Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [8]
Even the madness of my affair with Natasha was controllable. Or so I led myself to believe. She was by far the cleverest person I’d ever met. Far too clever to cross that final bit of no-man’s-land and force me into a decision between her and my family.
So I’d go to my room at the Accadia Hotel every day and write and make believe that Natasha really wasn’t going to be a problem. And I had reckoned that by the time I finished the novel and was ready to return to the States, Natasha and I would have burned the affair out—past history. Everything would resolve itself like magic ... yeah, sure, man. Gideon, you are one stupid Jew.
An abrupt downdraft got me in the pit of the stomach. A few of the Lions were annoyed enough to shift positions, grunt, and continue to snore.
So, Gideon, the best-laid plans of mice and men ... I was an idiot to think I could tightrope between two warring females.
I did manage to hold everything together and move the book along well and keep our heads above water financially. Then came the border raids, the sudden, swift escalation, and the inevitable conflict. Things started to really become unhinged with the Kalkilia raid. Good Lord, it was only seventeen days ago.
Major Ben Asher opened the door from the cockpit. This woke everyone up in a hurry.
“One hour to drop,” he bellowed over the engines. “We’ll be going down to five hundred feet to get under their radar.”
... The Kalkilia raid ... only nineteen days ago ...
HERZLIA, ISRAEL
October 9, 1956
IT WAS COMING UP to six o’clock, time for the English-language news. Gideon never missed the news; he should be back. The whole country stopped every hour, on the hour. Good news was scarce these days.
The sun played out its daily ritual, drifting downward toward a sea that was mirror-smooth tonight. From the kitchen window Valerie could just about make them out coming up from the beach. She shaded her eyes and squinted toward the path, then wiped her hands at the sink and stepped out onto the rear veranda and waved.
Penelope enjoyed her royal seat on Daddy’s shoulders, while Roxanne walked ahead of them swinging a bucket.
Val never failed to react every time she caught sight of him. Gideon was on the slight side, but most people thought of him as being larger. It was his bearing, a determined manner of stride, hunched forward, pondering. Val loved his looks. Feisty little bastard. Gideon had overpowering eyes that could express a full range of emotions with a glance, and when his look was for you and filled with lust, it always brought on shivers.
The first time she ever saw him was on a USO dance floor. He was in Marine uniform and she was a student at Mills College, a few miles away from the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. Gideon just moved right in—cut in and whisked her away from her partner. He was pure driving male.
And cocky! “You’d better put in your dibs for me now, Val, because I’m going to be a great writer.” Hell, he was only nineteen years old when he told her that, two nights after they met.
“Here’s a pair of tickets for a play at the hospital next week.” Gideon was a patient. He was also the playwright, director, producer, and star of the show.
It was frightening meeting someone so strong that early in life, but Lord, he was magic.
Grover Vandover, their golden retriever, a lollipop of a family dog, flopped up the path alongside them. Roxanne broke away, running toward the house, and opened the back gate onto a lawn of coarse grass.
“Mommy! Look! Coins!” She opened her palm revealing three bits of irregularly shaped metal, blackened by time, with the image and lettering no longer visible.
“Daddy says they may be Roman, even Israelite.”
What Roxy didn’t know was that when Professor Ben Zohar had been over the night before, he had slipped the coins to Gideon who had planted them at the tel earlier in the day. The Professor was their self-appointed Hebrew