The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

  “The cameras placed around Yefet Street yielded nothing,” Raskin reported as soon as she was seated in his office on the basement level of National Police headquarters.

  Danielle felt her shoulders sink, the news deflating her hopes. “Thanks for trying, Isser.”

  “Wait, Commander, you didn’t let me finish. The cameras on Yefet Street yielded nothing, but one on Terful Street, where the old woman lived in the village of Umm al Fahm, that’s something else.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had placed surveillance cameras in the Arab villages.”

  “Neither are the Arabs,” Raskin noted wryly, as he reached for his printer and lifted a sheet of thick paper from the tray.

  “Is this your man, Commander?” he asked, and extended the picture across his desk.

  Danielle inspected it, amazed at the computer-enhanced clarity. The man framed by the shadows of the street was lanky and gaunt, his scarred face almost skeletal and dominated by the black eye patch. She recognized him instantly from the Gaza refugee camp, the man who had killed Hakim.

  “When was this taken, Isser?”

  “The same day your Israeli-Arab woman was killed.” He gestured toward the page he had handed her. “The information’s on the reverse side.”

  Danielle kept staring at the face. “Have you tried to identify him?”

  “That’s the bad news, Commander. I drew a blank. If he’s on file in Israel, it’s on databanks I can’t access.”

  “Don’t worry,” Danielle said, more glad than ever that her first move upon being named commander of National Police was to promote Isser Raskin. “I know someone who can.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Harry Walls said to Danielle before she had a chance to even say hello. Harry wasn’t smiling, looking even more bellicose and disapproving than at their last meeting.

  “You’ve got a name for that man in the photo I e-mailed you, don’t you?

  “A name? Oh, I’ve got a name for you, all right. But I’m not going to give it to you, not until you tell me what this is about.”

  They were meeting at Jerusalem’s Holyland Hotel, a favorite haunt of Danielle’s since her father had brought her there as a child. Over the years she had watched a miniature reconstruction of biblical Jerusalem being erected one building at a time. The detail, right down to the etchings over tiny buildings, was perfect, the work of a single man who had watched Danielle grow up as his creation came to life. He hadn’t finished the project yet and claimed he never would. Danielle envied him that much, a world without expectation immersed in creative endeavor. No complications other than the occasional inconsiderate visitor who touched what he wasn’t supposed to.

  “He’s the suspect in a murder,” Danielle told Walls.

  “Whose murder?”

  “An old woman’s. The picture I sent you was taken by a security camera outside her apartment the day she was killed. And he was identified by one of the last people to see her alive as well.”

  “His name is Sharif Ali Hassan. That mean anything to you?”

  “Should it?”

  Walls spoke without notes as always, although from the look on his face, Danielle guessed much of what he was about to share had been committed to memory long before today. “Native Egyptian. Served in their intelligence service, quite brutally I might add. Dismissed when links to several radical groups were uncovered. Resurfaced in Saudi Arabia soon after that and was later identified as an al-Qaeda trainer in Afghanistan at a few of Bin Laden’s camps. Reputedly part of his inner circle of guards for a time. Wounded and captured in Tora Bora during that stage of the war and was eventually transferred to American custody at Guantanamo Bay.”

  “You’re telling me he’s in Cuba?”

  “I’m telling you he was.”

  “None of the Guantanamo prisoners escaped. The Americans would have informed us if they had.”

  “Six months ago, they were being moved from their cages and relocated during a hurricane scare. The storm hit and the marines bunkered the prisoners down as best they could. When it cleared, the two prisoners Hassan had been shackled to were dead and his chains had been snapped.”

  “Snapped?”

  “Not cut, not broken. Snapped. By hand.”

  Danielle considered the strength it would take for a man to do that. Not a single person she’d ever encountered could have managed it. “He still would have to get off the base.”

  “This is where it gets interesting,” Walls reported. “The marines trailed Hassan to the ocean.”

  “Are you saying he tried to swim?”

  “That’s what the Americans are saying. That’s why they never reported an escape. They searched for him for days. They believed Hassan had to be dead.”

  “Apparently they were wrong.”

  “He’s a certifiable psycho, Danielle. Word out of Guantanamo was that even the other prisoners were glad to see him gone.” Walls’s expression tensed, hardened. “But a man like Hassan doesn’t surface in Israel to kill old ladies, does he? There’s something more going on here I believe you forgot to share with me.”

  Danielle waited until a pair of tourists snapping pictures strolled past them. “What if I told you Hassan was part of the assault team that took out Akram Khalil earlier this week?”

  “I’d tell you that makes even less sense than him killing old ladies.”

  “You’re right; it makes no sense at all.”

  Walls’s eyes bore into hers. “What else?”

  She said nothing, looked down over the miniature streets of Jerusalem, eerie in their detail, and wished she could lose herself within them. “I can’t tell you. Not yet.”

  “Why am I not surprised? Let me give you some advice: Drop it, drop the whole thing now. Otherwise you’ll be giving them the ammunition they need to ruin you forever.”

  “ ‘Them,’ Harry?”

  “Vordi’s not running interference for you anymore. Apparently, his attraction had its limits. He’s let the lions loose, and they’re on your tail.”

  “I can’t drop this now. I don’t have a choice. There was a fatwa recovered from Akram Khalil’s hideout. It foretold the end of all things in the U.S. I gave it to Vordi.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Vordi’s report indicated that the pages had been too badly damaged to confirm much of anything.”

  “You’re telling me he never warned the Americans about the threat?”

  “He had something more important he wanted to accomplish,” Walls said, staring straight at her. “Stringing you along.”

  “He told me he hadn’t checked on the translation yet.”

  “So you took it upon yourself to send the pages to Kamal?” Walls shook his head in disgust. “My God, Danielle, what did you think they’d do when they found out, especially now?”

  “Why?”

  “Because Ben Kama! is currently in the custody of the United States State Department, linked to the very plot you helped him uncover.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Danielle snapped, as much scared as angry.

  Walls shook his head. “You never could play the game, Danielle. Instead you played right into their hands.”

  Danielle turned and started to walk away.

  “Don’t go back to your office, Commander.”

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “Vordi’s waiting for you there. And not to ask you for a date this time.”

  “That bastard ...”

  “They’re all bastards, Danielle, and you’ve given them everything they need to destroy you.”

  “Not yet.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 44

  W

  hat do you mean it doesn’t work?” the president asked, taking a step toward the pedestal holding the Ming Dynasty vase, where Paulsen was still standing.

  “The Dryvax vaccine the general mentioned has been stored since production ended in 1983. It was found to have lost its potency fiv
e years ago.”

  “But the reports I’ve been getting. . .”

  Paulsen turned toward Stephanie Bayliss. “Misinformation, General, meant to deceive anyone contemplating a smallpox release.”

  “Was it meant to deceive me as well?” the president asked him.

  “Now that you mention it, yes. They asked me what to do when they discovered the vaccine was useless. They did what I told them.”

  “Apparently, the decision wasn’t cleared by anyone at a high level.”

  “I told them that too. It was the whole point.”

  The president took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t say I disagree with you, Professor, but I’d like to know where that leaves us.”

  Paulsen looked toward Stephanie Bayliss. “You want to take that one, General?”

  “Sir,” the director of homeland security began, “our response plan never called for mass vaccination of the U.S. population in advance of a smallpox outbreak anyway. Instead we intended to inoculate rings of personal contacts—family members and coworkers of those infected, for example.”

  “Ring vaccination,” Paulsen elaborated. “It helped wipe out smallpox in the late seventies.”

  “But you don’t think it would help us today.”

  “Not at all, sir,” Paulsen answered, moving to a display of crystal animals set atop a wall table. He slid the tiger and bear together, face-to-face, beneath the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. “Who do you think would win?” he asked, crouching to be eye-to-eye with them.

  “Is there a point to this, Professor?” the president asked impatiently.

  “Half the people you ask would say the tiger and the other half would say the bear. Same thing here, sir. Different strategies for dealing with a smallpox outbreak were bandied about for years. But none of the scenarios considered an attack of this potential magnitude.”

  “Then we’re in agreement that a complete vaccination of the entire country is called for,” Bayliss suggested.

  “Called for, yes. Conceivable, you tell me.”

  “Mr. President, a few months after 9/11 we contracted with a British pharmaceutical firm called Immutech to produce enough smallpox vaccine for every man, woman, and child in America.”

  “Meaning you can expect to take delivery by 2005,” pointed out Paulsen. “A little late, don’t you think?”

  “Sir, Immutech is prepared to begin shipping the vaccine within four days.”

  “Using the vaccinia virus grown in live tissue culture, General?” Paulsen wondered.

  “In keeping with the standards you set, Professor.”

  “And this Immutech claims they can have three hundred million doses shipped within ten weeks?”

  “Shortly after we contracted with them, Immutech built the most advanced production and processing facility in the world,” Bayliss explained proudly. “Eliminates the need to further refine and process the vaccine. It arrives fully processed and divided into vials instead of in bulk form.”

  “What’s the cost?”

  “Just under three dollars per dose.”

  “Cheap.”

  “Economical,” Bayliss agreed. Then, to the president, “Immutech’s credentials are impeccable, and they’re used to handling large-scale government contracts.”

  “Nothing like this, I’d venture to say, Director.”

  “No, sir. But they’ve got the production line to manage it, and our observers on site assure me they can meet these dates, if they go to a twenty-four-hour operating schedule.”

  “What happens once Immutech delivers the vaccine?”

  Bayliss gazed at Paulsen before responding. “We are in the process of setting up between twenty and fifty clinics per state, which will operate eighteen hours a day. Each clinic will handle a preselected geographical grid. We are also currently selecting the ten thousand health-care workers and volunteers required to staff the clinics. The report’s on your desk, sir.”

  “And does the report say how long it will take before the last man, woman, and child are vaccinated, Director?”

  “Seventeen days, sir.”

  The president weighed Bayliss’s words, then turned to Paulsen. “Do you concur, Professor?”

  “Last time we tried something like this was the swine flu epidemic of the mid-seventies,” Paulsen replied somberly. “Took four months, reached only a quarter of the population, and was administered improperly thirty percent of the time. But God created the world in a week,” he continued after a pause, “so I suppose anything is possible.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 45

  W

  here can we find your brother, Mr. Kamal?” the man from the State Department resumed.

  “He has nothing to do with this,” Ben said, trying to sound calm.

  “But you went to him to help you find . . .” Again the man consulted his notes. “. . . Mohammed Latif.”

  “My brother was Latif’s sponsor in this country.”

  The man’s lips flirted with a smile. “Then I guess your brother does have something do with this, doesn’t he?”

  “He didn’t know Latif was working with Akram Khalil.”

  “Your brother has had dealings with Palestinian terrorist groups in the past.”

  “In the past he’s raised money for groups loosely associated with them, yes, but not anymore.”

  The man leaned a little closer to Ben. “Then why won’t you tell us where he is?”

  “Because I don’t want to get him killed.”

  “By us?”

  “By whomever killed Lewanthall.”

  The man kept at it like a machine gun, his words spat out in nonstop staccato bursts. “You said earlier that your brother was safe, that he was being protected. By who, Mr. Kamal?”

  “Whom.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whom. I was correcting your grammar. I can do that because I was educated entirely in this country, my country. I have a master’s degree in criminal justice, and I can recite you the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by heart, if that means anything.”

  The man smiled smugly. “Not anymore. Now tell me, Mr. Kamal, who is protecting your brother?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Hamas?”

  “No.”

  “Was your brother involved with Mohammed Latif? Is that why he had Lewanthall killed?”

  The question hit Ben like a kick to the chest, the first one the man had posed he hadn’t heard before. “That’s what you think?” he asked, recovering his senses. “You interrogate me for all these hours and that’s the best you can do?”

  “Your brother has a thick file with us, Mr. Kamal. I don’t know who’s been pulling strings to keep us off him, but that stopped yesterday.”

  Ben looked past the man to the wall, where he was certain hidden cameras were perched. “Is there someone in authority here I can speak to?”

  The man shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “How about someone with a brain, at least some common sense? You’re in here, dicking around with me, instead of looking for whoever killed your man and plans to turn smallpox into the common cold.”

  The man’s expression didn’t change. “Where can we find your brother, Mr. Kamal?”

  “This isn’t about my brother!”

  “Then why has he gone into hiding? Missed classes, appointments, students outside waiting for him during scheduled office hours yesterday and today?”

  “Because I thought he might be in danger.”

  “Why would that be the case, if this isn’t about him, Mr. Kamal?”

  Ben almost laughed, couldn’t believe this man from the State Department was actually serious. “Because he was with me when Latif was killed. Because his life was in danger.” He stopped, then started again almost instantly. “What about the gunmen at the bakery? Did you find anything about them?”

  “You’re referring to the men you killed.”