Patient One by Leonard Goldberg Page B

that, Roger! I won’t do that! I won’t come to Paris and wait around like some toy to be used at your convenience.”
    “What?” Aliev asked, caught off balance.
    “My God!” Diana went on. “At least leave me some dignity.”
    Aliev asked Carolyn, “What is this nonsense?”
    “She’s confused and disoriented,” Carolyn explained. “She’s reciting lines from a movie she made years ago. She does that a lot.”
    “Can she get out of bed?”
    Carolyn nodded. “Sometimes she wanders around, but she’s harmless.”
    “If she wanders into the hall, it will be her final performance,” Aliev threatened, motioning Carolyn and Warren to the door with his weapon.
    Back in the corridor Warren leaned against the wall and pressed a handkerchief to his wound, which was bleeding more heavily now. “I need to rest for a minute.”
    Aliev pushed him forward. “You can rest later.”
    Warren moved on, bothered more by the tightness he felt in his chest than by the wound in his side. He hoped it was musculoskeletal pain and not a return of his angina, which had been diagnosed a year earlier and was controlled so well with medication. Warren stretched his spine and took a deep breath, and the pain seemed to ease. But he was still worried about it being angina. Christ! Not here. Not now.
    They entered Sol Simcha’s room and found the elderly man sitting in his wheelchair reading from a Hebrew prayer book. He slowly raised his head.
    “Sol,” Carolyn said softly, “these people have taken over—”
    “I heard the shots and screams,” Simcha broke in with a nod. “And I knew exactly what it was. I heard those same sounds a long time ago,” he said, looking Aliev in the eye, “at a place called Auschwitz.”
    Aliev stared down at Simcha and focused in on the faded numbers tattooed across his arm. “You are a Jew?”
    “Yes,” Simcha said, closing his prayer book and kissing it.
    “The Holocaust was a hoax,” Aliev jeered.
    “It happened,” Simcha said flatly.
    “A myth,” Aliev insisted.
    “It happened,” Simcha said again.
    “It was an invention made up by the Jews so they could take Palestine away from the Arabs.”
    Simcha shrugged.
    Aliev grinned widely. “So you agree, Jew?”
    “I’m old and tired,” Simcha said in a quiet voice. “I barely have enough strength to call you a Nazi piece of dreck .”
    “ Dreck ?” Aliev asked. “What is dreck ?”
    “It’s a Yiddish word for shit .”
    Aliev’s grin abruptly disappeared. He raised his weapon up to Simcha’s head.
    Carolyn quickly interceded. “He has a severe muscle disease. He can barely walk. And he is taking medications that make him say things he ordinarily wouldn’t.”
    Aliev continued to point his weapon at Simcha, his finger tightening on the trigger.
    “It’s the medicine talking, not him,” Carolyn pleaded. “Sometimes he just babbles on, not even knowing what he’s saying.”
    “He knows,” Aliev growled.
    “Please!” Carolyn begged.
    Aliev slowly lowered his submachine gun and gave Simcha a long, stern look. “I will make time for you later, old man.”
    “I’ll be here,” Simcha said with equanimity.
    They walked out of the room and down the corridor. The smells of stale vomit and blood were everywhere. Two terrorists were rapidly moving in and out of suites, with handkerchiefs held up against their noses. A third terrorist was guarding the three other survivors. Vladimir Yudenko, Jarrin Smith, and Jamie Merrill were seated on the floor across from the nurses’ station. The terrorist standing over them had taken off his chef’s uniform and now was dressed in black pants and a black turtleneck sweater.
    As Aliev approached the group, he spoke to Carolyn. “Place the President’s daughter in a separate room. She is not to see the President, and her door is to be kept closed. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” Carolyn said and helped the badly frightened girl to her feet.
    “You are to rejoin us in two