by Jon Land
“Maybe they know something about great archaeological finds that we don’t,” she said.
The rocks varied in both size, shade, and design, looking as though they had been plucked randomly from the earth. Ben eased a few aside to check if anything lay beneath the single layer.
“What do you think those numbers mean?” Danielle asked him, noting the presence of numbers scrawled on white adhesive tape to each of the rocks.
“I don’t know,” Ben said and continued to rummage through the container.
“I think they’re labeled sequentially,” Danielle pointed out as she continued checking the rocks.
Ben wasn’t paying attention. “I guess they’ve already removed it from the scene. . . .”
“What?”
“Whatever the Americans took out of that shallow depression we found in the cave. Baruch must have taken that and everything else, besides these rocks.”
Ben leaned farther into the Land Rover’s cargo bay to unlatch the next case back. It, too, contained a collection of rocks and nothing more.
“Same labels as the first case,” said Danielle, giving them a quick look.
Ben moved on to a number of the other storage cases, finding all to be similarly packed. There was an urgency to his motions, as if finding so little in each container made opening the next one more vital.
Danielle leaned into the Land Rover with him after he had finished checking the sixth, lowering her voice so the Israeli soldiers hovering nearby couldn’t hear. “In the years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the Judean Caves have been plucked pretty clean. It’s possible there was nothing for Baruch to take from here, even if he had wanted to.”
“Did you look around the site when we got here, Pakad?”
“Briefly.”
“Notice anything missing?”
Danielle thought for a moment. “The cargo trucks that were here yesterday. ...”
“So obviously there was something Baruch must have wanted to remove from the scene.”
“It wouldn’t take two trucks to transport whatever the Americans found in that cave.”
“Another inconsistency.”
“Another?”
“The killers were professionals, yes, Pakad?”
“Unquestionably.”
“And yet they made no effort to disguise their prowess. They could have, if they’d wanted, with little effort too. Leave the scene more in a shambles. Create the illusion there was some resistance. Use more than a single shot to effect the kills, or even use knives instead of guns.”
“The killers didn’t care, obviously. They were simply completing a task in the most efficient manner possible.”
“Which brings us back to motive: something stolen we have no way of identifying.”
“Maybe nothing was stolen at all. Maybe the motive was political,” Danielle suggested.
Ben turned his eyes skeptically. “Archaeologists?”
“American archaeologists operating on an Israeli visa. That could have upset some of the locals after the land was transferred to Palestinian control.”
Ben gestured dramatically around him. “We’re in the desert, Pakad. There are no locals. We should be focusing instead on what few clues we have: those three depressions I found in the ground yesterday, for example. Something heavy resting on a tripod.”
“Probably meaningless.”
“Then why did someone fill them in?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, the tension between them growing again.
“And why do the Americans’ storage bins contain only rocks?” Ben challenged.
“Like you said, the team hadn’t encountered much luck at their other five sites either.”
“But here we know they at least pulled something from that shallow depression up in the cave. Where is it? Why was Commander Baruch so interested in whatever the Americans were up to out here?”
“I don’t know,” Danielle said.
“I wonder if this might tell us,” Ben said as he quietly stuffed a rock he had pilfered from the storage bin labeled “Area 6” into her pocket.
* * * *
CHAPTER 23
T
he forensics lab was located in the first cavernous sublevel of National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem. The air felt cool and antiseptic, the bright lighting an effective substitute for the lack of windows. As a detective, Danielle was well acquainted with the various personnel who worked among the computer monitors and test tubes. She knocked on the entrance to a cubicle belonging to a technician wearing a white lab coat and thick glasses and whose curly hair had receded from the crown of his scalp.
“Hello, Isser.”
Isser Raskin didn’t look up from his computer screen.
“Interesting case, Isser?”
He turned his gaze upon her over the monitor. “New York Times crossword puzzle, actually. I get it off their Web site.”
“What’s a four-letter word for ‘stone’?”
“Rock.”
“Exactly,” Danielle said, and produced the rock Ben had taken from the murder site in the Judean Desert.
“Is it my birthday?” Isser asked, taking it.
“Tell me everything you can about that and we’ll see about a gift.”
Isser rotated it in front of his Coke-bottle lenses. “Is this a murder weapon?”
“Not directly.”
“It has a number on it, 5-6-1. What does that mean?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Isser held the rock even closer to his eyes. “I can’t make out any blood or fiber residue.”
“Looking at it under a microscope won’t change that. I was hoping for a more mundane analysis.”
He frowned. “Then you should have taken it to the geology department at the university.”
“It’s part of an investigation.”
“Logged?”
“Not yet.”
“Evidence?”
“Eventually, perhaps.”
Isser looked disappointed. “If it were a hammer with skull fragments, or a piece of skin in need of DNA matching, or even a flattened-out bullet requiring forensic reconstruction. But a rock ...”
Danielle backed up until she was halfway out of the cubicle. “Then it shouldn’t take up too much of your time.”
“What exactly am I looking for, Pakad?”
“I’ll settle for whatever you find.”
* * * *
W
hen Danielle got back to her office, the door was open. She entered, figuring she must have forgotten to close it earlier, until she saw a pair of scuffed brown boots propped up on the edge of her desk.
“Hope you don’t mind me making myself comfortable,” a man said. He was wearing a cowboy hat that he removed to reveal a mop of thick wheat-colored hair that was whitening along the temples.
Danielle noted the visitor’s badge hanging from his neck. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
The man eased his boots back to the floor. “Name’s John Paul Wynn. My friends call me J. P.” He leaned forward and extended his hand, but Danielle didn’t take it.
“What are you doing in my office?”
“You left the door open, ma’am, and that’s an absolute fact. A woman should really be more careful about things. Could have been a bad guy waiting when you came back.”
“Maybe it was.”
Wynn’s accent was clearly American, not quite Deep South, but more likely the West. Wyoming or Montana probably, Danielle guessed. He was ruggedly handsome with a tan that looked to be applied permanently on his skin like dye on leather, and his face shared the same parchmentlike consistency. Too many furrows and crevices for a man who couldn’t be out of his thirties yet. His eyes were a piercing shade of blue.
“Do all Israeli women talk like that?”
“No, I’m more polite and reserved than most.”
Wynn looked her over, not bothering to hide where his eyes were going. “I think I coul
d get used to that kind of attitude.”
Danielle glared down at him. “Only if you get the chance.”
Wynn glanced around, nodding. “Got your own office, a fancy title . . . You good with a gun too?”
“I don’t think you want to find out.”- Danielle gave the badge dangling from his neck a longer look. “Your pass lists my office as your destination, so I’m assuming you’ve got a real reason to be here.”
“Actually, I was hoping a regular detective would get assigned to me.”
“A regular detective?”
“You know, a man, being that I never worked with a woman cop before and this isn’t the best time to change.”
“Feel free to request someone else.”
“I was told you were the best.” Wynn smiled confidently and started to reach for a pack of Marlboros in the lapel pocket of his shirt. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Gonna chop off my hands too, ma’am?”
“I might start lower, Mr. Wynn.”
Wynn reproached her with a wry wave of his finger. “Now I told you to call me J. P. . . .”
“No, you told me your friends call you J. P.”
“Just thought I’d jump past the obvious, ma’am.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what it is you’re doing here?”
Wynn stuck a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. “Thing is, ma’am, I’ve done plenty of work on behalf of your country. One of the people a bit in my debt was kind enough to make a call on my behalf.”
“To arrange a meeting with me . . .”
“Your boss, actually.”
“You saw Commissioner Giott?”
Wynn nodded. “Just came from his office. He thought we might be able to help each other out with a couple things.”
“And why would he think that?”
“On account of what I do,” Wynn said, as if it were something Danielle should have already known.
Danielle leaned back against her desk. “Which is?”
Wynn closed both his hands around the brim of the cowboy hat now resting on his lap. “Well, ma’am, it’s a little hard to say.”
“Give it a try.”
“I find things. Things that are lost and been that way for a whole lot of years, hundreds or even thousands sometimes. So many that in lots of cases people forgot they existed or didn’t believe in them to begin with.”
“A fortune hunter,” Danielle concluded.
“Actually, treasure hunter’d be a more accurate way of describing myself.” Wynn turned his mouth down at the corners, lengthening the lines that punctuated his face even farther. “You can see why I didn’t want to get into this off the bat. Gives you the wrong impression, that I’m just here to make a buck. Women think that way.”
“You lay claim to lots of fortunes, Mr. Wynn?”
Wynn flicked his unlit cigarette into the trash can with a quick twitch of his fingers. “I’m getting the impression that you’ve never heard of me.”
“That’s right.”
“Guess you don’t have much call to read or watch television.”
“Not enough to know you, apparently.”
“People magazine, the National Geographic, a couple of Datelines, a bestseller—my audience is mostly men, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when a woman’s never heard of me. Left my resume upstairs with your boss, if you want to check it out.”
“Was Commissioner Giott impressed?”
“He said to touch base with him before we left.”
Danielle looked at the phone and then back at Wynn. “Where are we going?”
Wynn rose from the chair and blew some air from his mouth in a slight whistle. “I’ll give you the whole story on the way.”
“Start now,” Danielle said.
He wedged his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. “It’s like this, ma’am. Your country’s lost its share of antiquities over the years, and I’ve been able to return the ones I’ve been lucky enough to track down.” Wynn’s bright blue eyes twinkled. “That’s where I made most of my friends over here and why your boss put me on to you after he learned you and me might be after the same thing.”
“And just what is that, Mr. Wynn?”
“What got those archaeologists killed in the Judean Desert, ma’am.” He stood up and flashed her a wink. “Now, call me J. P.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 24
B
en found Nabril al-Asi in the Oasis Casino once again. Just one o’clock in the afternoon and the colonel looked as dapper as he had the previous night; unchanged virtually, except for a fresh suit. Only this time he was standing before one of the one-dollar slot machines and had just yanked the lever down to no result when Ben stopped by his side.
“We’ve had complaints about these,” he reported, sliding another token into the slot. “Apparently the Israeli tourists aren’t winning enough. I’ve been asked to investigate.” He jammed the lever down again to the same results. Al-Asi shook his head unsatisfactorily. “Yes, I do believe this one may have some problems,” he said, moving to the next machine in the row with a token already in his hand. He finally looked at Ben before sliding it home. “You have the look of a man who’s lost his stash, Inspector.”
“A lot more than that. I was arrested by Israeli soldiers last night.”
The colonel frowned as this machine came up as empty as the last one. He readied another dollar token, but didn’t insert it. “The joint command was not informed.”
“Nor would they ever have been. I believe Commander Moshe Baruch of Shin Bet was behind it.”
Al-Asi’s face wrinkled, as if he’d swallowed something sour. “And yet here you are standing before me now.”
“My release was secured by others, also Israelis.”
“Merely saving me the bother. Who were these other Israelis?”
“Members of Rabbi Mordecai Lev’s Amudei Ha’aretz.”
“A messianic cult also known as the Pillars of the Land,” said al-Asi, pushing his token toward the slot. “Not particularly well known for rescuing outsiders. I have a rather thick file on Lev.”
“Not someone I thought the Protective Security Service would bother investigating.”
“We didn’t; the Israelis did.” The colonel jammed down the lever. “They merely passed the information on to us.”
“Why?”
The machine came up empty and al-Asi shook his head again. “They hoped we’d take care of Lev for them: his file had been doctored to make the good rabbi quite the enemy of Palestine.”
“Isn’t he?”
“He believes in the eventual destruction of our people, Inspector; he has no plans to bring it about himself. Why bother when you have God on your side?”
“The Messiah, actually. That’s what his people are waiting for.”
Al-Asi played another dollar, to the same results. “We’re all waiting for something, Inspector.”
“I have another problem, Colonel: that miniature recording disc I told you about yesterday.”
“The object of last night’s interrogation, no doubt.”
“Yes.”
“After they searched that church garden and found no trace of it, eh, Inspector?”
Ben’s eyes widened. “How could you know that?”
“Because I had you followed too,” al-Asi said, and reached into the left-hand pocket of his elegant taupe suit. He emerged with some stray chips he sifted through before coming up with the silvery disc Ben had showed him yesterday. “Just to be on the safe side.”
Utterly shocked, Ben took the disc gratefully from the colonel’s grasp.
“I know how their Commander Baruch works. Very predictable.”
“His mistress, Shoshanna Tavi, conducted my interrogation.”
“I know her work too,” al-Asi said, the glibness gone from his tone. “A few years ago, after Baruch falsely blamed me for the demise of two of his agents, he dispatched Tavi to my house outside Ram
allah to apply for a job as a maid. For payback, you understand.”
“What did you do?” Ben asked, caught off guard by the colonel’s rare mention of his personal life.