chess pieces with that hand. The surgeon wanted to repair it. He was advised not to.”
“I sense this is not going in a good direction.” The highway of possibilities was bumper to bumper from this point on.
“Then go ahead and ask. Or would you rather not know?”
“Why didn’t they want his hand fixed?”
“Because they wanted him to burn with anger. Every time he lifted a chess piece, they wanted the anger to burn hotter. Eventually, during a chess game one afternoon, they casually mentioned the idea of getting even. I think he had just knocked over his queen and two or three pawns with his claw.”
I didn’t like one bit the detail Jenö was bringing to bear on this little tale. He hadn’t just read it in a file. This was the sort of detail you got from talking to someone who had been there, or being there yourself.
“We could do something about that, they said. How so, your friend asked. A little assistance, they said. Not much. Nothing extraordinary. ‘You can fix my hand?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they said. They didn’t want it fixed. They wanted him to carry it around as a reminder. ‘But we can give you information now and again. Steer you in the right direction. Much more satisfying than a couple of new fingers. You know, an eye for an eye. Think about it,’ they told him.”
Jenö paused. I thought about it. Involuntarily, my hand went up to my eyes. I might as well ask. “How do you know all this?”
“The surgeon was a strange creature—a Pakistani Jew from Karachi. He was a student of my father, who was a surgeon in the Royal Marines before he went to Israel.”
“Does anyone drive a taxi in this tale?” Of course they did.
Jenö shrugged. “Sohn took your colleague back. It had been Sohn’s operation, and Sohn felt guilty.”
“Sohn.” I put a hand out to break my fall. “Sohn’s operation.” Suspicion is a leap into the unknown; you can fly away on suspicions. Confirmation is the fall to earth.
“You never saw your chief?”
“No. We weren’t supposed to.” I never saw my chief, the man who put us into an operation that had “hurry up” written all over it, the operation that was hung with “only chance” bunting from the walls.
“Well, Sohn, your old chief, took him back, used him as he needed. Kept him overseas mostly, edged him into the special squad when it was time. His job? You’ll never guess his job.”
But I already had guessed, a split second before.
“To watch and protect you.”
“Funny, I thought he wanted to kill me.” I laughed, one of those painful laughs that slips over the wall and gives everything away. “Can you believe it?” It would have been nice to sit down somewhere at this point, away from Jenö, away from everyone. It didn’t have to be a warm place, or a place full of light. It just had to be quiet, solitary. I could feel pieces falling into place; they’d all been there, just waiting to fall into place. They’d been waiting for me to put them on leashes and take them for a nice walk. Very patient, the pieces; even when they are staring you in the face.
“Why would he want to do that? Mun didn’t blame you. He blamed whoever it was that had sabotaged the operation.” If this was supposed to be comforting, it wasn’t. I wished Jenö would just shut up. More pieces right now I didn’t need. I was on overload. Too bad, I knew what was next.
Jenö smiled. “Ready for this?”
“No.”
“When he put you into the investigation of that woman in Pakistan, Sohn knew you would need protection. But he knew you wouldn’t accept it. So he gave you an enemy. You felt guilty as soon as you saw Mun; that’s all Sohn needed to get you back on board.”
So. Sohn had set it all up. He’d kept it right at the edge of where I would figure things out. He’d even told me a story about his connection with the woman who died in Pakistan. I still didn’t know what happened to her. I would never know, wasn’t supposed to; more than that, it never mattered, not really. From the beginning, I’d chased that very idea up and down the lists of possibilities—maybe whoever had put us on the investigation of the woman didn’t give a damn about what happened to her. Sohn was smart. He was also a son of a bitch.