A Walk in the Darkness - [Kamal & Barnea 03]

by Jon Land

  From that point, Ben didn’t hesitate. He turned his collar up and emerged from his hiding place as if these boys had been exactly what he was waiting for. He raised an empty hand to his lips and whispered into it, pretending to have a radio or walkie-talkie at the ready. Anyone watching in the dark would assume he was just a cop doing his job. The tote bag would have betrayed his disguise, so before walking across the street he discarded it and stuck the package, still sticky with dried soda, under his tucked-in shirt. Then he zipped up his jacket to hold it firmly in place.

  Ben entered the park, pretending to follow the gang of teenagers through the umbrella pines growing along the paths that sliced through the gardens. During the day these trees would provide great shade for strollers and joggers. At night, they had the opposite effect of obscuring the already-thin light emanating from sporadically placed ground lanterns.

  Ben stayed on the boisterous trail the kids left behind long enough to figure that anyone watching would have already dismissed his presence. He then broke off and headed southwest toward the Pincio and the Moses Fountain located at the bottom of a hill layered with lush, colorful foliage.

  He kept himself to the shadows as he drew closer, waiting for any sign of the enemy’s presence. Feeling a bit more secure but still wary, Ben decided to hide behind a pair of flowering trees until there was reason to show himself. If Gianni Lorenzo appeared without Danielle, Ben would know all bets were off and that his plan had failed.

  With twenty minutes still left before nine o’clock, Ben heard the faint shuffle of footsteps approaching and watched a pair of young men pass by him. They were holding hands, lovers apparently out for a nighttime stroll. Except that their eyes were everywhere but on each other, no matter how much they tried to hide it. This must be Gianni Lorenzo’s advance team, or part of it anyway.

  The two young men sat down on the edge of the fountain adorned with a statue portraying Moses as a baby wrapped in a granite basket. They kissed lightly, then rose and walked off into the cover of trees and denser brush.

  Somewhere in the distance, a clock struck nine and more footsteps clacked atop the walkway. Ben clung to the darkness and held his breath as a single man stopped in front of his hiding place. The man continued on again almost immediately and another set of footsteps followed his. Ben recognized Gianno Lorenzo, accompanied by a smaller figure walking by his side. A figure Ben thought first was a man from the clothes, then realized was a woman an instant before the light caught her face:

  Danielle Barnea.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 68

  H

  ours before and half a world away, Danielle’s tomb had begun to fill with the frigid water of the Grand Banks when she felt it jerked suddenly upward. The flow of water slowed but the angle tipped her head downward to where the bulk of it had settled. She could feel the tomb swaying and fought to steal what breath she could.

  Finally the container was righted and plucked from the water to be hoisted upward in a maddening series of stops and starts.

  What is going on? Have my captors suddenly changed their minds about killing me?

  Back on the deck, they cut the lid open but Danielle was in no condition to mount the resistance she had considered. Most of her body was still immersed and the frigid temperatures of the Grand Bank seas had numbed her to the point of near exhaustion.

  A pair of men, quickly joined by a third, spoke rapidly in Italian, clearly relieved she was still alive. She was yanked from the water and taken below, where her icy clothes were stripped off and replaced by blankets and towels. She realized in all the excitement they had forgotten to bind her hands, but the blood still felt like thick mud in her veins, and the desperate immediacy of escape had passed because, clearly, something had changed. Despite the many blankets wrapped around her, she continued to shake uncontrollably.

  They motored fast back toward shore. Danielle at first lacked the strength to dress herself in the ill-fitting clothes the men gave her. She managed to pull them on finally just before the boat docked. The pants sagged on her hips and the shirt was like a tent, material swimming all around her. She used a damp blanket as a coat and was all too happy to disembark into the waiting company of two well-dressed men whose suit coats could not disguise their powerful builds.

  One of them explained in decent enough English that she was being returned home, that a ransom for her was being paid.

  What ransom? And who was paying it?

  They did not drug her during the flight by private jet; they didn’t have to. Exhaustion and the lingering effects of the icy water had her asleep before the private jet was even off the ground. Danielle didn’t awaken again until the wheels smacked the runway, half expecting to look out the window and see Tel Aviv.

  Instead she saw Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport and felt more confused than ever. Four more men waiting on the tarmac brought her to a car and drove straight for what she recognized as the Villa Borghese.

  They escorted her into the park where she was met by another man wearing an ill-fitting military uniform. He was tall and gaunt, with a sharp angular face, and the others treated him with extreme reverence.

  “Welcome to Rome, Chief Inspector Barnea,” he greeted, taking her by the arm. “I am Gianni Lorenzo. Come, we must hurry. . . .”

  She did not resist and a few short minutes later, they entered a large clearing and stopped in front of a lavish fountain. Danielle felt Gianni Lorenzo’s grasp tighten on her arm as they turned back toward the path.

  “Inspector Kamal? You can come out now, Inspector Kamal.”

  And Danielle watched as Ben emerged from behind a nesting of trees. She knew instantly he was the reason she was still alive. She should have felt happy, joyous, but a wave of guilt washed over her instead.

  Somehow Ben had arranged her release. Ben Kamal, the man she was willing to forsake to preserve her good name and heritage once her baby was born. Danielle looked into his eyes again and saw the relentless resolve, like nothing she had ever seen in them before. Knew he was fighting to save something she had decided to deny him.

  The three men who had accompanied Gianni Lorenzo into the park closed ranks around him. Danielle felt him slide slightly behind her and grab hold of her other arm as well.

  “Let’s get down to business,” said Lorenzo, “shall we?”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 69

  G

  ood evening, Colonel,” Ben greeted.

  He realized Gianni Lorenzo was wearing a black uniform with enough medals hanging from his left lapel to strain his frame. From the way the pants hung too low and the jacket sagged on him, Ben guessed it was the colonel’s old military uniform. Perhaps the very one he had worn when he was sent to train as a member of the Knights Templars on the Swiss Guard’s behalf. He was lost in the thick material that had covered his once-powerful frame. He was a skeletal shape in a walking coffin, and Danielle braced before him.

  Ben could no longer see the male “lovers” and knew he had to proceed now without a lock on their positions. That posed extremely precarious prospects, but he had no choice at this point, and the good thing was they increased the enemy’s number by only two, a total of six when added to the three Swiss Guardsmen who had accompanied Lorenzo and Danielle into the park.

  Ben kept his hands in view as he approached Gianni Lorenzo through the spill of the night lanterns. He tried to hold his eyes on the colonel, but they kept straying to Danielle. She looked pale and weak, otherwise okay.

  “As you can see, Ben Kamal,” the captain commandant of the Swiss Guard said when Ben stopped ten feet from him, “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain.” Here, he eased Danielle slightly away from him. “Chief Inspector Barnea is alive, well, and before you. Now, where are the contents of the box you gave me earlier today? Live up to your end of the bargain and hand over Josephus’ scroll.”

  Ben slowly reached under his shirt to extract the well-wrapped bag that had spent the day in the airport t
rash can.

  “Take it from him,” the colonel ordered one of his guardsmen.

  “Interesting choice of clothing,” Ben noted.

  “I thought it was fitting.”

  The guardsman removed the bag from Ben’s outstretched hand and started back toward Lorenzo.

  “Now, release Inspector Barnea,” Ben demanded.

  Lorenzo let Danielle go and took the bag from the guardsman. He crouched to inspect the contents of the box he had buried in the Judean Desert fifty-two years before, his hands trembling so much he could barely hold it.

  Danielle rushed to Ben. He lunged the last step to meet her and took her in his arms, holding her there briefly before easing her slightly behind him. She was icy cold. He could feel her trembling.

  “One of you, bring me a flashlight!” Lorenzo ordered his men.

  Another guard approached and held the beam over the colonel’s shoulder. Gianni Lorenzo cradled the padded envelope and used his liver-spotted hands to tear away its seal. From it he removed the same animal skin the scroll had been rewrapped in a half century before. Then he peeled away the skin’s folds, angling the contents to catch the spray cast by the flashlight.

  The colonel’s eyes bulged. He looked up from the ground toward Ben, fury brewing in his eyes.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  He stormed forward and stopped three feet from Ben and Danielle, then emptied the contents of the dried animal skin onto the concrete.

  Dust and tattered refuse emerged, filling the cracks in the concrete. A pair of faded, decaying wooden rods that had once supported the parchment on either side of the scroll dropped out last, clattering at Lorenzo’s feet.

  ”Where is the contents of the box? Where is the lost scroll?”

  ”That’s it,” Ben said. “Nothing has been touched.”

  “What?”

  ”You just dumped out the lost work of Josephus, Colonel. Exactly as I found it yesterday in the cave where you buried it.”

  The colonel sank to his knees and began spooning his hands through the thick dust and minuscule fragments of what had been the parchment scroll he had seen only once before.

  ”What have you done?” he asked, not looking up.

  ”Not me, Colonel, you. When you returned the scroll to its skin, you must not have closed the ties tightly enough. You let the air of the Judean get to it and after fifty years ...”

  Gianni Lorenzo lurched awkwardly back to his feet, stumbling a little. “Liar! Where is it? I’m warning you, speak now!”

  Ben sidestepped to shield Danielle. His eyes met hers briefly, enough to pass an unspoken message.

  When I move, move with me.

  There were only three men in sight besides Lorenzo, plus the unseen male lovers, giving them a better chance than they had a right to expect. With only six to best, and the dark working for them, Ben felt they could pull it off. The problem was Danielle’s condition. The way she looked, Ben doubted she was capable of the quick escape required. And there was a third life to consider here, that of their baby.

  “My nephew might have suspected what he had found from legend, Colonel,” Ben said finally, “but he never could have proved it. So his murder, all the murders, were pointless. And now it’s over,” he continued, a trace of honest regret creeping into his voice. “You and your faith have nothing to worry about anymore. The evidence that could have destroyed you was destroyed itself. It’s finished.”

  Lorenzo straightened. “Unfortunate. I was hoping to finish this for good tonight. Now the best I can hope for is to eliminate the two remaining witnesses to the truth.”

  Ben didn’t react. “When are you going to let it end, Colonel? Don’t you get it? Your Knights Templars aren’t needed anymore. No more senseless massacres to hide the truth. No more worrying about something you neglected to destroy a half century ago.”

  “That may be so,” Gianno Lorenzo said. “But still . . .”

  He finished his remark in a shrug that Ben interpreted as some kind of signal. He had looked toward Danielle to give her his own sign when the nearby brush ruffled and footsteps sounded against the pavement.

  The gang of street toughs Ben had followed into the park emerged from all angles, surrounding them.

  I’ve played right into Lorenzo’s hands, goddamnit!

  Up close, Ben could see they weren’t teenagers at all; just men made up to look like them, so no one would notice such a large group entering the park. Lorenzo had been one step ahead of him all along!

  The captain commandant of the Swiss Guard was smiling when Ben returned his eyes to him.

  “Let us go, Colonel.”

  “I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

  “At least the woman, then. I gave you what you want. It’s over. We can’t hurt you. Nobody can.”

  Lorenzo didn’t look at all remorseful. “I’m afraid we can’t take that chance. I swore an oath half a century ago to protect and preserve our faith at all costs. Eliminating you is a small one, Inspector. I am merely—”

  Pop . . .

  Ben heard the sound at the same time the figure next to Lorenzo twisted into the old man, collapsing. The colonel lost his balance under the strain and fell beneath the body, his hands coming up coated in something dark and wet.

  “Blood,” he mouthed, dumbfounded.

  With the sound of a second pop, another figure snapped upright, a huge cavity in his chest briefly visible before darkness closed it and the figure crumbled. At the third muffled shot, Ben crashed into Danielle and took her hard to the pavement. Even pinned beneath him, he could feel how slow and lethargic whatever she’d been through had made her.

  “What’s going on?” she managed.

  More shots sounded and the third and fourth bodies fell almost simultaneously as the rest of Lorenzo’s men whipped out their weapons and swung desperately about.

  “It’s a sniper,” Ben said, perplexed by the identity of their savior as he gazed up into the darkness of the Pincio, the original hill of gardens.

  Sure enough, the next time he heard the popping sound, a brief flash accompanied it. Whoever was up there was damn good, using a semiautomatic scoped rifle instead of the often still preferred bolt action, based on the rapid succession of shots.

  The colonel’s soldiers had recovered enough from their shock to see the last muzzle flash as well, turning in unison, it seemed, toward the Pincio. Three more of the guards dressed as street toughs went down in rapid succession before the rest mounted a crazed charge up the hill. If nothing else, this allowed two of the guardsmen who had accompanied the colonel to the park to drag him out from beneath the first fallen body and lead him to safety.

  “Come on,” Ben said, yanking Danielle to her feet with him.

  “No!” Lorenzo screamed to the men enclosing him protectively. “Stop them! They’ll get away!”

  The guardsmen held their ground and turned toward Ben and Danielle. Before they could move, though, another shot rang out in the night and the head of one of the Swiss Guardsmen exploded, showering blood and brains all over the colonel. He spun one way, then the other, before a host of his men took him down to the pavement and covered him once more.

  “Now!” Ben implored.

  “We’ll be shot!”

  “If he wanted us, we’d be dead already.”

  “Then—”

  Ben didn’t give Danielle a chance to finish her thought. He latched on to her arm and drew her away with him. She lumbered more than ran, every step heavy and thick, still stuck in the wrong gear as if the proper wires had been disconnected.

  “Faster!” he ordered, and she did her best.

  Screams had replaced the silenced shots they were too far away to hear now. Ben had known a few snipers in his time, back in his days with the Detroit police. Enough to understand they were a breed unto themselves, literally one in a million for the reflexes, instincts, eyesight, and plain resolve it took to do their job. He remembered witnessing one put a bullet through t
he eye of a drug addict who’d taken hostages in a school. The addict had emerged from the building with a kid clutched in either arm, holding them in front of him. The shooter had maybe an inch to spare on either side and had still taken the shot, nailing it dead solid perfect. Whoever was on the hill must be at least that good, probably better, since the role he had given himself here required multiple shots, mere microseconds spent retargeting before pressing the trigger again.

  “Who was it back there?” Danielle rasped when he at last let them stop. She dropped her hands to her knees to catch her breath. “Who saved us?”