The Silver Scroll

by Jeff Spence

  A few minutes later and he was stepping out of the door, happy to be free of the confining little cell, with its jarring odour, not quite foul, but certainly not pleasant. He nodded at the man waiting to use it next, not envying him the air quality he was likely to endure — especially at that moment. He reached his row, taking a last look forward before sitting down. He could see the crown of Ben's head over the seat. Not making a move then, he thought, pussy. At least they were still there and all was well. He could sit down and relax… maybe watch a movie.

  A sharp pain erupted in the small of his back, near his left kidney. It felt like a bug bite at first, but quickly got worse. He sucked in air to yell. But didn't. He could feel his knees wobble, then nothing. With little more than a weak hiss, easily covered by the drone of the engines and air conditioning, he leaned and fell, gently guided by the man from the lavatory line, into his seat. A quick arrangement of pillows and blanket, and all a passer-by would see was a big man, snoozing away on a late-night flight.

  The man from the lavatory snapped the seatbelt around the sagging form, outside of the blanket for full visibility. It wouldn’t do to have the flight attendant try to wake him for a seatbelt check if they hit a patch of turbulence. Then he returned to his own seat and lifted up the magazine he had been holding at the boarding gate. He had found an article worth reading at last, and he wanted to finish it before taking a nap prior to arrival.

  His jacket shifted as he read and the woman beside him let out a quiet gasp. He looked at her and she pointed. A syringe had slipped from the leather packet in the side pocket of his jacket and fallen to the floor. He reached down to pick it up, smiled and tucked it back in.

  "Diabetes," he whispered, "Damn needles." She smiled and nodded, returning to her tiny television screen.

  It was done. The two were none the wiser.

  Kantor would be pleased.

  Ben and Marina were off the plane in good time. There was some fuss over a man who'd had some kind of stroke or heart attack and was unconscious, though still alive they said. Perhaps they always said that. In any case, once he was taken from the half-empty plane, the rest of the passengers filed out in just a few minutes. There was a layover of about two hours, just enough time to stretch the legs and get a bit of good coffee on the way to the next gate.

  “You ever been to London? To England?” Ben asked.

  Marina shook her head, though she had, a long time ago, been escorted down that same hallway, from one plane to another, the second one bound for Chicago and a new life in the United States. It was a powerful memory, but all through it a heavy rushing of sound, like the sustained push of a hurricane, dampened all clear sense of sound. Faces. Muffled voices. Colours and confusion. Her body had been there, but her inner self was still in the clutches of the war she had left behind. No, she hadn’t really been there before.

  “I studied here. About an hour from right here, actually. Oxford.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Did I like it? Yeah, I suppose. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. Not so much the cultural experience I’d hoped for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was intense. Narrow. When you hit a certain point in academia, everything is so specialised, that it feels like you’re living in a tunnel. Interesting things show up around the edges, maybe important things… but you can't look at them. There’s no time to really dig deep and understand the bigger pictures. It’s a rush to finish, and move on. When it’s over, that’s when you get to do more of what you want to do, but by then…”

  “By then what?”

  “Well, I’d forgotten most of those things I wanted to look into. All those ideas were washed away in the hurry and the workload.”

  “But it was still worth it?”

  He grinned at her. “Hell yeah!”

  The second leg of the flight was much shorter, and a uneventful to the couple as the first leg had been. They didn’t sleep, but kept up the feeling of rest. Preparation. They watched a movie. Ate. Leaned on each other and soaked in the mutual assurance and comfort. Then it was over. Wheels touched down with a jolt and they were there.

  Ben and Marina moved quickly through to the luggage carrousel, grabbed their packs and walked toward the taxi queue. Whatever ease they'd achieved on the plane faded with the air-cushioned thud of the security doors. They were in the open now, in Tel Aviv, Israel, both of them far from anything familiar or controlled. Marina remembered Leonard Kantor's warning to Ben. She realised for the first time that, by getting farther from Bass’s sphere of influence, they might well have stepped into the sphere of another, equally terrifying entity. If any of the people Kantor had warned Ben about were to make a move here, there would be little either she or Ben could do to stop it. Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all. A little late for that little revelation. Their best hope, as she saw it, was to keep moving and to keep anonymous.

  Ben turned to look behind them.

  "It's okay," Marina said, looping her arm through his once again, "We look just like any other couple walking through the airport. Tourists, or locals coming home from vacation. We're fine." I would like to find a gun though.

  Ben took in her words. Any other couple, she had said. Did she see them as a couple then? What would that mean? His mind went first to thoughts of the new privileges such a status would bring. Alone in a foreign land, sharing rooms… close, intimate quarters. But his mind didn't stop there. This was no fling at the university bar, this was a life-and-death situation, a potentially life-altering circumstance. Whatever happened, any emotional connection would be exaggerated tenfold. Could such a relationship be trusted? The good and the bad might easily spin out of control and become something beyond what he had the emotional capacity to deal with at that point in his life.

  He smiled back at her, but knew it was weak.

  She grinned and picked up their pace. She knew she needed to be strong, not only for her own sake, but for Ben's as well. Silence and stillness could be mistaken for anything, in such circumstances: even courage. Fear clung like a gargoyle to her back, but she couldn't let that show. For his sake she could do it; like he had for her back in Indiana.

  Like he had. She felt suddenly awkward, with her arm looped through his. A day or two after breaking it off with Barry, and here she was, flirting with a guy who had rich criminals chasing them half-way around the world. A guy with a dead wife, and obvious commitment issues.

  They reached the others waiting in line for cabs and she shrugged off any more thoughts of Ben, of her… of her and Ben. The benefit of being chased by murderous antiques collectors was that any emotional baggage or hesitation she might feel would be well camouflaged behind the fear and stress.

  Off to their left, following laterally, rather than behind the couple, a man walked along without apparent notice of the Americans, his magazine tucked snugly beneath his arm. Once outside, he paused and sat on a bench near the pickup area. He dialled a number on his phone and sat with it held up to his ear, saying nothing. As Ben and Marina neared the front of the line, he stood and spoke a quick word or two, in Hebrew. As they dropped their packs into the trunk of the car, a green Land Cruiser pulled up and stopped in front of the man. He stepped in, took a moment or two to adjust his safety belts, pull an automatic pistol from the console pocket, to tuck it into his belt, and to greet the driver with a smile. Then, as the taxi pulled out from the stand, the Toyota eased out into traffic a couple of vehicles behind it.

  Ben, Marina, and the man with the magazine all let out a long sigh of relief.

  So far, so good.

  Ben Gurion Airport faded from view as they set out into the desert. Desert, Ben thought, staring out the window at the broad patches of bright green vegetation. Crops and orchards blended in with the opportunistic weeds along their edges, sharp relief from the dry brown of the areas untouched by irrigation. This might technically be a desert, but the lack of rainfall had been hidden beneath a green layer of man's in
genuity. The soil, barren of all but the hardiest of desert plants for untold numbers of years, had been claimed, its richness tapped, for survival at first, then for luxury and profit. The barren plains had become yet another stronghold of the human race, secure so long as technology and relative peace could be sustained. The former was going strong, but peace, in this place more than most, was always precarious.

  "You must be proud of what your people have done here," Marina said as she squeezed his hand.

  "'My people?'"

  She hesitated, her face flitting between expressions, "I'm sorry, did I say something wrong? I just thought…"

  "It's alright, sorry, sorry. I am Jewish, you're right. Well, kind of. And Israel is a Jewish state. Kind of."

  "Why 'kind of'?"

  "Well, it's a secular state, not a religious one."

  "But isn't it Jewish?"

  "It was created to be a homeland for the Jewish people, kind of as compensation for what happened with Hitler."

  "So it didn't turn out that way?"

  "Well, most Israelis are Jewish, at least culturally, but only about one in five are religious Jews, and there are other people living there too, Christians and Muslims and others. One can be Israeli and not be Jewish, just like most Jews have nothing really to do with Israel."

  "Really? I didn't know that." She paused. "So what about you then, you aren't Israeli, obviously, but you are Jewish… 'sort of,' you said? I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Mine is a long story, that's all."

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, but… we have some time."

  "Later, if that's okay," he said, smiling as reassuringly as he could, "It's a bit heavy, and I'm feeling pretty light right now. It would be great to keep that going if we can."

  She nodded and kissed his cheek. Not quite quick. A bit more than a peck. Just the right amount of pressure, of breath. He felt the moisture from her lips cool on his skin as they drove through the hot sun. A tease of which she was well aware. The tension between what she was doing, and what she should be doing was still there, vibrating around her thoughts. What she really wanted was an afternoon of abandoned sex… but she wasn't yet sure that what she wanted and what she needed were the same thing.

  She usually didn't care.

  Ben leaned back in his seat, tilted his head forward, and watched the beautiful scenery speed by. Marina stared out of the window as well, but with her head resting on Ben's shoulder. They watched the land, occasionally pointing out some scene of interest, conserving energy against the unseen dangers on the horizon. Ahead of the cab, the built-up profile of Jerusalem came into view.

  Behind them, with three cars separating him from the cab, Magazine saw the city and renewed his efforts to spot anything out of the ordinary. It was so much easier to do this in America, where any car with more than one adult male occupant was suspect. Here, many people shared the cost of fuel and three or four people in a car was not an unusual thing, nor was a person walking alongside the road with a pack or burden. He paid little attention to the scenery, but instead scanned the oncoming vehicles, as well as those immediately ahead and behind. He had a bad feeling about something, a kind of lump high in his chest, like a golf ball just behind his sternum. The lump always meant trouble.

  As the vehicles entered the city, he sat a little straighter in his seat and took a long look backward to see if any vehicles were gaining on them. When he turned again to the front, something had changed. But what?

  "Overtake the Mercedes," he said, and the driver pulled out to pass the sleek silver car rolling along in front of them. Magazine took the gun from his belt and held it between his thigh and the door. As they cruised past the Mercedes and gained on the SUV in front of it — the one just behind the Americans’ taxi — one of its four passengers pulled something over his head and it became clear: masks. "Take them! Do it now!"

  Magazine's driver stomped on the pedal, but both men knew the effort was useless. From the east side of Kaplan's traffic circle, a van containing two visible occupants, both in balaclavas, rounded the corner toward the cab. The timing was perfect. Magazine turned his eyes to the Americans as the van crashed into the side of the cab.

  The music was tinny, but Marina liked it, the wavering tones of the male singer like an Imam's prayer, suiting the exotic nature of the landscape and buildings. The sound was, to her, much like she imagined hymns affected those raised in country churches. The meaning behind them was not where the power lay, but rather in the beauty of the sound and the depth of the evoked half-memories. It stirred something in her. It wasn’t a passion for violence or conquest, any more than the hymns stirred up desires to muster up another blood-soaked crusade in those who had been raised in a Western setting; it was something deeper, more stable. Peaceful and secure.

  Ben was in a different mood entirely. He didn’t dare call David, for fear that it would keep the man in Bass’s sights and therefore in the thick of the danger. That fear niggled at the edges of everything, but it was with some guilt that Ben felt the excitement of the situation taking the forefront of his mind. He had been to Jerusalem briefly, as a student, but with the heavy schedule and light wallet, hadn't seen much outside of windowless document rooms and a cheap room in student housing. This time he had money, both his own and the cash Bass had given him, a need to explore, and a beautiful woman sitting beside him, clutching his hand like a teenager. It really was like being the star of an Indiana Jones adventure. He smiled and turned to look at her.

  "LOOK OU-!"

  Through the side window, he had seen nothing but grill. The shining chrome smashed into the side of the car at the rear fender, sending the world spinning around them. They could do nothing but feel the hard pull of centrifugal force and grasp at their wits and bearings as both were slammed from their control. Marina’s ears rang with a high whistling sound. The radio seemed to have paused for the impact. A second crash arrested their rotation and the cab lurched backward, unnaturally slowly by comparison, until it came to rest with a light bump against a square, stone barrier.

  Marina sat for a moment, coming to terms with a still world and spinning heads, then looked over to Ben. He was staring down at his hands, at the blood and bits of shattered glass, his eyes widening, glancing around as if trying gain his own bearings. Marina glanced over her shoulder, still encased in the whistling sound from her inner ears, and saw balaclava-clad men jumping from the doors of the van and an SUV.

  Guns.

  FOURTEEN

  Gulam Thoma opened the email account, hands trembling and almost missing the keys. He typed in the password and looked at the menu. One draft. He opened it.

  Information received. Set to intercept. Will advise when complete.

  They had deleted his message.

  He thought of writing something back, just to keep involved in things, to feed that nervous energy into something. Anything. He thought better of it. He ticked the box beside the short message and deleted it. They would know from that that he had seen it. He would wait for word from them once they had completed the mission. That was better. More professional than an impotent reply. He logged out of the account and deleted the history on his browser.

  He sat back in his seat, one foot tapping back and forth against the chair leg, his teeth working his bottom lip to free a flake of chapped skin. How long would it be? An hour before he heard? A day? It would depend on where they took the American, he supposed. Tough to hide him in Jerusalem maybe. Back to Tel Aviv? Some place in the countryside? Probably.

  He had received the call from Dhawan the night before. Late. The hacker had intercepted some communication between the Texan and one of his operatives. He had also managed to identify the American expert and gain access to his credit card account. By signing in, but not doing anything with the card information, fraud protections had not kicked in and he had been able to leave without much of a trace. Certainly no trace Ben Gela would notice. Now, with the password in hand, he could check transactions
and know when and where the American was going. Each access would appear legitimate. No bells going off, free access to the information.

  The camping gear store had been puzzling at first, but the airfare to Tel Aviv had explained it. Americans… always thinking that any place outside of Manhattan was an untracked wilderness. How did they think these cultures had survived and thrived for millennia before the United States of America was even a distant dream?

  And already the so-called Superpower was beginning to crumble. They were riddled with poor, neglected citizens. Infrastructure was beyond any reasonable state of repair… trillions. War heroes were forgotten, empty celebrity was held higher than dignity, morality and real accomplishment. His face crumpled into a scowl and it was all he could do not to spit in disgust. It was one thing to fail, but quite another to fail while deluded that you were the pinnacle of human achievement. The great cultures of the Middle East would outlast the Westerners’ sprawling, soulless houses and profound weaknesses of character. Between that and their deluded conceit as the world's police force, they had no fan in the person of Gulam Thoma. He loved their movies — mostly — and their music. But that was about where it ended. He had met plenty of Americans, but what they pretended to be in their films… he had never met an American like that.

  Thoma had given his young hacker a bonus of five hundred dinars, peeled from a roll of three thousand, and promised him more for going above and beyond, for bringing any information about the shadowy deal unfolding in the secret realm of high-value black market antiquities. Dhawan had been thrilled by the payment, but Thoma knew that the young man was worth ten times that amount, and more. Business information, legitimate and otherwise, had shifted from the big, tin drawers of filing cabinets and secret ledgers, to the digital world. The digital world had, in its turn, been divided into territories as well, levels and depths beyond the skill of most people to navigate. Among the most esoteric of these was the network known as the Deep Web.