by By Jon Land
Until he saw the four men assigned to the last detail sprawled upon the plush carpeting, dead.
Ranieri cowered back against the wall.
The stranger stretched his legs and arms comfortably, revealing a pair of semi-automatic pistols holstered beneath his jacket. He had a face as worn as drum-dyed leather. Stringy dark hair peeked out from beneath a cowboy hat, the brim of which was darkened by sweat.
The hat!
Ranieri had seen it before, just moments ago in the bedroom.
This man was the window washer!
“Got in through the bedroom,” the man explained, as if reading his mind. “Cut through the window glass with a little laser thing and climbed inside. Your baby-sitters never knew what hit them. Shoulda had a man posted in the bedroom, too.” He pulled his legs in and leaned forward in his chair. “You know why I’m here?”
Ranieri remained still.
“People I work for can’t have you go blabbing everything to the folks here in Antwerp. That’d make things uncomfortable for everyone. Now, let’s try again. You know why I’m here?”
Ranieri nodded fearfully.
“That’s better. You got something that don’t belong to you. People I work for want to take delivery.”
“I was in East Jerusalem as planned!” Ranieri ranted. “They never showed up!”
“Yeah, a real cluster fuck’s what I heard. But we can put all that behind us now soon as you turn over the eyeglasses.”
“I—I—”
“You—you what?”
“I don’t have them.”
“Really?”
“An Israeli police detective followed me to East Jerusalem. She approached me at the café.”
“She?”
Ranieri nodded. “A woman.”
“Most ‘shes’ tend to be.”
“She knew about my meeting. She knew everything.”
“Not my problem.”
“I’m not making this up! I couldn’t! She was holding a gun on me. I placed the glasses on the table. Then the gun battle began. The table toppled over. I tried to retrieve the glasses. But I couldn’t find them. If I had stayed any longer, I would have risked being caught.”
“That was just the down payment anyway.”
“Right.”
“People I work for are more interested in where they can find the balance.”
Ranieri swallowed hard. That was information he had intended to save for the officials he was supposed to meet tomorrow, the leverage he needed.
“I’m waiting,” the cowboy said.
Ranieri looked at the widening pools of blood beneath the four men the cowboy had already slain. “Why should I tell you anything? You’re going to kill me anyway.”
The cowboy nodded slightly. “Maybe.”
Then in a blur of motion, from a seated position, he drew his weapon and shot Ranieri in the knee. The courier’s legs collapsed and he crumpled to the floor, staring in shock at the blood spreading down his leg through the hole in his pants.
“Then again,” the cowboy said, “maybe not.”
Ranieri waved his hands frantically before him, unable to take his eyes from the still-smoking gun held casually by the cowboy. “Please! Please! I’ll talk!”
“I figured you would.”
Ranieri gasped in pain, trying to recover the breath the shock had stripped from him. “I followed the usual procedure! Made the drop at a jeweler on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. Katz & Katz this time. The shipment must still be there!”
“That all?”
“It’s the truth!”
“Okay,” the cowboy said, and raised his gun barrel just enough to shoot Ranieri in the forehead.
The courier’s head snapped backward and cracked into the wall before his body slumped, spasmed once, then stiffened.
The cowboy stood up and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. As he dialed a number, he wandered over to the tray holding the assortment of seafood.
“It’s Black,” he said when the line on the other end was answered. “Things are all wrapped up here.”
“Very good, because you’re needed back in Israel.”
“I know. Jewelry store in Tel Aviv’s apparently got the rest of what you’re looking for.”
“There’s something else that requires your attention first.”
Jim Black swept a pair of tiny things that looked like shrimp off the tray and into his mouth. “Fuck!” he gasped, spitting them out.
“What?”
“Nothing. Goddamn fish tastes like shit, that’s all. You can buy me dinner when I get back.”
“Just hurry.”
“No problem. What else you need me for?”
“An Israeli detective. A woman. Is that a problem?”
“Depends how good she is.”
“She’s in jail.”
“Then it’s not a problem,” said Jim Black.
* * * *
* * * *
Chapter 13
M
r. Davies will see you now, sir.”
Ben Kamal rose from the couch in the reception area of the Tel Aviv law firm located in a small renovated building across from the Hilton Hotel. He smiled and followed the receptionist to an office down a long, sweeping hallway. She had already inspected his identification papers and, not surprisingly, didn’t give them so much as a second look. After all, the documents Colonel al-Asi had provided were perfect in every way; more than forgeries or reproductions, they appeared to be authentic.
The receptionist escorted Ben into the office of Shlomo Davies, the lawyer representing Danielle Barnea, and closed the door behind her. Davies did not rise upon seeing Ben enter. He looked harried and worn, an old man long past the age of coping with high stress and sleepless nights. The wisps of hair that clung to the side of his head were poorly combed, his eyes drawn and blotched with red as if he’d been looking at too much he didn’t need to see anymore.
“Thank you for meeting me, Mr. Davies,” Ben greeted.
The old man frowned and didn’t bother offering him a chair. “I got a call today from a high-ranking government official telling me that you were coming and I should see you. Very well. I’ve seen you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Kaplan, I have another matter urgently requiring my attention.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why you‘re here?”
“My name isn’t Kaplan, sir, it’s Kamal. Inspector Bayan Kamal of the Palestinian police.”
Davies started to stand up, then abandoned the effort. “What is the meaning of this? What is this about?”
“Danielle Barnea,”
The old man peered at Ben, narrowing his eyes. “You said your name was Kamal?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I think I understand.”
“I doubt very much that you do, sir.”
“You and Danielle Barnea . . .”
Ben let the comment stand as it was.
“You must have very powerful friends, Inspector Kamal.”
“One, anyway.”
“Often that is all a person needs. But believe me when I tell you there is nothing you can do to help Pakad Barnea.”
“I just want to see her.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“Unless I was an outside counsel, retained by your firm to lend assistance. Check my papers, Mr. Davies. It’s all been provided for,” Ben said, and slid the documents Colonel al-Asi had given him across the table.
The old man flipped through them, suitably impressed. “This powerful friend of yours?”
“One is all it takes, just as you said.”
Davies snickered, raising his lip enough to reveal a missing bridge on the left side of his mouth creating a toothless gap. “I don’t want Pakad Barnea distracted.”
“I want to help.”
“And I already told you there’s nothing you can possibly do.”
Ben held his ground directly in front of Shlomo Davies’s desk
. “Your inquiries have turned up certain rather striking discrepancies in Danielle’s story, haven’t they?”
“How did you—”
“The policeman she rescued died in surgery, didn’t he?”
“His wounds were grave.”
“Or maybe he died because he was the only one who could confirm Danielle’s story about what happened.”
“There were other policemen on the scene I intend to subpoena.”
“You won’t be able to interview them any more than you’ll be able to find any of the Palestinian gunmen who opened fire.”
“Are you saying Danielle was framed?” Davies posed incredulously.
“I’m saying someone is doing their best to cover up the truth. And there’s something else,” Ben continued, repeating what al-Asi had learned the previous night. “There’s no log of Commander Baruch ever entering East Jerusalem.”
The old man’s eyes widened, his expression losing its resolve. “I haven’t had time to check those records.”
“It doesn’t matter. The logs will be altered by now to account for the commander’s presence, I can promise you that.”
“And can you tell me why?”
“Let me speak to Danielle, and maybe I’ll be able to.”
“She’s already told me everything she knows, even about—” Davies’ face paled. “My God . . .”
“What is it?”
“I just remembered something. Pakad Barnea told me to check it out. It just slipped my mind . . .”
“Check what out?”
“The café in East Jerusalem she was sitting at when the shooting started. Pakad Barnea said something about a pair of eyeglasses in a black case, that they were the key.”
“Eyeglasses?”
Davies nodded. “Belonging to this man she’d been meeting. She asked me to go back there, see if anyone had found them.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
* * * *
Chapter 14
l
f have the results of your latest blood test,” the doctor said, as he entered General Latisse Matabu’s office inside the Revolutionary Unified Front’s headquarters in Kono.
The RUF controlled this region of Sierra Leone and made no effort to distance themselves or hide. If anything, under Matabu’s guidance, the RUF had become increasingly open in their dealings, preparing for the political legitimacy that would come with their eventual rise to power. Now that peace talks had broken down, President Kabbah would not be able to stem the tide forever and sooner or later the American-led peacekeeping effort would tire of ineffectuality and senseless loss of life. They would leave and there would be nothing standing in the way of the RUF taking Makeni, Freetown, and the other more populous areas. The power in Sierra Leone would be returned to its rightful heirs.
Matabu rose slowly from behind her desk. “It is not like you to be so abrupt, Doctor Sowahy.”
The doctor, a wizened old man with skin like worn tar and a shock of white hair, handed her a piece of paper. “I want you to read this for yourself.”
Matabu scanned it quickly. “This is supposed to concern me?”
“It should.”
She handed the paper back to him. A broken back suffered many years before had left Sowahy permanently hunched over and made reaching for anything an effort. “I have more important things to worry about now.”
“I want you to start taking the medications.”
“Why?”
“So you can live to rule this country.”
“I already rule this country. I only lack the title.”
Dr. Sowahy’s gaze was as grave as his voice. “You’re dying, General.”
Matabu smiled. “If I could be killed, Doctor, I would have died many times by now.” Her voice faded slightly. “Once in particular, as I’m sure you recall.”
The old doctor scolded her with his eyes. “I treated you afterwards.”
“A shame you couldn’t heal what was truly broken inside me.”
“You continue to punish yourself for something you had no control over, that wasn’t your fault.” The doctor grabbed the edge of Matabu’s rattan desk to support himself. “Well, I am as stubborn as you are, and I am also older and more patient. I brought the medications with me.”
“And you can take them with you when you leave.”
Sowahy tightened his gaze. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red lines. He blinked rapidly. “You see that man, that animal, in everyone you kill, General. But you can only kill him once.”
“It didn’t last long enough the first time, Doctor.”
A loud knock sounded on the door before Sowahy could respond.
“Enter!” Latisse Matabu ordered, holding her gaze on the old doctor who still saw her the same way he did the day she’d been carried into his office and laid on his examination table a decade before.
“General,” an RUF sergeant said, barging in, “we have just heard from our contacts in Israel. There was a problem with the exchange in East Jerusalem two days ago. A very serious problem. . . .”
* * * *
Chapter 15
I
f you don’t mind, Inspector,” Shlomo Davies said on the West Jerusalem side of Damascus Gate, “I’ll wait for you here.”
“I don’t blame you,” Ben Kamal said, as the old lawyer took a seat on a stone bench.
The violence of two days ago had led to a substantially stepped-up presence of Israeli soldiers in that section of the ancient city. The result, effectively, was to close the last bastion of tourism still available for Palestinians. Even though East Jerusalem was not technically under their sphere of control, it was Palestinian shopkeepers and store owners who would pay the price for fear, intimidation, and warnings from Israeli authorities for shoppers and tourists to stay away.
Ben passed through Damascus Gate into the mainsouq, typically lined with food and trinket vendors. The potent smells of spices and ripe fruit, pungent and sharp, were usually enough to advertise their presence. But the streets of East Jerusalem were virtually barren, the operators of kiosks, storefronts, and the produce market prohibited from entering the city for the second day in a row.
On an adjoining street, Café Europe, where Danielle had met with the man she had refused to identify for Davies, was empty, too. Its wooden outdoor tables, covered in colorful cloth, were all unoccupied, not a single waiter in sight to serve them.
Ben took a seat at one of the tables, imagining Danielle sitting here just before the gun battle. He tried to picture the case containing the eyeglasses that were so important to her spilling off the toppled table. He looked beneath his table just to make sure the glasses weren’t there, bemused by the act’s futility as he tried to wait patiently for a server to approach him. So far there was only a young boy wearing a man-sized apron sweeping up areas that clearly did not beg to be swept. The boy smiled and Ben flipped him a hefty coin.
“Ahlan,” a smiling waiter greeted Ben in Arabic, looking surprised to have a customer.
“Blackran” Ben replied, returning his welcome.
The man beamed at being addressed in Arabic and readied his pad. “What can I get for you?”
“A cup of Turkish coffee and a portion ofkunafeh,” Ben ordered, referring to a pastry of cheese topped with wheat flakes and soaked in honey.
“Right away, sidi.”
“A question as well. I left my glasses here a few days ago. I was hoping you could check to see if they’d been found,” Ben said, and slid a healthy tip across the table.
The waiter took it gratefully. “I will check for you,sidi.”
“They were in a hard case.”
“I’ll look as soon as I place your order,” the waiter promised and hurried back inside, leaving Ben alone with the boy who continued sweeping.
Ben’s cell phone rang and he quickly snatched it to his ear.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” greeted Colonel Nabril al-Asi in his typically jovial tone. Background no
ise blurred his voice to the point of being virtually unintelligible.