by Jon Land
“Hired her, of course. By the time she reported for work the next day, we had moved.” Al-Asi turned away from Ben and squeezed another token into the slot machine. He viewed the results with disdain. “So I’m aware of what Captain Tavi wanted from you, but I’m not aware of what Lev and his Pillars of the Land wanted.”
“The same thing.”
“Interesting.”
“He’s waiting for the Messiah, Colonel. He thinks that disc might help him figure out the final details of His coming.”
“Even more interesting.”
“Lev believes the Americans were killed because they found a scroll containing specific references to the Messiah’s appearance. Where and when, all that sort of stuff, buried inside that cave over the camp.”
“Seems like a pretty thin motive.”
“I don’t care what the motive turns out to be. Something got my nephew and those other Americans killed, and I’m going to find out what.”
“I figured as much,” Al-Asi said with a twinge of regret in his voice. He inserted another token and drew the lever down. “So I’ve arranged for you to view your disc. ...”
Before he could continue, though, the machine locked on three gold bars, and change began to spew from a slot in the bottom.
“Well, I think I can report that this machine is in perfect working order,” al-Asi said as the coins pooled about his feet. “Who knows, Inspector, maybe this is our lucky day.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 25
F
rom National Police Headquarters, J. P. Wynn drove his rental car toward urban West Jerusalem, where the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, was housed.
“Where are we going?” Danielle asked him.
“Don’t like surprises, do you?”
“Remember that gun you asked me about?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got my hand on it now.”
“I only wish.” Wynn glanced over at her. “Been to the museum lately, ma’am?” he asked, gesturing out the windshield at what Danielle recognized as the Hill of Tranquility. A complex of buildings forming the Israel Museum hugged the hillside.
“I seem to attract relics on my own.”
After parking in the museum lot, they passed through a security checkpoint and entered a circular building called the Shrine of the Book, topped by a white dome. Inside it was dark and cool, almost subterranean, to capture the atmosphere of the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947.
“I love places like this,” J. P. Wynn said. “See, my whole life’s been about bringing the past and present together. Salvaging stuff from one generation so another can understand it better. Sure, I’ve made more than my share of money, but I can also walk into just about any museum in the world and show you something that I recovered.”
“What about this one?” Danielle asked him.
“Not in this particular building,” Wynn replied meaningfully. “Not yet, anyway.”
They walked along a ring of exhibits displayed in glass cases, heading toward the largest a small tourist group had just vacated. Danielle recognized a selection of the Dead Sea Scrolls housed and illuminated within.
“The Jews who wrote the Scrolls hid them in a waterproof pouch made of sheep hide before burying them,” Wynn explained, sounding like a tour guide. “That’s what saved the parchment from turning to dust. Stuffs brittle as hell, very little moisture content.”
Danielle’s gaze followed his into the case, passing her eyes over the neatly arranged manuscript that had been written either in an offshoot of Hebrew or Aramaic, she couldn’t tell which.
“The Jews took refuge in caves all over the Judean Desert and left much of their legacy behind. Some’s been recovered, some lost forever, and there’s a little bit still waiting to be found, like what those dead Americans must have uncovered.”
She turned away from the glass toward him. “And what got them killed, according to you.”
“Oh, it got them killed, all right, and with good reason.”
“What reason?”
“Money and lots of it.”
“What did they do, strike gold in the middle of the desert?”
Wynn flashed a smile that looked inordinately white in the murky spill of the light. “As a matter of fact, they did.”
* * * *
H
ow are you with the Old Testament, Chief Inspector?” he continued.
“Pretty good. Especially the parts about sinners and miscreants.”
“Tell ya the truth, the closest I come to a Bible these days is in the night table of my motel room. I’m talking about Exodus, Moses, the Jews leaving Egypt—that part.”
Danielle nodded. “Sure, but it’s been a while.”
“Mount Sinai?”
“The place where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the stone altar where the Israelites worshiped the golden calf.”
Wynn held a hand up. “Stop right there. That’s it.”
“The golden calf?”
“Gold in general, hundreds of pounds of it. The gold your forefathers took out of Egypt. From what I—and other treasure hunters—have been able to piece together, it was buried at the base of Mount Sinai.”
“But Mount Sinai’s never been found or positively identified.”
Wynn nodded. “That’s the point, ma’am. Most people, just about all, hear the word ‘Sinai’ and think of the desert. Desert’s right enough—it’s the direction they’ve been getting wrong for years. I’ve been pursuing the theory that the Israelites actually buried their gold somewhere in the Judean Desert.”
“You think the murdered Americans found the lost gold of Exodus, Mr. Wynn?”
“They were as sure as shit looking for it, ma’am, and now they’re dead. Got a better reason to kill for than a fortune?”
“Then you’re here after the money too. Here it is, I had you pegged as a pimp when all you art is a prostitute.”
The remark stung Wynn, his mouth twisting in displeasure. “The truth is I got enough greenbacks to fill a field, but it’s all just manure to me compared to the lost gold of Exodus. We’re talking about the greatest archaeological relic left for man to find, and I intend to be the man who finds it. Figure that’ll make a great legacy, maybe lead a big-time actor to play me on the big screen someday.” He grinned at her. “You can be my date at the opening, if you start calling me J. P.”
“Save money and just bring your ego.”
Wynn ignored her this time. “You’ve been to the site, ma’am. Care to tell me exactly what it was you saw?”
Danielle tried to picture the American students uncovering the treasure at Area 6 and carrying it down out of that cave she and Ben had explored. But the task involved logistics much too monumental to undertake in the brief time they had been there.
“They didn’t find any gold in the Judean.”
“Maybe not the gold itself, ma’am. . . .”
“What then?”
“A map. A map detailing the route the Israelites took that got them to the Judean in their wanderings, with a big X marking the spot where they left their gold on the way.”
Danielle recalled the small, shallow trench the Americans had dug in the cave. Could they have found such a map inside it, perhaps concealed in some kind of case or box?
“You’re holding something back on me, ma’am.”
“I’m a woman, remember? We tend to keep secrets.”
“I was under the impression your boss told you it was in your best interests not to keep any from me.”
“He told me to use my best judgment. That’s what I’m doing.”
Wynn nodded, relenting. “If we knew what those Americans found up there, we’d be a long way toward knowing what got them killed.”
“Too bad we don’t,” Danielle said, thinking of the video mini-disc Ben Kamal had kept from Commander Baruch and then lost himself.
* * * *
CHAPTER 26
B
&nb
sp; en parked his Peugeot near a trio of ancient produce trucks at the entrance to the olive groves in the Jordan Rift Valley, just as Nabril al-Asi had instructed several hours earlier.
“The man who has the equipment you need is named Ari Coen,” the colonel had explained as several Oasis Casino workers struggled to collect his slot-machine jackpot off the floor. “He is expecting you.”
“An Israeli?”
They had walked away from the slot machines slowly, a portion of al-Asi’s winnings jangling in his pockets.
“Not much of one anymore. Call him an expatriate now. Suffice it to say he fell into extreme disfavor with his own people when the Israeli police learned the true nature of his business. He had no choice but to leave the country.”
“If he came to the West Bank, he didn’t leave the country.”
“Appearances, Inspector, are everything. The Jordan Rift Valley is another world entirely.”
“You took him in?”
“Coen used to be part of Israel’s intelligence community. We thought he could be of service to us by teaching us some of the tricks of the trade. He asked only that he be allowed to continue his more recent trade.”
“Which is?”
One of the casino managers caught up with al-Asi and handed him the sack stuffed with the rest of his winnings.
“Better that you see for yourself,” the colonel said. He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Ben.
The envelope felt thick, overstuffed, and Ben tried not to consider its contents.
“Give it to Coen when you get there,” al-Asi had said.
No sooner had Ben stepped out of his car amid the olive groves that stretched as far as the eye could see than a man with a shotgun slung from his shoulder appeared from a road at the entrance to the fields.
“We are expecting you,” he said, without asking Ben who he was or requesting some identification. The man simply turned and walked off, expecting Ben to follow. Clearly al-Asi had followed through on his promise to alert Ari Coen of Ben’s impending arrival. But what was an Israeli expatriate doing in the Jordan Rift Valley?
Ben walked along a high chain-link fence covered with thick vines that squeezed through the openings. The man with the shotgun was waiting in a Jeep just around the corner. Ben climbed into the passenger seat and the guard drove off down a road cut between the neat rows of sprawling branches that smelled of ripening olives. As they drew farther into the rich jungle, though, another smell greeted Ben’s nostrils, one he had to pull from way back in his memory to recognize.
Early in his career as a Detroit cop, when he was working narcotics, he had got to know the thickly pungent scent of unharvested marijuana and hashish very well. That was what he was smelling now. And almost immediately he began to recognize the familiar stalks and leafy brush he had seen in their unrefined form years before in his other life.
Before Ben could reformulate his thoughts, a small white house appeared in the midst of the grove, probably well camouflaged from the air by the surrounding foliage. The driver pulled up a bumpy road and stopped in a circular drive set before an enclosed porch filled with wicker furniture. Ben had just started to climb down when the front door opened and a slender man stepped out from the shadows within.
“I am Ari Coen, Inspector Kamal.”
They shook hands and Ben found Coen’s grasp to be limp and disinterested. The Israeli wasn’t just slender; he was almost sickly thin, his hair tied into a thick ponytail that was strangely unbecoming. He looked dull, almost glum— anything but flashy. A man who had carefully constructed his own box, only to find himself trapped within it to the point where his sallow skin looked untouched by the hot Mediterranean sun.
“Let’s go inside.”
The house was furnished in almost tropical fashion. Spanish tile adorned the floors. The ceilings and walls were finished in stucco. Large windows looked out over the olive grove in all directions, bathing the house with light that made Coen squint. Framed pictures of a woman and four children at various ages covered the top of a closed piano and a writing desk with a whitewash finish. The sweet smell of Israeli oranges filled the air.
“I think you have something for me.”
Ben handed over al-Asi’s envelope and Coen eagerly tore it open atop an elegant rattan console table. Inside were photographs, dozens of them, all picturing the same woman and children captured in frames throughout the open first floor.
“My wife and children,” Ari Coen said, arranging the pictures neatly before him. “I haven’t seen them since my relocation. They think I’m dead, along with everyone else in Israel including the authorities, who would come after me otherwise. It was either that or prison.” Coen went back to arranging his pictures. “Who knows, maybe I made the wrong choice. This is the only way I get to see my family, thanks to Colonel al-Asi’s assets in Israel.” He touched a few of the pictures tenderly and backed away from the table. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to make this quick. Colonel al-Asi told me you had a disc you can’t read.”
“I assume he knows what you’re doing out here.”
“What do you think, Inspector?”
“You grew this shit in Israel, didn’t you, until the authorities found out?”
“Actually, I only distributed it; I’ve stepped up in the world since coming here.” Coen finally closed the door behind him. “The Palestinians leave me alone, so long as I lend some assistance to the colonel from time to time on matters pertaining to Israeli intelligence.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m not allowed to sell or distribute in the West Bank or Gaza. That was the colonel’s condition.”
Coen led Ben down a short atriumlike hallway drenched in sunlight from a large skylight overhead. They came to a door in the back of the house that he unlocked by punching a combination into a keypad mounted on the wall. The door snapped open, revealing an array of computer terminals, printers, and fax machines. Two of the monitors flashed to tell Coen he had E-mail. One of the faxes had a stack of pages piled up in the tray. Clearly this was the nerve center of his operation, orders and reports coming in from who knew where.
Coen pressed a button on the wall and shades Ben hadn’t even noticed before closed enough to keep out any direct light. The Israeli moved to a computer set by itself in the corner, its screen dark until he flipped a switch on its rear and sat down.
“Let me have your disc,” Coen said, extending a hand back toward Ben. He inspected it briefly once Ben gave it to him, clearly impressed. “Nice workmanship. Strictly state of the art. Now let’s see what we’ve got here. . . .”
Coen inserted the disc into a customized slot, frowning as he watched the screen flash to life. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“The contents are encrypted.”
“How big a problem is that?”
Coen brushed some stray wiry hair back with his hands. “Insurmountable, if Colonel al-Asi hadn’t asked for this favor.”
“And since he did?”
“I want to keep getting my pictures,” Coen said, almost bitterly, and Ben understood at once how cramped the box Coen had made for himself here truly was. “The disc is Israeli?”
“That’s my assumption, yes.”
“Then not a very big problem at all. I’m aware of the sequencing they use in their coding. I’ll need a day, two at the most.”
“Can you make me a copy?”
Coen’s eyes flashed suspiciously. “It’ll be encrypted too.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’ll call you when I have something, Inspector.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neither,” said Ari Coen, “am I.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 27
W
hen Danielle arrived back at her office from the Israel Museum, her computer screen was flashing with an E-mail message from Isser Raskin in the forensics lab to contact her immediately. She picked up the ph
one and dialed his extension.
“Yes,” he answered.
“It’s me. Your favorite investigator.”
“Not anymore,” Isser said, not returning the joviality in her voice.
“What did I do now?”