Covenant

by Dean Crawford

  “You’re kidding?” Lopez snapped. “There’s no way.”

  Claretta came to a stop in front of Tyrell, looking up at him. No psychologist was needed to see that the events of the day had entirely sapped her of her will.

  “You know what happened here?” he asked her simply.

  Claretta shook her head once.

  “I told ’em everythin’.” Glistening pools appeared beneath her eyelids. “I don’t know why he’d have done somethin’ like this. I din’ give him no pills.”

  Tyrell looked into the empty room where Daniel Neville’s short life had come to an end, and then looked at the nurse and Officer Gomez.

  “Daniel Neville was suicidal with pain,” he said softly before looking at Officer Gomez. “A locked room, no way of getting contraband in or out, cameras on the corridor. You’re absolutely sure all of those criteria were met by the hospital staff?”

  Both Gomez and the nurse nodded without hesitation.

  “Couldn’t have got in any other way,” Gomez said sadly.

  Tyrell nodded, and turned to Daniel’s mother. “Claretta Neville, I’m arresting you on suspicion of first-degree murder. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney …”

  From the corner of his eye he saw Lopez’s jaw drop. Claretta Neville stared at him with drops of liquid quivering in her eyes as he read her her rights, the two officers flanking her remaining stonily silent.

  Claretta held his gaze for a few seconds.

  “This one’s for real,” she hissed at him.

  One powerful arm snapped free and whipped across Tyrell’s face with a sharp crack.

  Bright pain stung his face but he did not respond, watching silently as Claretta was brusquely handcuffed by the officers and led away down the corridor.

  “Go with them,” Tyrell said to Gomez, gesturing after the other officers. “Keep an eye on Claretta for me back at the station.”

  As Gomez moved off with Casey and the nurse, Lopez moved to stand in front of Tyrell. “The hell d’you think you’re doing?” she whispered.

  “Buying us some time,” he said quietly.

  Lopez pointed abruptly down the hall. “You just booked her, for Christ’s sake! This isn’t a mercy killing, she wanted us on Daniel’s case!”

  “I know,” he replied. “Daniel might have overdosed but he still had to get hold of the pills somehow.”

  Lopez eyed Tyrell testily, but he saw her forcing herself to consider the possibilities.

  “They said the cameras saw nobody enter or exit the room,” she said, “so he was definitely alone. The security door at the end of the hall was locked, Officer Gomez was beside it and Daniel couldn’t even feed himself let alone overdose. So if Claretta didn’t provide him with the pills, who could have?”

  “Call the morgue,” Tyrell said quietly. “I want Daniel Neville’s body tested for foreign DNA samples: hair, skin, blood, anything. There was one thing we never learned about Daniel: why he alone survived these experiments.”

  “Even if forensics found DNA samples, there’s no guarantee that they belong to a murderer, and how could the perp have gotten into the room without being seen on camera? Even if we could find a way, it doesn’t mean that they were in the room at the time of death.”

  Tyrell nodded.

  “I know, but we need everything we can get.” He hesitated, looking thoughtfully back down the corridor. “Find everything you can on Casey Jeffs, Michael Shaw, and Claretta Neville just in case.”

  “What for?” Lopez asked.

  “Just do it,” Tyrell said as they started walking. “Anyone who’s a witness is a suspect right now. Then I think that we need to pay a visit to the great pastor himself.”

  “If he’s involved in this, he’s not going to just open up,” Lopez pointed out as they walked down the corridor. “And Claretta’s arrest might not be enough to let them drop their guard, whoever they are.”

  “We’ll play it as though it’s just a routine questioning,” Tyrell said. “He’s bound to be expecting something along those lines after what’s happened here.”

  “If Powell finds out about this, he’ll hit the goddamn roof.”

  “Sure he will,” Tyrell agreed. “But if we find the link we need, he’ll be forced to keep the case open. What was the name of that surgeon again?”

  JERUSALEM

  Byron Stone watched as Malik strode with a casual gait to the glossy black SUV parked by the roadside, opening the rear passenger door and climbing in beside him. The tinted windows gave the world outside a peculiar polarized light. From his vantage point, Stone could see the blocky walls of the Israeli Parliament’s Knesset building glowing in the sunlight.

  “Well?” Stone drawled, closing the partition between him and the two MACE operatives, Cooper and Flint, in the front seat.

  “The building in which Warner and the woman were hiding was completely destroyed. There are Palestinians on the scene clearing rubble, but we can rest assured that the tunnels beneath have collapsed.”

  “What of Rafael?” Stone asked.

  “The Palestinians have found one dead Arab in the rubble,” Malik murmured with an unconvincing tone of regret. “Rafael must have been killed in the blast.”

  Stone looked out of the windows toward the Knesset.

  “One of our two Valkyrie prototypes was shot down,” he hissed furiously. “Warner and the woman must have convinced Israel to help them out of Gaza.”

  “The evidence is long gone,” Malik repeated, “buried under tons of rubble, and we have another Valkyrie standing by.”

  Stone turned back to face Malik.

  “Perhaps the two million dollars it took to build that prototype should come out of your salary then, if it is of such little consequence?”

  “The drone proved its capability,” Malik said defensively. “It hit a target in a hostile and densely populated environment with no collateral damage. What do you want me to do about Warner?”

  Stone jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the Knesset building outside.

  “We’ll go in there and clear up this mess once and for all.”

  Rafael sat in cross-legged silence at the corner of a street that looked out across the Knesset, peering through the folds of traditional Bedouin attire that shielded his features from view.

  Byron Stone and Spencer Malik strode arrogantly toward the Knesset with their two MACE escorts, showing their papers to the gate guards before being admitted inside. Rafael watched them as contempt seethed like acid through his veins. He looked down into his lap, where a digital camera that had once belonged to the American journalist lay. Rafael watched again the images of the Bedouin man being beaten, looked once more at the images of the strange bones and of the explosive devices in the MACE encampment.

  Stone had betrayed him—that much was obvious. The wounds on his body caused by the Valkyrie drone’s blasts served as a constant reminder of it. But what fired Rafael’s rage was that MACE was supplying arms to terrorists in Palestine. The exotic nature of the devices in Ethan Warner’s rucksack left Rafael in no doubt that whatever MACE was up to, it was designed to continue the conflict in Palestine. Profits over peace. Yet that alone was not sufficient reason for their destruction of Ethan Warner’s belongings: the images on the camera, however, might just have been. Rafael was no scientist, but he guessed that whatever the skeleton in the crate was, it was valuable. His mind turned to Bill Griffiths, the fossil hunter hired by Stone a few days before, and the woman with Warner whom he had overheard in the tunnels, speaking of her search for her daughter who had vanished after discovering something in the desert. Griffiths was the man who connected everything, and Rafael knew exactly where to find him.

  Rafael turned to the rucksack beside him and opened it, lifting out one of the explosive devices and looking again at Byron Stone’s car as a dark plan began to blossom in his mind. Then he got up and hurried toward the SUV.

  THE KNESSET

  JERUSALEM />
  The sky was bright and hot as the Humvee pulled into the heavily cordoned security of the Knesset building, the fortified home of the Israeli Parliament. Ethan peered through aching eyes out of the window at razor wire, metal fences, and hefty concrete blocks arranged to obstruct suicide bombers from hurtling vehicles into the building. The defenses contrasted sharply with the elegantly formed Shrine of the Book that dominated the entrance to the Israel Museum nearby.

  Armed guards checked the vehicles through and then they drove up to the Knesset building itself, a large and heavily glazed box-shaped structure. It looked to Ethan like a cross between a castle and a giant greenhouse. As the vehicle came to a stop a trooper promptly opened Ethan’s door for him and almost caused him to fall out after his cuffed hand. Ethan dragged his aching legs out of the vehicle and stood in the fresh morning air, dizzy with exhaustion as his cuffs were unlocked from the door and refastened around his wrists.

  “Ms. Morgan?”

  An officer approached them.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you come with us, please?”

  Ethan turned to follow the officer, but a soldier blocked his path. “Only Ms. Morgan may proceed, sir,” the soldier intoned robotically. “You’re to be taken for questioning.”

  “He’s with me,” Rachel cut across him in a tone that brooked no argument. “He’s innocent of any crime and I can prove it.”

  Ethan watched as the soldier took in Ethan’s battered appearance and decided that he represented a threat only to himself.

  The officer led them through the Knesset to a series of conference rooms, opening the door to one and gesturing for Rachel and Ethan to enter. Ethan’s tired eyes took in the circular table in the center of the room, the wood-paneled walls decorated with a large image of the Negev Desert and the broad windows aglow with the golden light of the rising desert sun. As Ethan followed Rachel through the door he saw the Foreign Ministry’s Shiloh Rok sitting at the large table.

  “Ms. Morgan, are you all right?” Shiloh asked in concern.

  Rachel nodded. “We’re okay, just tired.”

  “I can imagine,” Shiloh said, turning a suspicious eye on Ethan, “after what you’ve been dragged through during the past few hours.”

  Ethan felt a bolt of anger twist his innards as a pair of Knesset Guards flanked him.

  “Which wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d helped us.”

  Ethan was taking his seat when a familiar voice spoke from behind them.

  “Had you not broken the law, nothing would have happened to you.”

  Ethan whirled around to see Spencer Malik enter the room. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  Malik raised his hands defensively, but it was Shiloh who spoke.

  “He is here to help, Mr. Warner.”

  “We’ve already seen what that help has done for us.”

  Shiloh raised a placating hand. “Please, let us be seated and discuss this.”

  “Where is Ambassador Cutler?” Ethan demanded.

  “He is unavailable at this time,” Shiloh said. “I can speak for him.”

  Ethan was about to protest, but he caught a glance from Rachel and managed to swallow his anger as he took a seat alongside her. Shiloh retook his seat and looked at Rachel.

  “What on earth happened?”

  “MACE pursued us in the Negev and into Gaza,” she said.

  “There was a pursuit of a group of insurgents who infiltrated one of our perimeter camps in the Negev,” Malik interrupted. “We didn’t know who they were.”

  “We were shot at by your personnel,” Ethan snapped.

  “Please, gentlemen,” Shiloh said, and looked at Rachel. “Tell us, Ms. Morgan, what happened.”

  Rachel spoke quietly.

  “We went out to try and find out what happened to Lucy at her dig site. We were taken to an airfield near Masada, where a tracker led us out into the desert.”

  “Whose idea was this?” Shiloh asked.

  “It was Ethan—Mr. Warner’s,” Rachel admitted.

  “To take you into what you already knew was a restricted area,” Malik muttered. “After Warner assaulted the escort we assigned to protect you.”

  “Mr. Malik,” Shiloh cautioned, shooting him a severe look before motioning for Rachel to continue.

  Rachel outlined the altercation between Ayeem and the MACE soldiers, and their subsequent flight across the deserts.

  Shiloh leaned forward on his elbows as he spoke. “This Ayeem, your guide, where is he?”

  “He escaped,” Malik replied from across the table, “after killing one of my men.”

  “Probably in retaliation for the murder of Ahmed Khan,” Ethan said.

  Shiloh shook his head in confusion.

  “You must slow down; these accusations are getting us nowhere fast. What does this Ahmed have to do with anything?”

  “Ayeem told us that his son Ahmed disappeared in the Negev after being asked to search for my daughter,” Rachel explained.

  “As a matter of fact,” Malik said, “if I remember correctly, the body of a young Bedouin man named Ahmed Khan was autopsied recently in Jerusalem after being found in the desert by the IDF.”

  Ethan and Rachel exchanged a glance.

  “I was not aware of this,” Shiloh said.

  “The Bedouin are a complicated people,” Malik said conversationally. “Their traditional ways have given over to a more modern lifestyle as a result of their inability to provide for themselves in the desert, and that’s exposed them to alcohol, drugs, and crime. It’s not that uncommon for us to find Bedouin corpses in the desert.”

  “What was the cause of death?” Shiloh asked.

  “I don’t know,” Malik admitted, “but there was evidence of drug abuse, needles and suchlike. It’s possible that he was a wounded insurgent and had received some kind of rudimentary medical attention.”

  “I want a copy of that autopsy report,” Ethan insisted.

  Spencer Malik ignored Ethan, looking at Rachel.

  “Why did you jump out of the aircraft over Gaza?”

  “To protect the footage of the incident that Mr. Warner had filmed. If we had landed at Herzliya, we feared that the footage would be confiscated by MACE. We were hoping to find Lucy while in Gaza, as Mr. Warner has contacts there.”

  “And did you find them?”

  “No,” Rachel said sadly.

  Shiloh looked at Ethan curiously. “Why did you not contact us directly?”

  “We couldn’t make contact with anyone from Gaza,” Ethan explained. “The best I could do was contact an associate at the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was he who contacted Israel. Without Israel’s protection I feared that MACE would get hold of the footage, which unfortunately is exactly what happened.”

  Shiloh sat back in his chair. “What was this footage of?”

  “MACE soldiers beating Ayeem,” Ethan said, “and of cached improvised explosive devices used by terrorist groups. I also shot footage of the remains that Lucy Morgan was excavating before she disappeared. They were being prepared for shipment under the protection of MACE.”

  Malik clenched his fists on the table.

  “That’s ridiculous, a complete fantasy of the type I told you to be aware of from this man. Warner will concoct anything he can to make a story.”

  Ethan fumed silently in his seat but managed to remain silent.

  “What happened to this footage?” Shiloh asked Rachel.

  “We were attacked by a MACE drone,” Ethan replied for her. “During the attack the footage was stolen, along with the explosive devices I found in the MACE encampment.”

  Malik blurted out a laugh. “How convenient, and the meddling of your friend in America cost MACE a two-million-dollar drone, one of only two in existence.”

  Shiloh remained silent for a moment before turning to the soldier.

  “How do you explain your attack?”

  Malik spread his palms upward.

  “It was
an unfortunate misunderstanding. Our encampment was infiltrated by Mr. Warner, who seems hell-bent on exposing something that just isn’t there. My men tell me that they found the Bedouin sneaking around the camp and arrested him; that much is true. But there was no beating and certainly no shooting.”

  Ethan slammed his fist on the table.

  “That’s a lie. It was all on film.”

  “Then where is it?” Malik inquired calmly. “My men thought that they were under attack and that equipment from the camp was being stolen by insurgents. They pursued, and you fled. They understandably believed that you needed to be stopped. Everything that has happened is a product of the moment that you ignored our advice to stay out of the Negev.”

  “You used an air strike against civilians in Gaza,” Ethan stammered.

  Shiloh looked at Malik severely but the soldier appeared unfazed.

  “We tracked Mr. Warner’s movements via our aerial drone after he escaped into Gaza. Of course we didn’t know who it was, only that we were tracking someone we thought was a terrorist. In the early hours of this morning the image of an individual matching the features of the man at the camp site was spotted, and the air strike was requested on those coordinates.”

  Ethan leaned forward on the table.

  “And what was MACE doing with improvised explosive devices in the first place?”

  Malik stared blankly at him, and Ethan sensed in his dazed expression the realization that he had been cornered.

  The explosives are irrelevant,” Malik muttered dismissively. “This is about your intrusion into a restricted area.”

  Shiloh was watching Malik suspiciously. “I think that the presence of such weapons is anything but irrelevant.”

  Ethan nodded in agreement. “I recommend that you investigate the MACE encampment immediately. Whatever the hell they’re up to, it’s got nothing to do with protecting Israel.”

  Shiloh was about to speak, but the voice that replied came not from him but from behind them all in a broad Texan accent.