by By Jon Land
“You can tell me all about what you find when I get back from Germany.”
“Germany?”
Danielle nodded. “To pick up the trail Asher Bain was following.”
“They killed Bain. They’ll kill you, too.”
Danielle’s gaze was strangely emotionless. “They sent Ellie and they’ll send someone else for me whether I go or not, Ben. They’ll send someone else unless I get them first. I have to find out what Bain was on the verge of uncovering. I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do,” Ben said suddenly. “We both do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can take the job in Detroit.” He held his breath for an instant. “You can come with me.”
“Run away?”
“Get away. There’s a difference.”
“Not that I can see.”
“Because you’re not giving it a chance, Danielle. You’re not giving us a chance.”
Danielle’s expression softened, but didn’t waver. “Captain Bain told me my father’s name showed up on a list he generated. He fit the profile of these Holocaust survivors who’ve been killed.”
“So?”
“Do you remember how you felt until you learned the truth about your father?”
Ben nodded, wishing he could lie.
“Well, these men were murdered because of something they have in common. Something they were involved in. What if my father was involved in the same thing?”
Ben reached over and hugged her tenderly. He felt her flinch, but didn’t let go, “Beware of searching for secrets you’d rather not find, Danielle.”
Danielle remained undeterred. “Ellie was a Mossad assassin, Ben. That means someone in Israel ordered the deaths of these Holocaust survivors. These men who were just like my father.”
Ben left his hand where it was, feeling the softness of her skin. “I can call John Najarian right now. We can be on a plane tomorrow and fuck the rest of them.”
“You’re not listening to me. We’d be leaving too much behind.”
“Not always a bad thing,” Ben said pointedly.
* * * *
CHAPTER 51
I
‘m afraid even my contacts cannot penetrate these companies, Inspector,” Nabril al-Asi said apologetically to Ben, holding the list of those serviced by Abasca Machines. “Not with the little information you’re able to provide.”
Months before, after Israeli helicopter gunships strafed the building in which the colonel’s Palestinian Protective Security Services was headquartered, al-Asi had relocated his office here in the back rooms of a building off Amman Street. The front rooms served as a civil marriage hall for Jews, catering to secular Israelis who did not want to be wed by an Orthodox rabbi. Such a rite was required to make a marriage official in Israel, but not in the West Bank where an Israeli businessman ran the chapel and paid a registration fee for each marriage performed. The perfect place to house his office, al-Asi had once explained to Ben, since the comings and goings of unfamiliar faces never received undue attention.
“And if I were able to get more? Say, irrefutable proof these high school students were murdered by one of their victims?”
Al-Asi scratched his chin. His office was cramped and simply furnished, just a place to meet, apparently, although on a few occasions Ben was certain he heard activity in a floor or floors below. He couldn’t see any stairs or access doors, though.
“Tell me about these children again, Inspector.”
Ben went through the details of his investigation from the beginning, somewhat reassured by the fact that al-Asi was nodding when he finished.
“A question, Inspector: How did the students contact their chosen targets?”
“I assume by electronic mail.”
“Via their personal computers?”
“Possibly.”
“I doubt it. If you were going to commit such a crime, would you leave the evidence so readily available?”
“I see your point.”
“Of course you wouldn’t, because no lines in this part of the world are really secure. My Israeli friends watch everything.”
“You mean electronic correspondence can be traced back to its source, like a phone call.”
Al-Asi nodded. “In essence, it is a phone call, Inspector. Now, it is possible to confuse the issue by bouncing the signal around a bit. But even that can be tracked down, assuming one is patient.”
“The way threats over the Internet are tracked down.”
“More or less.”
“So what’s the alternative?”
“Thinking like a criminal, Inspector?”
“No, Colonel, like a high school student.”
“You’ve just answered your own question.”
“What?”
“A site with multiple outgoing lines and multiple users would make the tracing procedure much harder to manage and, even if successful, the target wouldn’t necessarily know which computer it came from or what person was logged on at the time.”
“A bank of computers.”
“That’s right.”
Ben felt as if someone had just given him a hard shake. “The kind you’d find, say, in a high school...”
“Very good, Inspector,” al-Asi complimented. “I think you’re learning.”
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 52
A
light fog coated the German countryside as Danielle drove the rental car toward the only nursing home in Remscheid, Germany. It was located in a residential neighborhood on Hanastrasse and comprised two interconnected buildings.
Danielle followed the signs in German toward the visitor parking lot which at this hour of the morning was virtually deserted. From her car, she walked down a small stone stairway to a second driveway that led to the nursing home’s lobby. The huge glass double doors slid open automatically as she approached them, and Danielle moved toward a reception booth behind a long counter on the left.
“Do you speak English?” she asked a receptionist garbed in white.
“Yes,” the woman replied.
“I would like to see Herr Weiss. I trust he’s still a patient here.”
“Gunthar Weiss?”
“That’s right.”
The receptionist regarded her suspiciously. “You’re not a relative, are you?”
Danielle withdrew her National Police identification and handed it across the counter. “I am here on a matter of some urgency.”
The receptionist stiffened as she inspected Danielle’s credentials. “Is Herr Weiss being investigated by your country?”
“Not directly, no.”
“Because it is our job to protect our patients here. We don’t want them bothered nor do we wish to have their pasts dredged up.”
“What makes you think this is about the past?”
“With men like Gunthar Weiss, it’s always about the past,” the receptionist said, her final words emerging through a condescending sneer.
“If you don’t mind, I’ve come a very long way.”
“I don’t mind at all.” The receptionist slid a clipboard complete with two-page form across the counter. “Just fill this out so it can be reviewed by our administrator. Make sure you leave your contact number in Germany so we can contact you as soon as he gets to it.”
Danielle turned the clipboard around and pushed it back across the formica. “I’m here as a representative of the Israeli government,” she bluffed. “If you want, I can return with a member of our embassy here along with my contact at your National Bureau of Investigations.” She leaned forward over the counter. “That way we can check up on some more of your residents at the same time.”
The receptionist returned the clipboard to its peg and reached for a clip-on pass in its place, but the displeasure lingered in her expression. “You won’t get anything out of Gunthar Weiss anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
* * * *
T
he visitor’s pass flapping against her jacket, Danielle rode the elevator to the third floor and stepped out into a large, open area. Before her, residents in wheelchairs or walked about dragging IV poles at their sides. Some leaned awkwardly against a wall. The sounds were quiet and muffled, save for an occasional misplaced cry from somewhere down the hall. The air was sour and spoiled, and the pungent stench of oversprayed Lysol was powerless to do anything but cling to the furniture and walls.
Another receptionist pointed her toward a small lounge off to the side and Danielle approached to the sounds of German blaring over a television in an overlit, windowless room furnished with three rows of interconnected chairs. A solitary man sat in a wheelchair looking up at the wall-mounted screen. His legs were covered by a plaid blanket. He smiled toothlessly at the morning cartoons, lacking enough breath to laugh. His mouth hung open, not changing. His eyes didn’t blink.
“Herr Weiss?”
No response.
“Herr Weiss?”
The eyes finally blinked as he turned her way for only as long as it took for him to realize he might be missing something better in the cartoon. Danielle walked out in front of his wheelchair, planting herself between it and the television. Weiss looked agitated, swiping at her as if she were a bothersome bug. Giving up, he simply wheeled his chair backwards to regain a clear view of the cartoon which Danielle recognized as an old American show dubbed in German.
“I need to talk to you about what you did in World War Two, Herr Weiss,” Danielle said, hoping her words got through. “I have some questions.”
A commercial came on the television and the old man’s eyes flickered. He looked at Danielle as if seeing her for the first time.
“You’re not my new nurse.”
“No, I’m from the police.”
“Police? I don’t like police.”
Danielle stole a quick glance at the screen, convinced the old man would remain lucid only through the length of the commercial break. “I’d like to talk to you about the labor camp outside of Lodz, Poland.”
“I wasn’t there, don’t know what you’re talking about. A schoolteacher. I was a schoolteacher.”
“You served twenty years in prison for your crimes. It’s public record.”
“I should have been a schoolteacher. I would have been a good one.”
“What kind of labor camp Haupsturmfuehrer were you?”
Weiss looked back at the television to see another commercial beginning. The air seem to drain out of his thin face like a popped balloon.
“A long time ago. Too long.”
Danielle looked at the frail old man sitting in the wheelchair before her, confronted all at once by the reality that she had no clear idea of what to ask him. Captain Asher Bain, before he died, had said only that Weiss was the key. Key to what! What else had Bain uncovered about this case and Danielle’s father?
On the screen angled down from the wall, the second commercial was winding down.
Gunthar Weiss looked up at Danielle suddenly. “You’ve come to ask me about him, too.”
“Who?”
“Karl Mundt. The bastard. Thought he was so much better than the rest of us, too good for labor camp service. Never trusted him. Should have known, should have figured out what he was really up to earlier.”
“And what was that?”
Just then the morning cartoons returned to the television and Gunthar Weiss slipped back into his dreamlike trance with his eyes locked on the screen.
* * * *
CHAPTER 53
B
en Kamal found Jane Wexler, principal of the Palestinian-Israeli cooperative school outside of Abu Gosh, busy with a stack of student files when he appeared in her office doorway.
“What are you doing here, Inspector?” she asked, clearly annoyed by his unannounced visit.
“I was hoping you could help me with something.” He hadn’t expected the Israeli soldiers outside to let him in. Having recognized Ben from the other day, though, they had grudgingly granted him entry after making sure he wasn’t armed.
Wexler looked around, as if expecting to see Danielle Barnea just behind Ben. “You don’t have any authority in Israel. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“Even if it’s in your own best interests and the best interests of the school?”
“Get to the point, please.”
“Do you want to help me find whoever killed your students or not, Ms. Wexler?”
Jane Wexler pushed her pile of folders aside. “Go on.”
Ben nodded. “I found Zeina Ashawi. She’s alive and under the protection of the Palestinian Authority.”
“Thank God.”
Ben closed the door to the principal’s office behind him. “She told me something you’re going to find extremely unsettling, Ms. Wexler. She told me the murdered students were involved in some kind of blackmail ring.”
“Blackmail?” Jane Wexler posed incredulously.
Ben nodded. “Shahir Falaya used his job as a business machine technician to steal sensitive information from major companies. I believe one or more of these companies were then extorted under threat that this stolen information would be made public.”
Jane Wexler’s face widened with fear and realization. “Then it was someone they blackmailed who killed them. That’s what you’re saying.”
“I need to find out who—which company it might have been.”
“I told you, Inspector, I didn’t know what they were up to. I can’t possibly help you.”
“Yes, you can,” Ben said, holding her gaze. “Because you were involved in the plot.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 54
T
ess Sanderson and Paul Hessler entered the Hessler Institute just after noon, hoping to keep recognition of their visit to a minimum. Security and laboratory personnel still on the premises couldn’t believe their eyes; Paul Hessler had spent extraordinarily little time in the institute that bore his name, especially as of late.
“You’re walking too fast,” Paul said, feeling his hips begin to ache.
“I’m nervous, sir.”
“I told you to call me Paul, and there’s nothing to be nervous about.”
Sanderson swiped her card to gain access to the secure laboratory area and then keyed the proper combination into the pad next to the door marked closed for construction.
“Your idea, Tess?” Paul wondered, impressed.
“Actually, it was your son’s.”
Paul felt a familiar heaviness in his stomach as he proceeded through the door into the antechamber. “This is my son’s legacy,” he said somberly. “All I have left of him.”
Tess Sanderson turned toward Hessler and nodded understandingly before approaching the inner door to the project lab. She scanned her iris and heard the door click open.
“I built this institute to find cures and treatments for diseases that continue to plague humanity,” Hessler said to her before they entered. “Diseases that attack both genders, all races. Diseases that do not discriminate among classes, that don’t care about the size of our wallets or our hearts. I considered myself a man of vision, Tess.” Hessler’s voice faded a bit. “But somewhere along the line I must have lost that vision. Thank God Ari picked it up.”
Tess Sanderson’s eyes moistened and she tried to blink them dry. “The world will thank him too, sir.”
Hessler pushed out a smile. “Paul. Now show me my son’s legacy. Show me Lot four-sixty-one.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 55
D
anielle could do nothing but wait for another commercial break in the cartoon show Gunthar Weiss sat watching. As soon as the next one came, and the old man’s dull gray eyes flickered back to a semblance of life, she resumed.
“Herr Weiss, you said you should have figured it out. Figured what out? What were you talking about?”
The old man’s lips quivered, his
eyes swimming in fear. Danielle realized she had come at him too hard, too fast. She made herself back off.