Blood Diamonds - [Kamal and Barnea 05]

by By Jon Land

  That Jim Black was working for Borodin came as no real surprise. It figured the Russian mafia had the most to lose from the investigation she had been conducting—not only illegally trafficking in arms, but doing so under the protective watch of Israeli officials who had been paid off. What did they care about Africa anyway? It was easy to turn a blind eye to a place you couldn’t see and had no desire to.

  For Moshe Baruch, the price had probably been different. His tenure asRav nitzav,commissioner of the National Police, had been marked by a series of high-profile arrests that included prostitution and drugs, solidifying his hold on power while Danielle steamed and suffered. She wondered if his relationship with the Russians had been long in the making, whether Baruch’s indisputable success came as a direct result of their involvement.

  Sasha Borodin, Jim Black told Danielle, made his home in the Israeli beach resort of Netanyah, commonly known as Miami On the Med. Once a center for citrus crops, it had grown into a prime resort area that was home to a large number of both American and Israeli retirees, along with some of Israel’s wealthiest citizens of any age. A peaceful community until a recent spell of terrorist bombings left the scents of cordite and sulfur to mix with the lush smell of orange trees.

  “If I was a Jew, an Israeli, I mean,” Black said suddenly from behind the wheel, “I woulda done what you did. Joined up with the Sayaret and all. What was the training like?”

  “Tough.”

  “No different at Fort Bragg back in the States, I’ll tell you that much.

  “Working for a man or a country. What’s the difference?”

  “The man pays a hell of a lot better, Danny girl. I’m just saying you should give it some thought, leave your options open. In case it didn’t occur to you yet, you ain’t got much of a future here. And that’s if you get out of this alive.” He worked a piece of gum into his mouth and then looked over at her. “I could set you up with some people I know. Get things going.”

  “I’ve got other plans.”

  “With the Arab who sprung you from jail?”

  “He’s Palestinian.”

  “Tough as you?”

  “Close enough, yes. In some ways, tougher than both of us.”

  Jim Black snickered. “You should really think about my offer. Mine might be the best one you get for a while, Danny girl. I’d be truly sorry if I have to kill you.”

  Danielle thought of Dov Levy’s body found covered in ice in Gaza. “I can’t say the same.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 55

  B

  en and the Russian family clung to the cover of the trees while a pair of soldiers struggled down the steep rise into the gully. Ben watched them check his smashed-up car and then search the area cursorily through the mist. A third soldier tried a slow descent of the hill, holding a handheld spotlight, and ended up flat on his back riding the last stretch down on his butt.

  The other soldiers laughed as the man staggered to his feet and brushed himself off before shining the powerful light around in all directions. The beam came close to Ben and the Russian family several times. Movement, above all else, would have given them away. But the parents held fast to their two children, and Ben resisted the temptation to peer out from behind the tree.

  After a few more minutes, the Russian soldiers tired of the task and retraced their difficult steps up the hill. Neither the family nor Ben said a word until the truck’s headlights flashed back on and its engine groaned to life. Seconds later it was gone.

  “We’re lucky,” the younger son said.

  “Lucky?” snapped the older one. “We wouldn’t even be anywhere near here if it wasn’t for him. We’d be away from here already!”

  “They’ll be back,” the father said, standing over them protectively. “We’ve got to get on the move.” He looked toward Ben. “We’ll take you with us.”

  “What’s your name?” Ben asked them.

  “Stepanski,” the father responded. “We are the Stepanskis. I am Victor. My wife’s name is Shavel. Our sons Misha and Alexander.”

  “Can you tell me what happened in Dubna?” Ben asked, using a tree to help pull himself to his feet. He still felt shaken by the shock of the car crash.

  “A problem at one of the old storage facilities,” Victor said. “We never found out what.”

  “But a few days later,” his wife Shavel picked up, “the spraying started.”

  “Spraying from the air, over the city?”

  “No. Just in places like this, the countryside. The wind blew it over the city.”

  “Then came the quarantine,” Ben concluded.

  “Because people began to get sick. Everywhere people were getting sick and dying. The spray smelled like household cleaner. What you call it, ammonia? Hospitals full. People driving out of the city drive straight into roadblocks.”

  “This is the only way out,” Victor added. “Through the woods.”

  “But you have to do it at night,” Shavel pointed out. “After the curfew when they’re not watching as close.”

  “Go back to what started this.”

  Victor looked around impatiently. “We’ve got to get going.”

  “The storage facility. What happened there?”

  “I told you. Nobody knows. Could have been anything, with no money left for security or upkeep. The spraying starts and the city is closed, which is not too hard to do. Dubna was built that way. Only one road in and out for security reasons to protect the scientists and their labs.”

  “What about the road up there?” Ben asked him, pointing.

  “Ends in a few more miles, easily ten from the city.”

  “How long ago did all this begin?”

  “Five days,” said Shavel. “Maybe six.”

  Ben did some quick figuring in his head, tried to calculate when Anatolyevich’s shipment had actually set out for the Mediterranean coast. Between a week and ten days ago seemed like a reasonable estimate. Could there be a connection to what had happened in Dubna in the aftermath?

  Suddenly they heard branches snap in the distance, accompanied by the rustling sound of men moving through brush.

  “More soldiers,” the Stepanskis’ oldest son whispered.

  “Routine patrol,” said his father. “Probably alerted to watch out for someone roaming the woods. We should go now, head back toward the city, before it’s too late.”

  “But—”

  Victor slapped a hand across Misha’s mouth. “We will try again another night. When things are quieter.”

  Ben drew up close to Stepanski and spoke in a hushed, but authoritative tone. “I need to see that storage facility. I need to find out what started all this.”

  Stepanski looked as though he was going to argue or object, then simply nodded his head. “Tomorrow, American. I will take you there tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 56

  Y

  ou know why you’re not dead, don’t you, Pakad?” Sasha Borodin asked Danielle, after they had both taken chairs by the pool outside his beachfront property in Netanyah. Sodium vapor lights rimmed the pressed flagstone, drawing flocks of mosquitoes and moths in the night.

  “The same reason you’re not; we both have something the other wants.”

  Borodin smiled, clearly impressed but not rattled. “Mr. Black has a gun trained on you right now.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life he’s faster than I am?”

  Borodin laughed and shook his finger at her. “You’re even better than I was led to expect. Now, let us discuss the rough diamonds you took from the jeweler in Tel Aviv.”

  “You can have them . . . for a price.”

  Borodin was tall and thin, much different from what she was expecting. Danielle had pictured him as a big and burly man with a size that corresponded to the vast power he wielded. Danielle recalled the time over a year before when a pair of car bombs exploded in Netanyah. It was Borodin who had learned the identities of the Palestinian bombers and had
them executed by the Russian mercenary force which did his bidding. But Borodin had tossed money around first, not bullets. In both cases the perpetrators were given up by those close to them who were now much richer for the betrayal.

  Borodin wore a bathrobe over his bathing suit. His hair looked wet. His skin had a watery sheen to it, leading Danielle to believe he had just finished a swim when Black escorted her onto the property.

  Borodin folded his arms, a bit chilled in the cooling spring nighttime temperatures. He looked surprised. “Money? Is that all you want?”

  “No. I want the cargo from that freighter.”

  “I understand it was stolen.”

  “And you have no idea what the cargo consisted of.”

  “Of course not. I’ve learned over the years the wisest thing is to keep my distance from such matters.”

  “Then the shipment of blood diamonds will remain just as distant. Unless you help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  “Find out what happened to the missing cargo.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 57

  I

  thank you for your promptness,” Latisse Matabu said, after the leaders of the Revolutionary United Front were seated. “You all know why you are here, so I will not waste any more time.”

  They gathered not at RUF headquarters in the Kono region where such a presence could be noted by spies. Instead Latisse Matabu summoned her commanders to a centrally located town controlled by General Yancy Lananga, the one member of her cadre with actual military experience, under cover of darkness when ambushes became a logistical impossibility.

  Sierra Leone grew so still and quiet at night that even a moderate force could not expect to disguise their approach. Sound would give them away in plenty of time to make an escape, if not over land, then through the tunnels dug beneath all headquarters on orders from Matabu’s commanders. Of the twelve who formed the ruling council of the Revolutionary United Front, the only one missing was General Sheku Karim, the one she trusted least and had clashed with most often.

  “The time has come to seize the government,” she continued, meeting the stares of all the participants in the spill of the lantern light. Any stronger lighting made too inviting a target from the air, and rumors that the Americans would soon be supplying helicopter gunships had not fallen on deaf ears. “Since failing to take Freetown three years ago, we have employed a hit-and-run strategy that has forced the government troops onto the defensive. Their patrols are pointless, their U.N. peacekeepers impotent children when confronted with our might. They distract us with fake peace initiatives and promised consolations. And we submit because it serves our needs while buying us time.Fobs ful nohto ful, boht sekobnjul, na-in netful. If you’re fooled once, you’re not a fool, but if it happens twice, then you’re a fool.”

  Matabu knew she had the full attention of her commanders now, an opportunity not to be squandered. This was a fractious bunch, easily given to petty jealousies and animosities.

  Indeed, the RUF for all its dramatic successes was little more than a loose amalgamation of tribes and cliques who could just as easily be at war with each other as the Kabbah government’s troops. Matabu’s most difficult job was to keep them focused on the common goal of seizing a power they all felt was rightfully theirs. The key to such an alliance, she knew from her studies in the United States, was to remain vague about what the specifics of such power would bring. Keep the goal simple and focused. It was pointless to let the spoils of victory be divisive until that victory was achieved. Most of her commanders’ concerns were local, or monetary, in nature and they were easily mollified with promises that could be kept or voided later.

  The Dragon’s long-term plan was to divide Sierra Leone into districts controlled by men like these but answerable to a provisional government with herself as the head. Given her condition, that plan, of course, would have to change, something her commanders had no need to hear tonight.

  She worried about reprisals, about turning these men loose on their enemies and the villages that had supported the government. How to control the fury and hate, how to harness them into a positive thing instead of letting them become the precursors to anarchy. They had to win the hearts and minds of their vanquished while leaving them their limbs.

  “So as we continue our apparent dedicated efforts toward the peace process, our opposition grows complacent,” Matabu resumed. “They believe they have beaten us down, believe their American weapons and troops are enough to make us cower and run. They no longer believe us capable of mounting, or desiring, the kind of attack that can destroy them.”

  The Dragon stopped to let her point sink in.

  “They have fallen victim to the illusion we have perpetuated and will not be ready when our attack commences forty-eight hours from this very moment.”

  A few of the RUF generals exchanged worried stares. “At night?”

  “A night of no moon, by design. The blackest of nights.”

  “An all-out offensive launched in the dark,” noted Lananga, suitably impressed.

  Latisse Matabu didn’t bother to nod. “Our troops will move as close to the capital as possible during the day, using the woods and hills as cover. As soon as night falls, they will be directed to predetermined areas that will effectively surround and cut off the city. At midnight we will attack in a stunning, coordinated effort from all directions at once. Once the government’s resistance is crushed, and President Kabbah and his cabinet officers are taken hostage, we will have won.”

  “We will execute them, of course,” another of the Revolutionary United Front generals presumed.

  “In public!” chimed in the crazed leader of the Ganta tribe whose men collected the scalps and ears of their victims.

  “Do that, either of those things,” Matabu retorted, “and we prove to the world that we really are the barbarians the Kabbah government would have the world believe. No, once the government is in custody, we will engage in peace and conciliation talks. The transfer of power will be restrained and orderly. We fight for the past as we prepare for the future.”

  “What about the Americans?” Lananga asked. “What do you expect them to do?”

  “Once we take Freetown, nothing.”

  “And before?”

  Latisse Matabu clasped her hands behind her back. “This is not their fight. The United States knows if they save the Kabbah government, they will be here forever.”

  “So you believe they’ll lie down like the dogs that they are!” the leader of the Ganta tribe said, speaking with his usual passion and vigor.

  “And we will step over them, instead of atop them, if they do. This is not their fight, unless we make it their fight.”

  “We should attack their quarters at the strike’s outset,” another of the generals proposed, looking about the room in the hope of gathering support. “Not give them the opportunity to choose whether to fight or not.

  “Same thing with the U.N. peacekeepers.”

  “I volunteer my men!” the leader of the Ganta tribe offered eagerly.

  Matabu maintained her air of calmness and authority. “Follow that strategy and our triumph will last a day instead of a lifetime. Provocation is what the Americans and the United Nations want. It gives them the excuse they need to repeat their intervention in Bosnia. The Americans, I tell you, are easy to predict.”

  “This is not Bosnia, General,” Lananga reminded.

  “No, General, it’s West Africa where American influence and presence is much, much stronger. We must not give them a rationale to intervene, must strike so suddenly and resolvedly that they will have no choice but to recognize the government we establish.”

  “What about the heavier weapons our diamonds purchased?”

  “Each of you will be given an allotment in proportion to the size of your commands. Do your best to make sure those who are provided a weapon are familiar with its use. And check your radios. Be sure you have backup units and batteries. Communicatio
n will be vital in the coming hours.”

  “Someday we will have cell phones,” one of the generals mused.

  “So the Americans can listen in on our discussions,” chided Lananga contentiously.

  “By that time,” said Matabu, “the Americans will be gone.”

  The door to the shack’s inner room burst open and General Sheku Karim strutted through, a sack suspended from his shoulder, a pair of his lieutenants at his sides. “And if they’re not,” he boasted, “I will do to them what I have done to the Kabbah government’s soldiers.”