Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

Dr. Rufus mopped the back of his neck and put his handkerchief in his pocket. He was done with sweating, the gesture seemed to say. He sat up straight, his hands on his knees. "You’re entirely right," he said. "I’ve always been ambivalent about this sort of thing, you know. I should never have allowed it. My God, to think I might be responsible… My boy, we’ll cancel your Torrejon assignment, of course. Where would you like to deliver your lectures instead? I’ll personally arrange it anywhere we have an education office. We certainly owe that much to you. Rome? Athens? How about Istanbul? Berlin?"

"Torrejon."

Dr. Rufus looked at him with his mouth open. Gideon had an urge to toss in a puffed wheat kernel.

"Yes, Torrejon. Now that I’m in it, I want to stay in it. There are too many loose ends for me to just give it up."

"But my boy, my boy, you’ve already been nearly killed. Oh, I could never let you…oh no, it’s out of the question. I’d never forgive myself…" The handkerchief was out and at work again. "Besides, Mr. Marks, Mr. Delvaux… They’d never permit it-"

"Are you saying that, as chancellor, you have to get their permission to assign your own faculty?"

"Well, in a case like this…Why, I think I should… After all…"

"Dr. Rufus, I’ve nearly been killed twice. I’ve got thirty-some stitches in my face. I’ve been driven to hurting other people, maybe killing one. My privacy’s been repeatedly violated. And," he said, realizing for the first time what the heart of it was, "I’ve been made to feel like a puppet, a pawn…a fool. I’m not out for vengeance; at least I don’t think I am. But I can’t just walk away from it now and let it ferment for the rest of my life." Embarrassed and a little surprised by his vehemence, he stopped.

Dr. Rufus looked at Gideon with a mixture of pride and concern, as a father might watch a son going off to war. "Very well, my dear boy, I understand, more than you think I do." He patted Gideon’s knee. "Torrejon it is. Mr. Marks can go to hell. But you will be careful, won’t you? If there’s any help I can give you…"

"Thanks, sir; John Lau’s already being very helpful. In fact," he said, standing up, "I’m supposed to meet him for lunch in half an hour. Then I’ve got a few business stops to make back here."

The chancellor rose and walked with Gideon across the office. "Ah, yes, you’ll have to pick up your travel orders and tickets and things. And be sure and stop by the library. Bruce has been holding onto some new books for you."

"I will. I have to return some to him, anyway."

"Fine." Placing his hand on Gideon’s arm to stop him at the door, he spoke in a low, earnest voice. His honest face, close to Gideon’s, was redolent of after-shave lotion and puffed wheat. "Gideon, are you sure you’re doing the right thing? Shouldn’t this be left to the professionals? My boy, if anything were to happen to you…"

"Don’t worry, Dr. Rufus. I know exactly what I’m doing," said Gideon, wishing mightily that he did.

He had arranged to meet John in a small cafe on the Marktplatz. He was fifteen minutes early, so he ordered a beer and sat back at an outdoor table, enjoying the view of the old church a hundred feet away. Like the castle above, it had managed to survive the seventeenth-century Orleans War and fires. But the slow depredations of time, which had made the castle a striking dowager, mysterious and alluring, had turned the Heilig-Geist-Kirche into a frowsy slattern. In a sense, though, thought Gideon, the castle was dead and embalmed, a museum piece; the church was still alive. Crude wooden stalls stood between its late Gothic buttresses, just as they had in the Middle Ages. Once they must have displayed venison and oil and rough beer. Now it was newspapers and magazines, and key chains that said "Olde Heidelberg."

A misty rain began to fall, the first precipitation Gideon had seen since coming to Europe. The tourists in the square melted away, and the merchants began to close up their closetlike stalls or to cover them with green canvas. Gideon remained outside, however, protected by a red-and-white table umbrella advertising Grenzquell beer, and enjoying the wet-clay smell of the rain. As a northern Californian, he had come to love the fog and rain, preferring stormy days to sunny ones. Here in Heidelberg he found himself enchanted by the mist that now obscured part of the castle and by the rain that glistened on the antique cobblestones of the square.

How nice it would be if Janet were sitting with him, he thought. His heart contracted suddenly; he had thought of Janet, not Nora. He felt…how? Guilty? Sad, because he was finally saying good-bye to Nora? Hopeful, because the despair might finally be at an end?

He shook his head to clear it. Addicted as he was to it, he knew that introspection of one’s emotions was pointless. Psychiatric dogma to the contrary, one’s emotions would work out their own problems or they wouldn’t; thinking about them wouldn’t help.

Ten minutes later John came up, protected by a trench coat and a big black umbrella, and looking cold.

"Hey, Doc! What are you sitting outside for?"

"Hi, John. It’s beautiful in the rain."

"Not to me. I’m not going to sit out here. What are you, crazy?"

"Okay," said Gideon. He picked up his beer and, under the protection of John’s umbrella, they both went inside. Finding a corner table they ordered Nurnbergerstadtwurst and weinkraut

"Hey, where’s the cane?" John said.

"I left it at home. The ankle felt pretty good this morning. Haven’t missed it yet."

"That’s great," said John with such genuine warmth that Gideon was moved. "I’m sorry I was late. I’ve been finding out lots of good stuff."

"Like what?" Gideon said.

"First tell me what you got from Marks."

"Not much." Over their plates of pungent little sausages and cooked, sweet cabbage, he told John what he had learned from Marks and Dr. Rufus. He also told John that he had no real evidence that any of it was true.

"Uh uh," said John, chewing his wurst, "I think it’s true all right. It fits in with what I’ve found out."

"But it doesn’t make sense. Why would they have sent that guy all the way down to Sicily just to protect me? I didn’t have any real kind of assignment, and I was apparently just one of a string of USOC’rs they used. Certainly they can’t have enough men to give that kind of protection to all their informants. Or do they?"

"Yes, they do. Look, whatever else you might think about Marks and the rest of the Intelligence outfit, they don’t just use people callously. If they thought there was a chance you could get in trouble, yes, you bet they’d have protection for you. Sometimes they use Safety people. I’ve had that kind of assignment."

"Is that what you were doing in Sicily last week?"

"No, I came as part of my regular job-protecting USOC life and limb."

John, who had done more listening than talking, had finished his meal. For a while he nursed his beer, watching Gideon eat.

"Doc," he said finally, "I hate to admit it, but you were right about the apple."

"Come again?"

"The guy on the bridge. You said he was an American because he ate an apple with his mouth."

Gideon had forgotten. "Right!" he said excitedly, with his mouth full of sausage. "He was an American?"

"Yup."

"Ha! You see what scientific ratiocination can do? Who was he?"

"Come on, I can’t tell you that. You want me to compromise-"

"I know, the need-to-know principle. I didn’t mean who is he, I meant what is he?…Where is he from?"

"From where Marks told you. He’s an American, an NSD intelligence agent, and his assignment was to watch out for you."