Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  “Hul khalast?”

  Brady jumped. A turbaned man in business attire and holding a briefcase stood to one side. He repeated his query, gesturing with his head at the phone.

  “Sorry,” Brady mumbled. He hitched the bags over his shoulders, turned the rolling suitcase around, and wheeled it away.

  “La termi!” someone called.

  He turned. The man at the phone was holding up Brady’s calling card. He walked back, took it with a nod, and pocketed it. He followed the rental car signs to an escalator and rode it to the floor below. He found the Hertz counter, but Alicia had not yet arrived.

  He waited behind a couple unsuccessfully bargaining for an upgrade, watched the people coming off the escalator in the distance, checked the time. The couple left, and he stepped up to the counter. The rental process took ten minutes, and when he turned away, keys, agreement, and map in hand, Alicia still had not shown up.

  He rode the escalator back to the main level and walked to the spot where they had parted. He had not seen where she went. The restroom, she’d said. Was she sick? Could authorities have stopped her, detained her? Alicia wouldn’t have allowed herself to be taken away without getting word to him—probably in the form of a miniriot of broken noses and screams of pain.

  He eyed the people and the services in the direction he had taken when he left her. Tourists trickled out of the customs lines, several stopping to wait for traveling companions. On this side of customs, three round pillars quartered the wide room like sentinels, protecting the rest of the terminal from arriving tourists until their presence in the country was approved. Brady’s vision scanned past them, then went back to a man leaning his right shoulder against one of the pillars. He was dressed sharply in casual clothes. Chocolate pleated slacks. Royal blue short-sleeved shirt that appeared tailored to the man’s tapered torso. His arms were crossed, and he was looking directly at Brady. Smiling. The man nodded in greeting.

  Brady looked around, saw no one else paying him undue attention. He headed toward the man, who came off the pillar as he neared.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.

  “How would I—” And the next word froze in his throat. He did know. His stomach flopped over.

  Expect anything, absolutely anything, Ambrosi had said.

  “Where is she?” he demanded. He resisted the temptation to slam his fist into Scaramuzzi’s smug face, to get him on the ground and bludgeon him to death with . . . anything. The CSD case. A shoe. His hands.

  “Halfway to Tel Aviv by now,” answered Scaramuzzi. He studied Brady’s features, searching for something.

  “What do you want with her?”

  “Are you going to waste our time together with stupid questions?”

  Brady glared. “All right. What do you want from me?”

  “Let’s go somewhere. I know a room.”

  He took a step. Brady grabbed his arm.

  “Here’s fine,” he said.

  Scaramuzzi nodded. “I want the file.”

  Brady’s mind raced. File? What file? He kept his face expressionless. He needed time to think.

  “How did you find us?” he said, stalling. The Pelletier case file? A computer file? The video walk-through?

  “Same way we knew where the two of you would be three days ago. What your FBI knows, we know.”

  “If I give you the file right now, you’ll release her, unharmed?” He patted his satchel with his fingers for effect.

  Scaramuzzi cocked his head. “Very funny.”

  “You expect me to give you the file without getting her in return? You’re as insane as I heard you were.”

  Scaramuzzi’s eyes hardened. “Just get the file,” he said. “When you have it, bring it to this address.” He handed Brady a business card.

  It was thick and silky to the touch. There was an Italian crest on it, Scaramuzzi’s name, and “Asia House.” Under that, in small script, was an address in Tel Aviv. The card trembled in Brady’s hand. He shoved it into his pocket. He wanted to say something, anything. Maybe, I have no idea what you’re talking about! But he was afraid that would squash any hope of getting Alicia back alive.

  Just stay alive and see what happens, he thought.

  “Instead of doing it this way, we could have tailed you,” Scaramuzzi said. “Killed all of you when you made the pickup.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Pip’s a little paranoid right now. Seems someone shot him in the head.” He plunged both his hands into his pants pockets, rocked up on the balls of his feet, and came down again. He appeared completely at ease.

  Brady remained silent. Pip? Who is Pip?

  “Even my men couldn’t sneak up on that old dog in his present state,” Scaramuzzi continued. “No, better to let you go get what you need to get your girl back.”

  “What if . . . ?” Brady shook his head. “What if something goes wrong? What if I don’t get the file?”

  Scaramuzzi eyed him sharply, trying to figure Brady’s game.

  “Then the girl dies,” he said.

  Inside, Brady buckled. His mind flashed an image of his wife, Karen, as she appeared in the morgue. A wax figure on a stainless-steel table, her skin as white as the sheet that came up to her neck. But it was not Karen on that table; it was Alicia.

  He wanted to grab Scaramuzzi and shake him and say, I don’t know who Pip is! I don’t know what file you think he’s going to give me! Or why he would give it to me! I don’t know where to start looking or who to contact! Why don’t you tell me to pull a violin out of my ear and play “Für Elise”? I have as much chance of doing that as I do of finding this head-shot Pip and his mysterious file!

  Brady tried to conceal his extreme frustration. He looked around at the tourists milling past, the counters and kiosks deeper in the terminal. He let his eyes linger too long on a pair of airport police, one laughing at something the other said.

  “They can’t help you,” Scaramuzzi said flatly.

  Brady snapped his gaze back to him, anger flushing his face, tightening his jaw. “Are you going to tell me you have entire police forces, entire governments in the bag? You can’t. No one can. Maybe you don’t know it, but there are people who can’t be corrupted. If you were as powerful as you’re suggesting, you wouldn’t worry about what evidence we’ve gathered against you. You wouldn’t be here.”

  Scaramuzzi let Brady have his say, then he replied, “My point is that Ms. Wagner would be so much fish food in the Mediterranean before authorities here realized they have no jurisdiction to search the extraterritorial Italian Embassy. My embassy. You’ve got six hours.” He brushed past Brady, his hands still buried in his pockets.

  “Wait,” Brady called.

  Scaramuzzi turned, raised his eyebrows.

  “What is all this about?” Brady asked. “Why the murders in Utah and Colorado? Why did you try to have us killed?”

  Scaramuzzi smiled, tight-lipped. He closed the gap between them with two steps.

  “You weren’t supposed to make it this far,” he said. “Now that you have, your role has escalated. The pawns have become rooks. Congratulations.”

  “But why kill us in the first place? What did we do?”

  Scaramuzzi scrutinized his face

  “You showed up, Mr. Moore,” he said. “That’s all you had to do.” He turned and strolled away, leaving Brady staring after him, slack-jawed.

  Scaramuzzi nodded at people passing him, and they beamed and gestured in return. He was pleasing to the eye and exuded a pleasantness too scarce in this world.

  Brady realized that the only way for true evil to flourish was to masquerade as good. Aggressive mimicry. In high school, he had written an essay on cleptoparasitic bees, which mimic the physical appearance and pheromones of other bees. In this way, the female cleptoparasitic—or cuckoo bee—infiltrates the host’s nest and lays her eggs. When they hatch, they attack and kill the entire host bee population.

  Brady had just met a human clep
toparasite.

  He wanted to vomit.

  70

  Brady charged through Ben-Gurion Airport, the CSD bag and his case-file satchel bouncing and banging against his hips. He had left the new wheeled luggage, with its store of clothes, where it stood. Speed and agility were priorities now. He spotted Scaramuzzi and slowed his pace. He needed to stay a good distance behind him to avoid detection. He intended to tail him to his car, grab a cab, and follow him. What if he was holding Alicia somewhere besides the embassy? He might go there to check the arrangements, make sure she was secure.

  Maybe she’s in his car, he thought. One glimpse of her—struggling in the backseat, unconscious in the trunk—and Brady would flag down the airport police, make enough commotion to bring the Israeli army down on their heads. He doubted Scaramuzzi would risk killing Alicia in a crowded parking lot with Brady yelling to wake the dead. If he could rescue her—right here, right now, before Scaramuzzi got her on the embassy’s sovereign soil—they would leave, just go home and strategize. Live to fight another day, as Ambrosi had said.

  Excited by the idea, he moved too quickly. Before he realized it, he was within thirty feet of his target. If Scaramuzzi turned his head, he would see his pursuer. Brady stopped at a newspaper vending machine, pretended to read the front page through the display window. Scaramuzzi abruptly stepped around a wall and was gone. Brady darted after him. He was nearly running when he rounded the wall and was stopped by a set of stiff, outstretched fingers. They caught him in the chest and he went down, landing on his back. The wind burst from his lungs. He gasped for breath.

  Standing over him was a man about fifty. Compact and muscular. Piercing eyes below a bald dome. His face was lean, corded with muscle. He pointed one of his iron-spike fingers at Brady. His straight, lipless mouth bent down. The warning was clear. The man strode away. His legs scissored quickly and precisely; his arms swung stiffly. A soldier’s gait. A name from the night before came to Brady’s mind: Arjan Vos. Scaramuzzi’s chief of security. Brutal was the word Ambrosi had used.

  People moved in to help. Concerned inquiries in languages he didn’t understand. Vertical again, Brady scanned the corridor for Scaramuzzi and Vos—assuming that’s who it was. They were gone. He could see that the corridor opened into a hall, beyond which lay the bustle of cabs and buses and private cars. He lowered the CSD case and the satchel to the carpeted floor. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pulled it open. Three oval bruises formed a little triangle over his sternum.

  His eyes closed, seemingly of their own accord.

  What now?

  He was expected to pick something up from a man. The something was a file. The man was named Pip. That was all he knew. Had Alicia made arrangements to meet this man, without his knowledge? Unlikely, but it wasn’t beneath Alicia to work secretly, independently, if she thought doing so was more expedient than involving him. How would she have learned about him? When did she have a chance to schedule a meeting?

  Didn’t matter. Whether Alicia knew about Pip or not, he wasn’t Alicia. He had to assume Pip would not suddenly appear to him.

  Someone shot him in the head.

  So Scaramuzzi had Alicia, and he had priced her freedom higher than Brady could pay. He simply did not have the item Scaramuzzi desired. The only option available that he could see was to get into the embassy and get her out. He tried not to think of his chances.

  Instead, as he picked up his bags and headed for the shuttle that would take him to his rental car, he thought of his adversary. Through their entire conversation, the man had kept his lips bent in a haughty smile. Brady had never met anyone so comfortable in his own skin, so unabashedly self-assured. He understood how this man could deceive people into believing he was whoever he said he was, especially if the charisma merely underpinned a program of claims and fabricated evidence.

  A notion slipped into his mind, then was gone. It had been important, but Brady could not coax it back into the light of his conscious thoughts. What was it? The conversation with Scaramuzzi. Something wasn’t right. He tried to reconstruct the exchange.

  “Where is she?”

  “Halfway to Tel Aviv by now.”

  “Huna!”

  Brady looked up at the shuttle driver. “Huh?”

  “A16,” the driver said, nodding toward a blue Peugeot.

  “Ah . . .” He clambered off, opened the sedan’s trunk, dropped in the two bags, and climbed behind the wheel. Started the engine. Cranked the AC. Stared out the windshield, not seeing anything but his own dark, chaotic thoughts.

  They started with a single word: Leave.

  He heard Alicia say, “You have somebody to go home to. You have someone who loves you and needs you, and you’re determined to live up to your responsibilities to Zach. That’s honorable. That’s noble.”

  If I stay, if I try to rescue her, I will die. What will happen to Zach then?

  Leave. Alicia would understand. She would want you to do it.

  His hands were gripping the steering wheel so hard, they were starting to cramp. Perspiration seeped from his palms, dripped onto his thighs. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  In response to Alicia’s abduction, the confrontation with Scaramuzzi, and the challenge to act, his hypothalamus had triggered his “fight or flight” response. Adrenaline surged through his bloodstream, increasing his pulse and respiration, routing less blood to the vital organs and more to the muscles and extremities. His vision was sharper, impulses quicker. He was more prepared, physically and psychologically, to battle an adversary or run from the danger than he had been even two minutes before. He sat there, cold air blowing on his face, and willed himself to calm down. Deep breaths, in and out.

  Leaving Alicia was not an option.

  Because he was better than that. Because she deserved better than that.

  If he left, shame would tear at him until he was nothing but bitter. This time and location would burn in his consciousness as the hour of his most tragic failure, as the place he ceased being a man, ceased being human. The driver who had hit Karen and left her on the side of the road to bleed to death had driven off because he was afraid, afraid his mistake would cost not only the life of an innocent jogger but his own life as well. Jailed for vehicular homicide. Ten years to life.

  How could Brady do worse, after cursing the killer of his wife for eighteen months? What level of hell would leaving Alicia earn him? With his efforts, she had a chance. Without him, she was dead.

  His eyes snapped open. He let out a determined roar, one of those Iron John bellows from the deepest part of his soul. He was going to do this.

  Priority one: Save Alicia.

  Priority two: Take Scaramuzzi down.

  He would give his life for the first, and hope for the second.

  He shifted into reverse, glanced over his shoulder, and made the tires chirp. Shifted into drive.

  “Zach, I wish I had talked to you,” he said out loud. He checked his watch. Almost four hours before he was to call back.

  Four hours. I can stay alive that long.

  The tires chirped again as he slammed down on the accelerator.

  71

  Brady drove out of the airport complex and ignored the signs for Highway 1—westbound for Tel Aviv, eastbound for Jerusalem. He passed under the highway and continued south. Almost immediately, he was in the town of Lod, an ancient, expanding amalgam of sunbaked, sandblasted brick-and-plaster buildings and gleaming contemporary structures fifteen stories high. Here and there, palm trees arced out of the desert floor like Loch Ness monsters popping up for a gander. He remembered that it was here the apostle Peter was said to have healed a paralyzed man by speaking Jesus’ name. He hoped it would prove fruitful for him as well.

  He followed Ambrosi’s directions on the card he had given Brady in front of the Samson fountain. He found Gidon Gertbu Street and turned west. Except for the predominance of Arabic hash marks that advertised each business, he could have been cruising a 1950s American hea
rtland Main Street. Storefronts made of wood or whitewashed brick. Tall, square facades hiding pitched roofs. Several merchants had set up sidewalk displays of their wares—fruit, grain, what looked to Brady like used Tupperware. Up close, he noticed the paint peeling back like wood shavings and the cracked windows that had been repaired with yellowing tape.

  Gidon Gertbu more closely resembled Main Street of the sixties, he corrected himself. When the first generation of youths—the same ones tapped to bloody the soil of Vietnam—realized they were not obligated to stay and tend their fathers’ grueling fields. After the beginning of the end for small-town America, but before the boards went up over the windows and the old-timers stopped caring about the dried amaranths tumbling down their streets.

  He rolled slowly, rotating his head, trying to catch the gist of each store’s trade. Judging by the scarcity of the Western alphabet, the area drew few tourists. After two blocks, he saw what he wanted on the left-hand side of the street: a narrow store with a low rack of books on the sidewalk. On the front window, in white and red paint faded to near-nonexistence, were Hebrew or Arabic letters and the words Yonatan’s Used & Rare Books.

  He paused for a rusty pickup truck to pass in the opposite direction, then turned and parked in front of the bookstore. A bell jangled above the door, and he stepped into air fragranced by aged paper, dust, and something sharper, tangier, that Brady had smelled before but could not place. Bookcases with warped shelves, laden with volumes, lined a room the size of his kitchen back home. An old man sat hunched over a book at a counter directly across the room from the front door. He did not look up.

  “Excuse me?” he said to the old man’s pink and freckled head.

  Slowly the man lifted his gaze. Wispy gray hair puffed out of his lower face. His nose was long and thin and severely beaked; he could have opened cans with it. His eyes, beady and close-set, scanned Brady up and down.