Highlander - Donna Lettow [94]
“Ah, one hell of a poker face, though. And if he thinks he’s got a winning hand, he’s unstoppable.” Constantine could tell from his face MacLeod’s mind was not on poker. “Look, Duncan, two thousand years ago Avram watched the Romans drive the Jews out of Palestine, and there wasn’t a day in those two thousand years—certainly not even an hour, when he was with me—he didn’t think about returning. And now, finally, the Jews have it back. Giving it up again … it must be impossible for him even to contemplate.”
“But does that give him the right to do what the Romans did? To drive people out of their homeland? To rob them of their culture? Their identity?”
Constantine poured himself another drink. “Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? That’s the problem with the politics of Palestine. Everyone is in the right. Everyone is in the wrong. Everyone believes that God is on their side. Meanwhile, people are dying on both sides. More?” He offered the decanter to MacLeod, who shook his head. “And God, in his wisdom, seems to have decided to stay well out of it. Which is what I would advise you to do, if you weren’t already in the middle of it up to your ears.”
“So what do I do?” MacLeod hoped that Constantine’s millennia of experience would yield an answer he had yet to think of.
“Not much you can do, I’m afraid. Stop seeing the girl because one of your friends doesn’t approve? Seems rather adolescent to me. Besides, if you did, and then something should happen to her”—MacLeod’s stricken face at Constantine’s words told him all he needed to know—“you’d never forgive yourself. Speak to Avram? Certainly not tonight. Maybe in a couple of days, but you may have more luck talking to a door-post. When he digs in, it’s nearly impossible to move him.”
“That’s for sure,” MacLeod agreed, remembering their time in the Ghetto.
“Or let him hate you, if that’s what he wants to do. It’s not the end of the world. You can’t make everyone happy all the time, but, no matter what Avram says, you’ve got the right to do what makes you happy.” Constantine looked at his worried friend honestly. “Sometimes I think you forget that.”
When MacLeod returned to the Lutétia that night, he felt no better than he had leaving Constantine’s. If anything, the security checks, the bureaucratic red tape, the pervading sense of fear and paranoia that surrounded the sumptuous palace only reminded him he was caught in the middle of a war. A war without battlefields. A war of words, of emotions pulled so tight the slightest incident could cause them to break. A war of rocks and bottles and hidden bombs that went off unexpectedly, in a bus or a school or in the mind of a fanatic.
Assad waited patiently outside the door to Maral’s hotel room. Didn’t the guy ever sleep? He nodded a perfunctory greeting at MacLeod and stepped aside to allow him to knock.
MacLeod rapped on the door lightly. “Maral?” He could hear her hurry to open it.
“Duncan.” The door opened partway and she pulled him in, closing it firmly behind him. Her hair was down, a hairbrush still clutched in her hand, and she wore a simple pair of satin pajamas which he found more attractive than any sexy peignoir or the most revealing teddy. She had the ability to make anything look good.
Maral gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, asking, “How was your meeting with your Israeli friend?” and resumed her nightly ritual of hair brushing. He didn’t know where to start. What to say? But his anger and disappointment showed in the way his body moved as he walked into the room. She set down her brush. “Not good, was it? Was it because of me?”
He shrugged and went to sit on a tapestried couch across the room from her. There wasn’t really anything he could tell her.
“Would you like a drink? Something to eat?”
“No, thanks.”
She moved to the couch and sat beside him, concerned about the shadows behind his eyes, the world-weary set of his shoulders. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not really,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t going to push.
She put an arm cautiously