Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  The old man calmly smeared some hummus over pita and took a small bite. “You seem to know my intentions better than I.”

  “I understand obsession.”

  “This is about duty, Herr Mundt.”

  “For both of us.”

  Vorsky weighed the intent of the German’s words and pushed the hummus tray back to the center of the table. Then he reached beneath his chair and produced a laptop computer.

  “The file for the database you’re interested in has already been opened,” he explained. “Press enter to proceed.”

  Before Mundt could do that, the old man fastened his hand around the huge forearm before him. “The machine has been programmed to allow you access to one name and one name only. Try a second and it will automatically shut down. You will copy nothing onto a disk. You will take no notes. You will view half of this file and be done.”

  Mundt tensed. “Half? That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “The deal is changed, Herr Mundt. Access to the second half of the file will be yours once we are sure the rest of the names you promised weren’t pulled from the phone book.”

  Mundt slid a CD storage disc across the table, following the same path the old man had taken with the laptop. “When?” he asked.

  Vorsky quickly pocketed it. “Is tomorrow soon enough?”

  “I suppose it will have to be.”

  “There’s something else,” Vorsky said. “The late General Janush’s chief aide has been asking questions, apparently making connections between the three victims.”

  “Why does this concern me?”

  “Because it occurs to me someone may have leaked information to him, someone with an interest in putting added pressure on us to suit his own needs.”

  The big man tapped the portable computer’s screen. “I have only one interest.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that the general’s aide met with a National Police inspector to enlist her help in his investigation?”

  “Her help?”

  “She is one of their very best.”

  “Then it seems you have a problem.”

  “And we intend to deal with it. Just so long as it is not of your making. I would hate to think you would want to implicate us to improve your own situation.”

  “And why do you imagine I would do that?”

  The old man pointed at the laptop. “In case you don’t find what you’re looking for.”

  “Let me see,” the big man said and pressed enter.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 38

  P

  akad?” Ben said through Danielle’s open car window.

  She came alert with a jolt, realizing she must have dozed off while waiting for him. “You’re late.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “It’s been a long couple of days, that’s all. And I’ve been waiting for you for, I don’t know, too long.”

  For some reason, Danielle had decided to wait in the car for Ben at the Palestinian-Israeli school outside Abu Gosh instead of inside the building. With the afternoon burning away toward evening, she had called to ask Jane Wexler, principal of the school, to please wait for them to arrive.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “I want to hear about this girl you found in the refugee camp first.”

  * * * *

  I

  can’t believe this,” Danielle said, after Ben had finished relaying his interview with Zeina Ashawi. “Is she under guard?”

  “It took some time, but Colonel al-Asi has arranged for the entire family to be moved to a safe house. I stayed with them until his people arrived. That’s why I’m late. What about you?”

  “I’ve been reassigned to administration. Commander Baruch did not take kindly to me pursuing an unauthorized investigation.”

  “That bastard...”

  “Not to worry. I gave myself the day off and spent part of the afternoon with Layla Saltzman,” Danielle told him, leaving out mention of her meeting with Captain Asher Bain for the moment. “You won’t believe what she found under her son’s bed-----”

  * * * *

  I

  t makes no sense,” Ben said, after listening to Danielle tell him about the money stuffed into a bag belonging to another of the murdered students. “The students handle everything so discreetly, careful to cover their tracks, and then they take the risk of withdrawing that amount of cash. Why?”

  “As you said, it doesn’t go along with the rest of how they carried out their plan.”

  “But they must have had their reasons, Pakad.”

  “Are we going to tell the principal the truth?” Danielle asked, after both of them had contemplated what those reasons might be for a few moments.

  “That her best students were running a blackmail ring? No, we just tell her we need the details on the job the school secured for Shahir Falaya. Then we dig deeper to see if another student was involved, as Zeina Ashawi suggested, on the chance that student might be able to tell us more.”

  “Before he or she is killed as well, of course. Where do you think all this is going to take us, Inspector?”

  Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the Falaya boy gets a low level job at a major corporation, an international conglomerate maybe. At some point he sees or overhears something, finds out something the company cannot afford to let go public.”

  “And then what? He enlists the help of these other students? Why?”

  “To cover his ass, Pakad. Each takes on a role. The details remain for us to uncover.”

  “And then this company the boy worked for decides to kill him and his accomplices,” Danielle said, not sounding convinced. “Again, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Then we find what does make sense and maybe we find their killers.”

  * * * *

  T

  hank you for waiting for us,” Ben told the school’s principal Jane Wexler, while Danielle sank into a chair in her office.

  “You said it was important.”

  “We need the details of the job the school procured for Shahir Falaya,” Danielle informed the principal.

  “Just a moment,” Jane Wexler said, and switched on her computer.

  She brought up the proper file and scanned the information briefly. IBM had opened a major corporate headquarters in Tel Aviv, Ben thought, and there were any number of large banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies that would have made prime fodder for a blackmailer of any age.

  “Here it is,” from the principal finally. “Yes, I remember now. Tel Aviv.”

  Ben and Danielle waited expectantly.

  “Abasca Machines,” said Jane Wexler.

  Ben leaned over the principal’s desk. “Excuse me?”

  “Abasca Machines. Would you like the address?”

  “What kind of corporation is that?” Ben asked her.

  Jane Wexler almost laughed. “A very small one, I would imagine: They fix business machines.”

  Ben looked over at Danielle who had started to rise, using the arms of the chair for support. All the color had drained out of her face and she leaned on the top of the desk suddenly, looking dizzy.

  “Pakad?”

  By then, though, she was falling backwards, the floor coming up fast when Ben caught her.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 39

  T

  ess Sanderson remained at Paul Hessler’s apartment long after the other mourners had left. Together they sat out on the spacious balcony, gazing into the Manhattan night.

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said, fingers squeezed into his cheeks. It was the first opportunity he’d had to continue the discussion they had begun earlier in the day. He liked the young woman’s company, especially after realizing how much time Ari must have spent with her these past few months. “How exactly did a project I ordered terminated successfully pass its preliminary testing phase?”

  “Ari never followed through on your order,” Tess Sanderson explained. “He thought the project was
too valuable.”

  “Valuable?” Paul Hessler challenged. “We had already spent half a billion dollars developing Lot four-sixty-one with nothing to show for it.”

  “Ari believed strongly in its potential.”

  “Potential, Sanderson, is the folly of the young.”

  Sanderson smiled, her pearl white teeth flashing in the moonlight. “Ari knew that was exactly how you felt. That’s why he rerouted the research money from another source and changed the project’s protocol altogether at the Hessler Institute.”

  “So I wouldn’t know.”

  “Ari believed he was looking at what might be the greatest discovery in the history of medical science.”

  “Potential again,” Paul scoffed. “What was your role in this, Sanderson?”

  Tess didn’t hesitate. “I was responsible for the diversion of funds into a phantom project so Lot four-sixty-one could remain under development.”

  “Grounds for dismissal.”

  “We both understood that.”

  “You’re telling me my son was willing to sacrifice his career for this project?”

  “That’s how much he believed in it.”

  “Then by all means, Sanderson, tell me how this belief of his was finally justified.”

  “A closed and blind study, meaning the recipients had signed up for any and all measures. They never knew whether they even received Lot four-sixty-one.”

  “When I terminated the project,” Paul Hessler recalled, “we were at Lot four-fifty-two, and every test patient had died.”

  Both of them knew and accepted that the purpose of such blind studies was not to determine so much if a new drug worked, as to see at what point its toxicity stopped becoming terminal and a safe dosage approximated. Only then were formal clinical trials undertaken.

  “Eight more lots failed after Ari took over the project,” Tess Sanderson explained. “But Lot four-sixty-one achieved results in eight of the ten patients who were given the drug.”

  “Eight of ten? That’s unheard of!”

  Sanderson nodded enthusiastically. “And all patients had reached so-called terminal levels. Seven of them are still alive today.”

  Paul Hessler’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t my son tell me about this, for God’s sake?”

  “He was going to. But he wanted all the data in hand first so you wouldn’t be mad.”

  “Mad? I probably would have smacked him.” Paul started to smile for the first time in days, but it faded quickly and he felt the prick of tears brewing behind his eyes again.

  “He was planning to show the test results to you as soon as you returned from Israel, once the Arrow anti-missile system was finally deployed. Ari didn’t want anything to distract you before then.”

  “That’s what this party he was planning was about, wasn’t it?”

  Sanderson nodded sadly.

  “You know what this means, Sanderson, don’t you?”

  “We can only begin to imagine.”

  “Try. I want to share my son’s vision.”

  Sanderson sighed, clearly uncomfortable with that task. “The revolutionizing of medical treatment practices for the most serious of diseases. The end of suffering for millions and millions of people. Lives extended. Families preserved.”

  “He didn’t raise the possible economic windfall such a drug would bring?”

  Sanderson let herself smile slightly. “Actually he had detailed reports drawn up. According to the latest projections, the potential was there to do fifty billion dollars of business in the drug’s first year out of the box alone.”

  She thought that would make Paul Hessler happy, but instead his features drooped, looking exactly as he had while standing over his son’s grave that morning.

  Tess Sanderson touched the old man’s shoulder briefly. “But it was never about the money. Ari saw this as his chance to prove himself to you. When the project succeeded, he knew he had succeeded too.” Sanderson waited for Paul Hessler to look her way again before resuming. “You should know that.”

  Hessler used a handkerchief to pat his moistening eyes. “Tell me, Sanderson, how did the two of you go about this behind my back?”

  “It helped that you were so consumed with the Arrow missile shield project for Israel. But all my communications with Ari from the institute were routed via fax or e-mail through our headquarters in Tel Aviv. The breakthrough came while the two of you were over there, a little over a month ago. He told me he was going to download a copy of the report for you, that he couldn’t wait any longer.” Sanderson let her eyes drop. “I guess he changed his mind.”

  “All this subterfuge ...”

  Tess Sanderson swallowed hard, as if unsure about proceeding. “Ari knew how closely you watched him, monitored his work. He didn’t want to leave you any clue of his commitment to Lot four-sixty-one. I never briefed him in person. We never even ate lunch together, met for only very briefly at a time.”

  Paul Hessler saw something change in the woman’s eyes. “Was that difficult for you?”

  “Very much so, sir.”

  “I suspect it was difficult for my son as well.”

  “I hope so.”

  “But it was smart, on both your parts.” Ari, Paul Hessler mused, had known him better than he realized. He hadn’t given the boy enough credit, which made Ari’s loss all the more difficult to bear. “Of course,” Paul resumed, trying to distract himself. “There is the matter of the four sixty-one’s current status. Someone will have to take over the project and shepherd it through the rest of the process. Are you interested, Sanderson?”

  “Of course I am, sir.”

  “Did you and Ari have occasion to discuss a bonus agreement and structure?”

  “Er, no, sir.”

  “I’ll have a proposal for you within forty-eight hours.”

  “That’s not neces—”

  “Yes, it is, Sanderson. This is about business, not family or friendship. The sooner both of us accept that now, the better off we will be. I think you will do just fine. I will expect all the reports and data on Lot four-sixty-one on my desk tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sanderson hedged a little. “Would you like me to bring them here, sir, given the circumstances?”

  “No,” said Paul Hessler. “I think a stop at the office will do me good.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 40

  W

  hen Danielle opened her eyes, Ben was hovering over her and she made out the figure of her obstetrician Dr. Barr standing at the foot of the bed. She realized she was dressed in a hospital gown and recognized the view from Mount Scopus out the window that could only mean she was in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, to her dismay a familiar setting for her.

  She started to prop herself up on her elbows. “Was it a...”

  “Miscarriage?” Dr. Barr completed, when she couldn’t. “No. Just a reaction to stress and fatigue no woman nearly four months pregnant should be subjecting herself to.”

  “You heard him, Danielle,” Ben said, restraining her gently and then easing her back down to the pillows. He had ridden with her in the ambulance from the school, expediting what would have otherwise been an impossible entry into Israel for him. “Easy does it.”

  She continued to focus on the doctor. “Then it had nothing to do with ... the problem with the baby we discussed yesterday?”

  “Nothing at all,” he affirmed. “Although I believe it is in your best interests to make a decision in the matter as soon as possible.”

  “The baby’s fine for now, though.”

  “Well...”

  “I mean when I fainted nothing happened to him.”

  Dr. Barr nodded reluctantly. “The sonogram we took here revealed no structural damage to the fetus.”

  “Did I approve the test?” Danielle asked him. “Because I don’t remember—”

  “I approved it,” Ben interrupted. “I thought it was something you would want to know.”