Ring of Lies

by Roni Dunevich

  “Arab?” Paris asked.

  “Too pale. It’s hard to say. Did you search him?”

  “Nothing in the pockets. Labels cut off. No wallet. No phone. Cheap watch. Fifty euros and change.”

  “You took it?”

  “Let’s say he paid his share of the gas,” Paris said with a sneer.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Would you say anything after falling five flights?”

  “Get rid of him. Your car looks out of place here. It’ll attract attention.”

  Paris nodded.

  “How did you get in?” Jane asked.

  Paris smiled, half closing his small eyes.

  “I need proof you’re Paris,” Jane said.

  “I need proof you’re London.”

  “You first,” she insisted.

  His thick fingers struggled with the button on his jeans. He gave her a sheepish grin.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Jane said.

  “Where did you spend the night?” Alex asked.

  Paris gestured toward the shadowy forest. “Out there.”

  GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 18:12

  “We can’t ID the body,” Butthead said over the phone.

  “Did you check international databases?”

  “Yup. We also tried face recognition, did a little artwork on the jaw. Nothing.”

  “Anything on Justus’s computer?”

  “Still digging. When there’s something to report, you’ll hear it.”

  He hung up.

  The bronze silhouette of the Walking Man stood out against the blue-tinged scene beyond the windows. The day was dying. The lights on the lawn came on, casting a bright yellow glow over the cherry trees.

  The forest had sent them this strange man, Paris. He’d spent the night up a tree after crossing Europe with a dead body in the trunk.

  “You said you left Justus a message. Where?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Where?” Alex repeated.

  “At crazyheli.com. He always answers within twenty seconds. Ask London.”

  “Is that true?”

  Jane nodded.

  Alex’s phone vibrated. The name of the caller appeared on the screen. Daniella!

  “Hello,” Alex answered.

  Silence.

  “Daniella?”

  Breathing.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “I’ll call you back.”

  He dialed.

  Someone picked up. Muted sounds.

  “Can you hear me now?”

  Silence.

  “Is something wrong?”

  A hand covered the speaker, cutting off the sound of weeping.

  His daughter was crying!

  “Daniella, are you all right?”

  The call was disconnected.

  Shit!

  “What did she say?” Jane asked.

  He redialed.

  No answer.

  “She was crying.”

  “Was she alone?”

  Alex threw Paris a steely look and checked him out from head to toe. His weirdness was disturbing. Should he stay or go? Daniella was in trouble. Could he leave Jane with this strange man? Fuck.

  “Maybe they can send someone from the Rome station,” Jane suggested.

  “She’s my only child.”

  “I meant in the meantime, until you get there.”

  Alex gazed at her. “I’m going.”

  She didn’t volunteer her company, but the offer was in her eyes.

  “We’ll find a better time for the two of you to meet,” Alex said. “I want that to happen.”

  Paris stroked his chin, examining Alex with his little eyes.

  “Are you okay to be alone with him?” Alex whispered in her ear.

  “It’ll give me a chance to get to know him better.”

  “You’re not scared?”

  “Go to Daniella. I’ll be fine.” She pressed her body to his.

  “Keep your gun with you at all times,” he whispered.

  When she nodded, her chin rubbed up against his chest.

  The streets were empty and the roads were covered in compacted snow. The heater purred contentedly. An elderly man wearing a cap was walking a thick-tailed beagle in a red sweater.

  Alex called Reuven and informed him that he was on his way to Tuscany.

  “Daniella isn’t in kindergarten and we’re not nursemaids. You’re the head of Operations. You can’t just get up and leave in the middle of a critical op because you think you heard her crying. Did she say anything?”

  “She couldn’t talk. I know her, Reuven. She’s in danger.”

  “She’s in danger . . .” Reuven said dismissively. “The whole Nibelung Ring is in danger! Mossad is in danger!”

  “So why aren’t you handling it yourself? Admit it, Reuven. You don’t give a damn about the Nibelungs. You’re already fantasizing about your next job.”

  “I’m your boss! I don’t have to explain anything to you. You don’t like it—you can quit.”

  “Someone’s trying to get to me where I’m most vulnerable. I can’t stay in Berlin and forget about her.”

  “You’re not going!”

  Alex’s long career in Mossad flashed before his eyes. It didn’t mean shit to him.

  He called Butthead.

  “I need a flight from Berlin to Tuscany right away.”

  “Give me a minute,” Butthead wheezed. Alex heard his fingers race across the keyboard.

  “Air Berlin from Tegel to Fiumicino in Rome. It’s a little longer than the flight to Milan, but it’s a shorter drive.”

  “When?”

  “Fifty-five minutes. Are you okay?”

  “Find something on Erlichmann for me.”

  “Exodus has something. I was there a little while ago. They’re all hysterical up there.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “You know her. If it isn’t a hundred percent, it doesn’t exist.”

  The mounds of dirty snow at the sides of the busy road were streaked with the red glare of brake lights.

  “Where did you get this fucking BlackBerry,” Sammy Zengot grumbled from Brussels.

  “Have you hacked it yet?”

  “Hacked it? The fucking thing doesn’t have an operating system. There’s no way to turn it on, no way to dial a number.”

  “Figure it out, Sammy.”

  “I’ve got seven people working on it.”

  “Could it be a cloud—the operating system only works when you key in the code?”

  “We can’t key in a code without getting into the system. Get it?”

  He got it, and he disconnected.

  A semitrailer loaded with Volkswagen Passats was blocking the left lane. In the right lane, traffic was crawling. The Air Berlin flight to Rome was looking less and less likely. He felt like screaming.

  He called Butthead. “Check the location of Daniella’s phone and get me the farm in Bucine.”

  “Right away, man.”

  He hung up.

  “Move already!” he yelled at the traffic inching ahead. He gazed out into the darkness, his knuckles white with frustration.

  The congestion eased a little.

  He was washed by a wave of panic. Too late, he saw the red lights rushing toward him. He slammed on the brakes and the Mercedes skidded on the ice. The back of the massive semi grew rapidly larger, as if it had been shot from a cannon in his direction. He pumped the brake pedal. The car slowed and slid sideways before stopping. The muscles in his back seized up. Shit, that was close.

  Butthead called. “Daniella’s phone is on. It’s somewhere on the farm, outside Pogi. There’s no answer in the office. Sorry.”

  He should have tried to stop her. He’d suggested that she talk to someone, but she’d said, “I’ll do better on my own.”

  He finally made it to Tegel.

  “You’re l
ate,” the woman at the check-in desk scolded him. She wouldn’t promise that the plane would wait. A man flying alone without any luggage demanded a thorough body search. German hands felt him up, invading his privacy, as the minutes ticked by.

  He prayed that she hadn’t been attacked again. He prayed that he wasn’t too late.

  He was about to waste two precious hours in the black sky.

  “Coffee?”

  “What?”

  “Coffee, sir?”

  A flight attendant with a pale, moon-shaped face smiled down at him. He shook his head. The smile vanished. She turned her attention to the passengers in the next row. Lights flickered between the clouds.

  Three rows back, a bald man bit his fingernails as he kept an eye on Alex.

  FIUMICINO, ROME | 21:37

  The agent at the car-rental desk in Fiumicino had pointed sideburns and calf eyes. He moved like a toy monkey drummer whose battery was running down. His thick fingers lumbered across the keyboard while he chewed on a disposable pen. Finally, he scowled, took the pen from his mouth, and handed it, gleaming with saliva, to Alex.

  “Sign here.”

  Traffic on the highway was light. Alex circled Rome from the north in the rental Alfa Romeo Giulietta, going more than a hundred miles an hour until a flashing blue light up ahead forced him to slow down.

  Leaving the lights of Umbria behind, he sped into the Tuscan night.

  What if he was too late?

  Sinkholes of fear opened beneath him. His knuckles on the steering wheel were white. Periodically he glanced in the rearview mirror, checking out the dazzling lights behind him, but he found nothing suspicious.

  Glowing orange traffic cones blocked the right lane. Red lights flashed in the distance. Scraps of slashed black rubber were strewn along the road. At the side of the highway, a wounded truck lay on its damaged tires like a collapsed beast in a slaughterhouse. The line of cars snaked forward at an exasperating crawl. Everyone had to get a look.

  Alex called her when he got off the highway in Monte San Savino. Her phone was off.

  A white fog hung in the dark air at the entrance to Pogi, blurring the shoulders of the road. He raced onward between the trees into the dark forest. The Giulietta shuddered violently, its engine groaning and its shock absorbers struggling to keep up. Tree trunks flashed by in the night as he sped down the winding road; his headlights were reflected back blindingly by the fog. All of a sudden a large deer leaped out of the forest in front of him. Alex braked wildly. The fog gushed toward him like smoke. The deer disappeared into the vineyard. As he took the final rise to the farm, he felt in his pocket for his gun.

  The Glock was back in Berlin.

  He parked the car, switched off the engine. Outside, everything lay in heavy silence.

  The front lawn was dimly lit, but the houses were dark. A single light flickered in a second-story window of a nearby building. Steep terra-cotta steps led to a covered veranda. He tiptoed up the stairs. Her red mountain bike was beside the door. The cypresses on the lawn sighed in the wind. Alex’s heart was pumping with adrenaline and fear. He saw a thin strip of light under a heavy gray curtain behind a double-glazed door.

  A petrifying growl issued from the forest.

  He knocked on the glass, the blood pulsating in his temples.

  Nothing.

  He pressed down on the handle.

  Locked.

  Alex picked up a small wrought-iron table and stepped back to give himself enough momentum to break the glass.

  Then he froze.

  The curtain had moved.

  BUCINE, TUSCANY | 00:36

  Daniella gaped at him. Her green eyes were swollen; her face was damp. She’d lost a lot of weight.

  There was no gun at her back, no knife at her throat. Alex lowered the table and put it back where it belonged.

  Thank God. She was alive.

  She opened the door and he spread his arms wide. His daughter flinched, resisting his embrace.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Daniella shrugged and gave him a piercing look.

  “Why didn’t you answer my call, Daniella?”

  “I couldn’t,” she wailed in fury.

  “My girl, what’s wrong?”

  “Your girl . . .” she spat back at him contemptuously.

  “I tried to see you . . . I was here—”

  “Liar!”

  “You wheeled your red bike past my car and rode into the forest.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “You’re pathetic!”

  “What’s wrong, Daniella?”

  “Reuven . . . he called . . . this afternoon.”

  Alex felt a wave of heat in his face and painful pressure in his chest.

  “I didn’t understand what he was talking about,” she said.

  “What did he say?”

  Her shoulders shuddered. “That you’re not my father . . . he is. He said Mom told him.” She burst into tears, wiping her face on the sleeve of her stained sweatshirt. “Is it true?”

  Reuven had set a trap for him. He’d brought out his deadliest weapon and delivered the terrible blow to Daniella. And the motherfucker had done it over the phone. She’d cried out for Alex, and Reuven had forbidden him to go to her, cornering him and forcing him to make a decision that would cost him his chance to become the next head of Mossad.

  If Reuven were here now, Alex would wring his neck.

  “Can I hold you?”

  She was hunched up in the corner of the sofa, childlike and helpless, a tiny figure in a large square room.

  Since Naomi died, he’d done everything he could to avoid this moment. He sat down beside her. “I’m your father, Daniella.”

  The marble counter in the kitchenette was cluttered with dirty dishes and leftover scraps of food. An empty wine bottle lay on its side.

  He reached out a tentative hand and stroked her hair in a familiar gesture. There was a wary look in her swollen eyes, but at least she didn’t pull away.

  In a broken voice he said, “I love you.”

  Her weeping grew more intense, her shoulders shaking.

  His despair grew deeper.

  Eventually she calmed down and leaned her head on his shoulder. He kissed it. Her hair smelled rancid and her body odor was rank. He put his arms around her and held her tight.

  A black moth flew in through the open glass door and was sucked into the floor lamp in the corner. Its heavy body thumped against the taut linen shade.

  “My whole world is crashing down,” she said quietly.

  Still shaking, she twisted around and rested her head in his lap.

  “Mom . . .” she mumbled, her chin trembling.

  He pulled her closer, struggling not to break down.

  “I’d almost come to terms with her death. I was feeling stronger. And then my world fell apart. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The moth landed on the floor near his feet, bare and motionless.

  He sighed. “I was afraid I would lose you.”

  BUCINE, TUSCANY | 01:04

  “I don’t have anyone,” Daniella said, light-years away.

  “You have me,” he said softly, stroking her hair.

  “Did you always know?” Her face tensed, ready to take the blow.

  “Of course not.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “They were your mother’s last words.”

  “And you didn’t sense anything before that?”

  “There was nothing to sense. You’re mine.”

  The gap was widening.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “When?”

  “Before I was born. How I was born. Everything. I have to know.”

  “Come home, dear.” Unconsciously, he bit down on his lip. “I’ll tell you at home, when things have quieted down. I promise.”

  She shook her head.

  He closed his eyes. Wings fluttered on his cheek. He wa
ved the insect away. A moment later, the irksome thumping against the lampshade started up again.

  “I was younger than you are now. I was sent out on a prolonged operation. I was supposed to be off the grid for about a year. In the end, it turned out to be much longer. There were four of us. Mom was at home, alone. They didn’t let us see each other until a year into the op, when we met in a hotel in Zurich. I always believed that you were conceived there.”

  “What really happened?”

  “Reuven was looking after the families. He took advantage of—”

  “Of what?”

  “The bottom line is, they had an affair. That’s it.”

  She made an effort to hide her astonishment.

  He nodded sadly.

  “And you were with that British woman . . .”

  “Jane.”

  “Did you sleep with her, Dad? Did you cheat on Mom?”

  “I was lonely, under pressure. We lived in constant fear.”

  “So you fucked the British woman,” she stated.

  Her innocence was gone. She was hardened, aggressive, and demanding. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t cut him any slack. “You know what? Yes. I fucked her, okay? Happy now?”

  “Did Mom know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you leave her for the British woman?”

  Alex inhaled deeply. Her questions weighed on him. But there was something liberating about finally revealing the secrets in his history.

  “When I got home, your mother was pregnant with you. About six months along.”

  “And all the years you lived together, you were having an affair on the side with the British woman?”

  “I didn’t have any contact with her.”

  She brushed the hair off her face. “Did you stay with Mom because of me?”

  “I loved your mother.”

  “And the British woman?”

  “Jane. Call her by her name. You owe her that, at least.”

  “I don’t owe her shit.”

  He’d never heard her talk like this. “She saved your life in London. She saved both our lives.”

  Daniella sat in silence, turning the information over in her mind.

  “Okay, Jane,” she conceded. “We’ll call her Jane. Were you in love with Jane all those years?”

  “Maybe.”