Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  He had returned to Poland personally to supervise the initial process himself. Trucks had ferried the vast amount of disassembled materials, all carefully labeled and photographed, to chartered cargo planes. Hessler had ordered the four remaining towers, though, to be removed intact, using state of the art laser equipment to shear them from their bases. Cranes then lowered the towers into huge flatbed trucks for the trip to the airport.

  Once in New Jersey, Hessler paid to build a complex of roads wide and sturdy enough to allow the towers and the rest of the pieces to be carried by cargo trucks to the construction site in Palisades State Park. And even then those roads had proven barely wide enough to accommodate the heavy-duty cranes required to safely raise the towers back into place upon the cliffs.

  Paul Hessler hadn’t seen the castle in over a month, since he had left for Israel to oversee deployment of the Arrow antimissile system. He knew the final stages of the massive effort were nearing an end, including the renovations and reconstruction aimed at creating a fully functional replica. To accomplish that, he had hired a dozen artists to re-create the fresco paintings of various landscapes that highlighted areas the castle’s original owner had visited, and stonemasons to repair the walls and rebuild the cracked and broken stone benches that rimmed many of them.

  In the soon-to-be-re-created gardens, Paul would have begun to tell his son what had really transpired within those walls over a half century before. The secret he had shared with no man. The secret that held the real reason why he had rebuilt this piece of his past so close to his New York City home.

  “Sir?”

  Paul turned to see an attractive woman standing at his side, cup of coffee extended toward him. In the camp prisoners had been allotted two cups of coffee per day, though it was never hot. That, just over two hundred grams of bread, and two servings of barely a liter of soup had constituted his entire daily ration.

  “Thank you,” Paul said, accepting the cup from the woman in a hand he willed not to tremble. He was certain he knew her, but couldn’t place her exactly. “Thank you, er...”

  “I’m Tess Sanderson, Mr. Hessler. I work for you or, more accurately, I worked for Ari.”

  “Have we met before?”

  “Not officially, no. I just wanted to say how sorry I am.”

  Paul shrugged, waiting for the woman to drift away as all the others did.

  “There’s something I need to speak to you about, sir,” she said instead, lowering her voice. “Concerning Ari.”

  “Of course. As soon as I get back to the office.”

  “Mr. Hessler, I think you need to hear this as soon as possible. That’s what Ari would have wanted. I know he planned on telling you himself, as soon as the two of you got back to New York. He wanted to surprise you.”

  “Surprise me?” A memory fluttered through Paul Hessler’s mind, of words that had been among his son’s last— something he promised to tell his father when they returned to the city. And there was that phone call Paul had received in Tel Aviv from an associate telling him about a celebration that Ari had arranged. “Does this have something to do with a party he was planning?”

  Tess Sanderson cleared her throat. “It has to do with Lot four-sixty-one.”

  “The project I terminated.”

  “Ari ordered testing restarted.”

  “Without my approval?” Paul asked, mystified and almost angered by his son’s actions.

  “He believed in the project, sir. He believed as I did that we were close. He allowed us to move forward in preliminary trials.”

  Paul Hessler smiled, wondering how he would have reprimanded Ari if he were alive. “Go on.”

  “It works, sir.”

  Paul blinked his eyes rapidly. “Did you say ...”

  “That’s right, sir,” Tess Sanderson acknowledged. “Lot four-sixty-one works.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 34

  A

  shawi,” the Aida refugee camp administrator repeated, flipping through a box of file cards. “Ashawi...” Ben noticed an old IBM computer on his desk that wasn’t even plugged in. “Just give me a moment, please.”

  In the complex dichotomy that Palestine had become, Ben found Bethlehem to be the most complex of all. Where Christian pilgrims used to gather in view of Manger Square, the finishing touches were being put on a controversial Israeli housing project. Not far away, a former Palestinian girls’ school that had once been a sultan’s palace built in the first millennium was now the Inter-Continental Bethlehem, a luxury hotel crammed with suites, gourmet restaurants, bars, and a fitness club. It was almost directly across the road from the refugee camp where Ben’s investigation had led him today. Construction of the hotel had been slowed repeatedly by frequent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths, which often resulted in tear gas wafting across the property. It was the only project of note, Ben thought, where the workmen wore gas masks clipped to their belts.

  Just beyond the hotel’s lavish swimming pool, a high concrete wall was all that stood between the Inter-Continental’s grounds and the Aida refugee camp where the relatives of the missing Ashawi family lived. Depending on the wind, Ben wondered if the pleasant scents of the hotel’s abundant flowers and smells of gourmet food being cooked might drift into the camp. And, also depending on the wind, whether the stench of spoiled mud and overflowing sewage might disturb the hotel’s wealthy guests.

  Ben had parked his car outside a slipshod building that housed the Aida refugee camp’s headquarters. The Palestinian Authority symbol had been painted near the door, battling that of the United Nations and the International Red Cross for supremacy. There were other smaller symbols that Ben didn’t even recognize, as if the logos of international relief and support organizations had become like those of consumer products in sports arenas back in America. The West Bank was nothing if not ironic.

  “Yes, of course,” the camp administrator said, his hand finally emerging from the file box with a card. “I directed the other two officers to their home just a few minutes ago.”

  Ben felt a thud in the pit of his stomach. “Other officers?”

  “What have the Ashawis done? Administration should be informed, you know,” the man called after him, as Ben hurried through the door. “We are the ones in authority here!”

  * * * *

  D

  anielle arrangedto meetCaptain Asher Bain at the Holyland Hotel southwest of the city—outside the hotel, actually, near the miniature re-creation of the ancient city that adorned its grounds. Intricately reconstructed of marble, stone, wood, copper, and iron—the materials of the time—the model was an exact replica of biblical Jerusalem. Danielle was walking along the shrunken version of the great wall that had once protected the old city when a man approached her from the opposite direction.

  “Pakad Barnea, I’m Captain Asher Bain.”

  He offered a hand and Danielle took it, feeling a powerful, callused grip. Asher Bain was only slightly taller than her own five-and-a-half feet. He was dressed in comfortably fitting clothes that could not disguise the vast bulk of his upper body and ramrod stance. He had almost no neck and a face so furrowed and angular that it seemed an artist might have taken a chisel to it one night as he slept. His slightly receding hair was cut military-close and he had the look of a man who’d be much more comfortable wearing a uniform. Holding a Galil assault rifle under his arm instead of a brochure that made him look as much like a tourist as he could.

  “How do you know me, Captain Bain?”

  “I’ve seen your picture, Pakad. On television and in the newspaper.”

  “I was talking about the Hessler investigation. How did you know about my brief assignment to the Hessler investigation?”

  “General Janush spoke of it. He was planning to make a condolence call, considered even flying to the United States for the funeral, before...”

  “I’m sorry about his death.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But from w
hat I’ve heard he died of a heart attack.”

  “It’s not true. I was there.”

  “You said he was murdered.”

  They walked slowly around the outskirts of a tiny ancient Jerusalem carved out of limestone with an accuracy that included even microscopic writing on a temple’s doorway.

  “The details don’t matter,” Bain told her, clearly uncomfortable. “What matters is that General Efrain Janush wasn’t the only one: Two others were murdered yesterday.”

  “Generals?”

  “Just men,” said Asher Bain. “Old men with something in common.”

  * * * *

  B

  en cutthrough thenarrow yardsbetween houses in the camp to reach the Ashawis as quickly as he could. His instinct told him whoever had arrived ahead of him looking for the missing family weren’t from the police. But there were two of them to only one of him, and based on the proficiency of their murderous work thus far, those were odds to be avoided.

  By the time he was halfway to the Ashawi relatives’ lot, his feet were covered in mud and manure from the gardens he had cut through in his mad dash. Ben was just two narrow, cluttered streets away when he nearly collided with a pair of uniformed Fatah representatives assigned to the camp by the Palestinian Council.

  His close encounter compelled him to notice the multiple contents of their utility belts, including a flashlight, small medical pouch, walkie-talkie, and more.

  “I need your help!” Ben told them, finding his breath.

  The two young men looked at each other, startled.

  “I’m a Palestinian policeman!” he said, shoving his identification at them. “And this is an emergency!”

  “What can we do for you?”

  “Just follow my lead and don’t say a word.” He led them on. “This way! Hurry!”

  * * * *

  A

  n elderly schoolteacher killed in a bicycling accident, a prominent businessman poisoned in the course of a routine medical procedure, and General Janush, of course.”

  “All three died yesterday!”

  Bain nodded. “That’s right, Pakad. All men in their early to late seventies.”

  “Is that all they have in common, Captain?” Danielle asked Asher Bain.

  “No, Pakad. All three were Holocaust survivors, just like—”

  “Paul Hessler,” Danielle completed for him.

  * * * *

  S

  tand to the side so they think you have a gun,” Ben instructed the young Fatah officials as they neared the home of Abdul Ashawi’s brother.

  “Why?” one of them asked, hedging.

  “Because it might keep you alive. Now keep moving. Hurry!”

  Ben led the young Fatah officials to the shack-sized structure where the Ashawi family lived. They had just passed through the warped chickenwire fence enclosing the modest yard when a ramshackle door too big for the frame banged open.

  A pair of men dressed as Palestinian policemen emerged holding between them a teenage girl whom Ben recognized from her school picture as Zeina Ashawi. Sobbing, protesting family members trailed the officers down the crumbling steps and passed out of the meager shade provided by a tattered awning. The officers ignored their pleas and their presence, stopped only when they saw Ben and the Fatah officials standing in their way.

  “I’ll take things from here,” Ben said, making sure the two men could see how close his hand had moved to his pistol.

  The imposters glanced at each other, weighing their options. Without the Fatah officials on either side of him, Ben had no doubt what option they would choose. As it was, the moment remained frozen. The family holding their ground behind the fake policemen. The fake policemen still considering their next step.

  The Fatah man on Ben’s left began to shake badly.

  Ben moved a hand to his elbow, looked back to see one of the imposters starting to reach for his gun.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 35

  H

  ow didyou figurethis out?”Danielle asked Asher Bain.

  “My suspicions grew after the general was murdered and I read more about Hessler’s near-murder. That made me do some checking. What I found was too striking to ignore.”

  “Go on,” Danielle prodded.

  “All four men were among the original refugees who settled here after World War Two.”

  “Could they have known each other since then?” Danielle probed, in search of some stray connection.

  Bain shook his square, angular head. “The general knew the businessman and he had met Hessler, but he didn’t know the schoolteacher who was killed in a traffic accident.”

  “They couldn’t have met as refugees?”

  “No. According to what I’ve been able to piece together none of the four came to Palestine on the same boat or even at the same time.”

  “So the only thing we know they have in common, besides being survivors, is that three of them are dead and the fourth is alive only because his son got in the way of the bullets meant for him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why contact me?”

  “Because of your connection to the Hessler investigation.”

  “It’s been severed, Captain.”

  “Not before you had a chance to interview Paul Hessler himself, though. I want to know if he said anything that might relate to this. Did he act strange? Did you notice anything unusual?”

  Danielle shook her head. “Not a thing.” She hesitated briefly. “Not about Hessler anyway.”

  “Someone else?”

  Danielle nodded very slowly. “His would-be killer.”

  * * * *

  B

  en lethis handdrop tothe buttof hispistol and steeled his eyes. In the very last instant before one of the fake policemen drew his gun, the other imposter laid a hand on his arm, restraining him. Slowly they moved away from Zeina Ashawi who looked no less terrified.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Ben said measuredly. “I will see that your commander learns of your cooperation.”

  Ben held his eyes on the imposters as they started forward out of the yard, passing on either side of him. When they were out of sight, the smaller of the Fatah representatives he had enlisted in the charade tried to light a cigarette but failed because he was shaking too hard. Ben lit it for him.

  “Thank you,” Ben said, and removed a small pad from his lapel pocket. “Give me your names. I am going to send a personal note to the president himself to inform him of your bravery.”

  The young men looked at each other. “Will he actually get it?” one asked.

  “I know an official who will make sure that he does.”

  The Fatah officials nodded and gave Ben their names before turning to leave. He had barely slipped his notebook into his pocket again when a man Ben guessed was Zeina Ashawi’s father, Abdul, stormed forward.

  “What is going on here? What do the police want with my daughter?”

  Ben held a hand up to calm the man. “Those two men weren’t really from the police, Abu Ashawi.”

  The man’s face dipped into uncertainty. “They weren’t? Then who...”

  “I need to speak to your daughter inside,” Ben said. “Then everything will be clear.”

  * * * *

  T

  he hot sun baked Danielle’s flesh, frying the miniature city at her feet, as she tried to recapture all she had learned from the autopsy on the old man who had shot Paul Hessler’s son.

  “He carried no identification, not even any money.”

  “Because he knew he was going to die,” Bain said. “This was a suicide mission from the start.”

  “The killer had suffered a reoccurrence of stomach cancer. He didn’t have long to live anyway. But he was an American; the pathologist was sure of that much. His only distinguishing features were a glass eye and an unusual tattoo.”

  “What kind of tattoo?”

  “A worm of some kind holding a knife in what looked like small hands w
ith blood dripping down the blade. And there was a name written across the tattoo: NIGHTCRAWLERS.”

  “A common earthworm that feeds at night.”

  “I didn’t know you were an expert on worms, Captain.”

  “I’m not. But the term ‘Nightcrawlers’ has other connotations.”