Текст книги "Eagle in the Sky"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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He was still being extremely dignified and aloof that evening when they

discovered a discotheque named2ooi A.  D.  run by a couple of English

boys down on the sea-front.  They crowded round a table at which there

were already two B.  E.  A.  hostesses and a couple of raggedy-looking

beards.  The music was loud enough and the rhythm hard enough to jar the

spine and loosen the bowels and when the two hostesses gazed at David

with almost religious awe Debra forsook her attitude of cool amusement

and suggested to David that they dance.

Mollified by this little feminine by-play, David dropped his

impersonation of the Ice King.

They moved well together, sharing the gut rhythms of the harsh music,

executing the primeval movements that reeked of Africa with a grace that

drew the attention of the other dancers.

When the music changed Debra came to him and lay her body against his.

David felt some force flowing from her that seemed to charge every nerve

of his body, and he knew that no relationship he had with this woman

would ever run calmly.  It was too deeply felt for that, too volatile

and triggered for momentary explosion.

When the record ended they left Joe and Hannah huddled over a carafe of

red wine and they went out into the silent street and down to the beach.

There was a moon in the sky that lit the dark cliffs crowding in above

the beach, and reflected off the sea in multiple yellow images.  The low

surf hissed and coughed on the pebble beach and they took off their

shoes and walked along it, letting the water wash around their ankles.

In an angle of the cliff, they found a hidden place amongst the rocks

and they stopped to kiss again, and David mistakenly took her new soft

mood as an invitation to continue from where he had left off that

afternoon.

Debra pulled away again, but this time with determination and said

angrily, Damn you!  Don't you ever learn?  I don't want to do that.  Do

we have to go through this every time we are alone?

, 'What's the matter?  David was immediately stung by her tone, and

furious with this fresh check.  This is the twentieth century, darling.

The simpering virgin is out of style this season, hadn't you heard?  ,

And spoilt little boys should grow up before they come out on their own,

she flashed back at him.

Thanks!  he snarled.  I don't have to stay around taking insults from

any professional virgin.  Well, why don't you move out then?  she

challenged him.

Hey, that's a great idea!  He turned his back on her and walked away up

the beach.  She had not expected that, and she started to run after him,

but her pride checked her.  She stopped and leaned against the rock.

He shouldn't have rushed me, she thought miserably.

I want him, I want him very much, but he will be the first since Dudu.

If he will just give me time it will be all right, but he mustn't rush

me.  If he could only go at my speed, help me to do it right.

It is funny, she thought, how little I remember about Dudu now.  It's

only three years, but his memory is fading so swiftly, I wonder if I

really did love him.  Even his face is hazy in my mind, while I know

every detail of David's, every plane and line of it.

Perhaps I should go after him and tell him about Dudu, and ask him to be

patient and to help me a little.

Perhaps I should do that, she thought, but she did not and slowly she

walked up the beach, through the silent town to the hotel.

Hannah's bed across the room was empty.  She would be with Joe, lying

with him, loving with him, I should be with David also, she thought.

Dudu was dead, and I'm alive, and I want David and I should be with him

but she undressed slowly and climbed into the bed and lay without

sleeping.

David stood in the doorway of 2001 A.  D.  and peered through the

weirdly flashing lights and the smog, the warm palpable emanation from a

hundred straining bodies.  The B.  E.  A.  hostesses were still at the

table, but Joe and Hannah had gone.

David made his way through the dancers.  The one hostess was tall and

blonde, with high English colour and china-doll eyes.  She looked up and

saw David, glanced around for Debra, made sure she was missing before

she smiled.

They danced one cut of the record without touching each other and then

David leaned close to her and placed both hands on her hips.  She

strained towards him with her lips parting.

Have you got a room?  he asked, and she nodded, running the tip of her

tongue lewdly around her lips.

Let's go, said David.

It was light when David got back to his own room.

He shaved and packed his ha& surprised at the strength of his residual

anger.  He lugged his bag down to the proprietor's office and paid his

bill with his Diners Club card.

Debra came out of the breakfast room with Joe and Hannah.  They were all

dressed for the beach with Terry robes over their bathing gear, and they

were gay and laughing, until they saw David.

Hey!  Joe challenged him.  Where are you going?

I've had enough of Spain, David told them.  I'm taking some good advice,

and I'm moving -out, and he felt a flare of savage triumph as he saw the

quick shadow of pain in Debra's eyes.  Both Joe and Hannah glanced at

her, and quickly she controlled the quiver of her lips.

She smiled then, a little too brightly and stepped forward, holding out

her hand.

Thank you for all your help, David.  I'm sorry you have to go.  It was

fun.  Then her voice dropped slightly and there was a tiny quiver in it.

I hope you find what you are looking for.  Good luck.  She turned

quickly and hurried away to her room.

Hannah's expression was steely, and she gave David a curt nod before

following Debra.  So long, Joe.  'I'll carry your bag.

Don't bother, David tried to stop him.

No trouble.  Joe took it out of his hand and carried it out to the

Mustang.  He dumped it on the rear seat.

I'll ride up to the top of the hills with you and walk back.  He climbed

into the passenger seat and settled comfortably.  I need the exercise.

David drove swiftly, and they were silent as Joe deliberately lit a

cigarette and flicked the match out the window.

I don't know what went wrong, Davey, but I can guess.

David didn't reply, he concentrated on the road.

She's had a bad time.  These last few days she has been different.

Happy, I guess, and I thought it was going to work out.

Still David was silent, not giving him any help.  Why didn't the big

bonehead mind his own business.

She's a pretty special sort of person, Davey, not because she's my

sister.  She really is, and I think you should know about her, just so

you don't think too badly about her.  They had reached the top of the

hills above the town and the bay.  David pulled on to the verge but kept

the engine running.  He looked down on the brilliant blue of the sea,

where it met the cliffs and the pine-covered headlands.

She was going to be married, said Joe softly.  He was a nice guy, older

than she was, they worked together at the University.  He was a tank

driver in the reserve and he took a hit in the Sinai and burned with his

tank David turned and looked at him, his expression softening a little.

She took it badly Joe went on doggedly.  These last few days were the

first time I've seen her truly happy and relaxed.  He shrugged and

grinned like a big St. Bernard dog.  Sorry to give you the family

history, Davey.  just thought it might help.  He held out a huge brown

hand.  Come and see us.  It's your country also, you know.  I'd like to

show it to you.

David took the hand.  I might do that, he said.  Shalom.  Shalom, Joe.

Good luck.  Joe climbed out of the car and when David pulled away he

watched him standing on the side of the road with his hands on his hips.

He waved and the first bend in the road hid him.

There was a school for aspiring Formula I racing drivers on a neglected

concrete circuit near Ostia, on the road from Rome.  The course lasted

three weeks and cost $500 U.  S.

David stayed at the Excelsior in the Via Veneto, and commuted each day

to the track.  He completed the full course, but after the first week

knew it was not what he wanted.  The physical limitation of the track

was constricting after flying the high heavens, and even the crackling

snarling power of a Tyrell Ford could not match the thrust from the

engine of a jet interceptor.

Although he lacked the dedication and motivation of others in his class

his natural talent for speed and his coordination brought him out high

in the finishing order and he had an offer to drive on the works team of

a new and struggling company that was building and fielding a production

team of Formula racing machines.  Of course, the salary was starvation,

and it was a measure of his desperation that he came close to signing a

contract for the season, but at the last moment he changed his mind and

went on.

In Athens he spent a week hanging around the yacht basins of Piraeus and

Glyfada.  He was investigating the prospects of buying a motor yacht and

running it out on charter to the islands.  The prospect of sun and sea

and pretty girls seemed appealing and the craft themselves were

beautiful in their snowy paint and varnished teakwork.  In one week he

learned that charter work was merely running a sea-going boarding house

for a bunch of bored, sunburned and seasick tourists.

On the seventh day the American Sixth Fleet dropped anchor in the bay of

Athens.  David sat at a table of one of the beach-front cafes and drank

ouzo in the sun, while he studied the anchored aircraft carriers through

his binoculars.  On the great flat tops the rows of Crusaders and

Phantoms were grouped with their wings folded.

Watching them he felt a consuming hunger, a need that was almost

spiritual.  He had searched the earth, it seemed, and there was nothing

for him upon its face.

He laid the binoculars aside, and he looked up into the sky.  The clouds

were high, a brilliant silver against the blue.

He picked up the glass of milky ouzo that the sun had warmed and rolled

its sweet liquorice taste about his tongue.

East, west, home is best.

He spoke aloud, and had a mental image of Paul Morgan sitting in his

high office of glass and steel.  Like a patient fisherman he tended his

lines laid across the world.  Right now the one to Athens was beginning

to twitch.  He could imagine the quiet satisfaction as he began to reel

it in, drawing David struggling feebly back to the centre.  What the

hell, I could still fly Impalas as a reserve officer, he thought, and

there was always the Lear, if he could get it away from Barney.

David drained the glass and stood up abruptly, feeling the fading glow

of his defiance.  He flagged a cab and was driven back to his room at

the Grande Bretagne on Syndagma Square.

His defiance was dying so swiftly that one of his companions for dinner

that night was John Dinopoulos, Morgan Group's agent for Greece, a slim

elegant sophisticate with an unlined sun-tanned face, silver wings in

his hair and an elegantly casual way of dressing.

John had selected for David's table companion the female star of a

number of Italian spaghetti westerns.  A young lady of ample bosom and

dark flashing eye whose breathing and bosom had become so agitated when

John introduced David as a diamond millionaire from Africa.

Diamonds were the most glamorous, although not the most significant of

Morgan Group's interests.

They sat upon the terrace of Dionysius, for the evening was mild.  The

restaurant was carved into the living rock of the hill-top of

Lycabettus, under the church of St. Paul.

Down the zigzag path from the church, the Easter procession of

worshippers unwound in a flickering stream of candle flames through the

pine forest below them, and the singing carried sweetly on the still

night air.  On its far hill-top the stately columns of the Acropolis

were flood-lit so that they glowed as creamily as ancient ivory, and

beyond that again on the midnight waters of the bay the American fleet

wore gay garlands of fairy lights.

The glory that was Greece murmured the star of Italian westerns, as

though she voiced the wisdom of the ages, and placed one heavily

jewelled hand on David's thigh while with the other she raised a glass

of red Samos wine to him and cast him a look under thick eyelashes that

was fraught with significance.

Her restraint was impressive, and it was only after they had eaten the

main course of savoury meats wrapped in vine leaves and swimming in

creamy lemon sauce that she suggested that David might like to finance

her next movie.

Let's find some place where we can talk about it she murmured, and what

better place than her suite?

John Dinopoulos waved them away with a grin and a knowing wink, a

gesture that annoyed David for it made him see the whole episode for the

emptiness that it was.

The star's suite was pretentious, with thick white carpets and bulky

black leather furniture.  David poured himself a drink while she went to

change into clothing more suitable for a discussion of high finance.

David tasted the drink, realized that he did not want it and left it on

the bar counter.

The star came out of the bedroom in a bedrobe of white satin which was

cut back from arm and bosom, and was so sheer that her flesh gleamed

with a pearly pink sheen through the material.  Her hair was loose, a

great wild mane of swirling curls, and suddenly David was sick of the

whole business.

I'm sorry, he said.  John was joking, I'm not a millionaire, and I

really prefer boys.

He heard his untouched glass shatter against the door of the suite as he

closed it behind him.

Back at his own hotel he ordered coffee from room service, and then on

an impulse he picked up the telephone again and placed a Cape Town call.

It came through with surprising speed, and the girl's voice on the other

end was thickened with sleep.  Mitzi, he laughed.  How's the girl?

'Where are you, warrior?  Are you home?  'I'm in Athens, doll. 'Athens,

God!  How's the action?  'It's a drag.  Yeah!  I bet, she scoffed.  The

Greek girls are never going to be the same again.  'How are you, Mitzi?

I'm in love, Davey.

I mean really in love, it's far out.

We are going to be married.  Isn't that just something else?  David felt

a spur of anger, jealous of the happiness in her voice.  That's great,

doll.  Do I know him?  Cecil Lawley, you know him.  He's one of Daddy's

accountants.  David recalled a large, pale-faced, bespectacled man with

a serious manner.

Congratulations, said David.  He felt very much alone again.  Far from

home, and aware that life there flowed on without his presence.

You want to talk to him?  Mitzi asked.  I'll wake him up There was a

murmur and mutter on the other end, then Cecil came on.

Nice work, David told him, and it really was.  Mitzi's share of Morgan

Group would be considerably larger than David's.  Cecil had drilled

himself an oil well in a most unconventional manner.

Thanks, Davey.  Cecil's embarrassment at being caught tending his oil

well carried clearly over five thousand miles of telephone cable.

Listen, lover.  You do anything to hurt that girl, I'll personally tear

out your liver and stuff it down your throat, okay?

Okay, said Cecil, and his alarm was brittle in his tone.  I'll put you

back to Mitzi.

She prattled on for another fifty dollars worth before hanging up. David

lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and thought about his

dumpy soft-hearted cousin and her new happiness.  Then quite suddenly he

made the decision which had been lurking at the edge of his

consciousness all these weeks since leaving Spain.

He picked up the phone again and asked for the porter's desk.

I'm sorry to trouble you at this time in the morning, he said, but I

should like to get on a flight to Israel as soon as possible, will you

please arrange that.

The sky was filled with a soft golden haze that came off the desert. The

gigantic T.  W.  A.  747 came down through it, and David had a glimpse

of dark green citrus orchards before the solid jolt of the touch-down.

Lad was like any other airport in the world but beyond its doors was a

land like no other he had ever known.  The crowd who fought him for a

seat in one of the big black sheruts, communal taxis plastered with

stickers and hung with gewgaws, made even the Italians seem shining

towers of restrained good manners.

Once aboard, however, it was as though they were on a family outing, and

he a member of that family.  on one side of him a paratrooper in beret

and blouse with his winged insignia on the breast and an Uzzi

submachine-gun slung about his neck offered him a cigarette, on the

other a big strapping lass also in khaki uniform and with the dark

gazelle eyes of an Israeli, which became even darker and more soulful

when she looked at David, which was often, shared a sandwich of unleaven

bread and balls of fried chick-peas, the ubiquitous pita and falafel,

with him and practised her English upon him.

All the occupants of the front seat turned around to join the

conversation, and this included the driver who nevertheless did not

allow his speed to diminish in the slightest and who punctuated his

remarks with fierce blasts of his horn and cries of outrage at

pedestrians and other drivers.

The perfume of orange blossom lay as heavily as sea mist upon the

coastal lowlands, and always afterwards it would be for David the smell

of Israel.

Then they climbed into the Judaean hills, and David felt a sense of

nostalgia as they followed the winding highway through pine forests and

across the pale shining slopes where the white stone gleamed like bone

in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in

graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six

thousand years of man's patient labour.

It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and

well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home.  There were

flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and

bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes, then suddenly a pang

that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of

chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the

crested head of an African hoopoe, a bird which was a symbol of home.

He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and

undirected as yet but growing, as he drew closer to the woman he had

come to see, and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.

There was, at last, a sense of belonging.  He felt in sympathy with the

young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.

See, cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of

war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks

and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on

the road to Jerusalem.  There was fighting here.  David turned in the

seat to study her face, and he saw again the strength and certainty that

he had so admired in Debra.  These were a people who lived each day to

its limit, and only at its close did they consider the next.

Will there be more fighting?  he asked.

Yes, she answered him without hesitation.

Why?

Because, if it is good, you must fight for it, and she made a wide

gesture that seemed to embrace the land and all its people, and this is

ours, and it is good, she said.

Right on, doll, David agreed with her, and they grinned at each other.

So they came to Jerusalem with its tall, severe apartment blocks of

custard-yellow stone, standing like monuments upon the hills, grouped

about the massive walled citadel that was its heart.

T.  W.  A.  had reserved a room at the Intercontinental Hotel for David

while on board the inward flight.  From his window he looked across the

garden of Gethsemane at the old city, at its turrets and spires and the

blazing golden Dome of the Rock, centre of Christianity and Judaism,

holy place of the Moslems, battleground of two A thousand years, ancient

land reborn, and David felt a sense of awe.  For the first time in his

life, he recognized and examined that portion of himself that was

Jewish, and he thought it was right that he should have come to this

city.

Perhaps, he said aloud, it's just possible that this is where it's all

at.

It was early evening when David paid off the cab in the car park of the

University and submitted to a perfunctory search by a guard at the main

gate.  Here body search was a routine that would soon become so familiar

as to pass unnoticed.  He was surprised to find the campus almost

deserted, until he remembered it was Friday and that the whole tempo was

slowing for the Sabbath.

The red-bud trees were in full bloom around the main plaza and the

ornamental pool, as David crossed to the admin block and asked for her

at the inquiries desk where the porter was on the point of leaving his

post.

Miss Mordecai, the porter checked his list.  Yes.

English Department.  On the second floor of the Lauterman building.  He

pointed out through the glass doors.  Third building on your right.  Go

right on in.  Debra was in a students tutorial, and while he waited for

her, he found a seat on the terrace in the warmth of the sun.  It was as

well, for suddenly he felt a breath of uncertainty cooling his spine.

For the first time since leaving Athens, he wondered if he had much

cause to expect a hearty welcome from Debra Mordecai.  Even at this

remove in time, David had difficulty in judging his own behaviour

towards her.  Self-criticism was an art which David had never seriously

practised; with a face and fortune such as his, it was seldom necessary.

In this time of waiting he found it novel and uncomfortable to admit

that it was just possible that his behaviour may have been, as Debra had

told him, that of a spoiled child.

He was still exploring this thought, when a burst of voices and the

clatter of heels upon the flags distracted him and a group of students

came out on to the terrace, hugging their books to their chests, and

most of the girls glanced at him with quick speculative attention as

they passed.

There was a pause then before Debra came.  She carried books under her

arm and a sling bag over one shoulder, and her hair was pulled back

severely at the nape of her neck; she wore no make-up, but her skirt was

brightly coloured in big summery whorls of orange.

Her legs were bare and her feet were thrust into leather sandals.  She

was in deep conversation with the two students who flanked her, and she

did not see David until he stood up from the parapet.  Then she froze

into that special stillness he had first noticed in the cantina at

Zaragoza.

David was surprised to find how awkward he felt, as though his feet and

hands had grown a dozen sizes.  He grinned and made a shrugging,

self-deprecatory gesture.

Hello, Debs.  His voice sounded gruff in his own ears, and Debra stirred

and made a panicky attempt to brush back the wisps of hair at her

temples, but the books hampered her.

David, She started towards him, a pace before she hesitated and stopped,

glancing at her students.  Then sensed her confusion and melted, and she

swung back at him.

David, she repeated, and then her expression crumbled into utter

desolation.  Oh God, and I haven't even a shred of lipstick on.  David

laughed with relief and went towards her, spreading his arms, and she

flew at him and it was all confusion with books and sling bag muddled,

and Debra making breathless exclamations of frustration before she could

divest herself of them.  Then at last they embraced.

David, she murmured with both arms wound tightly around his neck.  You

beast, what on earth took you so long?  I had almost given you up. Debra

had a motor scooter which she drove with such murderous abandon that she

frightened even the Jerusalem taxi-drivers who crossed her path, men

with a reputation for steel nerves and disregard for danger.

Perched on the pillion David clung to her waist and remonstrated with

her gently as she overtook a solid line of traffic and then cut smartly

across a stream coming in the opposite direction with her exhaust

popping merrily.  I'm happy, she explained over her shoulder.  Fine!

Then let's live to enjoy it.  "Joe will be surprised to see you.  Jr we

ever get there.  'What's happened to your nerve?  'I've just this minute

lost it.  She went down the twisting road into the valley of Em Karem,

as though she was driving a Mirage, and called a travelogue back to him

as she went.

That's the Monastery of Mary's Well where she met the mother of John the

Baptist, according to the Christian tradition in which you are a

professed expert.  Hold the history, pleaded David.

There's a bus around that bend.

The village was timeless amongst the olive trees, dug into the slope

with its churches and monasteries and high-walled gardens, an oasis of

the picturesque, while the skyline above it was cluttered with the

high-rise apartments of modern Jerusalem.

From the main street Debra scooted into the mouth of a narrow lane,

where high walls of time-worn stone rose on each hand, and braked to a

halt outside a forbidding iron gate.

Home, she said, and wheeled the scooter into the gatehouse and locked it

away before letting them in through a side gate hidden in a corner of

the wall.

They came out into a large garden court enclosed by the high rough

plastered walls which were lime-washed to glaring white.  There were

olive trees growing in the court with thick twisted trunks.  Vines

climbed the walls and spread their boughs overhead; already there were

bunches of green grapes forming upon them.

The Brig is a crazy keen amateur archaeologist, Debra indicated the

Roman and Greek statues that stood amongst the olive trees, the exhibits

of pottery arnphorae arranged around the walls, and the ancient mosaic

tiles which paved the pathway to the house, It's strictly against the

law, of course, but he spends all his spare time digging around in the

old sites.  The kitchen was cavernous with an enormous open fireplace in

which a modern electric stove looked out of place, but the copper pots

were burnished until they glowed and the tiled floor was polished and

sweet smelling.

Debra's mother was a tall slim woman with a quiet manner, who looked

like Debra's older sister.  The family resemblance was striking and, as

she greeted them, David thought with pleasure that this was how Debra

would look at the same age.  Debra introduced them and announced that

David was a guest for dinner, a fact of which he had been unaware until

that moment.

Please, he protested quickly, I don't want to intrude.  He knew that

Friday was a special night in the Jewish home.

You don't intrude.  We will be honoured, she brushed aside his protest.

This house is home for most of the boys on Joe's squadron, we enjoy it.

Debra fetched David a Goldstar beer and they were sitting on the terrace

together when her father arrived.

He came in through the wicket gate, stooping his tall frame under the

stone lintel and taking off his uniform cap as he entered the garden.

He wore uniform casually cut, and open at the throat with cloth insignia

or rank and wings at the breast pocket.  He was slightly

round-shouldered, probably from cramming his lanky body into the cramped

cockpits of fighter aircraft, and his head was brown and bald with a

monk's fringe of hair and a fierce spiky mustache through which a gold

tooth gleamed richly.  His nose was big and hooked, the nose of a

biblical warrior, and his eyes were dark and snapping with the same

golden lights as Debra's.  He was a man of such presence that he

commanded David's instant respect.  He stood to shake the General's hand

and called him sir completely naturally.

The Brig subjected David to a rapid, raking scrutiny and reserved his

judgement, showing neither pleasure nor disdain.

Later David would learn that the nickname The Brig was a shortened

version of The Brigand, a name the British had given him before 1948

when he was smuggling warplanes and arms into Palestine for the Haganah.

Everyone, even his children called him that and only his wife used his

given name, Joshua.

David is sharing the Sabbath meal with us tonight, Debra explained to

him.

You are welcome, said the Brig, and turned to embrace his women with

love and laughter, for he had seen neither of them since the previous

Sabbath, his duties keeping him at air bases and control rooms scattered

widely across the land.

When Joe arrived, he was also in uniform, the casual open-necked khaki

of summer, and when he saw David he dropped his slow manner and hurried

to him, laughin& and enfolded him in a bear hug, speaking over his

shoulder to Debra.

Was I right?

Joe said you would come, Debra explained.

It looks like I was the only one who didn't know, David protested.

There were fifteen at dinner, and the candlelight gleamed on the

polished wood of the huge refectory table and the silver Sabbeth

goblets.  The Brig said a short prayer, the satin and gold embroidered

yamulka looking slightly out of place on his wicked bald head, then he

filled the wine goblets with his own hand murmuring a greeting to each

of his guests.  Hannah was with Joe, her copper hair glowing handsomely

in the candlelight, and she greeted David with reserve.  There were two

of the Brig's brothers with their wives and children and grandchildren,

and the talk was loud and confusing as the children vied with their

elders for a hearing and the language changed at random from Hebrew to

English.

The food was exotic and spicy, although the wine was too sweet for

David's taste.  He was content to sit quietly beside Debra and enjoy the

sense of belonging to this happy group.  He was startled then when one

of Debra's cousins leaned across her to speak to him.

This must be very confusing for you, your first day in such an unusual

country as Israel, and not understanding Hebrew, you not being Jewish

The words were not meant unkindly, but all conversation stopped abruptly

and the Brig looked up, frowning swiftly, quick to sense an unkindness

to guest at his board.

David was aware of Debra staring at him intently, as if to will words

from him, and suddenly he thought how three denials finalized any issue,