by By Jon Land
“In self-defense.”
“You must be a very good shot.”
“Not really. I’ve just had a lot of practice.”
“You didn’t call the police.”
“No.”
“Were you alone?”
“What’s the difference?”
“You said your brother was with you.”
“He helped me find Latif,” Ben said. “I told you that.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask one. What about the gunmen?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It is if they were part of the same group that killed Lewanthall. And it should be your concern too, but that doesn’t seem to matter much to you.”
Ben’s inquisitor crossed his arms, hardened his expression. “Maybe we should just start at the beginning again. ...”
“Go ahead,” Ben said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * * *
Chapter 46
Y
ou can go now, Marta,” Layla Aziz Rahani said to the nurse hovering near the foot of her father’s hospital bed.
Marta bowed slightly and left the room, her face covered by the ever-present black veil, leaving only a narrow slit for her eyes and matching her black robe, known as an abaiya.
Layla Aziz Rahani watched Marta walk through the door built in the rear of the room. This had once been her father’s office, the place where she would sit in his lap while he did business on the speakerphone or stand next to him while he held audience to his many business suitors. He was most happy within these walls, surrounded by memorabilia and documents comprising the successful pursuits of his vision. It was here, together, that they had spawned the concept of pushing tourism as the basis for Saudi Arabia’s financial future. And the scale models of the various projects they envisioned still adorned tables set throughout the sprawling room. Layla had left them in place, unchanged, knowing in her heart this was as close as Abdullah Aziz Rahani would ever come to seeing them completed. She turned from the models back to the shape in the bed before her, now an empty shell.
“How are you, my father?” It had been nearly a day since she had returned, that much time needed to confirm her brother’s claims about Abullah Aziz Rahani’s plans for succession, destroying the dream she had so long counted on.
How could you have done this? she wanted to ask him. After all I’ve done, after all you promised me. . .
But she didn’t, having tried to convince herself it had all been Saed’s doing, that her father wasn’t to blame. Besides, what was done was done, and her father was all she had left. “I have much to tell you today,” she said, her stomach turning slightly from the antiseptic smell of air freshener, pumped into the room at regular intervals.
Her father lay before her, covered to his neck by a sheet. Tubes ran in and out of him. Wires strung him to the various machines enclosing the bed that had kept him alive since a stroke had killed his brain. Most of him had died that day, but a part still clung to life, and Layla remained convinced he could hear her even though he could not respond.
“Your plan, the one you first spoke of as I lay in the hospital all those years ago, goes well, my father. Soon the United States will pay for what it did to both of us. Their government has made it so easy, responded just as you predicted every step of the way.” She stopped briefly to choke back tears and settle herself. “The doctors say there’s no chance you’ll ever awaken again. I ask only for a few moments in the coming days, a few moments when you open your eyes so I can tell you the destruction of their world is soon to begin. I have followed your plan, my father. I want for us to share our success, our triumph, together.”
Sometimes the days of the plot’s true beginnings drifted away from her. But when Layla was close to her father, listening to the machines pushing air into his lungs and helping his heart to beat, the memories returned as if it had all happened only yesterday. . . .
They had been on a trip to London, Layla with her mother and younger sister, Kavi. Mostly shopping, which Layla only pretended to enjoy. The truth was she missed her father horribly during these trips. Clearly he was her favorite while Kavi favored their mother.
Her parents had met while her father was finishing his studies in the United States. Abdullah Aziz Rahani had brought back a degree in business and his soon-to-be wife, who, though American, did her best to embrace all the customs and traditions of Saudi Arabia. The land for their palace had been a wedding gift from the king himself, and the palace was finally completed just before Layla was born. Kavi followed in far less ceremonial fashion two years later. To this day Layla held the distant memory of her father stealing away to be alone. She had followed and caught him crying, not realizing until much later that his tears sprang from the fact that his wife had given birth to a second daughter instead of a son.
As she grew older, though, he seemed increasingly unbothered by that, having taken Layla under his wing, teaching her as he would have a boy. And Layla embraced the opportunity right from the start. She found herself utterly disinterested in the Western ways of her mother, and came to loathe the trips to London on which she was forced to go.
Then late one night, on one of those trips, her mother had shaken her awake in one of the bedrooms of their hotel suite.
“We must get dressed.“
Layla sleepily looked toward the window to find the blinds still drawn and darkness shining beyond. “I’m not ready to get up yet,” she had said.
“You must.”
“Are we going home?”
That had drawn a smile from her mother; but Layla remembered thinking it looked more sad than happy. “Yes, we’re going home. “
Layla was barely five years old at the time, but sensitive and acutely aware of her surroundings. Her mother helped her dress and then moved on to Kavi, who wouldn’t stop sobbing from having her sleep interrupted. Layla wondered where the servants were who usually handled these menial tasks. Weren’t they staying in the next few rooms down,? But on this night the only one in evidence was Kavi’s governess Habiba, who hurried to pack the toddler’s small bag.
Kavi fell back to sleep in a chair once she was dressed. Layla watched her mother scurry around the suite, gathering things into a small suitcase Layla had never seen before.
The last thing her mother stuffed into the suitcase was her jewelry box, filled with the lavish treasures her father was fond of surprising her with. Layla had never seen her mother take the box with her on these trips, had never seen her take it out of their big house at all. Something was alarming about her motions. She seemed scared.
Layla started crying. Her mother came to her side instantly, took Layla in her arms.
“Everything’s going to be all right. I promise. “
Layla couldn’t stop crying.
Her mother eased her gently away but kept her hands clasped about Layla’s tiny shoulders. “We’re just going on another trip. To a place you’ve never been before, a wonderful place.”
“I don’t want to go!” Layla sobbed. “I want to go home!”
“We are going home, to my home.”
She drew Layla close to her again, but Layla stiffened and pushed her away.
“I want Daddy!” she cried. “I want my daddy!”
Her wailing awoke Kavi, who began to wail again, causing Habiba to take the toddler in her arms for comfort. Layla felt sick to her stomach and thought she might throw up. She rushed into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Layla leaned over the toilet and gasped for breaths between her wails. But the sickness passed as quickly as it came, and she was left there on the floor breathing hard, the tears hot and wet on her cheeks.
Then she saw the phone. It seemed strange for a bathroom to have a phone, but there it was. She picked up the receiver, heard the dial tone. She searched her memory and dialed her father’s private number in Saudi Arabia, careful to make sure she stuck her hand in the right ho
le of the dial before turning it.
The phone made a grinding sound. She heard clicking in the receiver.
“Front desk,” a voice that wasn’t her father’s announced.
“I want my daddy.“
“How can I help you, miss?”
“I want my daddy! I tried to call him. ...”
“What’s the number, then?”
Layla recited it from memory. Silence followed, and she laid the receiver on the floor, crying once again until she heard her father’s voice coming from the receiver. Layla fumbled it to her ear.
“Mommy’s taking me away, Daddy. “
To this day, Layla did not know whether she spoke the words in English or Arabic.
“I don’t want to go, Daddy! I don’t want to go to her home!”
Her father had started to respond, when Layla’s mother entered the bathroom to find the phone cradled in both her hands. Layla watched her draw it to her ear, listen briefly, and slam it back onto its cradle. Then she grabbed her harshly by the arm and jerked her to her feet. Layla resisted, but her mother dragged her back to the living room section of the suite.
Her mother had never hurt her before. She started crying again. She missed her father badly, terrified by what all this meant.
Her mother plopped her down in a chair and reached for a phone on the table. Dialed a number quickly. Layla could hear it ring from the chair, her mother agitated now, clearly frightened as.. .
* * * *
Chapter 47
B
elow her, in his hospital bed, Abdullah Aziz Rahani had started to wheeze. A bubbly, frothy sound came in fits and starts that drew Layla out of her trance back to the present. Almost instantly, one of the machines squeezed next to his bedside began chirping a metallic warning.
At the sound of the alarm, the veiled nurse Marta reappeared.
“Go,” Layla Aziz Rahani ordered. “I can handle it.”
And Marta disappeared back through the door.
The tube feeding air to Abdullah Aziz Rahani’s lungs, breathing for him, needed to be cleared. A simple process she had performed dozens of times since his stroke. But today the past drew uncomfortably close, and her hand fumbled the plastic and she felt the tube grate against his throat passage. Layla winced, feeling the pain he could no longer feel for himself. Not that her brother Saed cared about such things. He had never spent time with their father while he was alive. And he only bothered now that Abdullah Aziz was dying because as rightful heir, he wanted to show the proper decorum. The hypocrisy and unfairness of that left Layla seething. But she comforted herself with thoughts of the great plan she was completing on his behalf. This was how she would make herself worthy of the faith her father had once shown in her. Let him see how she had grown to be everything his true heir should be.
“Yu ‘sifuni hada,” she apologized, as if he could hear her.
She finished clearing her father’s tube and listened to him wheeze steadily again as the machines sustaining him clunked and whirred. He’d been such a handsome man in his youth, before age and the stroke had whittled away at his bones, turned his flesh pasty and left it painted thinly on his brittle bones.
They had grown inseparable once her mother and sister were gone. There were times when Layla imagined what her life would have been like if things had developed differently. But she had to admit her years growing up alone with her father were the happiest of her life. Teaching her the ways of his business. Imbuing in her a strength and power seldom known by Saudi women. She had always believed it would be her lot as his oldest child to take his position when the fates dictated. Now that her brother had shattered that dream, she turned to the other that was coming ever closer to fruition.
“You’d be proud of me, walid,” Layla said, stroking his forehead. “I know you’d be proud.”
Her cell phone rang, and for a moment she ignored the sound, passing it off as yet another made by the array of machines channeling what passed for life into her father. Finally she snapped alert, plucked the phone from her belt, and pressed it to her ear.
“Yes?”
“There’s a problem,” said a voice at the other end. She recognized it as that of a Saudi double agent with deep contacts in Israeli intelligence.
“Explain.”
“You asked me to monitor the investigation into that old woman’s murder in Jerusalem.”
“And you assured me the Israeli police would simply file the case.”
“According to my source, they did—at least, tried to.”
“What happened?”
“A commander from National Police has reopened the investigation.”
“When?” Layla Aziz Rahani asked, feeling suddenly chilled.
“Yesterday.”
“And you waited until now to tell me?”
“I only just learned the details myself. Her investigation, I’m told, was not authorized.”
“Her investigation?”
“Don’t let her gender fool you. She’s very tenacious. Very effective.”
Layla Aziz Rahani realized all of a sudden how cold the room was. “I want her file, everything you can find about her. Use the usual electronic channel.”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll want your Israeli contacts to monitor all of her movements.”
“That’s a problem,” the man said, after a pause.
“Why?”
“Because she’s disappeared. Even her own superiors in the Ministry of Justice can’t find her.”
“Use every resource you can. When she surfaces, I want to know it. Is that clear?”
Silence.
“Is that clear?” Layla Aziz Rahani repeated.
“All this because of an old woman’s murder?”
“You have no idea,” she told the man.
* * * *
Chapter 48
D
anielle found Colonel al-Asi seated on a wooden bench in the shade of an orange grove. He had half peeled an orange and extended another to her when she sat down.
“I picked them myself. Thought you might want one.”
She didn’t really, but took the orange the colonel offered and began to peel it anyway. The kibbutz, located in a valley southwest of Jerusalem, was heavily guarded by both army and civilian personnel, making it seem even stranger to find al-Asi here.
“My counterparts in your government have been gracious enough to provide me refuge,” he explained, as if reading her mind. “In return for my services, of course.”
“What else?”
Al-Asi finished peeling away the rind and pried a section free. “All the fruit I can eat,” he said, and eased it into his mouth.
“Where’s your family, Colonel?”
He worked another section of the orange free. “Safe.”
“Resettled?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Al-Asi stuck the second section into his mouth, trying to look nonchalant.
“Ben told me you have a wife and three children. My government got them out, didn’t they? That’s why you’re working for us.”
Al-Asi looked up from his orange, clearly stung. “You think I’m a traitor, Chief Inspector?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. Sitting here with you right now would more than qualify me as one in the minds of some. But everything I do, I do with the greatest good of Palestine in mind. I serve my people, not yours, because my government has stopped doing so.”
“I need your help.”
The colonel popped another section of orange into his mouth and gulped it down. “I suppose that makes us both traitors, Chief Inspector. Ironic, isn’t it? that I have only your people to rely on while you, apparently, have only me.”
“Ben’s in trouble,” Danielle said. “He needs me.”
Al-Asi tensed. “You’re a world away, Chief Inspector.”
“We’ve always been a world away, Colonel. It never stopped us before.”
“I k
now about Pine Valley, Chief Inspector,” al-Asi said softly.
“From Ben?”
“Other sources this time.” The colonel stopped, apparently finished, until suddenly he continued. “In the FBI. They wanted me to keep an eye on you. Apparently, they don’t trust the Israelis very much.”
“They think I killed one of their men.”