Shibumi

“I see.” Diamond turned his fingers toward Miss Swivven. “I’ll dine here tonight. Something quick and light, but I’ll need a protein shock. Make it brewer’s yeast, liquid vitamins, egg yolks, and eight ounces of raw calf’s liver. Do it up in a blender.”

Miss Swivven nodded. It was going to be a long night.

Diamond turned in his desk chair and stared sightlessly out toward the Washington Monument. Walking across the lawn near the base was the same group of schoolchildren that passed every day at exactly this time. Without turning from the window, he said over his shoulder, “Give me a data pull on this Munich Five.”

“What indices, sir?” the First Assistant asked.

“It’s a small organization. And recent. Let’s begin with history and membership.”

“At what depth do I scan?”

“You work that out. It’s what you do well.”

The First Assistant turned in his chair and began instructing Fat Boy. His face was immobile, but his eyes behind the round glasses sparkled with delight. Fat Boy contained a medley of information from all the computers in the Western World, together with a certain amount of satellite-stolen data from Eastern Bloc powers. It was a blend of top-secret military information and telephone-billing records; of CIA blackmail material and drivers’ permits from France, of names behind numbered Swiss bank accounts and mailing lists from direct advertising companies in Australia. It contained the most delicate information, and the most mundane. If you lived in the industrialized West, Fat Boy had you. He had your credit rating, your blood type, your political history, your sexual inclinations, your medical records, your school and university performance, random samplings of your personal telephone conversations, a copy of every telegram you ever sent or received, all purchases made on credit, full military or prison records, all magazines subscribed to, all income tax records, driving licenses, fingerprints, birth certificates—all this, if you were a private citizen in whom the Mother Company had no special interest. If, however, the Mother Company or any of her input subsidiaries, like CIA, NSA, and their counterparts in the other democratic nations, took particular notice of you, then Fat Boy knew much, much more than this about you.

Programming facts into Fat Boy was the constant work of an army of mechanics and technicians, but getting useful information out of Him was a task for an artist, a person with training, touch, and inspiration. The problem lay in the fact that Fat Boy knew too much. If one scanned a given subject too shallowly he might not discover what he wanted to know. If he scanned too deeply, he would be overwhelmed with an unreadable mass of minutia: results of former urine tests, boy scout merit badges won, predictions in high school annuals, preference in brand of toilet paper. The First Assistant’s unique gift was his delicate touch in asking just the right questions of Fat Boy, and of demanding response at just the right depth of scan. Experience and instinct combined to send him after the right indices, the right permutations, the right rubrics, the right depths. He played the instrument of the computer masterfully, and he loved it. Working at his console was to him what sex was to other men—that is to say, what he assumed sex was to other men.

Diamond spoke over his shoulder to Miss Swivven. “When I’m ready, I’ll want to talk to this Starr person, and to the Arab they call Mr. Haman. Have them kept on tap.”

Under the First Assistant’s manipulation, the console was warming and humming. The first responses were coming in; fragments were being stored in the local memory bank; the dialogue had begun. No two conversations with Fat Boy were alike; each took on its own patois, and the delights of the problem were beginning to stroke the First Assistant’s considerable, if exclusively frontal, intellect.

It would be twenty minutes before a full picture was available. Diamond decided not to waste this time. He would take a little exercise and sun, tune up his body and clear his mind for the long haul to come. He gestured with a fingertip for Miss Swivven to follow him into the small exercise room off the principal work area.

As he stripped down to his abbreviated shorts, Miss Swivven put on a pair of round, dark eyecups, handed him a similar pair, and turned on the bank of sunlamps installed along the walls. Diamond began doing sit-ups on an inclined platform, his ankles held by a loop of velvet-covered rope, while Miss Swivven pressed against the wall, keeping her vulnerably pale skin as far away from the intense glare of ultraviolet as possible. Diamond did his sit-ups slowly, getting the most work out of the fewest repetitions. He was in excellent shape for a man of his age, but the stomach required constant attention. “Listen,” he said, his voice tight with a withheld grunt as he rose and touched his right knee with his left elbow, “I’ll have to bring some CIA clout in on this. Alert whoever is left at the top after that last round of cosmetic administrative shakeups.”

The highest-ranking administrator below the political shills that came and went as sacrificial lambs to outraged public opinion was the Deputy International Liaison Duty Officer, who was typically referred to by his acronym. Miss Swivven informed her superior that he was still in the building.

“He’ll do. Order him to keep himself on tap. Oh—and cancel my tennis date for this weekend.”

Miss Swivven’s eyebrows lifted above her dark eyecups. This must be something very serious indeed.

Diamond began to work with the weights. “I’ll also want a 0-jump priority on Fat Boy for the rest of the afternoon, maybe longer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. What do you have on your pad?”

“High protein input in liquid form. Alert and freeze Mr. Starr and Mr. Haman. Alert and freeze the Deputy. Request 0-jump priority on Fat Boy.”

“Good. Precede all that with a message to the Chairman.” Diamond was breathing heavily with the effort of exercise. “Message: Possible that Rome International spoiling raid was imperfect. Will seek, sort, and report alternatives.”

When Miss Swivven returned seven minutes later, she was carrying a large glass of thick, foamy, purplish liquid, the color lent by the pulverized raw liver. Diamond was in the last phase of his exercise routine, working isometrically against a fixed steel pipe. He stopped and accepted his dinner, as she pressed close to the wall, avoiding the sunlamps as best she could, but knowing perfectly well that she had already had enough exposure to burn her delicate skin. Although there were many advantages of her job with the Mother Company—overtime, good retirement plan, medical benefits, company vacation resort in the Canadian Rockies, Christmas parties—Miss Swivven regretted two aspects of her career: this getting sunburnt every week or so, and the occasional impersonal use Mr. Diamond made of her to relieve his tensions. Still, she was philosophic. No job is perfect.

“Note pad cleared?” Diamond asked, shuddering slightly as he finished his drink.

“Yes, sir.”

Disregarding her presence, Diamond stepped out of his shorts and into a glass-fronted shower stall, where he turned on a full spray of bracing cold water, over the noise of which he asked, “Did the Chairman respond to my message?”

“Yes, sir.”

After a short silence, Diamond said, “Please feel free to tell me what the response was, Miss Swivven.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

Diamond turned off the shower, stepped out, and began to dry off on the rough towels designed to heighten circulation.

“Do you want me to read the Chairman’s message to you, sir?”

Diamond sighed deeply. If this twit had not been the only attractive one in the over-100 wpm pool… “That would be nice, Miss Swivven.”

She referred to her note pad, squinting against the glare of the sunlamps. “Response: Chairman to Diamond, J.O.: ‘Failure in this matter not acceptable.’”

Diamond nodded as he dried his crotch meditatively. It was as he had expected.

When he returned to the work area, he was crispminded and prepared for decision-making, having changed into his working clothes, a jumpsuit of pale yellow that was loose and comfortable, and set his rotisserie tan off to advantage.

The First Assistant was working at the console with narrow concentration and physical exhilaration, as he tickled a cogent printout of data on the Munich Five out of Fat Boy.

Diamond sat in his swivel chair above the milky etched glass tabletop. “Punch up the RP,” he instructed. “Give me a roll-down rate of five hundred WPM.” He could not absorb information faster than this because the data came from half a dozen international sources, and Fat Boy’s mechanical translations into English were as stilted and unrefined of idiom as a Clint Eastwood film.

MUNICH FIVE, THE…

ORGANIZATION… UNOFFICIAL… SPLINTER… GOAL EQUALS TERMINATION OF BLACK SEPTEMBRISTS INVOLVED IN KILLING ISRAELI ATHLETES IN MUNICH OLYMPICS…

LEADER AND KEYMAN EQUALS STERN, ASA…

MEMBERS AND SATELLITES EQUAL LEVITSON, YOEL… YARIV, CHAIM… ZARMI, NEHEMIAH… STERN, HANNAH…

“Hold it,” Diamond said. “Let’s take a look at them one at a time. Just give me sketches.”

STERN, ASA

BORN APRIL 13, 1909… BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA… 1352 CLINTON AVENUE… APARTMENT 3B…

The First Assistant clenched his teeth. “Sorry, sir.” He was probing just a shade too deeply. No one wanted to know the number of the apartment in which Asa Stern was born. Not yet, anyway. He shallowed the probe a micron.

STERN EMIGRATES TO PALESTINE PROTECTORATE… 1931…

PROFESSION AND/OR COVER… FARMER, JOURNALIST, POET, HISTORIAN…

INVOLVED IN STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE… 1945-1947 (details available)…

IMPRISONED BY BRITISH OCCUPATION FORCES (details available)…

UPON RELEASE BECOMES CONTACT POINT FOR STERN ORGANIZATION AND OUTSIDE SYMPATHETIC GROUPS (details available)…

RETIRES TO FARM… 1956…

REACTIVATES WITH MUNICH OLYMPICS AFFAIR (details available)…

CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY EQUALS COEFFICIENT.001…

REASON FOR LOW COEFFICIENT EQUALS:

THISMAN NOW DEAD, sub CANCER, sub THROAT

“That’s a surface scratch, sir,” the First Assistant said. “Shall I probe a little deeper? He’s obviously the pivot man.”

“Obviously. But dead. No, just store the rest of his stuff in the memory bank. I’ll come back to him later. Let’s have a look at the other members of his group.”

“It’s rolling up on your screen now, sir.”

LEVITSON, YOEL

BORN DECEMBER 25, 1954… NEGEV, ISRAEL…

FATHER KILLED… COMBAT… 6-DAY WAR… 1967…

JOINS MUNICH FIVE… OCTOBER 1972…

KILLED… DECEMBER 25, 1976… (IDENTITY BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH DATES NOTED AND CONSIDERED COINCIDENTAL)

“Hold that!” Diamond ordered. “Give me a little depth on this boy’s death.”

“Yes, sir.”

KILLED… DECEMBER 25, 1976… VICTIM (PROBABLY PRIMARY TARGET) OF TERRORIST BOMB…

SITE EQUALS CAFE IN JERUSALEM… BOMB ALSO KILLED SIX ARAB BYSTANDERS. TWO CHILDREN BLINDED…

“Okay, forget it. It’s unimportant. Return to the light scan.”

CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY EQUALS COEFFICIENT.001…

REASON FOR LOW COEFFICIENT EQUALS:

THISMAN NOW DEAD, sub MULTIPLE FRACTURES, sub COLLAPSED LUNGS…

* * *

YARIV, CHAIM

BORN OCTOBER 11, 1952… ELATH, ISRAEL…

ORPHAN/KIBBUTZ BACKGROUND (details available)…

JOINS MUNICH FIVE… SEPTEMBER 7, 1972…

CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY EQUALS COEFFICIENT.64±…

REASON FOR MEZZO-COEFFICIENT EQUALS:/p>

THISMAN CAUSE-DEVOTED, BUT NOT LEADERTYPE…

* * *

ZARMI, NEHEMIAH

BORN JUNE 11, 1948… ASHDOD, ISRAEL…

KIBBUTZ/UNIVERSITY/ARMY BACKGROUND (details available)…

ACTIVE GUERRILLA, sub NONSPONSORED (details of known/probable/possible actions available)…

JOINS MUNICH FIVE… SEPTEMBER 7, 1972…

CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY EQUALS COEFFICIENT.96±

REASON FOR HIGH COEFFICIENT EQUALS:

THISMAN CAUSE-DEVOTED AND LEADERTYPE…

SEE THIS! SEE THIS! SEE THIS! SEE THIS! THISMAN MAY BE TERMINATED ON SIGHT.

* * *

STERN, HANNAH

BORN APRIL 1, 1952… SKOKIE, ILLINOIS, USA…

UNIVERSITY/SOCIOLOGY AND ROMANCE LANGUAGES/ACTIVE CAMPUS RADICAL (NSA/CIA DOSSIERS AVAILABLE)…

SAYAGAIN!SAYAGAIN!SAYAGAIN!SAYAGAIN!

Diamond looked up from the conference table screen.

“What’s the matter?”

“Something’s in error, sir. Fat Boy is correcting himself.”

“Well?”

“We’ll know in a minute, sir. Fat Boy’s cooking.”

Miss Swivven entered from the machine room. “Sir? I have requested telephotos of the members of the Munich Five.”

“Bring them as soon as they print out.”

“Yes, sir.”

The First Assistant lifted his hand for attention. “Here it comes. Fat Boy is correcting himself in terms of Starr’s report on the spoiling raid in Rome. He just digested the information.”

Diamond read the rear-projected roll-down.

NEGATE PRIOR, RE: YARIV, CHAIM sub CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY…

CORRECTED COEFFICIENT EQUALS.001…

REASON FOR LOW COEFFICIENT EQUALS:

THISPERSON TERMINATED…

* * *

NEGATE PRIOR, RE: ZARMI, NEHEMIAH sub CURRENT IRRITANT POTENTIAL TO MOTHER COMPANY…

CORRECTED COEFFICIENT EQUALS.001…

REASON FOR LOW COEFFICIENT EQUALS:

THISPERSON TERMINATED…

* * *

Diamond leaned back and shook his head. “An eight-hour lag. That could hurt us someday.”

“It’s not Fat Boy’s fault, sir. It’s an effect of rising world population and our own information explosion. Sometimes I think we know too much about people!” The First Assistant chuckled at the very idea. “By the way, sir, did you notice the rephrase?”

“Which rephrase?”

“THISMAN is now expressed as THISPERSON. Fat Boy must have digested the Mother Company’s becoming an equal opportunity employer.” The First Assistant could not keep the pride from his voice.

“That’s wonderful,” Diamond said without energy.

Miss Swivven entered from the machine room and placed five telephotos on Diamond’s desk, then she took her position below his dais, her note pad at the ready.

Diamond shuffled through the photographs for that of the only member of the Munich Five not known to be dead: Hannah Stern. He scanned the face, nodded to himself, and sighed fatalistically. These CIA imbeciles!

The First Assistant turned from his console and adjusted his glasses nervously. “What’s wrong, sir?”

His eyes half closed as he looked through the floor-to-ceiling window at the Washington Monument threatening to violate that same chubby cloud that always hung in the evening sky at this time. Diamond tapped his upper lip with his knuckle. “Did you read Starr’s action report?”

“I scanned it, sir. Mostly checking for spelling.”

“What was the ostensible destination of those Israeli youngsters?”

The First Assistant always felt uncomfortable with Mr. Diamond’s rhetorical style of thinking aloud. He did not like answering questions without the aid of Fat Boy. “As I recall, their destination was London.”

“Right. Presumably intending to intercept certain Palestinian terrorists at Heathrow Airport before they could hijack a plane to Montreal. All right. If the Munich Five team were going to London, why did they disembark at Rome? Flight 414 from Tel Aviv is a through flight to London with stops at Rome and Paris.”

“Well, sir, there could be several—”

“And why were they going to England six days before their Black September targets were due to fly out to Montreal? Why sit in the open in London for all that time, when they could have stayed securely at home?”

“Well, perhaps they—”

“And why were they carrying tickets to Pau?”

“Pau, sir?”

“Starr’s action report. Bottom of page thirty-two through middle of page thirty-four. Description of contents of victims’ knapsacks and clothing. List prepared by Italian police. It includes two plane tickets for Pau.”

The First Assistant did not mention that he had no idea where Pau was. He made a mental note to ask Fat Boy first chance he got. “What does all this mean, sir?”

“It means that once again CIA has lived up to the traditions of Bay of Pigs and Watergate. Once again, they have screwed up.” Diamond’s jaw tightened. “The mindless voters of this country are wrong to worry about the dangers of CIA’s internal corruption. When they bring this nation to disaster, it won’t be through their villainy; it will be because of their bungling.” He returned to his pristine desk and picked up the telephoto of Hannah Stern. “Fat Boy interrupted himself with that correction while it was backgrounding this Hannah Stern. Start me up on that again. And give me a little more depth.”

Evaluating both the data and the gaps, Diamond analyzed Miss Stern to be a fairly common sort found on the fringes of terrorist action. Young, intelligent mid-American, cause-oriented. He knew the type. She would have been a Liberal, back when that was still fashionable. She was the kind who sought “relevance” in everything; who expressed her lack of critical judgment as freedom from prejudice; who worried about Third World hunger, but shambled about a university campus with a huge protein-gobbling dog—symbol of her love for all living things.

She first came to Israel on a summer tour at a kibbutz, her purpose being to visit her uncle and—in her own words quoted in a NSA lift from a letter home—”to discover my Jewishness.”

Diamond could not repress a sigh when he read that phrase. Miss Stern obviously suffered from the democratic delusion that all people are created interesting.

Fat Boy ascribed a low coefficient of irritant potential to Miss Stern, regarding her as a typical young American intellectual woman seeking a cause to justify her existence, until marriage, career, or artsy hobbies defused her. Her personality analysis turned up none of those psychotic warps that produce the urban guerrilla who finds sexual expression in violence. Nor was she flawed by that desperate hunger for notoriety that causes actors and entertainers who, unable to remain in the public eye by virtue of their talents, suddenly discover hitherto unnoticed social convictions.

No, there was nothing in Hannah Stern’s printout that would nominate her for particular attention—save for two facts: She was Asa Stern’s niece. And she was the only surviving member of the Munich Five.

Diamond spoke to Miss Swivven. “Have Starr and that Arab… Mr. Haman… in the screening room in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And have the Deputy there too.” He turned to the First Assistant. “You keep working on Fat Boy. I want a deep rescan of the leader, this Asa Stern. He’s the one who will bleed through. Give me a list of his first-generation contacts: family, friends, accomplices, associates, acquaintances, affairs, and so on.”

“Just a second, sir.” The First Assistant introduced two questions into the computer, then one modifier. “Ah… sir? The first-generation list will have… ah… three hundred twenty-seven names, together with thumbnail sketches. And we’ll cube as we move to second-generation lists—friends of friends, etc. That’ll give us almost thirty-five million names. Obviously, sir, we have to have some kind of priority criterion.”

The First Assistant was right; a critical decision; there are literally thousands of ways in which a list can be ordered.

Diamond thought back over the sketch on Asa Stern. His intuition was tickled by one line: Profession and/or cover… Farmer, Journalist, Poet, Historian. Not, then, a typical terrorist. Something worse—a romantic patriot.

“Order the list emotionally. Go for indices indicating love, friendship, trust—this sort of thing. Go from closest to most distant.”

The First Assistant’s eyes shone as he took a deep breath and lightly rubbed his fingers together. This was a fine challenge demanding console virtuosity. Love, friendship, trust—these imprecisions and shadows could not be located through approaches resembling the Schliemann Back-bit and Non-bit Theory. No computer, not even Fat Boy, can respond to such rubrics directly. Questions have to be phrased in terms of nonfrequency counts and non sequitur exchange relationships. In its simplest form, actions performed for no measurable reason, or contrary to linear logic, might indicate such underlying motives as love or friendship or trust. But great care had to be exercised, because identical actions could derive from hate, insanity, or blackmail. Moreover, in the case of love, the nature of the action seldom helps to identify its motivational impulse. Particularly difficult is separating love from blackmail.

It was a delicious assignment, infinitely complicated. As he began to insert the first probes into Fat Boy, the First Assistant’s shoulders twisted back and forth, as though he were guiding a pinball with body-english.

Miss Swivven returned to the work room. “They’re waiting for you in the theater, sir.”

“Good. Bring those telephotos along. What on earth is wrong with you, Miss Swivven?”

“Nothing, sir. My back itches, that’s all.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

Darryl Starr sensed trouble in the air when he and the Arab received curt orders to report to the viewing room at once. His fears were confirmed when he found his direct superior sitting gloomily in the auditorium. The Deputy International Liaison Duty Officer nodded a curt greeting to Starr and grunted once toward the Arab. He blamed the oil-rich Arabian sheikhdoms for many of his current problems, not the least of which was the interfering presence of Mr. Diamond in the bowels of the CIA, with his snide attitude toward every little operational peccadillo.

When first the oil-producing Arabs had run a petroleum boycott against the industrialized West to blackmail them into withdrawing their moral and legal commitments to Israel, the Deputy and other leaders of CIA proposed putting on line Contingency Plan NE385/8 (Operation Six Second War). In terms of this plan, CIA-sponsored troops of the Orthodox Islamic Maoist Falange would rescue the Arab states from the temptations of greed by occupying more than 80 percent of its oil facilities in an action calculated to require less than one minute of actual combat, although it was universally admitted that an additional three months would be required to round up such Arab and Egyptian troops as had fled in panic as far as Rhodesia and Scandinavia.

It was agreed that Operation Six Second War would be undertaken without burdening the President or Congress with those decision-making responsibilities so onerous in an election year. Phase One was instituted, and political leaders in both Black and Muslim Africa experienced an epidemic of assassinations, one or two at the hands of members of the victim’s own family. Phase Two was in countdown, when suddenly everything froze up. Evidence concerning CIA operations was leaked to congressional investigating committees; lists of CIA agents were released to Leftist newspapers in France, Italy, and the Near East; internal CIA communications began to be jammed; massive tape erasures occurred in CIA memory banks, denying them the “biographic leverage” with which they normally controlled American elected officials.

Then one afternoon, Mr. Diamond and his modest staff walked into the Center carrying orders and directives that gave the Mother Company total control over all operations touching, either directly or tangentially, the oil-producing nations. Neither the Deputy nor his colleagues had ever heard of this “Mother Company,” so a quick briefing was in order. They learned that the Mother Company was a consortium of major international petroleum, communications, and transportation corporations that effectively controlled the Western World’s energy and information. After some consideration, the Mother Company had decided that she could not permit CIA to continue meddling in affairs that might harm or irritate those oil-producing friends in consort with whom she had been able to triple profits in two years.

No one at CIA seriously considered opposing Mr. Diamond and the Mother Company, which controlled the careers of most major governmental figures, not only through direct support, but also by the technique of using their public media subsidiaries to blacken and demoralize potential candidates, and to shape what the American masses took to be the Truth.

What chance had the scandal-ridden CIA to resist a force with enough power to build pipelines through tundra that had been demonstrated to be ecologically fragile? Who could stand against the organization that had reduced government research spending on solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal energy to a placating trickle, so as to avoid competition with their own atomic and fossil-fuel consorda? How could CIA effectively oppose a group with such overwhelming dominance that She was able, in conjunction with its Pentagon flunkies, to make the American public accept the storage of atomic wastes with lethal half-lives so long that failure and disaster were absolutely assured by the laws of antichance?

In Her takeover of CIA, the Mother Company had no interference from the executive branch of the government, as it was nearing election time, and all public business is arrested during this year of flesh-bartering. Nor did She really worry about the post-election pause of three years before the next democratic convulsion, for the American version of representative government assures that such qualities of intellect and ethics as might equip a man to lead a powerful nation responsibly are precisely the qualities that would prevent him from subjecting himself to the debasing performances of vote begging and delegate swapping. It is a truism of American politics that no man who can win an election deserves to.

There was one awkward moment for the Mother Company when a group of na

This was the background to the Deputy’s feelings of petulance over loss of control of his organization as he heard the doors of the auditorium bang open. He rose to his feet as Diamond entered at a brisk pace, followed by Miss Swivven who carried several rip-sheets from the Fat Boy printout and the stack of photographs of members of the Munich Five.

In minimal recognition of Diamond’s arrival, Starr lifted most of the weight off his butt, then settled back with a grunt. The Arab’s response to Miss Swivven’s arrival was to jump to his feet, grin, and bow in jerky imitation of European suavity. Very nice looking woman, he told himself. Very lush. Skin like snow. And most gifted in what, in English, is referred to as the knockers.

“Is the projectionist in the booth?” Diamond asked, sitting apart from the others.

“Yes, sir,” Starr drawled. “You fixin’ to see the film again?”

“I want you fools to see it again.”

The Deputy was not pleased to be grouped with a mere agent, and even less with an Arab, but he had learned to suffer in silence. It was his senior administrative skill.

“You never told us you wanted to see the film,” Starr said. “I don’t think the projectionist has rewound it yet.”

“Have him run it backward. It doesn’t matter.”

Starr gave instructions through the intercom, and the wall lights dimmed.

“Starr?”

“Sir?”

“Put out the cigar.”

…the elevator door opens and closes on the dead Japanese gunman’s head. The man returns to life and slides up the wall. The hole in his palm disappears, and he tugs the bullet out of his back. He runs backward through a gaggle of schoolchildren, one of whom floats up from the floor as a red stain on her dress is sucked back into her stomach. When he reaches the lightblurred main entrance, the Japanese ducks as fragments of broken glass rush together to form a window pane. The second gunman jumps up from the floor and catches a flying automatic weapon, and the two of them run backward, until a swish pan leaves them and discovers an Israeli boy on the tiled floor. A vacuum snaps the top of his skull back into place; the stream of gore recoils back into his hip. He leaps up and runs backward, snatching up his rucksack as he passes it. The camera waves around, then finds the second Israeli just in time to see his cheek pop on. He rises from his knees, and blood implodes into his chest as the khaki shirt instantly mends itself. The two boys walk backward. One turns and smiles. They saunter back through a group of Italians pushing and standing tiptoe to greet some arriving relative. They back down the lane to the immigration counter, and the Italian official uses his rubber stamp to suck the entrance permissions off their passports. A red-headed girl shakes her head, then smiles thanks…

“Stop!” called Mr. Diamond, startling Miss Swivven, who had never heard him raise his voice before.

The girl on the screen froze, a blow-back douser dimming the image to prevent the frame from burning.

“See that girl. Starr?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me anything about her?”

Starr was confused by this seemingly arbitrary demand. He knew he was in trouble of some sort, and he fell back on his habit of taking cover behind his dumb, good-ol’-boy facade.

“Well… let’s see. She’s got a fair set of boobs, that’s for sure. Taut little ass. A little skinny in the arms and waist for my taste but, like my ol’ daddy used to say: the closer the bone, the sweeter the meat!” He forced a husky laugh in which he was joined by the Arab, who was anxious to prove he understood.