"Does paranormal mean witchy?" asked Daphne.
"Yes," said Lepidopt. He kept his eyes on Daphne, but she was looking at her father.
"Can you," said Marrity, "make it stop?"
"If we can reproduce Einstein's work, I believe we can, yes. We can save — we can make this intrusion stop now, before it — goes any further."
Marrity was sure the man was being euphemistic because Daphne was listening. We can save your daughter's life, he had probably been going to say; or at least, your daughter's sanity. And before it's too late.
"I may have to — leave, abruptly," Jackson was saying now, and he pulled a business card out of his pants pocket. "Take this, and call us if you think of anything later, or — need anything."
Marrity took it — the only thing printed on it on either side was an 800 telephone number. He tucked it into his shirt pocket. "Do you speak German?" Marrity asked.
"Yes."
"What was the German thing the cartoon said, at the end?"
The NSA man appeared to consider not answering; then he said, "It meant 'Cut open her throat.'"
Daphne touched the stitches below her chin. "Again? " she whispered.
"No," said Jackson, "that was an echo of something it said this afternoon, when you were choking."
"An old woman said it," said Marrity, "in the restaurant. Were you there? What is all this? Was the old woman that thing on the TV? Tell me what's going on."
"I can't, until I know what's gone on. Did you have some kind of intrusion yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes," whispered Daphne.
"Yes," echoed Marrity. He rubbed his eyes. "Did you have a woman approach me, a couple of hours ago? Primed with… knowledge of my tastes in books and liquor, to question me?"
"No," said the NSA man. "Where did this happen?"
"Outside St. Bernardine's, the first hospital we were at. She even smoked the same cigarettes I do."
"What did she look like?"
"Audrey Hepburn." He realized that he was describing her more to Daphne than to Jackson; they had watched Breakfast at Tiffany's not long ago. "Slender, that is, with dark brown hair in a ponytail. Sunglasses. Burgundy shirt, black jeans. About thirty."
"You have a pen and paper," said Jackson. "Let's conduct this conversation in writing, shall we?"
"You mean — not out loud," said Marrity.
"Right. I find it's easier to keep track of topics that way."
Marrity was surprised to see Jackson hurriedly twist a pair of earplugs into his ears. But probably they're miniature spy speakers, he told himself.
Marrity crossed to Daphne's table and tore off the top sheet of the pad and put it in his pocket.
Ten
Rascasse was snapping the fingers of his free hand as he listened to the scrambler telephone. He stopped in order to put his hand over the mouthpiece and bark at the driver, "Ralentissez, we are too late." The roaring of the bus's engine went down in pitch.
Finally he replaced the receiver in its box. To Golze, he said, "We should have put Charlotte at the second hospital, compromised though she was. Shaved her head and given her a fake mustache. Not wasted her on foolish Bradley."
"What happened?"
"An NSA man, or some fellow claiming to be of the NSA, talked to Marrity and the daughter at the hospital."
He sighed and dragged his fingers across his scalp, making his close-cropped white hair even spikier. "The dybbuk appeared on the TV set in her chambre, her room," Rascasse went on, "trying to get her to let it into her mind. The NSA fellow and her father stopped her from consenting. An NSA man, knowing about dybbuks! We'll be getting a fax of the transcription of their talk, but Marrity mentioned Einstein, and the NSA man gave him a bunch of nonsense about wanting Einstein's work in order to talk to dead people. He hinted that Marrity's daughter is in big danger if Marrity doesn't cooperate."
"Well," said Golze, "she would be."
"He'd have dropped the hint in any case, to open Marrity up. And Marrity said he and his daughter experienced some kind of 'intrusion' yesterday at four-fifteen, which is precisely when we registered the Chaplin device as having been activated."
Rascasse had been looking at Golze, but now Charlotte saw her own face swing into his view. "Then Marrity asked if the NSA had set a woman onto him, primed with his tastes in books and liquor!" He paused, no doubt making some sort of face. "And he gave the fellow a good description of you too. And then the NSA man said they should conduct the rest of their question-and-answer session in writing! All we got was the sound of a pen scratching on paper! Luckily Marrity made the man leave after about five minutes. We should have had you in the room next to the girl's."
"True," said Charlotte in a level tone. She was one of the very few remote viewers who could read text while looking out of someone else's eyes — possibly because if she couldn't read that way, she wouldn't be able to read anything at all.
The scrambler phone buzzed, and Rascasse opened the case again and lifted the receiver. After thirty seconds he said, "'Kay." He replaced the receiver and shut the case.
"The San Diego detective who called the Shasta hospital yesterday is dead," he told Golze and Charlotte. "Before he died, our people asked him who told him to track down Lisa Marrity. The detective, who was Jewish, said he was doing a favor for a friend — and under duress admitted that he believed his friend was with the Mossad."
Beside Charlotte, Golze gulped audibly. "Then that wasn't an NSA man in the girl's hospital room — he didn't sound like NSA, what with the dybbuk and all." Behind the disordered tangle of his black hair, his glasses winked in the overhead light. "Could the Mossad be on to us, here, because of the New Jersey branch's pass at the Tel Aviv mainframe on Saturday?"
"They're here for the same reason we are," said Rascasse. "They want the thing Lieserl Maric had."
After a moment of bafflement, Charlotte remembered that Lieserl Maric was Lisa Marrity's real, Serbian name.
"We've got to get the thing, both pieces of it, and close this down," said Rascasse. "We're on alien turf here, our strength is all in Europe. This is still Einstein's defended exile island. Tomorrow," he said, staring at Charlotte so that she had a good view of her own face, "early morning, you kill Marrity. Gunshot."
Charlotte watched her eyebrows and mouth, keeping them in straight lines.
"He's the Mossad's source now," Rascasse went on, "and we don't want them to get any more out of him than they did tonight. This will isolate the daughter, and we might be able to work on her with help from the dybbuk and our tête friend in the cabinet."
Her face swung out of Rascasse's view as he looked out the window at cars in other lanes. "You've been due to kill someone for a while, you know, Charlotte," Rascasse went on, not unkindly. "Can't get favors from the Devil unless you do some favors for him."