by Jon Land
“My pass allows for free passage anywhere in the West Bank.”
“This particular area is currently under Israeli control.” The soldier shifted his weapon from his shoulder so it was within easier reach. “If you do not vacate the area, I will have to detain you.”
Ben turned off his car’s engine. “This land was ceded to the Palestinian Authority in the latest phase of your government’s withdrawal. I have the official maps right here. Would you like to see them?”
The sergeant leveled his rifle. The barrel trembled slightly.
“Please exit the car now! I am placing you under arrest.”
Directly in front of the Peugeot’s hood, the private snapped his weapon to his shoulder and aimed through the windshield.
“Do as I say!”
Ben caught the look in the sergeant’s eyes and opened the door slowly. The sergeant backpedaled enough for Ben to climb out, then instantly resteadied his rifle.
“Turn around! Hands on the roof!”
Again Ben did as he was told, cocking his gaze backward to see the sergeant shoulder his weapon before he approached.
“Face forward!” the sergeant ordered, and Ben felt his neck jerked downward, reduced to the same height as the sergeant, who was at least four inches shorter than Ben’s six feet.
The angle allowed Ben to see himself in the car’s side mirror. The dust and a thin jagged crack distorted his face, gave it a grotesque, misshapen appearance like something from a sideshow attraction. Not that he liked the real version much more, even though his skin remained smooth and relatively unmarred for a man of forty. This while many Palestinians wore their scars proudly and enjoyed explaining in which war they had suffered each one. Ben’s hair was lighter than most of his countrymen’s as well, a medium shade of brown; thick, wavy, and full. A young man’s hair, he often mused, layered above a much older man’s eyes.
The sergeant’s hands started frisking at his shoulders and worked downward, quickly feeling the outline of the pistol beneath his jacket.
“Beretta nine-millimeter,” the sergeant said as he yanked it out. “Good gun.”
“Israeli military surplus.”
“I think I’ll hold on to it for now.”
And Ben felt the sergeant’s hands continue their probe, while the private kept his gun poised in front of the Peugeot’s hood. The sergeant got to Ben’s jacket pocket and jammed a hand inside, emerging with his portable mini-disc player trailed by the small attached headphones.
“What’s this?”
Ben turned enough to look at the sergeant. “It plays music. The radio in my car doesn’t work.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“A friend gave it to me.”
The sergeant gave the disc player a closer look. “The instructions are in Hebrew.”
“An Israeli friend.”
Before the sergeant could respond, a four-wheel drive vehicle with darkly tinted windows and yellow Israeli license plates came to an abrupt halt. The driver’s door opened and the soldiers snapped to attention as a woman with a National Police badge dangling from her neck stepped out.
“What is going on here?” demanded Danielle Barnea, her eyes falling on Ben.
* * * *
CHAPTER 3
W
hy are you searching this man?” Danielle continued.
The sergeant regarded her nervously as the private lowered his rifle in front of the car. “I, er, we . . .”
Danielle’s boots clattered atop the pebble-strewn road. She stopped in front of the sergeant only long enough to flash her identification.
“Didn’t Inspector Kamal tell you he was here on my orders? Are you the man I informed over the radio to expect his arrival?”
“I—”
“Never mind. Return his gun and possessions immediately.”
The soldiers looked at each other, then back at Danielle. The sergeant approached and returned the Beretta to Ben.
“Forgetting something?” Ben asked, holstering the pistol.
The sergeant slid the portable mini-disc player from his pants pocket and handed it over.
“Thank you,” Ben said.
“I will take things from here,” Danielle informed the soldiers as Ben and the sergeant glared at each other, “if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Pakad,” the sergeant relented, though it was clear that he did mind.
Danielle, of course, should have been addressed by the feminine “pakadet.” But being the youngest woman ever to attain the rank of Chief Inspector of the National Police had led to her identification card being mistakenly printed with the first name “Daniel.” The correction had been made almost immediately. Her formal rank, though, had stuck and spread quickly, a matter of tradition now, as well as respect for her prowess as an investigator. In fact, all her subsequent identification cards continued to call her “pakad.” This after a military career in which she became one of the first female soldiers selected for duty in the elite Sayaret, the Israeli Special Forces.
As of late, Danielle had found herself comparing the old picture on her identification to the face she saw in the mirror. Remarkably, she looked the same. Her wavy auburn hair still tumbled to her shoulders. Her brown eyes were as bright and vital as five years ago, her weight exactly the same thanks to an obsessive dedication to daily workouts. And yet she felt so different, another person entirely, especially over the past three weeks.
Danielle waited for the two Israeli soldiers to head back to their vehicle before approaching Ben.
“That could have been nasty,” she said. “They would have kept your gun.”
Ben leaned back against his car. “I was more concerned about the disc player you gave me. Now tell me about these American archaeologists murdered in the desert. ...”
She watched him smoothing out the wires connecting the player to the small headphones. “It would be better if I show you.”
“The courtesy of the call was much appreciated, Pakad, especially since I haven’t heard from you since you missed our . . . appointment last Wednesday.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That makes two weeks in a row.”
“I’ve been very busy,” she said, not meeting his gaze.
“Are you going to be busy this Wednesday?”
“That’s not important now.”
Ben caught the uneasy tone in her voice. “Why did you call me here, Pakad, when it is clear your people have assumed jurisdiction?”
Danielle produced the wallet she had taken from the crime scene. “One of the victims, one of the Americans, is named ‘Kamal.’ “
Ben accepted the wallet almost reluctantly and opened it. Danielle watched the color drain from his face as he inspected the identification, started to reach out a hand to comfort him, then pulled it back.
“It’s my nephew,” Ben said so weakly the wind almost swallowed his words.
* * * *
F
or several long moments, he could only stand there staring at his nephew’s college identification card, hoping there was some mistake. His gaze was so empty he seemed to be looking past the wallet’s contents instead of at them. “My brother’s son. You’re saying he’s ...”
Danielle turned away. “Let’s take my car.”
“It’s been so long, I barely even recognize him,” Ben mumbled, falling into step alongside her.
“Then perhaps...”
Ben shook his head painfully. “No, Pakad. The student ID is from the University of Michigan, Dearborn campus. My brother is a professor there. I remember him telling me that is where Dawud enrolled.”
“You haven’t spoken to your brother very often, have you?”
Ben’s gaze was fixed straight ahead. “Three times since I returned to Palestine. Maybe four.”
Danielle left it there and got behind the wheel. It seemed to take Ben a very long time to come around to the passenger side, but when he finally climbed in, his face had hardened, reddening eve
n as she watched.
“How was he killed, Pakad?”
“Shot. They were all shot.”
“How many?”
“Twelve Americans. Two others.”
“Witnesses?”
“One, maybe: a bedouin man on the scene.”
“I’d like to talk to him,” Ben said, staring out the window.
* * * *
CHAPTER 4
T
he crime scene, Ben lunged out of the car ahead of Danielle. She rushed to catch up with him.
“You are not here in any investigatory capacity. I want you to understand that. Let me do all the talking.”
Ben didn’t slow down. “Just take me to my nephew, Pakad.”
Captain Aroche, the ranking Israeli soldier on the scene, stepped out in front of him before Ben could enter the hastily staked-out crime scene.
Danielle hurried to draw even. “Captain, I would like to introduce Inspector Bayan Kamal of the Palestinian police.”
The captain continued to look at Ben. “We should discuss his—”
“We should not make this matter more complicated than it already is. Inspector Kamal is here on my authority. That is all you must concern yourself with. Is that clear?”
She watched the captain stiffen. “If you insist, Pakad.”
“Now, I am going to take the inspector to identify one of the bodies. After that I will escort him from the premises.”
This time Ben waited for her to take the lead, but he stopped halfway to the row of small Quonset huts and crouched down over the desert floor.
“You said my nephew and the others were archaeologists, Pakad.”
Danielle knelt next to him. “Yes. Why?”
“Look at this.” Ben moved his hand away from a deep rectangular depression in the ground. “There was a piece of very heavy equipment here.”
He rose and moved sideways, never taking his eyes off the ground. Suddenly he crouched again over a second identical depression. Then he was on the move again, finding a third.
“Machinery,” he said, looking up. “Something big. I wonder what archaeologists were doing with such a machine.”
Captain Aroche stormed toward them, the dirt sounding like ice crystals crackling beneath his boots.
“Pakad, I must insist that you—”
“The inspector was just pointing something out to me, Captain, that’s all,” Danielle said, tugging on Ben’s sleeve. “We’ll continue on our business now.”
But Ben was staring at the old bedouin who sat in the shade, flanked by two standing Israeli soldiers. “That’s the man who found the bodies?”
“Yes,” Danielle said. “He was delivering supplies not long after dawn.”
“That’s all you know?”
“We think his son was one of the camp guards who was killed. Beyond that we haven’t been able to make sense of what he’s saying; no one speaks his language.”
Ben looked at Danielle, then Captain Aroche. “I do.”
* * * *
W
ith Aroche’s reluctant consent, Ben approached the old bedouin and crouched next to him. “I am a Palestinian policeman,” he greeted in a vernacular of Arabic his father had taught him as a child. “I am here to help you.”
The old man did not acknowledge him.
“I am told your son lies with the dead here. So does my nephew, I think.”
The old man’s eyes came to life. He reached out and grasped Ben’s forearm, mumbled something.
“Can you tell me what happened here?”
“We arrived just after the sun came up,” Ben translated when the old man spoke. “We come with supplies every other day. My son got us this job, because my son ...”
Ben stopped when the old man broke down and dropped his face into his hands. Ben shimmied closer, grasped his shoulder gently.
“I’m very sorry about your son.”
The old man didn’t look up, just pointed toward one of the bodies covered in plastic on the camp’s perimeter. A guard. “I find him like that. See him, but I touch nothing!”
The old man rose, crying now. Tears followed the deep furrows lining his ancient face, a face that looked like baked leather.
“He lies there, staring at the sky, at God,”Ben translated in between the sobs, standing back up. “He cannot see me.”
“You found no one alive.”
The old man shook his head.
“Fourteen—that’s the total number of the camp personnel?”
The old man nodded once, still looking down at the ground.
“A dozen Americans?”
“And two of my people,” the old man said. “My son,” he continued, holding up two fingers, “and one other. Here because they knew the land and the people. Good with a gun too. Paid well. Too much. Not worth it.”
The old man kept repeating that phrase, shaking his head violently until Ben held both his shoulders. The thin bones felt brittle beneath his grasp, the skin stretched loosely over them beneath the folds of his loose clothing.
“What were the Americans doing here?” Ben asked, glancing up briefly at Danielle. “What were they locking for?”
“Don’t know.”
“What about your son?”
“My son never told me; I can’t say that he knew. He was just a guard and his English was not good enough to understand everything they said.”The old man thrust a trembling finger toward the cave opening where two Israeli soldiers stood guard with Galil machine guns dangling from their shoulders. “Up there. They find something up there just the other day. But my son, they never let him go in. That’s what he tells me.”
The old man’s sobs consumed him and he buried his face in his hands, sinking once more to the ground. After a few seconds, one of his hands began clawing at the earth, raking the dusty ground as if it were to blame for his son’s death. The bedouin’s hand froze with a handful of dirt that sifted slowly through his fist as he peered into Ben’s eyes. Ben looked back and saw more than grief now, something new added to the mix:
Fear.
“Always they come to the desert to look for something to change history. Always they leave lucky to find a few artifacts. I don’t know if these had found anything.”
“Ask him how long the American team had been here,” Danielle suggested.
“Almost five months in the desert they spend exploring new caves and old. Only a week have they been in this place.”
“When was the last time you saw your son alive?”
“Everything was fine. Everything was good. He was being paid very well, more money than most of us ever see.”
“When was the last time you saw your son alive?” Ben repeated.
“Two days ago.”
Ben returned his gaze to Danielle and the Israeli captain. “That means they all could have been killed anytime in the past forty-eight hours.”
“The level of rigor mortis and the temperature of the bodies indicate closer to twelve,” Danielle told him, much to Aroche’s dismay.
The bedouin began speaking again, clacking off words rapidly as his hands clenched the air before him.
“He says there had been threats,” Ben translated. “That his son told him the Americans were thinking about adding more security.”
Ben stopped and waited for the old man to catch his breath. “Who do you think did this?”
The old man fought back more sobs before responding.
“This is a holy place, a powerful place. Many claim it for their own and wish no trespassers, interlopers, or infidels to disturb its purity ... or uncover its secrets. But I, I think this was a robbery. A tribe in search of riches the Americans pulled from the earth. The last time we spoke, my son told me they had found something valuable. I have crossed paths with many tribes in my time that would kill to steal such a thing. The jackals of the desert, who appear by night and vanish by day.”
“Bedouins,” Danielle surmised.
“We should have a look in that cave for
ourselves.” Ben turned away from her, toward the huts, before she could protest. “But I want to see my nephew first.”
* * * *