Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [12]
Valerie used to be privy to all the plans, but Gideon seldom talked them over with her anymore. Once upon a time, it had been a wonderful nightly ritual for her to read the new pages back to him while he took notes. She hadn’t read to him for weeks.
The pleasure had faded. Val didn’t laugh at his funny lines anymore, only the mistakes. She would get combative and argue over meaningless points. Val seemed very distant from what he was writing and trying to say. Her barbs left him fuming. Little by little, the pages stopped coming to her on one pretense or another. He’d leave the carbon for her to read on her own.
“I wouldn’t mind reading to you, tonight.” Val’s expressed desire was now a desperate attempt not to be shut out.
“Aw, hell. I’ve really got a ton of stuff to go over with Shlomo.”
They exchanged cold kisses and a “See you later, honey ... don’t wait up for me.”
GIDEON WHEELED the jeep through the breezeway of the Accadia Hotel and spotted Shlomo Bar Adon. Shlomo was an unpolished gem, a native-born sabra who coordinated all of Gideon’s interviews, travels, translations, and showed him every corner of the land. Shlomo knew Israel and taught it with the zeal of an ancient seer. For Gideon, Shlomo’s rough edges were more than compensated for by the breadth of his knowledge.
Valerie barely tolerated him and Roxanne generally mirrored her mother. Val had eased Shlomo out of coming to their home, but he had become indispensable to Gideon. Perhaps she was even a bit jealous.
Shlomo indicated that they should get out of earshot, so they walked to the bluffs.
“We’ve been invited to join an operation,” Shlomo said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Gideon registered a flush of excitement. “Reprisal? Jordan?”
Shlomo shrugged that he didn’t know.
Gideon had pestered, demanded, pleaded for a chance to go out on an action over the border. He knew there was something different about these soldiers, different from any others in the world. Their connection with the ancient biblical warriors intrigued him. The pieces of a six-thousand-year-old puzzle could not be found hidden away in an office drawer. He could only find them by going out and putting the puzzle together with his own hands.
Most of his prodding of the authorities had been done before Val and the girls arrived. They changed the picture. His embarking on such a risky adventure would be brutally unfair to them. But what the hell, writing is unfair. It takes from everyone—the writer, the wife, the children. Everyone’s blood ends up hidden in the pages. Was this beyond reasonable unfairness?
“So, what do you think, Shlomo?”
“Val?”
“Val.”
Shlomo’s black beard and head rolled from side to side: maybe yes, maybe no. “There’s going to be gunfire. People are going to get hurt ... killed ... maimed. You don’t have to smell gunpowder to write about it. Something else pushing you to go out?”
“Maybe.”
“What is it, Gideon?”
“I don’t know. But I do know the only way I’m going to find out. I’m coming.”
“Well keep our asses down low.”
“Your assignment with me doesn’t call for this kind of crap. You don’t have to come.”
Shlomo puffed out his chest. An insult. “Be here at the hotel at five in the morning,” he said. “I’ll take you to the staging area.”
VALERIE SAT cross-legged on the bed, her gown drawn up so that her thighs were bared. The international edition of Time was balanced between her legs as she wiped her reading glasses. She had hit the waste-basket with the Jerusalem Post and Herald Trib. Four points. Gideon’s pages were on the bedstand to read last, for dessert.
Val turned to the Time book review. A full page in frothing lionization of a minor talent who couldn’t sell twenty thousand books if they spotted him nineteen thousand.
“Pricks,” she said, tossing the magazine. She picked up Gideon’s pages, teased herself with them. She had looked forward to them voraciously.
Val read half a page, then lay