by Jon Land
* * * *
CHAPTER 44
A
fter leaving the jail, Ben had gone straight to the Oasis Casino, where he found Nabril al-Asi at a blackjack table.
“The Israeli tourists have accused some of our dealers of cheating for the house,” the colonel explained. “I thought it best I study every one. Pull up a chair, Inspector.”
Ben obliged, but waved off the dealer when it was time to lay down his bet. Al-Asi slid a fifty-dollar chip into the box and waited for his cards.
“I need a favor, Colonel.”
“Does this concern that matter involving your late nephew?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Just one minute,” al-Asi said, watching the dealer slide him a queen and then a ten. “No, I don’t think this man is guilty at all. Now what can I do for you?”
Ben watched as the dealer took a mandatory hit on fifteen and busted. Al-Asi stacked his winning chip atop his original bet and let it ride.
“I need a prisoner released from jail.”
“An exchange?”
“A Palestinian jail, Colonel.”
Al-Asi received a king first this time. “Who is this prisoner?”
“Abid Rahman. The man I arrested in Baladiya Square on Monday.”
“Then why come to the Protective Security Service? Why not just obtain the authorization from that young police chief who is so in your debt for his position?”
The dealer flipped al-Asi an ace and paid him three chips instantly.
“The paperwork would delay things for days,” Ben explained. “I can’t wait that long.”
The colonel left four chips, two hundred dollars, out for the next hand. “I detest bureaucracy, something to be avoided at all costs.”
Al-Asi’s next two cards were a two and an eight. He doubled down and drew a nine. The dealer locked at seventeen and slid eight more chips against the colonel’s pile.
“I do believe you’re bringing me luck, Inspector.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I would have done this for you, even if you weren’t bringing me good luck. These dealers must be put on notice that someone is watching them. I have many tables yet to visit.”
Ben started to back his chair out. “Do you want to—”
“No, this one suits me just fine for now. You’re sure you don’t want to play a hand or two? I’ll back you.”
“Another time.”
Al-Asi smiled. “Of course. Now tell me what you learned from that disc I arranged for you to view.”
“Those Americans weren’t archaeologists, at least not all of them.”
“Your nephew?”
“I’m not sure, I’m not sure of anything right now.”
Al-Asi hit on twelve and drew a seven for nineteen. The dealer flipped over his hole card to reveal an ace and eight, giving the colonel a push. He reached and pulled all but one twenty-five-dollar chip back.
“I was suspicious of them from the beginning, Inspector.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing of significance left to find in the Judean Caves.”
“They were running some kind of tests on the ground.”
“The ground is something else again.”
“They had set up sophisticated rigging and drilling equipment. The Israeli soldiers must have dismantled it before anyone else got to the scene.”
The dealer recorded an instant twenty-one and collected all the chips laid out in a semicircle before him.
“Did you consider doing any surveillance on them?” Ben asked.
“Why bother? Whatever they were doing didn’t concern me. I rather enjoyed their little ruse. Playing dumb is one of the greatest advantages we Palestinians have going for us.”
Al-Asi lost fifty dollars on the next hand and pushed his chair away from the table. He collected his remaining pile of chips and rose.
“Time to check another dealer, Inspector.” He looked at Ben, seeming to see him for the first time. “Now what do you think this man you arrested can add to your investigation?”
“I was attacked the other night by men matching the description he gave me: they had tattoos on their arms, tattoos of an upside-down red cross.”
“Have you researched this mark?”
Ben nodded. “No mention of it anywhere I can find.”
“The Internet?”
“I haven’t tried that yet, no.”
“Let me help, then. I’ve gotten quite good with a keyboard. We used to have to tear fingernails out to get what the Internet gives us now.”
“The man who’s being held prisoner attacked a woman he claims was about to kill him, Colonel. He claimed she had a knife—I found that knife in a bag of her belongings she left at the hospital.”
“And did she have this same tattoo?”
“No, but men who appeared in the man’s village a few days before did. They tried to have him killed because he had recognized them.”
“From how many years ago did you say?”
“Fifty-two.”
Al-Asi straightened his tie. “Not a lot to go on.”
“Enough, perhaps, to bring me to the killers of my nephew.”
“Who have reappeared after half a century. I imagine they must have their reasons.”
“So do I, Colonel.”
* * * *
A
l-asi arranged for Abid Rahman’s release before the afternoon was out. Now, a few hours before sunset, the former prisoner stood by Ben’s side five miles from the village of Bani Nai’m in the Judean Desert as Commander Baruch of Israel’s Shin Bet glowered at them both.
“What do you think you’re doing, Inspector?” Commander Moshe Baruch of Shin Bet demanded when he saw Ben leading Abid Rahman about the crime scene in the Judean Desert.
Ben looked up past Baruch’s barrel chest. “Working with a witness, Commander.”
Baruch’s gaze narrowed on Rahman, who stood fidgeting, leaning alternately on one leg and then the other. “A witness to the murders?”
“Not exactly,” said Ben.
“What do you mean by that?” Baruch demanded.
“He was a witness to something being buried in the Judean Caves many years ago. I believe it was the same thing that led to the deaths of the Americans.” Ben hesitated. “That box two of them brought out of the cave. You can watch it all on this.”
Baruch’s face reddened as Ben handed him the original of the disc Ari Coen had made a copy of. The commander sucked in his breath. His cheeks puckered, as if he were hiding something behind them.
“I should have you thrown off this land right now. . . .”
“From here or the West Bank, Commander?”
“We can start with here.”
Ben looked about the site. “I notice you’ve managed to keep the media away from the scene. Perhaps I should make some calls, see if we can get you on tonight’s news. Maybe tell the reporters all about the drilling apparatus you had the army dismantle before anyone else had a chance to see it.”
Baruch stood there fuming, motionless. He closed his hand around the small disc. “Make it fast, before I change my mind.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 45
T
ake a look around. Does any of this look familiar to you?” Ben asked Abid Rahman after they walked away from Baruch toward the hillside.
Rahman’s eyes slowly panned the site. “I don’t know yet. I’ve got to walk around, get the feel of this place, see if anything I remember strikes me.”
Together, they continued along the guarded strip of desert where the Americans had been murdered, shadowed at every step by a pair of soldiers. Abid Rahman didn’t seem to be looking for anything at all, but remained attentive, even focused if the lines that had deepened on his forehead were any indication.
He stopped suddenly when the sun hit his eyes, a hand held before his face to partially shield them. Now it was only the sun he seemed to be looking at; wide-eyed, tryi
ng not to blink.
“What is it?” Ben asked.
“Wait, please,” Rahman said, and held his hand up to keep Ben from drawing any closer. “I remember now. . . .”
“Tell me.”
“The way the sun pierces the slope of the hills and bounces off the desert.” Rahman’s words emerged in a dull monotone, as if a product of shock. “The same way it was when the devil finally found the spot he was looking for. I will never forget the feel of it on my face in that moment, because it was the last moment I would know true peace.” He pulled his hand down and looked at Ben. “Here, sidi.”
Abid Rahman pointed at the cave and headed toward it. With a pair of Israeli soldiers looking on, he hesitated at the foot of the goat path briefly before ascending toward the doorway.
Ben stayed on his heels, not wanting to miss a single word.
“I remember this slope,” Rahman recalled, “the opening then just as it is now.”
“You’re sure?”
“The sun was in my eyes until we were halfway up.” They climbed past the midpoint of the path and entered the shadows. “Then it was gone. The view is the same, the hillsides unchanged. But how is it I never found this place before? ...”
“The devil could have covered the opening with rocks and dirt after you ran away,” Ben said, recalling his earlier analysis of the twin piles of debris that the Americans had cleared from the cave entrance. “Covered it to blend in with the rest of the hillside.”
Once inside the cave, Abid Rahman plopped to his knees near the shallow depression that Ben’s nephew and another of the Americans had located nearly a week ago now.
“The devil wanted to explore the rest of the cave, but it was too close to getting dark,” he started. “So he buried it here. I remember him digging this hole.”
“You never saw what was inside his pack, though?”
“No.” Rahman turned back to the hole. “Tell me, why are all those people outside?”
“Because two days ago, more than a dozen people died here. After they had found whatever you saw the devil bury fifty-two years ago.”
Rahman tensed and clasped his hands in a position of prayer. “Haududallah! Where is it now?”
“We don’t know.”
Rahman reached out and grabbed the legs of Ben’s trousers. His whole body was trembling. “You must find it,sidi! Hurry, before it is too late. Whoever has what the devil buried cannot possibly know of its power!”
“It seems, Abid, that somebody does.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 46
D
anielle sat at her desk, trying to keep down another wave of nausea. Hershel Giott had been in a high-level meeting since her call with Professor Bernstein had ended.
“Oil,” the professor had told her. “Wherever that rock came from, the land is extremely rich in oil reserves. One of the richest strikes in decades.”
“You’re sure?” Danielle had managed.
“The concentration of hydrocarbons on the sample provided me could suggest nothing else.”
Oil, Danielle thought now as she waited for Hershel Giott to become available. That’s what the Americans had found in the West Bank and what J. P. Wynn had suspected from the time he arrived. Oil. . .
Danielle recalled Isser Raskin’s insistence that the rock she had given him for analysis matched similar rocks found in the Texas Panhandle. Israeli geologists, and scientists perhaps, must have uncovered the possible existence of oil in the West Bank. Lacking the technical expertise to probe further, they had hired an American geological survey team and provided them the cover of archaeologists so no one would think twice about their presence in the desert.
After all, the mere existence of oil in the West Bank proved a complicated enough issue even before the issue of ownership entered into the picture. Whose land was it anyway? That part of the Judean Desert had recently been ceded to the Palestinians, but technically it remained under joint Israeli-Palestinian control. So who did the oil belong to? It seemed as if Israel was prepared to claim it as her own, the economic potential too mind-boggling to even consider allowing it to slip away. The Palestinians, of course, would argue for a hefty share at the very least. But it was hard to envision the State of Israel allowing the Palestinians to attain the power and wealth oil inevitably brought with it, which meant Israel needed to find a way to keep all of the reserves for herself.
“Could you tell me where this rock came from, Chief Inspector?” Bernstein had asked her.
“How could it have taken so long for the oil to be discovered?” Danielle responded instead.
“Probably because nobody bothered to look. The truth is there might be far more oil on Earth than we could ever use hidden in places we’ve never thought of looking. In years past the reserves were buried beneath shale and salt domes far too deep to find. But now we’ve got the technology to reach down a thousand feet and beyond.” Bernstein had cleared his throat. “Now about the location of—”
“I’ll call you back later, Professor,” Danielle had said and hung up.
So much still remained unclear to her, but what was clear was that not only had Shin Bet known the truth behind the presence of the Americans, they were complicit in them being there. Heads would roll if that truth were ever revealed; Commander Baruch’s and Shoshanna Tavi’s, at the very least.
The phone rang and Danielle snatched it to her, expecting Hershel Giott to be on the other end.
“Rav Nitzav?”
“Excuse me?” a female voice said back to her.
“I’m sorry. I thought it was someone else.”
“Yes, well, this is Dr. Petroska’s office calling,” the woman said, referring to her OB-GYN. “The doctor would like to see you.”
Danielle felt the words clog up in her throat. “Is there ... a problem?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I’m only relaying his message. Could you come down to the office right away?”
“The doctor said right away?”
“As soon as possible.”
Danielle realized she was shaking badly. “Yes. Of course. I’ll leave right now.”
“I’ll inform the doctor.”
* * * *
T
he ride to the medical building passed in agonizing stops and starts, normal heavy Jerusalem traffic bothering Danielle more than it ever did. Her test results had come back and the doctor must have seen something he didn’t like. She was sure of it.
The thoughts she had harbored before, about how the child should be raised, suddenly seemed insignificant. Perhaps Dr. Petroska was going to tell her she had lost the baby. Again.
There were no parking spaces in the medical building lot, and Danielle left her Jeep in a crosswalk rather than search the street. She was halfway to the entrance when she caught the reflection of a familiar face in the glass, everything clear but the scar.
“Please stop and keep your hands where I can see them, Pakad,” said Shoshanna Tavi.
Danielle turned to face her. “Whatever this is about, it will have to wait. I have an appointment.”
“I know; I’m the one who had the call placed.”
Danielle saw a pair of men she recognized from the door of J. P. Wynn’s hotel room approach her from either side.
“And in your haste to get here,” Tavi continued, “you must have left your pistol in your bag instead of clipping the holster to your belt. Please lay that bag down in front of you.” Tavi made sure Danielle could see the Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter clutched low by her hip. “Now.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 47
S
ecurity at the fenced compound belonging to Rabbi Mordecai Lev’s Amudei Ha’aretz outside of Kiryat Arba had been increased since yesterday. Ben had earlier arranged for Abid Rahman to be placed in “observation” at the Palestinian clinic in Jericho until he could work out something more permanent. Then he had driven straight to the compound, arriving two hours after dark.
He met Lev in the synagogue again, only this time a pair of armed guards stood vigil at the entrance.
“Have you brought the disc?” Lev asked, sitting in the front pew directly before the bema as he had the day before.