The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

  “You only had to ask.”

  “I prefer not feeling that I am in your debt.”

  “I haven’t forgotten all you’ve done for me—and Ben—over the years.”

  “But it’s just the two of us now.”

  Danielle sipped the wine the waiter had poured for her. “How can I help you, Colonel?”

  Al-Asi looked instantly more relaxed. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like you to look into the murder of an Israeli-Arab woman living in the village of Umm al Fahm. Her name was Zanah Fahury. Lived alone. In her sixties, I believe.”

  “She was murdered in Umm al Fahm?”

  “Her body was found in Jerusalem two days ago. It’s being called a robbery gone bad.”

  “And you have reason to believe it wasn’t.”

  “I have no reason to believe anything at all, since the police have dropped the investigation.”

  “Because the woman was Arab.”

  “I think you see my point.”

  “And there’s nothing else special about this Zanah Fahury?” Danielle asked, keenly aware that many of al-Asi’s pursuits over the years involved a larger purpose.

  “Other than the fact that she apparently died for no reason and no one seems to care she was ever alive, no,” he replied sharply.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

  “No, Chief Inspector, I’m the sorry one. So many senseless deaths, so many innocents left in unmarked graves. Nothing I can do about most of them. I was hoping you could help me do something about this one.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Danielle said, and took another sip of her wine, settling back in her chair.

  “What are you smiling about, Chief Inspector?”

  “All the years we’ve known each other, Colonel, and this is the first time you’ve asked me for anything.”

  “I’m not used to asking anyone for anything.”

  Danielle shook her head slowly, sadly, amazed by the subtle power and dignity al-Asi had maintained through the latest period of strife. He had managed to redefine and remold himself, to blend with the times instead of fighting them. “All the things you’ve done for people over the years, all the favors they must owe you . . .”

  “True power lies in leaving the paybacks out there to remain available. Of course, even if I wanted to I would have trouble collecting from the people in my debt.”

  “Why, Colonel?”

  “Because, Chief Inspector, most of them are dead.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 9

  B

  en Kamal walked down Warren Avenue in Dearborn, watching the last of the businesses still open closing up for the night. His flight had landed late, and he had driven his rental car straight here from the airport, bypassing the Hyatt Regency a few miles away for the time being.

  He hadn’t called ahead to tell his brother he was coming. The trick was to convince Sayeed to help him find Mohammed Latif, and alerting his brother to his coming would do more harm than good.

  Sayeed Kamal was one of nearly 300,000 Arabs who now called the metropolitan-Detroit area home—the largest Arab community in the nation. Not far from where Ben stood on Warren Avenue, construction on the Islamic Center of North America, the largest mosque in the country, had recently been completed. And this street itself remained a commercial haven, lined with signs in Arabic advertising insurance, cosmetic dentistry, brokerage services, food goods, and bargain blue jeans. Since Ben had left for Palestine a decade before, nearly two hundred new businesses had opened, stretching for miles and gobbling up old houses and vacant lots he barely remembered.

  He passed a pair of restaurants that were just closing for the night, and the New Yasmeen Bakery, where lights burned beyond the window in the kitchen. A clerk at an all-night market had a short line at his register, and the owner of an old-fashioned newsstand was boarding up his wares for the night, leaving leftover copies of Al Bayat, the Beirut daily newspaper, tied up by the curb to be collected by the city’s recycling trucks.

  Ben had come here to feel at home, he supposed, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it, but this was a different place from the one he had left following the murder of his family. He wanted to feel something, a sense of nationalism, perhaps. Instead he felt oddly sad, struck by the fact that Palestinians across the world could no longer walk down similar streets in the West Bank at night, or even travel to nearby towns, thanks to Israeli curfews, roadblocks, and patrolling troops. A Palestinian here could walk twenty miles in less time than it took a Palestinian over there to drive the same distance.

  And yet if he closed his eyes, Ben could almost convince himself he was back in Palestine. Almost, because the pungent aroma of kabob and spicy grilled meat was not marred by the wafting scent of gun smoke or the residue of fires left to burn themselves out. Warren Avenue was not Palestine reborn or transplanted. Warren Avenue was an American street in an American city where people walked without fear and businesses operated without being subject to persecution. It was the world in which he had grown up but had lost track of in his years away, hoping against hope that someday the streets in Ramallah and Nablus would be the same.

  Ben neared a cozy-looking restaurant called Al Madina and stopped, attracted by the scents of fresh grilled meats that drifted out into the cool spring air. He had forgotten how hungry he was and still didn’t feel like going to the hotel just yet. Besides, a quick meal would give him an excuse to read the pages Danielle had faxed him. He had tried to manage that task on the plane but drifted off to sleep each time he started.

  Inside the softly lit Al Madina, a hostess ushered him to a table for two set between the bar and an open grilling station and left him a menu. Ben made his selection, laid the pages on the table, and began to read, listening to the sizzling sounds of meat and fish cooking just a dozen feet away.

  The condition of what was written on the pages had been further degraded by the fax. The poor quality of the transmission made it difficult to identify the precise damage done by the flames; gray or black patches of varying sizes blotched each sheet. Another inspection of them confirmed what a more cursory one on the plane had suggested: He would be able to translate the Arabic words into English, but stringing them into a cohesive context was another matter altogether. Ben thought the entire endeavor would likely prove fruitless.

  He realized how wrong he was barely two pages in, the tone and rhythm of the writing clear even before he came to the substance. Not the location of ordnance and men. Not rambling communiqués written in some undecipherable code.

  The writing rambled, all right, but there was sense and logic to it. Ben was rereading the pages in more detail when his food arrived, then reread them again as it cooled on the table before him.

  His appetite was gone. The pages teased him, dared him to discern their meaning amid the garble due to fire and phone line.

  Ben realized he was sweating, even though the restaurant felt cold. The door opened and a sudden wind flipped the pages across the table. He gathered up the sheets and summoned his waiter for a check. The man looked puzzled by his still-full plate, asked if Ben wanted the meal wrapped up. To avoid complications Ben said he did, then put his coat on and was halfway to the door by the time the waiter returned with a Styrofoam box.

  Ben tucked it under his arm, the pages stuffed in his pocket now, pages that held the portent of a plan excruciatingly lacking in detail but terrifying real in purpose.

  Al-mawlidu n-nabawi. . .

  The Last of Days.

  * * * *

  Chapter 10

  T

  he plane trembled, buffeted by head winds and turbulence that tossed it about like a toy in the sky. Its steel weight seemed helpless against the power of the storm it confronted head on.

  Layla Aziz Rahani, the plane’s lone passenger, had fallen asleep hours before, as she always did on long flights, her repose bothered not by the pounding swells of air but by her own dreams, which clutched hard and wouldn’t let go.

&
nbsp; “Please, please, don’t do this.”

  The woman’s voice was faint and pleading, her words broken up into grating, raspy utterances. Harsh sand swirled about in the air and stuck in her eyes and mouth. Buried in the ground up to her head, she was powerless to wipe them free.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” she pleaded, straining to see the figure looming before her through the glare of the sun. “How many times can I say that?”

  The man turned and stepped back until the sun streamed over his shoulder and burned into the woman’s eyes. The folds of his robe fluttered in the wind. His keffiyeh left the bulk of his bronze, angular face and perfectly manicured beard exposed.

  The man walked toward a thin grove of olive trees, the woman following him with her eyes until sand kicked up by his sandals sprayed into her face and mouth and left her retching.

  “You can’t do this,” she gasped.

  “You’ve left me no choice. “

  “You‘re my husband.“

  The man’s features flared briefly. “That didn’t stop you from having relations with another man. Did you think I would not learn of it? But I looked the other way, convinced myself it was a one-time indiscretion committed years ago. Then you tried to steal my daughters, and that I could not overlook.”

  “For the love of God...”

  “We have different gods,” the man said, and walked on until he reached the figure of a young girl, nearly lost in the shapeless confines of her robe. She stood in the narrow ribbon of shade among the others who had accompanied them here.

  The woman watched the man stretch his hand down, watched the little girl take it.

  “Please, take her away. Don’t let her watch. It’s the least you can—”

  Sand swirled into the woman s mouth and again made her gag. She spat it out as best she could and struggled mightily to move her hands, her legs, her feet—anything. But the sand had been packed down too hard and any hope had evaporated before the afternoon burned hot and drained the last remnants of her strength. She had prayed she might pass out, realizing now even that minor solace would be denied her.

  The woman’s eyes burned hot with tears, finally clearing to the sight of the man standing a few yards before her still holding the little girl’s hand. In their free hands, each of them clutched a rock pulled from the large pile halfway between her sand-packed tomb and the olive trees; the man’s fist-sized, the girl’s smaller but still seeming absurdly large in her tiny grasp.

  “No,“ the woman muttered, the word muffed by the sand trapped in her mouth. She tried to speak again, but her voice quickly dissolved into a rasp that further scraped her raw throat.

  The little girl watched the man approach the woman and kneel down so he could slip a dark hood over her face. He tied a pair of sashes together, taking up the hood’s slack so the woman’s breathing made it pucker in and out.

  The man returned to the little girl’s side and nodded. Then the little girl started to bring her free hand upward, her tiny fingers tightening around the rock she held in the last moment before she released it.

  The dream ended. Layla Aziz Rahani’s eyes opened to the sight of the Manhattan skyline through the window, something having stirred her awake. She looked down at the armrest and realized the built-in satellite phone was ringing. She cleared her throat and brought it to her ear.

  “Yes,” she said groggily.

  “Have you forgotten our own language, my sister?” a harsh, slightly slurred voice demanded.

  “No more than you have forgotten the Muslim rules concerning alcohol, my brother,” Layla returned.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Saed Aziz Rahani continued. “Did you think I would not find out? Did you actually believe you could get away with this?”

  “I am doing the business of our family, Saed, something you have never shown any interest in.”

  “That is not your place.”

  “It has always been my place.”

  “I speak to you from our father’s palace in Riyadh, my sister. This charade will go no further.”

  So her brother had learned the truth of their father’s condition. Layla tried not to feel overly concerned. It was inevitable he should find out, after all. She was lucky to have kept it a secret from Saed for this long.

  “Are those his words, Saed? Do you speak with his voice?”

  “No more than the signature on your visa is really his. Forgery is a serious crime in our country, my sister.”

  “So long as our father is still alive—”

  “He will not be alive much longer, and at that point his final instructions will be carried out. For now your instructions are to return home.”

  Hot tears of rage burned Layla Aziz Rahani’s eyes. “I’ll do no such thing.”

  There was a pause, and Layla thought she heard the sound of ice cubes jangling about on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, of course,” Saed Aziz Rahani resumed, “you have an important business meeting to attend, a deal to close.”

  “How could you know—”

  “They called Rahani Industry’s Riyadh headquarters to confirm. I happened to take the call.”

  “It must have been between happy hours.”

  “You will not find them receptive to your proposals.”

  “You don’t even know my proposals.”

  “All the same, I made sure to provide them a better alternative. They are meeting with you only as a courtesy. I look forward to watching you lose what little face you have left. But fear not: Your exile from the company once I take over will be gradual.”

  “Once you take over?”

  “The line of succession is clear, and I am the oldest child.”

  “You are seven years younger than I.”

  “Oldest son, my sister.”

  Layla scratched at the phone’s plastic with her fingernails. “Our father still lives.”

  “And if you turn your plane around, you can be here for his last breath without humiliating yourself.”

  “You don’t want me as your enemy, Saed.”

  “I accepted that long ago. Neither of us can change the inevitable. You waste your life trying.”

  Layla Aziz Rahani switched the phone from one ear to the other. “We’ll talk when I return.”

  “There is no return from what you are about to do, my sister. It is I who will step into our father’s shoes. Complete his dreams, his vision.”

  Layla smiled ever so slightly. “You have no idea how wrong you are, my brother,” she said, and returned the phone to the armrest.

  * * * *

  Chapter 11

  W

  hat does it mean?” Danielle asked groggily, trying to chase the sleep from her head.

  “It’s a prophecy from the Koran, signifying the destruction of the world, the end of man.”

  “So these pages...”

  “They appear to be a religious fatwa from a cleric giving the holder permission to bring it about. In the United States.”

  Danielle found herself suddenly alert. “Armageddon.”

  “Not exactly. The New Testament calls a similar prophecy something else: the end of all things,” Ben continued. “According to the Koran, the Last of Days would begin with the coming of al-Mahdi, a messianic prophet. Al-Mahdi would arise to restore justice to the world, return it to the hands of those pure enough to hold it. Or at least destroy the infidels who corrupted mankind.”

  “Americans.”

  “According to this fatwa.”

  “You’re saying that’s what Akram Khalil was involved in?” Danielle asked, wondering if Deputy Minister Vordi had deliberately held back the truth from her, or whether it had been held back from him as well.

  “That’s what these pages say.”

  “But they don’t say how.”

  “The final section is missing.”

  Danielle rubbed her eyes with her free hand, picturing the final moments of Khalil’s life. Under attack, he had retreated to the rear of
the compound, where he began to destroy evidence of his work, his plans. Getting a fire going in the trash can would have taken a few precious moments. Then, in the moments before bullets cut him down, he must have lifted a clump of papers and dumped them into the flames.

  “Who else might have had a reason to kill Khalil?” Ben asked her.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” She waited for him to respond and resumed speaking when he didn’t. “What’s wrong?”