The assignment had turned out to be a quiet one-he and eleven other officers tagging along with the Israeli athletes. Nine in Los Angeles, two with the rowing team in Santa Barbara, ten-hour shifts, rotation schedules. There had been a couple of weak rumors that had to be taken seriously anyway. Some hate mail signed by the Palestine Solidarity Army and traced, the day before the Games, to an inmate of the state mental hospital in Camarillo.

But mostly it was watching, hours of inactivity, eyes always on the lookout for anything that didn't fit: heavy coats in hot weather, strange contours under garments, furtive movements, the look of hatred on a jumpy, terrified face- probably young, probably dark, but you never could be sure. The look imprinted on Daniel's brain: an aura, a storm warning, before the seizure of stunning, stomach-churning violence.

A quiet assignment, no Munich in L.A. He'd ended each shift with a tension headache.

He'd sat in the front of the room during the orientation lecture and grown aware, before long, that someone was looking at him. A few backward glances located the source of scrutiny: a very dark black man in a light-blue summer suit, a SUPERVISOR identification badge clipped to his lapel. Local police.

The man was heavily built, older-late forties to early fifties, Daniel figured. Bald on top with gray hair at the side, the hairless crown resembling gift candy-a mound of bittersweet chocolate nestled in silver foil. A thick gray mustache flared out from under a broad, flat nose.

He wondered why the man was looking at him, tried smiling and received a curt nod in response. Later, after the lecture, the man remained behind after the others had left, chewed on his pen for a few seconds, then pocketed it and walked toward him. When he got close enough, Daniel read the badge: lt. EUGENE brooker, lapd.

Putting on a pair of half-glasses, Brooker looked down at Daniel's badge.

"Israel, huh. I've been trying to figure out what you are."

"Pardon me?"

"We've got all types in town. It's a job to sort out who's who. When I first saw you I figured you for some sort of West Indian. Then I saw the skullcap and wondered if it was a yarmuike or some type of costume."

"It's a yarmuike."

"Yeah, I can see that. Where are you from?"

"Israel." Was the man stupid?

"Before Israel."

"I was born in Israel. My ancestors came from Yemen. It's in Arabia."

"You related to the Ethiopians?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"My wife's always been interested in Jews and Israel," said Brooker. "Thinks you guys are the chosen people and reads a lot of books on you. She told me there are some black Jews in Ethiopia. Starving along with the rest of them."

"There are twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews," said Daniel. "A few have immigrated to Israel. We'd like to get the others out. They're darker than me-more like you."

Brooker smiled. "You're no Swede, yourself," he said. "You've also got some Black Hebrews over in Israel. Came over from America."

A delicate topic. Daniel decided to be direct.

"The Black Hebrews are a criminal cult," he said. "They steal credit cards and abuse their children."

Brooker nodded. "I know it. Busted a bunch of them a couple of years ago. Con artists and worse-what we American law-enforcement personnel call sleazeballs. It's a technical term."

"I like that," said Daniel. "I'll remember it."

"Do that," said Brooker. "Sure to come in handy." Pause. "Anyway, now I know all about you."

He stopped talking and seemed embarrassed, as if not knowing where to go with the conversation. Or how to end it. "How'd you like the lecture?"

"Good," said Daniel, wanting to be tactful. The lecture had seemed elementary to him. As if the agent were talking down to the policemen.

"I thought it was Mickey Mouse," said Brooker.

Daniel was confused.

"The Mickey Mouse of Disneyland?"

"Yeah," said Brooker. "It's an expression for something that's too easy, a waste of time." Suddenly he looked puzzled himself. "I don't know how it came to mean that, but it does."

"A mouse is a small animal," suggested Daniel. "Insignificant."

"Could be."

"I thought the lecture was Mickey Mouse, too, Lieutenant Brooker. Very elementary."

"Gene."

"Daniel."

They shook hands. Gene's was large and padded, with a solid core of muscle underneath. He smoothed his mustache and said, "Anyway, welcome to L.A., and it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Pleasure to meet you too, Gene."

"Let me ask you one more thing," said the black man. "Those Ethiopians, what's going to happen to them?"

"If they stay in Ethiopia, they'll starve with everyone else. If they're allowed out, Israel will take them in."

"Just like that?"

"Of course. They're our brothers."

Gene thought about that. Fingered his mustache and looked at his watch.

"This is interesting," he said. "We've got some time-how about lunch?"

They drove to the Mexican place in Gene's unmarked Plymouth, talked about work, the similarities and differences between street scenes half a world apart. Daniel had always conceived of America as an efficient place, where initiative and will could break through the bureaucracy. But listening to Gene complain-about paperwork, useless regulations handed down by the brass, the procedural calisthenics American cops had to perform in order to satisfy the courts-changed his mind, and he was struck by the universality of it all. The policeman's burden.

He nodded in empathy, then said, "In Israel there's another problem. We are a nation of immigrants-people who grew up persecuted by police states. Because of that, Israelis resent authority. There's a joke we tell: Half the country doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish criminal; the other half doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish policeman. We're caught in the middle."