Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

Gideon’s second reaction, following closely on the first, was amazement. Running into the motionless figure was like running into a two-ton statue. Not only did he not go flying; he didn’t budge. It was Gideon who was nearly knocked off his feet.

His third reaction was a mixture of alarm and fury, just barely in that order. It was the ferret-faced man, staring at him with an expression closer to disgust than menace. The man began to turn away.

"Hey!" Gideon cried. "You! Wait!" He thrust out his cane to block the man’s path. Calmly, the smaller man seized it and pulled it across his chest, jerking Gideon toward him and spinning him half-around. Then, with an expert, economical motion, like a martial-arts instructor demonstrating before a class, he lifted his foot and brought down the sole on the calf of Gideon’s left leg. Gideon’s knee buckled like cardboard, and he fell to the ground, writhing desperately to keep his weight off the injured ankle. The cane was wrenched from his grasp and sent clattering into the street.

As a boxer in college, Gideon had learned to anticipate an opponent’s movements by watching his eyes. Now, even as he landed heavily on his back, he looked up into the face above him and was stunned by a blazing look of surpassing contempt, theatrical in its intensity.

The man blinked, and a little of the glittering danger left his eyes. Then he pivoted abruptly, as if forcing himself to leave, and began to walk firmly away.

"Wait a minute, you-" Janet cried, stepping slightly forward. Gideon’s arm went out to warn her off, but she stepped back on her own when the man stopped, rotated his snaky neck, and fixed her with those fierce eyes. Turning a little further, he looked at Gideon one more time with a glare that said he was considering whether he might not rather come back and kill him after all. Apparently deciding against it, at least then and there, he turned once more and disappeared quickly into the darkness.

The entire episode had taken about ten seconds, not enough time for a crowd to collect, but four or five nearby people were watching intently.

Gideon picked himself up self-consciously, brushing off Janet’s offered help. Gingerly, he tested his left ankle; amazingly, it was no worse than it had been before. Janet, also looking self-conscious, began to dust him off with her hands.

With a surly gesture, he shrugged off her attentions, then apologized at once.

"I’m sorry." He reached for the hand he had just brushed away.

"I know," she said, squeezing Gideon’s hand. "Hey, how’d you like to come up to my place to see my dissertation notes?" She wiggled her eyebrows roguishly, but Gideon could feel her hand trembling in his. He found it strangely affecting. Vulnerability was a side of her he hadn’t seen before. Of course, he thought it might be his hand that was doing the trembling; his heart was pounding hard enough.

A wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked adolescent wordlessly handed Gideon his cane. He took it with a nod of thanks, and they began to walk back down the Haupstrasse.

Janet took his arm again. "What was that about, Gideon? It happened so fast I hardly saw it. Who was that creep?"

"He was one of the ones in my room at the Ballman; the one with the knife. He was following us." Gideon could hear the irascibility in his own voice. He was annoyed with Janet, but he didn’t know why.

A little uncertainly, Janet laughed. It didn’t improve his temper. "I think you’re becoming paranoid," she said. "Or melodramatic is more like it. If he was following us, he wasn’t very good at it. He was standing right out in the middle of the street gawking at the Red Ox like anyone else."

Gideon didn’t think so. Ferret-face didn’t strike him as a gawker. "No," he said impatiently. "I think we surprised him by coming back out almost as soon as we went in, that’s all."

Janet thought about it. "Could be." She thought about it some more. "You know, I never saw anyone move quite like that. He had you flat on your back so fast I could hardly follow it."

"Well, hell, Janet," he said, his voice rising, "I’ve got a bunged-up ankle, and this damn cane throws me off balance… What the hell is so funny?"

She was laughing again, easily now, and with an affection that put a chink in his petulance. " You’re funny," she said. "You sound exactly like a twelve-year-old that just got beat up by the neighborhood bully in front of his girl."

"God damn it, Janet-" he began, and then realized she was absolutely right. "You’re absolutely right," he said. "That’s exactly what I’ve been doing." He stopped walking and faced her squarely; it seemed important to get this right. "Janet, I’ve been acting like an immature boob. I had no call to snap at you like that. I’m sorry."

She smiled at him-a wide, warm smile. "Professor Oliver, you’re a very likable man." She hugged his arm to her, and he felt the back of it brush her breasts, first one and then the other. He shivered, knowing from the change in her eyes that she had felt him tremble.

"Now," she said, "what about those dissertation notes?"

"Can I trust you?" he asked.

"What do you think?" She wiggled her eyebrows again.

"I hope not. Let’s go."

To get to her room in the BOQ, they had to walk past Gideon’s door. He paused there to take a long look at the floor around it, even using his cane to probe the strands of the nearly nonexistent carpet nap. There were no toothpick slivers. (He had switched from paper clips to toothpick pieces; they were easier to break off and much less likely to be spotted by intruders. He had also taken to putting one at each side of the door for insurance.)

When Janet asked what he was doing, he explained and added, "I suppose you’re going to say this is paranoid too."

"Even paranoiacs have enemies," she said seriously.

Janet’s room was a replica of his, except for the mess.

Janet took a slip and blouse from the green plastic-covered armchair and tossed them on one of the beds. "Setzen Sie sich," she said. "I’ll make some drinks."

After rummaging first in a desk drawer and then in the closet, she located a bottle of Scotch and poured some into a couple of paper cups. She gave Gideon his drink, kicked off her shoes, and sat on one of the beds, her back propped against the white metal bars at its head. As she drew her legs up, Gideon caught a glimpse of long, tawny thighs. Suddenly, he was both excited and shy. He looked down into his cup and swirled the liquid around.

"So tell me," Janet said, "how do you like teaching for USOC?"

"It’s okay, but it’s been pretty dull so far."

Janet laughed as she brought the drink to her lips, spluttering the Scotch a little. When she had done that over wine with Eric, it had been an annoying mannerism, contrivedly girlish. Now it seemed spontaneous and charming.

"Janet Feller," he said. "Nice name. Right out of a teenage romance. Do you know I don’t know anything about you?"

"Ah, you would like to hear more about the dissertation, then? Excellent. Let me read you the first two hundred pages-"

"No, I mean about you."

She told him. For over an hour, through three cups of Scotch, she told him how she’d been raised in Illinois; how at eighteen, on a trip to Athens with her parents, she’d fallen in love with a Greek truck driver; how she’d married him against the wishes of both families and then lived two hellish years in his mother’s house in Piraeus, never managing to learn the language. Somehow, her father, an elementary-school principal, had managed to engineer a divorce and bring her back to Champaign, where she had lived at home while working on her B.A. in history. Her father’s graduation present was a trip to New York. There she promptly met and married another truck driver. That had lasted two months.