were never to put his drop points under surveillance or attempt to tail the Mossad agents that serviced them.”
“Mossad agents?”
“Yeah. The cheeky bastard actually used the normal Mossad letterboxes to communicate with us. I think it would be fair to characterize that as what a Jewish ex-girlfriend of mine liked to call chutzpah.”
“So what happened to Absalom?”
“We have no idea. He fell off our radar screen after the fiasco in Tel Aviv.”
“And you never managed to reestablish contact?”
“No. And believe me, we’ve tried. So you can see what you’re stepping into. Before you showed up everyone was willing to let Absalom be forgotten because we were all mostly sure that he was dead. Now, however, the Israelis want to find Absalom just to make goddamn sure he’s dead. And, uh, we want to find him to…well, honestly, probably in order to blackmail him into coming back to work for us.” Yusuf stretched and yawned, catlike. “So as you can see, it’s slightly more urgent than life or death for us to know whether you’re for real.”
Arkady waited, but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming.
“That’s it,” Yusuf concluded cheerfully. “That’s Absalom. The whole only moderately censored story. My gift to you.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“You tell me why.”
“Because you know I’m going to talk to the Israelis at some point and you’re feeding me the story you want to feed them?”
“Pretty good for an amateur. I’m impressed. But sadly I’m neither that organized or that intelligent. And that’s not just my opinion; it’s a direct quote from my last personnel review. Any other possibilities come to mind? It’s not a trick question, trust me. You’re seriously overthinking it.”
“You want something from me.”
Yusuf pantomimed a silent round of applause.