Like a Dog in the Street
Lawrence Block

The capture of the man called Anselmo amounted to the gathering together of innumerable threads, many of them wispy and frail. For almost two years the terrorist had been the target of massive manhunt operations launched by not one but over a dozen nations. The one valid photograph of him, its focus blurred and indistinct, had been reproduced and broadcast throughout the world; his features—the jagged and irregular yellow teeth, the too-small upturned nose, the underslung jaw, the bushy eyebrows grown together into a single thick, dark line—were as familiar to the general public as they were to counterintelligence professionals and Interpol agents.
	Bit by bit, little by little, the threads began to link up. In a cafe in a working-class neighborhood in Milan, two men sat sipping espresso laced with anisette. They spoke of an interregional soccer match, and of the possibility of work stoppage by the truck dispatchers. Then their voices dropped, and one spoke quickly and quietly of Anselmo while the other took careful note of every word.
	In a suburb of Asuncion, a portly gentleman wearing the uniform of a brigadier general in the Paraguayan army shared the front seat of a four-year-old Chevrolet Impala with a slender young man wearing the uniform of a chauffeur. The general talked while the chauffeur listened. While Anselmo was not mentioned by name, he was the subject of the conversation. At its conclusion the chauffeur gave the general an envelope containing currency in the amount of two thousand German marks. Three hours later the chauffeur—who was not a chauffeur—was on a plane for Mexico City. The following afternoon the general—who was not really a general—was dead of what the attending physician diagnosed as a massive myocardial infarction.
	In Paris, in the Ninth Arrondissement, three security officers, one of them French, entered an apartment which had been under surveillance for several weeks. It proved to be empty. Surveillance was continued but no one returned to the apartment during the course of the following month. A thoroughgoing analysis of various papers and detritus found in the apartment was relayed in due course to authorities in London and Tel Aviv.
	In West Berlin, a man and woman, both in their twenties, both blond and fair-skinned and blue-eyed and looking enough alike to be brother and sister, made the acquaintance of a dark-haired and full-bodied young woman at a cabaret called Justine's. The three shared a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, then repaired to a small apartment on the Bergenstrasse where they shared several marijuana cigarettes, half a bottle of Almspach brandy and a bed. The blond couple did certain things which the dark-haired young woman found quite painful, but she gave every appearance of enjoying the activity. Later, when she appeared to be asleep, the blond man and woman talked at some length. The dark-haired young woman, who was in fact awake throughout this conversation, was still awake later on when the other two lay sprawled beside her, snoring lustily. She dressed and left quickly, pausing only long enough to slit their throats with a kitchen knife. Her flight to Beirut landed shortly before two in the afternoon, and within an hour after that she was talking with a middle-aged Armenian gentleman in the back room of a travel agency.
	Bits and pieces. Threads, frail threads, coming together to form a net...
	And throughout it all the man called Anselmo remained as active as ever. A Pan Am flight bound for Belgrade blew up in the air over Austria. A telephone call claiming credit for the deed on behalf of the Popular Front for Croatian Autonomy was logged at the airline's New York offices scant minutes before an explosion shredded the jetliner.
	A week earlier, rumors had begun drifting around that Anselmo was working with the Croats.
	In Jerusalem, less than a quarter of a mile from the Wailing Wall, four gunmen burst into a Sephardic synagogue during morning services. They shot and killed twenty-eight members of the congregation before they themselves were rooted out and shot down by police officers. The dead gunmen proved to be members of a leftist movement aimed at securing the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States. But why should Puerto Rican extremists be mounting a terrorist operation against Israel?
	The common denominator was Anselmo.
	An embassy in Washington. A police barracks in Strabane, in Northern Ireland. A labor union in Buenos Aires.
	Anselmo.
	Assassinations. The Spanish ambassador to Sweden shot down in the streets of Stockholm. The sister-in-law of the premier of Iraq. The Research and Development head of a multinational oil company. A British journalist. An Indonesian general. An African head of state.
	Anselmo.
	Hijacking and kidnapping. Ransom demands. Outrages.
	Anselmo. Always Anselmo.
	Of course it was not always his hand on the trigger. When the Puerto Rican gunmen shot up the Jerusalem synagogue, Anselmo was playing solitaire in a dimly lit basement room in Pretoria. When a firebomb roasted the Iraqi premier's sister-in-law, Anselmo was flashing a savage yellow smile in Bolivia. It was not Anselmo's hand that forced a dagger between the ribs of General Suprandoro in Jakarta; the hand belonged to a nubile young lady from Thailand, but it was Anselmo who had given her her instructions, Anselmo who had decreed that Suprandoro must die and who had staged and scripted his death.
	Bits and pieces. A couple of words scrawled on the back of an envelope. A scrap of conversation overheard. Bits, pieces, scraps. Threads, if you will.
	Threads braided together can make strong rope. Strands of interwoven rope comprise a net.
	When the net dropped around Anselmo, Nahum Grodin held its ends in his knobby hands.

	It was early summer. For three days a dry wind had been blowing relentlessly. The town of Al-dhareesh, a small Arab settlement on the West Bank of the Jordan, yielded to the wind as to a conquering army. The women tended their cooking fires. Men sat at small tables in their courtyards sipping cups of sweet black coffee. The yellow dogs that ran through the narrow streets seemed to stay more in the shadows than was their custom, scurrying from doorway to doorway, keeping their distance from passing humans.
	"Even the dogs feel it," Nahum Grodin said. His Hebrew bore Russian and Polish overtones. "Look at them. The way they slink around."
	"The wind," Gershon Meir said.
	"Anselmo."
	"The wind," Meir insisted. A sabra, he had the unromantic outlook of the native-born. He was Grodin's immediate subordinate in the counter-terror division of Shin Bet, and the older man knew there was no difference in the keenness both felt at the prospect of springing a trap upon Anselmo. But Grodin felt it all in the air while Meir felt nothing but the dry wind off the desert.
	"The same wind blows over the whole country," Grodin said. "And yet it's different here. The way those damned yellow dogs stay in the shadows."
	"You make too much of the Arabs' mongrel dogs."
	"And their children?"
	"What children?"
	"Aha!" Grodin extended a forefinger. "The dogs keep to the shadows. The children stay in their huts and avoid the streets altogether. Don't tell me, my friend, that the wind is enough to keep children from their play."
	"So the townspeople know he's here. They shelter him. That's nothing new."
	"A few know he's here. The ones planning the raid across the Jordan, perhaps a handful of others. The rest are like the dogs and the children. They sense something in the air."
	Gershon Meir looked at his superior officer. He considered the set of his jaw, the reined excitement that glinted in his pale blue eyes. "Something in the air," he said.
	"Yes. You feel something yourself, Gershon. Admit it."
	"I feel too damned much caffeine in my blood. That last cup of coffee was a mistake."
	"You feel more than caffeine."
	Meir shrugged but said nothing.
	"He's here, Gershon."
	"Yes, I think he is. But we have been so close to him so many times—"
	"This time we have him."
	"When he's behind bars, that's when I'll say we have him."
	"Or when he's dead."
	Again the younger man looked at Grodin, a sharp look this time. Grodin's right hand, knuckles swollen with arthritis, rested on the butt of his holstered machine pistol.
	"Or when he's dead," Gershon Meir agreed.

	Whether it was merely the wind or something special in the air, the man called Anselmo felt it, too. He set down his little cup of coffee—it was sweeter than he liked it—and worried his chin with the tips of his fingers. With no apparent concern he studied the five men in the room with him. They were local Arabs ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-eight. Anselmo had met one of them before in Beirut and knew two of the others by reputation. The remaining two were unequivocally guaranteed by their comrades. Anselmo did not specifically trust them—he had never in his life placed full trust in another human being—but neither did he specifically distrust them. They were village Arabs, politically unsophisticated and mentally uncomplicated, desperate young men who would perform any act and undertake any risk. Anselmo had known and used just that sort of man throughout the world. He could not have functioned without such men.
	Something in the air ...
	He went to a window, inched the burlap curtain aside with the edge of his palm. He saw nothing remarkable, yet a special perception more reliable than eyesight told him the town was swarming with Israelis. He did not have to see them to be certain of their presence.
	He turned, considered his five companions. They were to cross the river that night. By dawn they would have established their position. A school bus loaded with between fifty and sixty retarded children would slow down before making a left turn at the corner where Anselmo and his men would be posted. It would be child's play—he bared his teeth in a smile at the phrase—child's play to shoot the tires out of the bus. In a matter of minutes all of the Jewish children and their driver would be dead at the side of the road. In a few more minutes Anselmo and the Arabs would have scattered and made good their escape.
	A perfect act of terror, mindless, meaningless, unquestionably dramatic. The Jews would retaliate, of course, and of course their retaliation would find the wrong target, and the situation would deteriorate. And in the overall scheme of things—
	But was there an overall scheme of things? At times, most often late at night just before his mind slipped over the edge into sleep, then Anselmo could see the outline of some sort of master plan, some way in which all the component parts of terror which he juggled moved together to make a new world. The image of the plan hovered at such times right at the perimeter of his inner vision, trembling at the edge of thought. He could almost see it, as one can almost see God in a haze of opium.
	The rest of the time he saw no master plan and had no need to search for one. The existential act of terror, theatrical as thunder, seemed to him to be a perfectly satisfactory end in itself. Let the children bleed at the roadside. Let the plane explode overhead. Let the rifle crack.
	Let the world take note.
	He turned once more to the window but left the curtain in place, merely testing the texture of the burlap with his fingertips. Out there in the darkness. Troops, police officers. Should he wait in the shadows for them to pass? No, he decided quickly. The village was small and they could search it house by house with little difficulty. He could pass as an Arab— he was garbed as one now—but if he was the man they were looking for they would know him when they saw him.
	He could send these five out, sacrifice them to suicidal combat while he made good his own escape. It would be a small sacrifice. They were unimportant, expendable; he was Anselmo. But if the Jews had encircled the town a diversion would have little effect.
	He snapped his head back, thrust his chin forward. A sudden gesture. Time was his enemy, only drawing the net tighter around him. The longer he delayed, the greater his vulnerability. Better a bad decision than no decision at all.
	"Wait here for me," he told his men, his Arabic low and guttural. "I would see how the wind blows."
	He began to open the door, disturbing the rest of a scrawny long-muzzled dog. The animal whined softly and took itself off to the side. Anselmo slipped through the open door and let it close behind him.
	The moon overhead was just past fullness. There were no clouds to block it. The dry wind had blown them all away days ago. Anselmo reached through his loose clothing, touched the Walther automatic on his hip, the long-bladed hunting knife in a sheath strapped to his thigh, the smaller knife fastened with tape to the inside of his left forearm. Around his waist an oilcloth money belt rested next to his skin. It held four passports in as many names and a few thousand dollars in the currencies of half a dozen countries. Anselmo could travel readily, crossing borders as another man would cross the street. If only he could first get out of Al-dhareesh.
	He moved quickly and sinuously, keeping to the shadows, letting his eyes and ears perform a quick reconnaissance before moving onward. Twice he spotted armed uniformed men and withdrew before he was seen, changing direction, scurrying through a yard and down an alleyway.
	They were everywhere.
	Just as he caught sight of still another Israeli patrol on a street corner, gunfire broke out a few hundred yards to his left. There was a ragged volley of pistol fire answered by several bursts from what he identified as an Uzi machine pistol. Then silence.
	His five men, he thought. Caught in the house or on the street in front of it, and if he'd stayed there he'd have been caught with them. From the sound of it, they hadn't made much trouble. His lip curled and a spot of red danced in his forebrain. He only hoped the five had been shot dead so that they couldn't inform the Jews of his own presence.
	As if they had to. As if the bastards didn't already know ...
	A three-man patrol turned into the street a dozen houses to Anselmo's left. One of the men kicked at the earth as he walked and the dust billowed around his feet in the moonlight. Anselmo cursed the men and the moonlight and circled around the side of a house and slipped away from the men.
	But there was no way out. All the streets were blocked. Once Anselmo drew his Walther and took deliberate aim at a pair of uniformed men. They were within easy range and his finger trembled on the trigger. It would be so nice to kill them, but where was the profit in it? Their companions would be on him in an instant.
	If you teach a rat to solve mazes, presenting it over a period of months with mazes of increasing difficulty and finally placing it in a maze which is truly unsolvable, the rat will do a curious thing. He will scurry about in an attempt to solve the maze, becoming increasingly inefficient in his efforts, and ultimately he will sit down in a corner and devour his own feet.
	There was no way out of Al-dhareesh and the Israelis were closing in, searching the village house by house, moving ever nearer to Anselmo, cutting down his space. He tucked himself into a corner where a four-foot wall of sun-baked earth butted against the wall of a house. He sat on his haunches and pressed himself into the shadows.
	Footsteps—
	A dog scampered along close to the wall, found Anselmo, whimpered. The same dog he'd disturbed on leaving the house? Not likely, he thought. The town was full of these craven whining beasts. This one poked its nose into Anselmo's side and whimpered again. The sound was one the terrorist did not care for. He laid a hand on the back of the dog's skull, gentling it. The whimpering continued at a slightly lower pitch. With his free hand, Anselmo drew the hunting knife from the sheath on his thigh. While he went on rubbing the back of the dog's head he found the spot between the ribs. The animal had almost ceased to whimper when he sent the blade home, finding the heart directly, making the kill in silence. He wiped the blade in the dog's fur and returned it to its sheath.
	A calm descended with the death of the dog. Anselmo licked a finger, held it overhead. Had the wind ceased to blow? It seemed to him that it had. He took a deep breath, released it slowly, got to his feet.
	He walked not in the shadows but down the precise middle of the narrow street. When the two men stepped into view ahead of him he did not turn aside or bolt for cover. His hand quivered, itching to reach for the Walther, but the calm which had come upon him enabled him to master this urge.
	He threw his hands high overhead. In reasonably good Hebrew he sang out, "I am your prisoner!" And he drew his lips back, exposing his bad teeth in a terrible grin.
	Both men trained their guns on him. He had faced guns innumerable times in the past and did not find them intimidating. But one of the men held his Uzi as if he was about to fire it. Moonlight glinted on the gun barrel. Anselmo, still grinning, waited for a burst of fire and an explosion in his chest. It never came.

	The two men sat in folding chairs and watched their prisoner through a one-way mirror. His cell was as small and bare as the room from which they watched him. He sat on a narrow iron bedstead and stroked his chin with the tips of his fingers. Now and then his gaze passed over the mirror.
	"You'd swear he can see us," Gershon Meir said.
	"He knows we're here."
	"I suppose he must. The devil's cool, isn't he? Do you think he'll talk?"
	Nahum Grodin shook his head.
	"He could tell us a great deal."
	"He'll never tell us a thing. Why should he? The man's comfortable. He was comfortable dressed as an Arab and now he's as comfortable dressed as a prisoner."
	Anselmo had been disarmed, of course, and relieved of his loose-fitting Arab clothing. Now he wore the standard clothing issued to prisoners— trousers and a short-sleeved shirt of gray denim, cloth slippers. The trousers were of course beltless and the slippers had no laces.
	Grodin said, "He could be made to talk. No, nahr, I don't mean torture. You watch too many films. Pentothal, if they'd let me use it. Although I suspect his resistance is high. He has such enormous confidence."
	"The way he smiled when he surrendered to us."
	"Yes."
	"For a moment I thought—"
	"Yes?"
	"That you were going to shoot him, Nahum."
	"I very nearly did."
	"You suspected a trap? I suppose—"
	"No." Grodin interlaced his fingers, cracked his knuckles. Several of the joints throbbed slightly. "No," he said, "I knew it was no trick. The man is a pragmatist. He knew he was trapped. He surrendered to save his skin."
	"And you thought to shoot him anyway?"
	"I should have done it, Gershon. I should have shot him. Something made me hesitate. And you know the saying. He who hesitates and so forth, and I hesitated and was lost. I was not lost but the opportunity was. I should have shot him at once. Without hesitating, without thinking, without anything but an ounce of pressure on the trigger and a few punctuation marks for the night."
	Gershon studied the man they were discussing. He had removed one of the slippers and was picking at his feet. Gershon wanted to look away but watched, fascinated. "You want him dead," he said.
	"Of course."
	"We're a progressive nation. We don't put them to death anymore. Life imprisonment's supposed to be punishment enough. You don't agree?"
	"No."
	"You like the eye-for-eye stuff, huh?"
	'"And you shall return eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning.' It's not a terrible idea, you know. I would not be so quick to dismiss it out of hand."
	"Revenge."
	"Or retribution, more accurately. You can't have revenge, my friend. Not in this sort of case. The man's crimes are too enormous for his own personal death to balance them out. But that is not why I wish I'd killed him."
	"Then I don't understand."
	Nahum Grodin aimed a forefinger at the glass. "Look," he said. "What do you see?"
	"A piggish lout picking his feet."
	"You see a prisoner."
	"Of course. I don't understand what you're getting at, Nahum."
	"You think you see a prisoner. But he is not our prisoner, Gershon."
	"Oh?"
	"We are his prisoners."
	"I do not follow that at all."
	"No?" The older man massaged the knuckle of his right index finger. It was that finger, he thought, which had hesitated upon the trigger of the Uzi. And now it throbbed and ached. Arthritis? Or the punishment it deserved for its hesitation?
	"Nahum—"
	"We are at his mercy," Grodin said crisply. "He's our captive. His comrades will try to bring about his release. As long as he is our prisoner he is a sword pointed at our throats."
	"That's farfetched."
	"Do you really think so?" Nahum Grodin sighed. "I wish we were not so civilized as to have abolished capital punishment. And at this particular moment I wish we were a police state and this vermin could be officially described as having been shot while attempting to escape. We could take him outside right now, you and I, and he could attempt to escape."
	Gershon shuddered. "We could not do that."
	"No," Grodin agreed. "No, we could not do that. But I could have gunned him down when I had the chance. Did you ever see a mad dog? When I was a boy in Lublin, Gershon, I saw one running wild. They don't really foam at the mouth, you know. But I seem to remember that dog having a foamy mouth. And a policeman shot him down. I remember that he held his pistol in both hands, held it out in front of him with both arms fully extended. Do you suppose I actually saw the beast shot down or that the memory is in part composed of what I was told? I could swear I actually saw the act. I can see it now in my mind, the policeman with his legs braced and his two arms held out in front of him. And the dog charging. I wonder if that incident might have had anything to do with this profession I seem to have chosen."
	"Do you think it did?"
	"I'll leave that to the psychiatrists to decide." Grodin smiled, then let the smile fade. "I should have shot this one down like a dog in the street," he said. "When I had the chance."
	"How is he dangerous in a cell?"
	"And how long will he remain in that cell?" Grodin sighed. "He is a leader. He has a leader's magnetism. The world is full of lunatics to whom this man is special. They'll demand his release. They'll hijack a plane, kidnap a politician, hold schoolchildren for ransom."
	"We have never paid ransom."
	"No."
	"They've made such demands before. We've never released a terrorist in response to extortion."
	"Not yet we haven't."
	Both men fell silent. On the other side of the one-way mirror, the man called Anselmo had ceased picking his toes. Now he stripped to his underwear and seated himself on the bare tiled floor of his cell. His fingers interlaced behind his head, he began doing sit-ups. Muscles worked in his flat abdomen and his thin corded thighs as he raised and lowered the upper portion of his body. He exercised rhythmically, pausing after each series of five sit-ups, then springing to his feet after he had completed six such series. Having done so, he paused deliberately to flash his teeth at the one-way mirror.
	"Look at that," Gershon Meir said. "Like an animal."
	Nahum Grodin's right forefinger resumed aching.

	Grodin was right, of course. Revolutionaries throughout the world had very strong reasons for wishing to see Anselmo released from his cell. In various corners of the globe, desperate men plotted desperate acts to achieve this end.
	The first attempts were not successful. Less than a week after Anselmo was taken, four men and two women stormed a building in Geneva where high-level international disarmament talks were being conducted. Two of the men were shot, one fatally. One of the women had her arm broken in a struggle with a guard. The rest were captured. In the course of interrogation, Swiss authorities determined that the exercise had had as its object the release of Anselmo. The two women and one of the men were West German anarchists. The other three men, including the one who was shot dead, were Basque separatists.
	A matter of days after this incident, guerrillas in Uruguay stopped a limousine carrying the Israeli ambassador to a reception in the heart of Montevideo. Security police were following the ambassador's limousine at the time, and the gun battle which ensued claimed the lives of all seven guerrillas, three security policemen, the ambassador, his chauffeur and four presumably innocent bystanders. While the purpose of the attempted kidnapping was impossible to determine, persistent rumors linked the action to Anselmo.
	Within the week, Eritrean revolutionaries succeeded in skyjacking an El Al 747 en route from New York to Tel Aviv. The jet with 144 passengers and crew members was diverted to the capital of an African nation where it overshot the runway, crashed and was consumed in flames. A handful of passengers survived. The remaining passengers, along with all crew members and the eight or ten Eritreans, were all killed.
	Palestinians seized another plane, this one an Air France jetliner. The plane was landed successfully in Libya and demands presented which called for the release of Anselmo and a dozen or so other terrorists then held by the Israelis. The demands were rejected out of hand. After several deadlines had come and gone, the terrorists began executing hostages, ultimately blowing up the plane with the remaining hostages aboard. According to some reports, the terrorists were taken into custody by Libyan authorities; according to other reports they were given token reprimands and released.
	After the affair in Libya, both sides felt they had managed to establish something. The Israelis felt they had proved conclusively that they would not be blackmailed. The loosely knit group who aimed to free Anselmo felt just as strongly that they had demonstrated their resolve to free him—no matter what risks they were forced to run, no matter how many lives, their own or others, they had to sacrifice.
	"If there were two Henry Clays," said the bearer of that name after a bitterly disappointing loss of the presidency, "then one of them would make the other president of the United States of America."
	It is unlikely that Anselmo knew the story. He cared nothing for the past, read nothing but current newspapers. But as he exercised in his cell his thoughts often echoed those of Henry Clay.
	If there were only two Anselmos, one could surely spring the other from this cursed jail.

	But it didn't require a second Anselmo, as it turned out. All it took was a nuclear bomb.
	The bomb itself was stolen from a NATO installation forty miles from Antwerp. A theft of this sort is perhaps the most difficult way of obtaining such a weapon. Nuclear technology is such that anyone with a good grounding in college-level science can put together a rudimentary atomic bomb in his own basement workshop, given access to the essential elements. Security precautions being what they are, it is worlds easier to steal the component parts of a bomb than the assembled bomb itself. But in this case it was necessary not merely to have a bomb but to let the world know that one had a bomb. Hence the theft via a daring and dramatic dead-of-night raid. While media publicity was kept to a minimum, people whose job it was to know such things knew overnight that a bomb had been stolen, and that the thieves had in all likelihood been members of the Peridot Gang.
	The Peridot Gang was based in Paris, although its membership was international in nature. The gang was organized to practice terrorism in the Anselmo mode. Its politics were of the left, but very little ideology lay beneath the commitment to extremist activism. Security personnel throughout Europe and the Middle East shuddered at the thought of a nuclear device in the hands of the Peridots. Clearly they had not stolen the bomb for the sheer fun of it. Clearly they intended to make use of it, and clearly they were capable of almost any outrage.
	Removing the bomb from the Belgian NATO installation had been reasonably difficult. In comparison, disassembling it and smuggling it into the United States, then transporting it into New York City and reassembling it and finally installing it in the interfaith meditation chamber of the United Nations—all of that was simplicity itself.
	Once the meditation chamber had been secured, a Peridot emissary presented a full complement of demands. Several of these had to do with guaranteeing the eventual safety of gang members at the time of their withdrawal from the chamber, the UN building and New York itself. Another, directed at the General Assembly of the United Nations, called for changes in international policy toward insurgent movements and revolutionary organizations. Various individual member nations were called upon to liberate specific political prisoners, including several dozen persons belonging to or allied with the Peridot organization. Specifically, the government of Israel was instructed to grant liberty to the man called Anselmo.
	Any attempt to seize the bomb would be met by its detonation. Any effort to evacuate the United Nations building or New York itself would similarly prompt the Peridots to set the bomb off. If all demands were not met within ten days of their publication, the bomb would go off.
	Authorities differed in their estimates of the bomb's lethal range. But the lowest estimate of probable deaths was in excess of one million.
	Throughout the world, those governments blackmailed by the Peridots faced up to reality. One after the other they made arrangements to do what they could not avoid doing. Whatever their avowed policy toward extortion, however great their reluctance to liberate terrorists, they could not avoid recognizing a fairly simple fact: they had no choice.

	Anselmo could not resist a smile when the two men came into the room. How nice, he thought, that it was these two who came to him. They had captured him in the first place, they had attempted to interrogate him time and time again and now they were on hand to make arrangements for his release. It seemed to him that there was something fitting in all of this.
	"Well," he said. "I guess I won't be with you much longer, eh?"
	"Not much longer," the older man said.
	"When do you release me?"
	"The day after tomorrow. In the morning. You are to be turned over to Palestinians at the Syrian border. A private jet will fly you to one of the North African countries, either Algeria or Libya. I don't have the details. I don't believe they have been finalized as yet."
	"It hardly matters."
	The younger of the Israelis, dark-eyed and olive-skinned, cleared his throat. "You won't want to leave here in prison clothes," he said. "We can give you what you wore when you were captured or you may have western dress. It's your choice."
	"You are very accommodating," Anselmo told him.
	The man's face colored. "The choice is yours."
	"It's of no importance to me."
	"Then you'll walk out as you walked in."
	"It doesn't matter what I wear." He touched his gray denim clothing. "Just so it's not this." And he favored them with a smile again.
	The older man unclasped a small black bag, drew out a hypodermic needle. Anselmo raised his eyebrows. "Pentothal," the man said.
	"You could have used it before."
	"It was against policy."
	"And has your policy changed?"
	"Obviously."
	"A great deal has changed," the younger man added. "A package bill passed the Knesset last evening. There was a special session called for the purpose. The death penalty has been restored."
	"Ah."
	"For certain crimes only. Crimes of political terrorism. Any terrorists captured alive will be brought to trial within three days after capture. If convicted, sentence will be carried out within twenty-four hours after it has been pronounced."
	"Was there much opposition to this bill?"
	"There was considerable debate. But when it came to a vote the margin was overwhelming for passage."
	Anselmo considered this in the abstract. "It seems to me that it is an intelligent bill," he said at length. "I inspired it, eh?"
	"You might say that."
	"So you will avoid this sort of situation in the future. But of course there is a loss all the same. No doubt that explains the debate. You will not look good to the rest of the world, executing prisoners so quickly after capture. There will be talk of kangaroo courts, star chamber hearings, that sort of thing." He flashed his teeth. "But what choice did you have? None."
	"There's another change that did not require legislation," the older man said. "An unofficial change of policy for troops and police officers. We will have slower reflexes when it comes to noticing that a man is attempting to surrender."
	Anselmo laughed aloud at the phrasing. "Slower reflexes! You mean you will shoot first and ask questions later."
	"Something along those lines."
	"Also an intelligent policy. I shall make my own plans accordingly. But I don't think it will do you very much good, you know."
	The man shrugged. The hypodermic needle looked small in his big gnarled hand. "The pentothal," he said. "Will it be necessary to restrain you? Or will you cooperate?"
	"Why should I require restraint? We are both professionals, after all. I'll cooperate."
	"That simplifies things."
	Anselmo extended his arm. The younger man took him by the wrist while the other one readied the needle. "This won't do you any good either," Anselmo said conversationally. "I've had pentothal before. It's not effective on me."
	"We'll have to establish that for ourselves."
	"As you will."
	"At least you'll get a pleasant nap out of it."
	"I never have trouble sleeping," Anselmo said. "I sleep like a baby."
	He didn't fight the drug but went with the flow as it circulated in his bloodstream. His consciousness went off to the side somewhere. There was orchestral music interwoven with a thunderstorm. The bolts of lightning, vivid against an indigo background, were extraordinarily beautiful.
	Then he was awake, aware of his surroundings, aware that the two men were speaking but unable to make sense of their conversation. When full acuity returned he gave no sign of it at first, hoping to overhear something of importance, but their conversation held nothing of interest to him. After a few minutes he stirred himself and opened his eyes.
	"Well?" he demanded. "Did I tell you any vital secrets?"
	The older one shook his head.
	"I told you as much."
	"So you did. You'll forgive our not taking your word, I hope."
	Anselmo laughed aloud. "You have humor, old one. It's almost a pity we're enemies. Tell me your name."
	"What does it matter?"
	"It doesn't."
	"Nahum Grodin."
	Anselmo repeated the name aloud. "When you captured me," he said. "In that filthy Arab town."
	"Al-dhareesh."
	"Al-dhareesh. Yes. When I surrendered, you know, I thought for a long moment that you were going to gun me down. That wind that blew endlessly, and the moon glinting off your pistol and something in the air. Something in the way you were standing. I thought you were going to shoot me."
	"I very nearly did."
	"Yes, so I thought." Anselmo laughed suddenly. "And now you must wish that you did, eh? Hesitation, that's what kills men, Grodin. Better the wrong choice than no choice at all. You should have shot me."
	"Yes."
	"Next time you'll know better, Grodin."
	"Next time?"
	"Oh, there will be a next time for us, old one. And next time you won't hesitate to fire, but then next time I'll know better than to surrender. Eh?"
	"I almost shot you."
	"I sensed it."
	"Like a dog."
	"A dog?" Anselmo thought of the dogs in the Arab town, the one he'd disturbed when he opened the door, the whining one he'd killed. His hand remembered the feel of the animal's skull and the brief tremor that passed through the beast when the long knife went home. It was difficult now to recall just why he had knifed the dog. He supposed he must have done it to prevent the animal's whimpering from drawing attention, but was that really the reason? The act itself had been so reflexive that one could scarcely determine its motive. As if it mattered.

	Outside, the sunlight was blinding. Gershon Meir took a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on. Nahum Grodin squinted against the light. He never wore sunglasses and didn't mind the glare. And the sun warmed his bones, eased the ache in his joints.
	"The day after tomorrow," Gershon Meir said. "I'll be glad to see the last of him."
	"Will you?"
	"Yes. I hate having to release him but sometimes I think I hate speaking with him even more."
	"I know what you mean."
	They walked through the streets in a comfortable silence. After a few blocks the younger man said, "I had the oddest feeling earlier. Just for a moment."
	"Oh?"
	"When you gave him the pentothal. For an instant I was afraid you were going to kill him."
	"With pentothal?"
	"I thought you might inject an air bubble into a vein. Anything along those lines. It would have been easy enough."
	"Perhaps. I don't know that I'd be able to find a vein that easily, actually. I'm hardly a doctor. A subcutaneous injection of pentothal, that's within my capabilities, but I might not be so good at squirting air into a vein. But do you think for a moment I'd be mad enough to kill him?"
	"It was a feeling, not a thought."
	"I'd delight in killing him," Grodin said. "But I'd hate to wipe out New York in the process."
	"They might not detonate the bomb just for Anselmo. They want to get the other prisoners out, and they want their other demands. If you told them Anselmo had died a natural death they might swallow it and pretend to believe it."
	"You think we should call their bluff that way?"
	"No. They're lunatics. Who knows what they might do?"
	"Exactly," Grodin said.
	"It was just a feeling, that's all."
	And a little further on: "Nahum? It's a curious thing. When you and Anselmo talk I might as well not be in the room."
	"I don't take your meaning, Gershon."
	"There's a current that runs between the two of you. I feel utterly excluded from the company. The two of you, you seem to understand each other."
	"That's interesting. You think I understand Anselmo? I don't begin to understand him. You know, I didn't expect to gain any real information from him while he was under the pentothal. But I did hope to get some insight into what motivated the man. And he gave me nothing. He likes to see blood spill, he likes loud noises. You know what Bakunin said?"
	"I don't even know who Bakunin was. A Russian?"
	"A Russian. 'The urge to destroy is a creative urge,' that's what he said. Perhaps the context in which he said it mitigates the line somewhat. I wouldn't know. Anselmo is an embodiment of that philosophy. He only wishes to destroy. No. Gershon, I do not understand him."
	"But there is a sympathy between the two of you. I'm not putting it well, I know, but there is something."
	Grodin did not reply immediately. Finally he said, "The man says we'll meet again. He's wrong."

	Yet they might have met again on the day that Anselmo was released. Grodin and his assistant were on hand. They watched from a distance while the terrorist was escorted from his cell to an armored car for transport to the Syrian lines, and Grodin had been assigned to oversee security procedures lest some zealot shoot Anselmo down as he emerged from the prison. They followed the armored car in a vehicle of their own, Meir driving, Grodin at his side. The ceremony at the Syrian border, by means of which custody of Anselmo was transferred from his Israeli guards to a group of Palestinian commandos, was indescribably tense; nevertheless it was concluded without a hitch.
	Just before he entered the waiting car, Anselmo turned for a last look across the border. His eyes darted around as if seeking a specific target. Then he thrust out his jaw and drew back his lips, baring his jagged teeth in a final hideous smile. He gave his head a toss and ducked down into the car. The door swung shut. Moments later the car sped toward Damascus.
	"Quite a performance," Gershon Meir said.
	"He's an actor. Everything is performance for him. His whole life is theater."
	"He was looking for you."
	"I think not."
	"He was looking for someone. For whom else would he look?"
	Grodin gave his head an impatient shake. His assistant looked as though he would have liked to continue the conversation, but recognized the gesture and let it drop.
	On the long drive back Nahum Grodin leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. It seemed to him that he dreamed without quite losing consciousness. After perhaps half an hour he opened his blue eyes and straightened up in his seat.
	"Where is he now?" he wondered aloud. "Damascus? Or is his plane already in the air?"
	"I'd guess he's still on the ground."
	"No matter. How do you feel, Gershon? Letting such a one out of our hands ? Forget revenge. Think of the ability he has to work with disparate groups of lunatics. He takes partisans of one mad cause and puts them to work on behalf of another equally insane movement. He coordinates the actions of extremists who have nothing else in common. And his touch is like nobody else's. This latest devilment at the United Nations—it is almost impossible to believe that someone other than Anselmo planned it. In fact I would not be surprised to learn that he had hatched the concept some time ago to be held at the ready in the event that he should ever be captured."
	"I wonder if that could be true."
	"It's not impossible, is it? And we had to let him go."
	"We'll never have to do that again."
	"No," Grodin agreed. "One good thing's come of this. The new law is not perfect, God knows. Instant trials and speedy hangings are not what democracies ought to aspire to. But it is comforting to know that we will not be in this position again. Gershon?"
	"Yes?"
	"Stop the car, please. Pull off on the shoulder."
	"Is something wrong?"
	"No. But there is something I've decided to tell you. Good, and turn off the engine. We'll be here a few moments." Grodin squeezed his eyes shut, put his hand to his forehead. Without opening his eyes he said, "Anselmo said he and I would meet again. I told you the other day that he was wrong."
	"I remember."
	"He'll never return to Israel, you see. He'll meet his friends, if one calls such people friends, and he'll go wherever he has it in mind to go. And in two weeks or a month or possibly as much as two months he will experience a certain amount of nervousness. He may be mentally depressed, he may grow anxious and irritable. It's quite possible that he'll pay no attention to these signs because they may not be very much out of the ordinary. His life is disorganized, chaotic, enervating, so this state I've discussed may be no departure from the normal course of things."
	"I don't understand, Nahum."
	"Then after a day or so these symptoms will be more pronounced," Grodin went on. "He may run a fever. His appetite will wane. He'll grow quite nervous. He may talk a great deal, might even become something of a chatterbox. You recall that he said he sleeps like a baby. Well, he may experience insomnia.
	"Then after a couple of days things will take a turn for the worse." Grodin took a pinseal billfold from his pocket, drew out an unfolded sheet of paper. "Here's a description from a medical encyclopedia. "The agitation of the sufferer now becomes greatly increased and the countenance now exhibits anxiety and terror. There is marked embarrassment of the breathing, but the most striking and terrible features of this stage are the effects produced by attempts to swallow fluids. The patient suffers from thirst and desires eagerly to drink, but on making the effort is seized with a violent suffocative paroxysm which continues for several seconds and is succeeded by a feeling of intense alarm and distress. Indeed the very thought of drinking suffices to bring on a choking paroxysm, as does also the sound of running water.
	"The patient is extremely sensitive to any kind of external impression— a bright light, a loud noise, a breath of cool air—anything of this sort may bring on a seizure. There also occur general convulsions and occasionally a condition of tetanic spasm. These various paroxysms increase in frequency and severity with the advance of the disease."
	"Disease?" Gershon Meir frowned. "I don't understand, Nahum. What disease? What are you driving at?"
	Grodin went on reading. '"The individual experiences alternate intervals of comparative quiet in which there is intense anxiety and more or less constant difficulty in respiration accompanied by a peculiar sonorous exhalation which has suggested the notion that the patient barks like a dog. In many instances—'"
	"A dog!"
	'"In many instances there are intermittent fits of maniacal excitement. During all this stage of the disease the patient is tormented with a viscid secretion accumulating in his mouth. From dread of swallowing this he constantly spits about himself. He may also make snapping movements of the jaws as if attempting to bite. These are actually a manifestation of the spasmodic action which affects the muscles in general. There is no great amount of fever, but the patient will be constipated, his flow of urine will be diminished and he will often feel sexual excitement.
	'"After two or three days of suffering of the most terrible description the patient succumbs, with death taking place either in a paroxysm of choking or from exhaustion. The duration of the disease from the first declaration of symptoms is generally from three to five days.'"
	Grodin refolded the paper, returned it to his wallet. "Rabies," he said quietly. "Hydrophobia. Its incubation period is less than a week in dogs and other lower mammals. In humans it generally takes a month to erupt. It works faster in small children, I understand. And if the bite is in the head or neck the incubation period is speeded up."
	"Can't it be cured? I thought—"
	"The Pasteur shots. A series of about a dozen painful injections. I believe the vaccine is introduced by a needle into the stomach. And there are other less arduous methods of vaccination if the particular strain of rabies virus can be determined. But they have to be employed immediately. Once the incubation period is complete, once the symptoms manifest themselves, then death is inevitable."
	"God."
	"By the time Anselmo has the slightest idea what's wrong with him—""
	"It will be too late."
	"Exactly," Grodin said.
	"When you gave him the pentothal—"
	"Yes. There was more than pentothal in the needle."
	"I sensed something."
	"So you said."
	"But I never would have guessed—"
	"No. Of course not."
	Gershon Meir shuddered. "When he realizes what you did to him and how you did it—"
	"Then what?" Grodin spread his hands. "Could he be more utterly our enemy than he is already? And I honestly don't think he'll guess how he was tricked. He'll most likely suppose he was exposed to rabies from an animal source. I understand you can get it from inhaling the vapors of the dung of rabid bats. Perhaps he'll hide out in a bat-infested cave and blame the bats for his illness. But it doesn't matter, Gershon. Let him know what I did to him. I almost hope he guesses, for all the good it will do him."
	"God."
	"I just wanted to tell you," Grodin said, his voice calmer now. "There's poetry to it, don't you think? He's walking around now like a time bomb. He could get the Pasteur shots and save himself, but he doesn't know that, and by the time he does—"
	"God."
	"Start the car, eh? We'd better be getting back." And the older man straightened up in his seat and rubbed the throbbing knuckles of his right hand. They ached, but all the same he was smiling.

From "The Collected Mystery Stories"
(scanned/proofed – M)