“He has lost even the dream,” Zahre said softly. “How easily you have broken him, like a plaster figurine.” She was a black silhouette against the sun. Her hair was gathered behind with an elastic, and hung in a long ponytail. Sawchuk thought of an unbraided whip.

  “We had better get down for the Committee meeting,” he said, leaning against the balcony door, talking to her back.

  “The Committee. It is always meeting. And we are never alone. You seem fearless with everyone else. Why are you afraid of me?”

  But he felt not fear — only a yawning gap between this woman and himself. He admired her beauty as one might a sculpture, aesthetically. He wondered if he would ever know physical arousal again.

  “Jacques,” she said softly, “where are you?”

  “Thinking. About where it will all end.”

  “Will it end? What will happen to us, Jacques? If we succeed here, then Libya awaits, and it will be terrible there. After Libya, what? The police will hunt us all over the world. They will follow our trails of blood. Can’t we make it stop?”

  Sawchuk remained silent.

  “Don’t kill tomorrow. If I see you kill those helpless men tomorrow, I will begin to fear you, and that will corrupt what we have between us.”

  What we have between us. A structure made of her self-delusion, his acquiescence. “I won’t have to kill.”

  A hard laugh. “Do you think they will not test you? You will kill to prove your resolution. Instead of Karl presiding at the butcher’s block, it will be you, Jacques. Don’t become like him.”

  “Become like Karl? It would be impossible.”

  “Perhaps we should be certain of that.” Her hands went to her shirt buttons, undoing them as she stared past a falling sun that painted her an iodine colour. The shirt hung loosely now.

  She shrugged. It fell.

  She turned around and looked at him intensely.

  He edged back into the room.

  “We’re on enough explosives to take down the Aswan dam. It doesn’t turn me on.” He tried to smile.

  “It adds an edge.” Her voice teased. “Touch me. I want to feel your hands.” He didn’t move, and she came up to him, took his hands in hers and pressed them to her breasts. He felt a trembling within her. Now she crushed her body into his, thrust her hands into his tousled hair and pulled his head down toward her mouth. She kissed him brutally, with the click and slide of teeth.

  He answered her with very little.

  She drew her head back, her eyes showing hurt. “For God’s sake,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry.” He glanced at the splotch of blood on the sheets, felt revulsion.

  She looked only at him. “What are you afraid of, scandal? We have stolen some time — please, let us use it.”

  “I have things on my mind.”

  “Stop the revolution for a few minutes; I want to get off. God, Jacques, the struggle doesn’t fall apart because its new leader escapes from it for half an hour and becomes human.”

  “We don’t have half an hour.” He had felt so much power upon entering the palace compound. But he felt none now with Zahre. His hands dropped from her chest and they closed into fists of frustration.

  She pressed her face into him. “Love is more important than the rest of it. Please make love to me. I am ashamed that I have to beg.”

  “I can’t.”

  She stepped back, her face hot with the spurning. “You are the same as Karl. As one form of power grows, another dies. Will you, too, be saving your orgasms for your pistol? Is it the killings tomorrow, is that what you are saving it for?”

  “Käthe, let me be frank with you.” He took a deep breath. “Whatever you believe you feel for me, I do not share. I have no desire for you.” A blunt, quick truth.

  She blinked. “God, I have had my fill of cruel men.” She stopped, picked up her shirt, began to put it on. She fought tears as she did up the buttons. “I feel ashamed.” She whirled around, went to the door, slammed it shut behind her.

  Sawchuk walked out onto the balcony and stood looking at cruel Arabia.

  * * *

  Karl Wurger scrutinized the pumpkin-like face of his Rotkommando guard. Jurgen, you were nothing when I found you; you are less now. Is this a German?

  Another headache had begun to take him. They visited whenever they wished. If he fought them, he remained lucid. When he was lucid he understood that he was having a breakdown. Had von Hertz told him the truth? Had his mother suffered from schizophrenia before she was killed by American bombs? He feared he carried her curse in his cells. He knew not how to conquer it.

  If he gave in to his headaches they went away. But then he passed into insanity, and when in that state he saw that Sawchuk had mysterious, malevolent powers. He had weaved a hypnotic web about Käthe, clouded her mind as he had the minds of all the others. He held them with a satanic force. If his grip could be released, they would return to Wurger. Käthe would return.

  Wurger fought his headache, stayed sane. He swung back and forth, his heels scraping the dirt. His hands hung loosely between his knees, but sometimes he would raise them and press them tightly to his head.

  A while ago, Wurger had glanced up, over the playground wall, and had seen Sawchuk and Zahre at the top of the palace stairway, near the elevator. She had been close to Sawchuk, touching. And they had been watching him. He had bowed his head, unable to let her eyes meet his in a terrible shared understanding of the things that had happened. Wurger knew that they were seeking a place to be alone, where the Canadian — a man of mixed blood — could take his pleasure from her. He thought of them naked, writhing on the sheets. Vile. Vile.

  He fought the pain, the jarring, cutting pain in his head. He fought its release too, because with it would come the hallucinations. Again he studied the young guard, his nervous hands clutching his gun. The pumpkin face of a stupid child. A chinless coward. It was a face of weakness. Not German.

  “Jurgen,” he hissed. “I brought you into the revolution. I taught you. Do you not feel like a traitor?”

  “I am sorry, Comrade Wurger.”

  Wurger closed his eyes. His mind went back; as it had many times in the two days since Sawchuk’s arrival here, to the events of Berlin. How had von Hertz found Sawchuk before the PLO assassination team had got to him? Von Hertz, who had been like a father. Has he bought Sawchuk, sent him here to replace me? It was a puzzle that refused to fall into place. It caused his brain to spin. Conspiracies behind conspiracies, wheels whirling through the void. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.

  “You have been deceived, Jurgen. You have all been deceived.”

  “I believe we are doing the right thing now,” Jurgen said, his voice small and worried. “I was not sure before Comrade Sawchuk spoke to us.” He stood eight feet from Wurger. He saw pain crease his former leader’s face. “Are you not well?”

  Wurger looked up at him with reddened eyes, stark. He pushed his fingers against his temples, digging there as if trying to reach into the cortex, the pain centre.

  Where had he taken her? In what room above was he overpowering her, pouring his foulness into her? He looked up, over the playground wall, and saw Committee members assembling near the garden pool for their nightly meeting. What were they without Karl Wurger? He had been their heart, their mind. He had been the revolution.

  His eyes travelled up the glassed front wall of the palace tower. His eyes saw the frightened, staring faces at the windows, the American arms dealers, the feudal royalty of the Saudi kingdom. But they did not seem important now. Nothing was important but preserving his mind and proving his will and strength.

  Now his eyes went to the penthouse balcony of the bedroom of Aziz. And there he saw her. His Käthe, illuminated by the low sun.

  He remembered the first time they had met, at an exclusive party of West Berlin’s radical chic, before the university lecturer had submerged and joined the Röte Armee Faktion. His eyes had followed hers as she drifted from group to group. There had been a crackle of energy, like lightning. Later, when she had taken him to her bed, she had said: “I knew we would come together. I knew it when I looked into your eyes. It was as if a current had connected us.”

  Now he made out the tall form of a man up there. And he saw her hands undoing the buttons of her shirt. And he saw the shirt fall from her shoulders, baring her breasts. He saw her turn toward the man.

  Wurger snapped.

  He saw a horned beast on top of her, saw the beast expelling vapours of potency, conquering her, thrusting at her, thrusting at her, filling her with poison seed, mixed, impure.

  He began to swing, pulling forward, back, in increasing arcs. His headache was gone. In his insanity, he was free of it.

  He looked at Jurgen, looked at that slack-jawed, chinless distortion of a human being, too misshapen in mind and spirit for the race of great leaders that Wurger had been destined to create.

  “You are nothing,” Wurger shrilled at him.

  Jurgen looked at the crazy eyes, ran a tongue over his dry lips.

  “You are refuse. The refuse of history.” Wurger swung higher, catching his heels on the dirt, pumping the swing. “You will not be remembered, because you are nothing, a piece of shit. You do not know, do you? He is up there, spinning his webs for General von Hertz. But I have will.”

  “Who is up there?” Jurgen felt a chill. The sun had disappeared from them, but reflected off the mountains and off the tower. He looked up.

  Wurger flew off the swing as if launched. Coming down, he caught Jurgen in the neck with the heel of his boot in a hard karate snap from the knee. Wurger rolled as he fell. His mind was full of chaos. Jurgen was woozily scrambling for the gun which he had dropped, but before he could get to it, Wurger pounced like a leopard, bringing the cutting edge of his hands down on the back of Jurgen’s neck, snapping it. Jurgen screamed and grunted and died.

  Hearing the noise, the guard outside the gate rushed in and met Wurger racing toward him. He did not have the chance to level his submachine gun before Wurger was upon him, fearless in his insanity. He smashed the guard back with hammer blows, throwing him against the playground wall, beating him until his face was a pulp and Wurger’s fists were scored and raw.

  Yes, Wurger exulted to himself, it is good. It gives strength. Death is the true orgasm.

  He picked up the submachine gun.

  When I kill him, it will all stop. All this turning and whirling will stop.

  He crouched and ran from the gate, up the terraced incline toward the palace, toward the great stairway that led to the elevator — and the detonator.

  42

  The Palace

  Sawchuk had remained for a few minutes at the balcony door, letting settle the silt of his roiling emotions.

  Then he saw Wurger attack the playground guards.

  Now he saw him racing toward the stairs, toward the detonator, firing wild bursts with his submachine gun.

  His mind for a few seconds seemed sluggish as if he were trying to work himself out of a harsh dream.

  Sawchuk ran to the door, grabbing the gun from his belt.

  * * *

  The twelve members of the Central Committee were gathered at the poolside around a transistor radio, listening as the world was to the story — distorted by the capitalist media — of the heroes of Mecca. They felt righteous and they felt important. They waited for the news that would tell them they had succeeded in turning history in new directions.

  The great financial institutions of the world were racing to meet the deadline of noon tomorrow. The banks of the world and their richest customers were dancing to the Rotkommando’s blood music. And, best of all, they were saviours now, not scum, heroic men and women for whom many leaders of the Third World were offering careful praise. And they had their own hero — Sawchuk.

  None of them was near the railing, so none saw Wurger running toward the palace stairs. And when the gunfire began, they were stunned into immobility.

  It was only when Wurger had neared the top of the stairs that anyone moved, and then the twelve men and women were suddenly like a hive of hornets, pulling guns, racing toward the elevator. And they saw the three young comrades stationed by the detonator being raked with a line of fire from Wurger’s submachine gun. Then Wurger emerged in front of them, firing with gritted teeth and crazed eyes, and they were diving to the tile as bullets spit past them.

  Cuyfer, from the ground, got off a shot with his automatic pistol as Wurger dove, somersaulted, fired wildly. Cuyfer’s bullet slashed into Wurger’s stomach, but didn’t stop his headlong rush to the detonator, and suddenly he was there, on top of it, and everyone held fire for fear of setting it off.

  They looked at Wurger and he at them, with a cocked smile, blazing eyes.

  He had turned the power switch on and they could see that he had moved the timer button to the three-second mark on the dial, and was holding it.

  Three seconds to eternity.

  Käthe Zahre, gun in hand, had raced down the spiral staircase of the tower. She stepped out on the ground-floor landing and stopped. She saw him there, his submachine gun on the floor beside him, one hand clutching his stomach from which an ooze of blood came, one hand on the timer button.

  He was smiling, hurt but possessed of power.

  Her gun was pointing at him but she dared not fire.

  “If I let the timer go,” Wurger said, “we all pass into hell.” She saw in his face insanity’s cruel mask. She felt nauseated, fought to control the tremors running through her body.

  Rotkommando soldiers were hurrying toward the stairway.

  “Get back!” Wurger shouted.

  And they saw him at the detonator, and slowly they began to inch away. Some of the Committee members also began to sidle toward the stairway, their eyes fixed on Wurger and his deadly machine.

  “Stop!” he screamed. “No one leaves!”

  They stopped. All but Grubbler, who seemed stunned, in shock, uncomprehending, and taking uncertain steps toward the stairs.

  “You will stay!”

  Another step.

  “He has clouded your mind, do you not see? Because you are weak! He has seized control of your mind!” A pause. Still addressing Grubbler, menacing, low: “There is coward’s blood in your veins.”

  Now, slowly, Wurger removed his left hand from the wound in his stomach, and he picked up the submachine gun, and cradled it under his arm, his finger on the trigger. His right hand was still on the timer button.

  “Those who run — they are weak. The weak fall. The strong conquer.”

  Now Grubbler panicked, turned, bolted for the stairs.

  Wurger’s gun thundered.

  Grubbler’s thin body lurched forward and sailed like an ungainly bird toward the stairway, bounced down several steps, and lay there limp and lifeless.

  And then there was a deep and penetrating silence.

  Below, in the courtyard, the soldiers began to drift away to the inner edges of the walls, as far from the tower as they could get.

  Zahre spoke softly in German. “Karl, it is I, Käthe.”

  He turned to her. She was six feet from him, at the bottom step of the spiral staircase. She was still pointing her gun at him.

  “I know you.” He barked a laugh. “Do you think I don’t know you?” He shouted the words.

  Zahre began now to move slowly toward him, tried to hold him with her gaze. Her smile was a stony, glacial smile, false, learned in modelling school. “We will go away together, Karl, just you and I. Yes?”

  “No.” The word was uncertain, almost a question.

  “It will be as it used to be. Do you remember?”

  He said nothing for a moment. He looked away from her, then quickly back. “He has sent you,” he said in a cautious voice. “He has spewed his poison into you, then sent you to me.”

  She kept her eyes on him: dark and potent and eloquent. “Could you not see that I was only pretending with him?” A soft laugh. “I am yours, Karl. Look into my eyes, and you will know. You are hurt — let me care for you. See? I don’t want this thing.” She stooped slowly, keeping her eyes on him, and laid her pistol on the tiles. Then she straightened and took three slow steps toward him.

  “No,” he said. But again the tone was unsure, questioning.

  “I love you, Karl,” she said.

  Something human and real came into his face as she leaned closer to him. “Did you tell him everything?” he whispered. “Did you tell him how I could not satisfy you? Did you tell him how I cried in front of you?” His face was white and bloodless.

  “I told him only that I loved you.”

  Now her hand went toward him as if to stroke an unruly blond lock from his forehead.

  Then her fingers darted down to the on-off switch, but with a lightning snap — with the hand that had been holding the timer button — he grasped her wrist.

  “Karl!” she screamed. He jammed a finger onto the needle of the dial and it stopped at the one-second mark. “Treachery!” he screeched.

  One shove, one push, one stumble, one second: if Wurger released his finger the palace would blow up. Zahre’s hand was crushed by his against the steel surface of the detonator box, and her fingers were flattened there, inches from the power switch.

  “Treachery!” He dropped the submachine gun and with his free hand grabbed her by the hair, snapping her head back hard. “Whore of the revolution! Cunt! Filthy sewer of a cunt!”

  The Committee members were bathed in a fearful silence, motionless like the impassive busts of the Saudi kings that guarded the hallways.

  Zahre saw Cuyfer inching his gun in Wurger’s direction. “Don’t shoot, for God’s sake,” she cried.

  Wurger looked down sadly at his abdomen. The wound was not sealing and the wash of blood across his shirt front was spreading. He looked as if he was weakening but he seemed strong as a demon — her hand was numb with the force he exerted upon it.

 

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