The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  It was getting dark when she returned after her umpteenth circuit, and the lights were on in the Benway’s house. It was snowing and it was cold and she hadn’t eaten the whole day. Or peed since she’d left home. And she suddenly desperately needed to do both.

  Then she saw a cab ease up to the house adjacent to Benway’s and when she heard a rattling sound she watched as the green door of a garage rolled up and a man scuttled out. A very small man with a very big head.

  Janey, standing not ten feet away from him, wished that somehow a gun could manifest in her gloved hand, that she may smite him like he had smote her David.

  These atypically biblical fantasies were brought to an end when the press squad spotted Benway and converged, yelling and jostling and flashing and whirring and clicking. Benway ducked into the taxi and the car blared its horn and shook off the media like a dog shaking off fleas.

  They were left muttering and stamping their feet and then the cold and the advancing dark worked their magic and they started to leak away and within a half-hour there were only two paparazzo left—bouncer-sized men who were famously locked in some grim blood feud—until they, without looking at one another, folded away their massive lenses and straddled matching Japanese superbikes and roared off in opposite directions.

  Janey waited a moment before she crossed the road and climbed the steps and rang the bell. No reply. She knocked. And knocked again.

  With a squeal and a clatter a sash window was raised and she saw a shadowy figure looming over her.

  “If you don’t go away I’ll have you arrested for criminal trespass,” Nadja Benway said in that cultivated accent of hers, part Brit, part something Balkan.

  “I’m not a reporter, Mrs. Benway,” Janey said, resisting the old hack impulse to get all chummy and call the woman by her first name.

  “Who are you then?”

  “My name’s Jane Burke and I believe your husband killed my husband.”

  - - -

  When Nadja opened the front door and the light spilled out and caught the elfin face of the small figure standing on her top step she thought she had been duped.

  This was a child, surely?

  But as Mrs. Burke stepped closer, Nadja realized she was at least thirty.

  “Please, come through to the kitchen,” Nadja said, taking the woman’s coat.

  Jane Burke followed her and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m really desperate to pee.”

  Nadja pointed to the bathroom and went on through to the kitchen and fidgeted, wanting to drink and smoke. But she did neither.

  The day had been arduous. She’d been kept prisoner in a house that was under siege. Lucien had stayed holed up in his office, emerging only a few minutes ago, leaving without telling her where he was going.

  The only relief had been the absence of Mr. Morose.

  The toilet flushed and the Burke woman appeared in the doorway.

  “Please,” Nadja said, pointing at the chair opposite her. “Sit.”

  Jane Burke sat.

  “So, why have you come here Mrs. Burke?”

  “Janey, please.”

  “Janey.”

  “As I said, I believe that your husband killed my husband.”

  Nadja kept her gaze level. She almost, out of some misguided sense of sisterhood, voiced her true feelings, that whatever Lucien may be he was not a fool. It was one thing to kill her lover in some desert wasteland, quite another to eliminate the man who had been pointing a very big finger at him in his own back yard.

  But, instead, she said, “But why have you come to me?”

  “Because I think he also killed somebody you loved.”

  This rocked Nadja and she felt the blood drain from her face. She reached across and grabbed the small woman by the arm hard enough to bruise her.

  “What do you know? Tell me?”

  Janey shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much, honestly. But I’ve heard rumors that you and Mike Emerson were lovers.”

  “It’s true. We were. I was going to leave my husband to be with Michael.”

  “Would your husband have allowed that?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “So you do believe he killed Mike Emerson?”

  Nadja looked at the portrait of the peasant girl, remembered all she had sacrificed in her life to be here, and then she looked at this small carrot-haired woman—who might just be her savior—and said, “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “Then you’ll help me?”

  “Help you how?”

  “To make him pay for the death of David.”

  “What I can tell you, Janey, is that Lucien hasn’t survived all these years in his toxic profession without being cunning. He will have covered his tracks very carefully. Despite all the hullabaloo has anyone come forward with any tangible evidence linking him to the death of your husband?”

  “No yet.”

  “Exactly. Just as there are all these wild, unsubstantiated rumors about his involvement in that plane crash in Asia.” She shook her head. “Lucien will weather this storm.”

  “I can’t let that happen.” Nadja shrugged. “So you won’t help me?”

  “I can’t help you.”

  The small woman flushed and shot to her feet, knocking her chair over. “You’re trying to protect him!”

  Then she started to shake and flail and Nadja was certain she was experiencing some grand mal epileptic seizure.

  Janey grabbed hold of the table and with sheer force of her will she stilled the shaking.

  “I’m sorry,’ she said. “It’s the shock, I think.”

  “Of course. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a drink.” The only alcohol in the house was locked in Lucien’s office.

  Janey shook her head. “No, I think it’s better if I don’t drink.”

  “Probably wise.”

  Nadja extended one of her long legs and raised the hem of her jeans, exposing the ankle monitor. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Yes,” Janey said.

  “My husband fitted it. I can’t leave the house.”

  “Jesus. And you let him do that to you?”

  “It was either that or be committed to a psychiatric hospital. Indefinitely.”

  “The fucking bastard.”

  “Yes. I’m showing you this to impress upon you that I hate my husband with a singular passion. The last thing I would want is to protect him.”

  “So?”

  “I want as badly as you do to see him destroyed. But we have to be strategic. I understand you feel that you have a crusade. That you want to expose to the world that Lucien killed your husband. But you may have to accept that will never happen.”

  “I can’t accept that.”

  “Ask yourself a question, Janey. Do you want Lucien brought down, by any means possible?”

  “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “Then kindly sit and listen to me. I have a plan.”

  SEVENTY

  When Benyamin Klein, sitting slumped on his bed beneath the lethargic ceiling fan, heard a soft knock at the door he assumed that his evening meal—donated by a kosher restaurant in Bangkok and shipped each day to the hotel where he and his Haredi colleagues were billeted—was being delivered by one of the silent Thai men who staffed the establishment.

  Klein had requested that only men serve him and clean his room. He did not trust himself after what had happened over a decade ago, even though the photographs taken by the American still dangled over his neck like a sword.

  When the knock came again, a little louder, Klein rose, grunting as the mechanism of his bad knee grated and stuttered, steadying himself on the scuffed green wall before he limped to the door.

  This would be his last meal here. His job was done, the gobbets of charred flesh and spikes of bone, all that remained of the young gymnasts and their coaches, had been scraped from the blackened earth and plucked from the branches of the trees, identified and laid in coffins that had been flown to Bangkok for transfer to Jerusalem.
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  And tomorrow Klein, too, would fly home, back to his wife and the certainties of the old stone buildings of the Meah She’arim, where he would, once again, spend his days at the yeshiva, fervently rocking backward and forward as he studied the Torah, shockelling as the years blew away like dust and his blood thinned and cooled, and all these sinful thoughts became as nothing.

  But when Klein opened the door the man standing in the corridor was not small and brown and dressed in a tunic, he was very tall and cadaverously pale, wearing an ugly floral shirt—so new it was still stiff and bore a checkerboard of creases from where it had lain folded in a store—and a pair of khaki trousers over running shoes.

  The big goy reached out and placed the flat of his hand on Klein’s sweaty chest and shoved, sending the Haredi sprawling onto his back on the wooden floor.

  The man stepped into the room, closed the door and crouched beside Klein, putting a long white finger to his bloodless lips.

  When Klein, panting, tried to rise, the goy pushed him back down with no effort at all.

  He dipped a hand into the pocket of his khaki pants and withdrew a large cell phone. He squinted at the face for a second, swiped at it with his finger and then turned the display toward Klein, who, blinking through sweat, thought he was suffering some heat induced hallucination, for on the screen of the phone was his beloved wife, Batsheva, seen from behind, her bewigged head covered by a scarf, a cloth bag hanging from the shoulder of her dark dress as she walked through the narrow streets of the Meah She’arim, passing a trio of bearded men in black hats and long coats.

  It was late afternoon and she was on her daily shopping trip to the fruit and vegetable market, the butcher and the bakery.

  As Klein wondered when this had been shot the pale man said in an American accent, “This is live. This is right now.”

  A hand appeared on the screen and waved, and then was removed from the frame, the cell phone camera jiggling and bumping as it followed close behind Batsheva.

  “Show me what you have under your coat,” the tall man said into the phone.

  The camera panned down over the familiar black garb of a Haredi and then the coat gaped and Klein saw a suicide bomber’s belt: cylinders of high explosive strapped to the man’s body. The coat was closed and the camera swung back to Batsheva who had stopped at a fruit stall where she lifted a Jaffa orange and inspected it.

  The pale man stared down at Klein. “If you answer my questions honestly your wife will be spared. If you don’t . . .” He shrugged.

  “What do you want?” Klein said in a thick whisper.

  “A finger was given to you, was it not? To plant at the crash site?”

  Klein couldn’t find his voice and the man raised the cell phone toward his mouth.

  “Wait,” Klein said. “Yes. Yes. Please, don’t hurt her.”

  “Was it given to you by this man?”

  The goy swiped again at the phone and when he turned it back toward Klein it showed the face of the American who was blackmailing him. The picture had been taken maybe ten years ago, but it was unmistakably him.

  Klein nodded, his sidecurls dancing. “Yes. He gave it to me.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “No.”

  The pale man brought back the view of Batsheva shopping and spoke into the phone, “Okay, stand down.”

  The camera swung away from his wife and bumped and shook as it moved down the sidewalk and turned a corner and then the face of the phone went dark.

  “You did good,” the man said, looking into Klein’s eyes.

  He had a hypodermic in his hand and he shoved aside the Haredi’s thick beard and plunged the needle into his carotid and Klein just had time to say “Oy, gottenyu,” as he saw his whole life rushing toward him.

  Then he saw nothing.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Harry Hook, seated beneath a light at the table in his little wooden house in the jungle, sharpened an HB pencil to a lethal point with an X-Acto knife, while he squinted through cigarette smoke and his smudged reading glasses at his drawing.

  He was breaking from his formula of land and seascapes that were remarkable only by their lack of human presence, which, he supposed, said a lot about him. This was a portrait. Drawn from memory. A portrait of the kid. Suzie. His granddaughter. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t half bad. The likeness pleased him and he’d captured something of her essence, an intriguing mixture of playfulness and a kind of melancholy that was way too old for her years.

  On impulse Hook had opened the sketchpad when he’d found himself lusting after the bottle of Cutty Sark that he’d stashed in the kitchen closet. He’d somehow convinced himself that pouring the liquor down the sink was as much an act of weakness as drinking it.

  When he’d returned from prowling the small tourist strip of bars, restaurants and stalls down on the beachfront—the night air thick with spices, fried foods, gasoline, laughter and snatches of music—he’d been sped up by adrenaline, and knew he wouldn’t sleep.

  It was either boozing or a sketching.

  So he sketched.

  He’d been in town as a lure, making himself visible in the belief that Morse was watching, Hook using all his tradecraft to try and draw the man out.

  But he’d caught not a glimpse of the walking cadaver. Which meant that he was betting on something that may never happen. What if Morse was a no-show?

  What if he was back in D.C. chewing on glass or lying on a bed of nails or whatever a Liddyesque freak like him did in his downtime?

  Hook, his attention drifting, applied the blade of the knife too zealously and broke the tip of the pencil, a little rain of lead joining the whorls of shavings that lay on floor at his feet.

  Hook dropped the pencil onto the table, looked away from the eyes of the kid and removed his glasses. As he massaged his sinuses he felt the sudden dragging weight of impeding loss, and almost gave himself up to a sadness so deep that if he let it take him he’d have no way of getting free.

  He stood, frisking himself for his cigarettes, and brought a pack of Camels to his mouth, extracting one with his lips as he wandered across to the window. Hook lit the cigarette, staring out at the night through the mesh of mosquito net, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The jungle was dense and dark, but the stars were as bright as pinholes in black paper, a silvery rash that rose from behind the trees and the luminous limestone cliffs.

  The cigarette tasted bitter and he ground it dead in an ashtray and found himself at his laptop, nudging the mouse, hearing the hard drive grind and moan, and opened The Bangkok Post online. He scrolled past the international news until a link caught his eye: ISRAELI DISASTER VOLUNTEER FOUND DEAD.

  He clicked on the link and scanned the article. The body of Benyamin Klein had been found in his hotel room earlier that evening. He’d apparently been the victim of a heart attack.

  Hook closed his eyes and felt the old familiar cocktail of elation and terror.

  It was on.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Kate field stripped the weapons on the bed in the cramped resort bungalow, fingers practiced and assured as she spread the working parts on the counterpane and wiped them with a cloth. The guns were clean and well maintained but the labor kept her calm and focused. Like a meditation, almost.

  That morning, when she’d woken next to Suzie in JP’s bed (the Frenchman had gallantly taken the couch when Hook and the girl had returned from their ice cream mission) Kate had lain staring at the stained ceiling, listening to the calls of the gibbon monkeys and, later, the distant whine of the scooter traffic, feeling more relaxed than she had in a long while. Last night’s sex had something to do with it, but the knowledge that she was about to go into battle had always calmed her. Stilled her mind.

  She remembered one of her instructors from years ago, a tough old combat veteran, telling her that she was a natural, one of the rare breed who
grew more chilled in the face of danger.

  “You’re like a fuckin athlete, girl, an elite performer. Time slows down for you when things get critical and that lets you do shit that nobody else can do. I’d go to war with you in a fuckin heartbeat.”

  She left the bed and went through to where JP was making coffee in the kitchen. He put his arms around her and tried to kiss her but she withdrew and hurt bloomed in his eyes for a second before he turned away and stirred his coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Things are about to happen.”

  “What things?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He swung on her, angry. “You don’t trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. This is for your own good.”

  He laughed a very cynical, very French laugh. “That’s a bit like when you break up and say it’s not you it’s me.”

  “Hey, let’s not do this,” she said, walking away.

  She only realized he was gone when she heard the squeak of the kickstand of his scooter and the scratch of the electric starter followed by the sewing machine whine of the small engine.

  She went into the bedroom and woke Suzie and the two of them showered together, washing their hair and laughing, but Kate was vigilant all the while, listening for anyone approaching the house, waiting for that indefinable sensation, like a change in barometric pressure, that for her had always signaled the coming of danger.

  They were dressed by the time JP returned with a backpack slung over his shoulder. Kate got Suzie watching cartoons on JP’s iPad in the bedroom and she went into the kitchen with him where he removed a few objects wrapped in old T-shirts from the pack.

  He opened them to reveal the Glock, a .32 Smith & Wesson and a Remington sawed-off.