by Jon Land
“That’s a diamond bore drill,” Coen explained. “They must have been going deep all right, through plenty of rock and shale.” Coen swung his chair around and accidently struck the keyboard. The screen returned to normal, picking up exactly where it left off. “I want to know what this is about. If it’s something that can help me buy my way back into—”
“Freeze the frame!” Ben said suddenly, leaning over his shoulder.
Coen hesitated, then did so with a touch of a key.
“Now back up, slowly.”
Coen regressed the picture one frame at a time, a click for each pass until Ben said, “Stop!”
On screen the angle had changed to include the mouth of the cave. A pair of shapes, smaller and less distinct in the distance, seemed to have just stepped out onto the goat path that led back to the ground.
“Zoom in on them,” Ben instructed, planting his fmger over those two shapes.
Coen worked the keyboard, finally clicking his mouse as Ben waited anxiously. An instant later a man and a woman filled the screen in a grainy image. The man looked to be in his early twenties with dark features and a scraggly growth of beard: Ben’s nephew, Dawud.
“Can you sharpen it?” Ben asked, swallowing hard.
“Hold on.” Coen worked a sequence of keys until the machine beeped. “That’s the best I can do.”
“It’s good enough,” Ben told him. For what seemed like a very long time, he stared at the screen in silence, imagining his nephew still alive. If he had known the boy was here, could he have prevented this? Could he have at least tried? But there was something else on the screen that had claimed his attention, and he slid aside so Danielle could see. “Take a look, Pakad.”
She leaned in close to him and tightened her gaze on what Dawud Kamal was holding.
* * * *
CHAPTER 35
T
he object was slightly smaller than a shoe box, light enough to be cradled in a single arm, and made of what looked like some kind of wood. The poor quality of the picture made it difficult to tell anything else for sure.
“It looks like a container of some kind,” Ari Coen noted.
“Is there any way you can tell when this part of the disc was made?” Danielle asked, sliding closer to Ari Coen.
Coen pressed the key that displayed the time and date on-screen.
“Two days before the Americans were killed,” she calculated.
“But if these Americans were geologists, why would they bother with what was in that cave?” Coen wondered.
Ben looked at his nephew holding a box uncovered in the cave, while below ten other members of the team used a diamond bore drill to explore the ground. He couldn’t answer Coen’s question. Maybe the Americans were both archaeologists and geologists. Or maybe they were something else entirely.
“That box is the key,” Ben said, thinking out loud.
“To what?” asked Coen.
“Their murders.”
“It could just as easily have been whatever they were looking for with that diamond bore drill,” Danielle argued.
Ben’s expression didn’t change. “How long had they been in the Judean, Pakad?”
“Over five months.”
“At how many sites prior to this one?”
“Five.”
Ben’s eyes returned to the screen. “There was only one thing different about Area Six.” He focused on the box his nephew was holding. “And we’re looking at it.
“We don’t know that.”
“We know that the box is gone.”
“So who has it?”
“A better question,” Ben suggested, “is how anyone else knew it was there.”
“The Americans must have been in contact with the outside world, probably through a satellite phone.”
Ben nodded. “Then they could have made some calls to inform people of what they had found.”
“Say they weren’t sure what it was yet.”
“But they had a very good idea it was important. They’d need confirmation, at least help in identifying it.”
“So who would they call?”
“Their phone records might tell us,” Ben suggested.
“They might,” said Ari Coen, “but they probably won’t. Those satellite phones can be easily equipped with automatic scramblers and rerouters that don’t leave any trail. Believe me, I know.”
“Well,” Danielle resumed, “our mystery box wasn’t among the specimens found at the dig, but those numbered rocks were.”
“We need to find out what made them so special,” Ben said.
Danielle looked back at the screen, remembering how certain she had been that J. P. Wynn was holding something back from her. “And that’s just what I’m going to do.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 36
G
ianni Lorenzo, Captain commandant of the Swiss Guard, eased the old man in the wheelchair slowly along the shaded lanes of the Vatican gardens. Tourists were able to see a large part of the gardens from the tour buses that snail along the main roads outside the complex. But, as always, Lorenzo clung to the nearly hidden paths in the wilder parts of the garden near the north wall. The overgrown weeds and vines formed a protective shroud, concealing them from all who passed or stopped to look in, perhaps in the hope of catching a glimpse of the pope himself. Lorenzo knew this was his predecessor’s favorite part of the gardens, and spring was his favorite season.
His predecessor was in his nineties now, already crippled by arthritis when a stroke utterly incapacitated him two years earlier. His last official action had been to promote Gianni Lorenzo to colonel and appoint him as his successor against the strident objections of the Curia board. After all, all previous captain commandants of the Swiss Guard had been Swiss army officers and, almost always, members of the corps themselves. But his predecessor, under the circumstances, had felt that Gianni Lorenzo was the best and only man for the job.
Lorenzo had no idea how much his predecessor was aware of now, or even if he was capable of enjoying these trips past the small stone fountains and statues, unchanged through the ages, he had once so loved. Lorenzo looked upon it as another duty to be accepted with grace and dignity, but he didn’t feel up to the task today.
Two of my men were killed last night, having failed miserably to complete their assignment. How could things have gotten so far out of control?
Lorenzo continued to move his predecessor’s wheelchair along the path that led to neatly arranged rows of flower beds and the sound of splashing fountains. Sometimes the old man would fidget and moan as they drew closer to the clearing, perhaps afraid of relinquishing the security of concealment. Today he was silent and still.
Lorenzo sighed and slowed the wheelchair. “The day all this began you impressed upon me the impact of what the archaeologist Winston Daws had discovered in Ephesus. You convinced me that the discovery required desperate and immediate action, enacted without the knowledge or consent of anyone else in the Vatican. I was honored to accept your charge and journeyed to Ephesus with the other original members of the Noble Guard to complete our mission. And yet I confess today, confess for the first time to anyone, that this mission was never actually completed. I confess that the fault for what we are now facing lies totally with me, and I fear I may have failed you, the Holy Father, and the Lord Himself.”
Lorenzo realized he had brought the wheelchair to nearly a complete stop. He doubted very much his withered predecessor could hear or comprehend him. But that made his words no less easy to utter, leaving his mouth dry and pasty.
He swallowed hard. “I confess that in Ephesus all those years ago for a few moments I held in my hands the fruits of Daws’s labors and the reason for which his death was necessary. The scroll’s parchment was brittle and badly faded, but remarkably preserved considering it dated back almost nineteen hundred years. I could not understand the language in which the ancient words had been written, and so many were blurred I wondered how Daw
s had managed to string together a context and meaning from the little he had reportedly read. It may have been preliminary, but that made it no less terrifying. I had to assume, as you did, that Daws had shared the contents of his discovery with the rest of his team. As a result, all two dozen had to die.
“But I could not bring myself to destroy the ancient writings. This wasn’t just an artifact I was holding, it was an actual piece of history in spite of what its purported message might mean for the future of mankind. I held it in my hands, and knew I could not follow through with my orders to destroy it and chose another way to make sure no man ever laid eyes upon it again.
“I thought my alternative plan would be equally effective and two days later, before returning to the Vatican, I enacted it. No one ever knew. No one ever questioned me, not even you because you believed that my devotion to duty was so total.”
Lorenzo realized he was squeezing the wheelchair’s handles hard enough to make his hands ache horribly. For just an instant, the colonel thought the old man may have perked up, as if suddenly cognizant.
“I confess my weakness, and my cowardice, for not being able to complete my mission. And I confess my vanity at believing I would always be in a position to safeguard the secret I was charged with protecting forever.
“Forever, you see, did not last as long as I expected. Fifty-two years later, my failure has come back to haunt us all, and the church now faces the greatest crisis it has ever known. I alone realize this and I alone have brought it on. No one else, besides you now, knows how perilously close the very foundations of our faith, perhaps society itself, are to crumbling.”
Some drool oozed from his predecessor’s lips and Gianni Lorenzo dabbed the corners of his withered mouth with a handkerchief. The old man offered no guidance in return, no blessing.
The captain commandant of the Swiss Guard started the wheelchair on through the garden once more. “Last night we failed in our attempts to execute two people who have drawn uncomfortably close to the truth. We will not fail again. This I promise.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 37
D
anielle recognized the large complement of vehicles double-parked in front of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel as government issue. That told her something was wrong even before she entered the building.
She had driven to the hotel in hopes of persuading J. P. Wynn to finally divulge everything he knew about what had transpired in the Judean Desert. When the elevator opened on the fourth floor, though, Danielle saw a pair of casually dressed men standing stiffly on either side of an open door halfway down the hall. She approached, counting down the numbers until she was sure it was J. P. Wynn’s door.
At Wynn’s hotel room she flashed her identification, but the men still continued to block her entrance.
“What’s going on here?” Danielle demanded, trying to peer past them.
Captain Shoshanna Tavi of Shin Bet approached from inside, peeling a pair of latex gloves from her hands. “Nothing that concerns you, Pakad.”
Danielle glared at the other woman, let her eyes linger briefly on the latex gloves Tavi had balled up in a single fist. She was as lean and muscular as Danielle, her appearance little changed since their days in the Sayaret together. The long scar looked like a pale exclamation point amid her otherwise rosy skin.
“Tell your goons here to let me inside the room,” Danielle insisted, gazing beyond Shoshanna Tavi now. She could see a photographer busy snapping photos, a second man with a black forensics case probably dusting down the room for fingerprints.
“Then you would be disturbing a crime scene.”
“What happened?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“Wynn was murdered, wasn’t he?”
“As I said—”
“A bullet to the head, just like the Americans in the desert. Yes or no?” Danielle’s tone was obstinate, and a little fearful: she couldn’t help thinking of the person or persons who had been waiting inside her apartment the night before. Or another pair Ben Kamal had slain in self-defense. No doubt she and Ben were supposed to die last night, just as J. P. Wynn had.
“I wouldn’t know about the Americans in the desert,” Shoshanna Tavi told her.
“You knew enough to ask Inspector Bayan Kamal of the Palestinian police about a certain disc.”
Shoshanna Tavi’s scar turned a little paler. “Your Palestinian friend should develop a more cooperative attitude.”
“His attitude depends on who he’s working with.”
“So I’ve heard,” Tavi said caustically, narrowing her gaze. “You really should be more careful about the company you keep, Pakad.”
“I was about to give you the same advice.”
“Consider it done. Now you can leave.”
Danielle held her ground. “Shin Bet has no authority to investigate crimes, unless called in by National Police. Strange you should even be here.”
“This American’s murder is obviously connected to another crime we are investigating. You said so yourself.”
“I want to see the body.”
Tavi smirked. “Suit yourself,” she said, and stood to the side.
Danielle moved inside the hotel room before Tavi could change her mind. J. P. Wynn lay on his back, covered to the chest in a bedsheet, his eyes and mouth hanging obscenely open. His head had lopped slightly to the right, casting his sightless gaze toward her and obscuring the bullet wound from which a thin trickle of blood had run down the pillow to the sheet. Some of it had stained Wynn’s straw-colored hair.
“Shot once in the head,” Captain Shoshanna Tavi of Shin Bet droned, coming up behind her, “just like you said.”
“Any sign of forced entry?”
“None of your business.”
“And what is Shin Bet doing here?”
“I already explained that.”
“The why, not the how.” Danielle turned to face Tavi again. “Who called you?”
“I’d have to ask the duty officer.”
“Strange you’re not the least bit curious what I’m doing here, what the American and I were working on.”
“Should I consider you a suspect, Pakad?”
“In an investigation over which you have no authority? Feel free.”
“I leave such jurisdictional decisions to higher powers.”
“I thought maybe you just happened to be lying next to Commander Baruch when he got the call.”
“And where did you spend last night, Pakad?”
“Who contacted Shin Bet, Captain?”
“A maid finds the body of a foreign national in a hotel room. The manager calls Jerusalem police and Jerusalem police follow proper procedure and call us. Are we done here now?”
Danielle noticed the plastic Ziploc evidence bags the forensics technician had lined up on the nightstand. “Any shell casing?”
“No.”
“None were found at the crime scene in the desert either. Interesting, don’t you think?”
“I might, if I were better acquainted with that investigation.”
“Of course, I forgot. Commander Baruch must have left that part out over cigarettes.”
Danielle felt Shoshanna Tavi brush past her toward the bed. “Anything else you would like to see? I mean, this man was a foreigner and you seem quite taken by them. Here, take a look.” She reached the bed and yanked off the bedsheet, exposing Wynn’s naked body. The photographer and technician backed away, surprised and embarrassed. “Like what you see, Pakad? After all, your Palestinian friend is American as well, isn’t he?”
“But he still has a heartbeat, Captain. Have you checked the chest of the man you’ve been sleeping with? How about the pictures of his wife and children in the wallet he must leave on the bureau?”
Shoshanna Tavi strode forward, close enough for Danielle to smell stale mints on her breath. “You would be well advised to keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong.”
Danielle gazed dra
matically back toward J. P. Wynn’s naked corpse. “Worried he might hear something?”
“Perhaps something about your visit to a doctor’s office yesterday, Chief Inspector?”
Danielle held her ground. “Were you having me followed?”
“Perhaps I had an appointment too.”
“I’m sure Moshe Baruch would love to hear about that.”