ABSALOM SLUMPED IN THE OTTOMAN THAT THE HOUSEKEEPER’S inventory listed as Victorian and Azazel, with his rabbinical mindset, described as antediluvian.
The heavy lids on his eyes were shut tight but twitching, evidence of a dreadful dream or an inability to doze off while he waited for his sidekick to emerge from the dungeons with the residuum. Damn Azazel and his phobia about elevators—he was no doubt walking up the six flights and stopping on each landing to catch his breath, no matter that Absalom, not to mention the entire Israeli intelligence community, was anxiously (and sleeplessly) waiting to see the results of the search that had been based on the tip from the American Sawyer. Absalom had heard on the grapevine where Sawyer had unearthed the detail that the blind Redeemer with the mark of prostration on his forehead was a bona fide medical doctor. Sawyer’s “secret” trip to Paris had not gone unnoticed. Israeli Mosad operatives had been watching the Palestinian agents who were watching the woman Lamia Ghuri. Not that it mattered—one passionaria less wouldn’t seriously distress the Palestinian diaspora—but Absalom wondered how long she would remain among the living now that Sawyer had attracted attention to her.
Wheezing, Azazel pushed through the fire door and shambled across the room to stand over Absalom. “How you can catnap at a time like this is beyond me,” he said breathlessly.
Absalom permitted his lids to open lazily as he sat up. “Question of the purity of one’s heart,” he murmured. “And what pray tell have we here?” he demanded, blinking at the wad of brown index cards clutched in Azazel’s soft fist.
“Five.”
“Five?”
“Correct. What we have here is five.”
“Five what?”
“Easy to see you’ve been getting forty winks. Wake up, Absalom. Focus. We have narrowed the list down to five, count them, five prime suspects who were all short, heavy, ardently Islamic medical doctors.”
“You might have said so in the first place.”
“I thought I did.”
Absalom sniffed at the index cards. “Baruch, bless his copper’s soul, will be tickled fuchsia.”