Gospel (117 page)

O'Hanrahan and Lucy were taken to the Hilton Hotel, where the State Department
strongly
insisted they remain, since the capital was in a bout of improvised curfew and the population of drunken soldiers out after dark was not to be underestimated. The Cubans, said Mr. Thorn, of whom a fresh shipment had just come in from Angola, were drug addicts and drunkards—not to be wondered at since they were losing this civil war and utter annihilation awaited them. If Americans and their diplomats had any ease of mobility at all, it was because the government realized that Americans,
not
their Soviet patrons, were instrumental in famine relief and as long as there were Americans around, the government wouldn't have to lift a finger to help its own people.

The Hilton had seen its best days, as had Addis Ababa, in the 1960s.

O'Hanrahan exchanged his 400 Sudanese pounds for Ethiopian birrs, paid for the two rooms, and made empty conversation with the receptionist, fearing that moment that he and Lucy would be alone. Mr. Thorn, scurrying back to the safety of the embassy before dark, wished them Christ's blessings—it paid to advertise his Christianity down here, Lucy figured, given the Muslim insurgencies—and hoped to see them tomorrow.

Lucy was silent in the elevator.

“What are you thinking?” the professor risked.

“How you've been lying to me.”

“Now, Luce, I am just as excited as ever about finishing the
Gospel of Matthias,
but Teheran is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was offered a position back when we were in Jerusalem—”

Lucy was bitter as she left the elevator. “Thanks for telling me! So what was Khartoum and Degoma? Just a little vacation before you dropped all this, dumped me on a plane with Colonel Westin and headed off for Teheran on another adventure?” She slammed her key in the lock. “That's great for you, isn't it? You don't even intend to finish the
Gospel of Matthias
project, do you?”

“Of course I do—”

“No you don't. You're not a finisher of things, I see that now.” She spun around to accuse him to his face: “You dabble. You stand beside the people who do things and get your picture taken with them, but you don't…”

O'Hanrahan shamefacedly put a hand consolingly on her arm—

“Let go of me,” she pulled back.

“I just want you to hear me out—”

She rushed into her room and slammed the door in his face.

Lucy, near tears, paced before the mirror, checking her flustered appearance, which seemed to increase her anger. She went back to the door, hearing that O'Hanrahan was right outside. She turned the lock. She had been ready to endanger herself for this man who would lie to her, steal from her,
use
her however he would just to distract himself from his … his own mortality. She leaned against her door and heard the professor go to his room, unlock his door, and gently retire within. I hope he's disappointed in himself, she thought. I don't care if I've hurt him.

Lucy flopped down on the bed.

She was, as she had always been,
alone.
Patrick O'Hanrahan had never really been an ally. She was part of
his
life's dream, she hitched a ride for a while. For a time it seemed it was hers too but no more. And David McCall. How so much hope was wagered—what an edifice, what a St. Peter's and the Pyramids and Holy Sepulcher was built upon so little information! As in most of my life, I saw what I wanted to see, heard what I wanted to hear. What a fool, what a colossal embarrassment I am to myself.

All the more reason it should be me in those refugee camps near Gonder dishing out food, doing what I can for those people whose needs are so obvious, so painful—me, the woman whose life doesn't count with anybody else.

Outside in the streets, ten stories below, she heard gunfire.

Curious, she went to the window. Few streetlights worked anymore; she could only make out some scattered people below, ragged, running in packs. There was a truck filled with fruit, followed by another with more people in the back than she had thought possible, countless skinny arms and legs wrangling and bouncing over the broken asphalt of once-fine Addis Ababa, the 1960s showplace of the New Africa, birthplace of the OAS, jewel in the crown of black nationalism and African independence, now a Soviet client state overrun with terror and evil and Cuban drunks shooting out windows for fun at eight
P.M.
, longing for Havana.

She lay back on her bed: much of this world is a terrible place.

A
UGUST
26
TH

Lucy awoke and gave thanks briefly for this modern, luxurious, clean bed at the Hilton, her island of the Western World. Slowly her old life crept up on her. Deserted by O'Hanrahan. Pregnant. Thesis due. Parents ready to kill me for having a life. I need an ally, she figured coolly. I'll call Rabbi Hersch at his home and see if he can advise me—I'll tell him everything. Maybe there's still a chance I can have this kid in Jerusalem out of public view.

“Can I make an international call?” she asked the woman who picked up the phone at the reception desk. “It's to Israel, but I don't know the home number of the person I'm calling.”

The woman informed her she would have to come downstairs to their bank of phone booths and meters.

Lucy picked up her key from the bedside table. Quietly she turned the doorknob and peered into the hall. Stealthily, she closed and locked her door, barely breathing lest O'Hanrahan discover her, and she skipped quickly to the elevator bank.

The lady at reception greeted her with a smile. It was 10:30
A.M.
and the few guests were in a spare breakfast room off the lobby, drinking coffee and choosing with tongs from a mountain of croissants.

“We spoke about an international phone call,” Lucy announced.

The receptionist, the woman who'd registered O'Hanrahan and Lucy last night, was a tall woman of Somalian features, with a perfectly oval head with large circular eyes. She knelt beside a stubborn drawer that opened with difficulty. Inside were numerous phone books from various African capitals, a few European cities, New York, Los Angeles …

Lucy: “Do you have Jerusalem?”

“Oh yes,” she said, rummaging.

“Your English is very good,” said Lucy, feeling the urge to make friends with this woman of such striking beauty.

“I studied in America, Michigan State University.”

“East Lansing, sure,” Lucy said, having never been there.

“Last night was a night of Americans at the hotel.”

Lucy glanced up at the hundreds of keys dangling at the boxes, few venturing to travel to Ethiopia amid the war. Or perhaps, those who did come to Ethiopia—aid-workers and volunteers and returning expatriates—would not stay at such an expensive place. “No businessmen stay here?” asked Lucy.

“No one comes anymore,” she said, setting aside Athens and Paris. “That is why it is odd, three Americans last night. We do not get many Americans these days. You, the doctor…” She meant O'Hanrahan, who had registered himself as Dr. O'Hanrahan. “… and the monk.”

“The monk.”

“An American monk…” The woman unearthed the Jerusalem phone book, tattered and coverless. “It had no front, see? Impossible to find,” she laughed.

“A monk, you say.”

“Yes, he checked to see if your friend…” Her eyes glanced down to the guest register for the name she wanted, “… to see if Dr. O'Hanrahan was staying at this hotel but when he asked you had not arrived. The monk is with your party, yes?”

Lucy's heart beat faster. “Yes.”

“Axum is closed to tourists because of the war. But Lalibela sometimes, sometimes is open.” She plopped the book on the counter and kicked the bottom drawer closed. “Many Christians used to travel to Ethiopia—it is sad.”

“The monk is my uncle,” invented Lucy. “What room did you put him in, again? I'll go call on him for breakfast.”

The woman's lovely face looked to her register with heavy lids, perfect arcs. “Oh yes, 416.”

Lucy opened the Jerusalem phone directory and looked up Mordechai Hersch's home number, then copied it down. Then she excused herself, promising to be right back to make her phone call. The woman said Lucy would have to deal with Rashawn, who was coming on duty in five minutes.

In the elevator Lucy pushed “4.”

When it opened on the fourth floor, Lucy stepped out into the empty corridor. What did she have in mind to say? Was this man
their
Mad Monk who had been following them? She would pretend she had the wrong room, but she'd get a good look. She went a few doors in the wrong direction, then backtracked counting down the rooms, 420, 419, 418, 417 …

She stood before the door.

Which was ajar.

“Hello?” she tried.

Nothing. Lucy pushed the door foward ever so gently.

“Hello? Uh, maid service, excuse me.”

Still nothing. Lucy leaned in and looked into the room. It was a shambles. A suitcase on the bed lay in shreds, the sides and bottoms ripped apart by some rough blade. Papers were scattered everywhere, a black robe was in tatters. Her heart was beating quickly as she surveyed the mess. There was an airline tag hanging from the remains of the suitcase, El Al, and the name on the luggage was Mordechai Hersch.

*   *   *

“Lucy,” said O'Hanrahan, looking exhausted after his restless, sleepless night, “please come in. Look, let me apologize. I don't know what I was thinking. Teheran is out. I must have been crazy…”

Lucy quickly stepped inside to his room of spent smoke and an emptied half-pint whiskey bottle.

“Better sit down,” Lucy warned him, beginning to pace.

O'Hanrahan sat on the edge of his bed. “What?”

“By merest chance I learned there's a monk in the hotel who was looking for us yesterday.”

O'Hanrahan's eyes widened.

“The trusting woman at the desk gave me the room number. She said he was an American. I got curious, I went to Room 416 and it was ransacked. And the suitcase inside belonged to Rabbi Hersch.”

O'Hanrahan lightly touched his forehead. “So … he did say he was going to meet us here…”

“Do you think Rabbi Hersch could be our Mad Monk?”

The professor muttered, “Jesus,” and began thinking, reviewing the whereabouts of their nemesis. The Mad Monk had first surfaced in Assisi, according to Father Vico … and, yes, the rabbi was in Italy where he wasn't supposed to be, in Rome. So he could have preceded them to Assisi.

Then the monk was at Athens and on Mt. Athos. Conceivably, Morey could have not gotten on a plane to Tel Aviv and flown to Greece days ahead of them.

No sign of the monk in Jerusalem, damningly enough, and then at Wadi Natrun and the Coptic Library, then at Khartoum … Why would Morey do such a thing? He and Lucy considered every possibility, going over and over the scanty collection of facts.

“Let's go down to the reception desk,” said O'Hanrahan, standing. “There is one way we can tell where Morey's been for sure.”

In the elevator Lucy looked anxiously at the professor. “What are you gonna do?” she asked.

“Let's hope all old white men look alike to Ethiopians.”

O'Hanrahan went to the reception desk and talked to a honey-colored, smiling man, very eager to please. “Excuse me, sir,” said O'Hanrahan. “I need my passport to cash the last of my traveler's checks. Could I have it? Room 416.”

A moment of truth. Would O'Hanrahan look enough like Rabbi Hersch in his passport photo to fool this young man? But the man handed the passport of the guest in 416 to O'Hanrahan without checking, an American asking for an American passport. Lucy approached the professor as he flipped through the pages.

“Of course,” mumbled O'Hanrahan. “Morey was raised in Brooklyn and has dual citizenship in Israel. No Israeli could travel easily in the Sudan so, of course, he'd travel on this American passport…”

Lucy remembered he used this passport at the Northern Irish border.

“Here he is in the U.K., in Ireland, stamped at Dublin on the right date, here's Italy, Milan … Damn it, here's Greece! He
was
there the day before we were there! So he
didn't
go back to Jerusalem after Rome. Didn't you see him get on his plane when you guys went to the airport in Rome?”

“No,” she shrugged. “I was getting drunk in the lounge, remember?” But the thought occurred: “But that's right, I didn't even see a flight for Tel Aviv. I recall that now.”

The man behind the counter now squinted at them suspiciously.

“Changed my mind,” said the professor. “I'll do it tomorrow.” The professor noticed that the key for 416 was missing. They doubled back and took the elevator to the fourth floor.

“If his key's out,” said O'Hanrahan, “he might have come back.”