City of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

Eva slept.
    He wondered if the man had died. Asher never said, and there was no one he could ask.
    In the morning as he was leaving, she thanked him for the pendant, as if to apologize for last night. From then on she wore it—to placate him, he thought—taking it off only for appointments, confusing him further. Instead of reassuring him, seeing her fish it from her purse and fasten it in the backseat as they curled down the drive of the Semiramis or the Mediterranean or the King David Hotel made him picture her naked intheir bright, vacuumed rooms, and he gripped the steering wheel and fixed his eyes on the road.
    At least he had money. He finished the arak and bought himself a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Now when he couldn’t sleep, instead of his keys he reached for a glass. It was safer to stay home, with the extra patrols. In Cairo the bands played all night, the dial a warm orange glow in the dark.
Kiss me once, and kiss me twice, and kiss me once again
. Sick with pride, he stood at his cold window, looking out over the rocky graveyard and the black mass of the Church of the Dormition blotting out the Zion Gate and wondered if she was alone. Not once had she been to his room. In the small hours, the phone in the downstairs hall rang and rang. He listened for Mrs. Ohanesian to answer it, hoping it was her.
    Days he still drove her. She didn’t have to ask for him anymore. Greta the dispatcher knew. It was a joke around the garage. Brand the lady-killer. Brand the pimp.
    Slovenly at home, Eva had a whole wardrobe of smart clothes for dates, picking through them with a critical eye as if choosing the right costume for a role. In public she wore an arsenal of hats with a netted veil that didn’t quite hide her scar, a tease. In the backseat she opened her compact, lifted the veil and touched up her lipstick, drawing on a smile. The pendant rode her breastbone, the gold chain taut against her skin.
    â€œHow do I look?” she asked.
    Expensive, Brand wanted to say. Cheap. Heartless.
    â€œYou look beautiful.”
    â€œYou always say that.”
    â€œBecause it’s true.”
    â€œIt can’t always be true.”
    â€œYes it can,” Brand said.
    â€œStop, you’re going to make me sick.”
    Brand’s response, as always, was silence.
    â€œNow you’re not talking to me?”
    With the influx of tourists, it was a busy season for her as well, her evenings booked solid. Christmas Eve he dropped her at the Eden Hotel and camped at the Café Alaska on the Jaffa Road, killing time drinking coffee and eating
Apfelstrudel
and reading about the war crimes trials in his old hometown paper from last week, his eye on the clock.
    The Alaska was the province of a certain class of Mitteleuropean émigré now mostly extinct in its natural habitat. With its crystal chandeliers and polished brass samovars and marble-topped tables full of threadbare scholars playing chess and arguing politics, it belonged to Vienna or some other fashionable capital brimming with art and theater rather than gloomy Jerusalem, surrounded by nothing but rocks and Arabs. Like the kibbutzniks playing at being peasants, the Alaska’s denizens clung to roles Brand, having survived the war, thought long obsolete. Yet there he was, reading last week’s paper, fretting over the fate of a city that had murdered everyone he loved. He had his booth. The coffee was real, and the strudel wasn’t bad either.
    The Eden was just as fantastic, a dream from a bygone, triumphal era, out of scale, oblivious to human suffering. He was early to pick her up and sat at the curb with the motor off. There wasa gala under way. One after another, gleaming limousines rolled up and disgorged couples in evening wear, the doorman salaaming as if they were royalty. British, most likely. Gentile, certainly, though he noticed some Indians and Africans and a pair of Arabs in Western dress. She was late now, and with every