Highlander - Donna Lettow [7]
“I think we’ve gone way beyond ‘mistake.’ ” MacLeod took her by the arm and led her off through the crowd, Assad lagging a short distance behind. “This had better be good.”
“So it was all a lie? Bir Zeit? New Brunswick? All of it?” MacLeod paced angrily across the sumptuous lobby of the Hôtel Lutétia, feeling used. Across the lobby Assad and an Arab gentleman in a traditional headdress were speaking with a gendarme, straightening out the little “misunderstanding” at Chez Nous. Maral, looking tired and worn, sat in an armchair near MacLeod, trying to get him to understand.
“It is true. Every word of it.”
“So tell me again the part about how the schoolteacher conveniently forgot to mention she was a negotiator for the Palestinians, with a gun in her handbag and an armed bodyguard.” He pulled her to her feet. He was in her face. He didn’t care.
Maral gave it right back to him. “What am I supposed to do? Announce to every Don Juan who comes on to me in a restaurant ‘I’m with the PLO! Come kill me and all my friends?’ It’s my job, Duncan, it’s not who I am.” He started to walk away from her. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back, looking him dead in the eyes. “Tell me your life’s an open book. You swoop in like James Bond, you take down Assad without even breathing heavy. Maybe there’s something you’d like to tell me about Duncan MacLeod?”
He stared at her and realized she had him. She hadn’t told him she was a Palestinian diplomat in Paris to negotiate the future of East Jerusalem with the Israelis, and he’d neglected to mention he was born in the Highlands of Scotland in 1592 and couldn’t die unless someone took his head. In retrospect, he had to admit his was probably the more egregious omission. He led her to a couch, the wind out of his sails, and they both sat. “Okay,” he said simply, “tell me about the gun.”
Maral wasn’t quite as ready to stop fighting. “I’m planning on hijacking a busload of schoolchildren, what did you think?” MacLeod just gave her a long, long look, one that seemed to see right through the shield of her anger and into her soul. “I just want to survive, Duncan,” she said. “Is that so much to ask for?” Her anger seemed to evaporate into his look and with it her bravado, leaving her tired and looking just a little … lost. “The man who had this job before me was blown up in his own car at a traffic light while taking his son to school, did you know that?” MacLeod had to shake his head, no. “I just want to be around long enough to know I’ve started something that might someday stop the killing. More than anything, I want peace—but I’m not stupid, and I’m not suicidal. There are a lot of crazies out there, on both sides. And 1 refuse to go down like a sacrificial lamb. I’m no martyr, Duncan—does that make me evil?”
“No,” he said quietly, “no, it doesn’t.” He of all people could understand her plight, trying to do what she knew was right while all around, it seemed, the whole world conspired to stop her. It was a battle he’d faced for four hundred years. He looked into her coffee-colored eyes and felt a moment of intense connection between them. He started to put his free arm around her shoulders to bring her close to him, wanting to kiss her, to seal their link. Instead, she pulled away and stood up, breaking the bond. He looked at her, surprised—he knew from the look in her eyes she felt the spark, too.
“Not here. Not now,” she whispered. “Islam forbids it.” MacLeod thought back on his travels in the Arab world, and remembered that public signs of affection between unmarried men and women were taboo. Some societies, he remembered, even refused to let them speak to each other—and punished with death. He was amused to think that he, at his age and experience, would be subject to those rules, but he nodded that he understood. Maral continued in a low voice. “We have several what you might call ‘fundamentalists’ in our