by By Jon Land
“Not just any old men.”
“No. One of them was deputy chief of staff of the army. My God, if the truth of what you did ever came out...”
“Let it!” Vorsky raged, voice carrying through the desert. “Let the rest of the bastards flee in fear!”
“There are no others, Vorsky. Do you understand that? Your inquiries into Paul Hessler’s background are absurd and ill-founded.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Vorsky insisted, in a softer voice.
“That is exactly why I called you here,” David Turkanis said firmly. “Paul Hessler is not to be touched. You will end your investigation forthwith.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying?”
“The real question is do you hear what I’m saying, Vorsky? Because the responsibility is yours. Whatever it takes, whatever you need to do.”
“I have resources, you know,” the older man said lamely, realizing in that instant how stupid he sounded.
“Good. Then use them to deal with whoever might cause Paul Hessler any harm. The government desires no involvement in this. This conversation never took place.”
Vorsky’s eyes blinked grimly. “You speak as though something else never took place.”
For a moment David Turkanis’s features flared. He took a step toward Vorsky and seemed on the verge of grabbing him when he settled himself and churned his feet into the dry ground beneath him.
“I am going to forget you said that, Vorsky. I am to inform you that Paul Hessler’s life is now in your hands. His protection is your responsibility. End this absurd vendetta of yours and focus your energies there. You know what I am saying.”
“And it disgusts me.”
“Then understand that should anything happen to Paul Hessler, no matter what its source, the blame will fall on you.”
“I understand perfectly.”
David Turkanis shuffled his feet and nodded. “Then I believe you have another meeting to set up, don’t you?”
* * * *
CHAPTER 71
F
asil’s bodyguards knew nothing,” al-Asi told Ben after they had shaken hands warmly.
“Your men work fast, Colonel.”
“Anger sometimes makes me neglect subtlety. It isn’t just these two men we’re dealing with, Inspector.”
“So I gathered.”
They sat on the bed in the back room of a thirty-two-foot Winnebago motor home. Beyond the closed sliding divider, Ben could hear the Walt Disney video al-Asi’s wife and three youngest children were watching. Ben had glimpsed the colonel’s teenage son seated by himself doing homework when al-Asi escorted him to the rear of the Winnebago. The boy was a younger, more casually dressed version of his father.
“Others came to my house tonight,” the colonel explained. He wore a taupe-colored Italian suit, elegant as always even with a mock turtleneck in place of a dress shirt. “They were not selling magazine subscriptions.”
“Your family,” Ben realized.
“Yes, targeted by the same people behind the murders of these children you uncovered, we believe.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mayor Fawzi Wallid and his guards had driven Ben to the Winnebago’s parking spot in the cramped rear lot of the Jerusalem Hotel on Amman Street. From there it was only twenty miles to the Allenby Bridge and Jordan, should the colonel find the need to take his family across the border for safekeeping.
Al-Asi flashed a slight smile. “It is the killers who are going to be sorry, Inspector. They went to the wrong house, the old one we used before I moved back to the neighborhood so my kids could go to a regular school and play soccer. Did I tell you we made the division finals?”
“No.”
“You’ll attend, of course.”
“As assistant coach?”
“The job is still available, Inspector.”
“I’m keeping my options open.”
“A wise thing in such uncertain times.”
“The men who came to your house,” Ben said, changing the subject back.
“They were disguised as Israeli soldiers. There were too many of them for my men to risk taking them on. But the early warning gave me time to get my family moved into this before they found my most recent address.” Al-Asi looked about him proudly. “What do you think, Inspector?”
“Anyone with direct knowledge of the murder of these children is being silenced,” Ben said. “Someone is covering their tracks.”
The colonel chided him with a glare, rested the soft drink in his lap. “I was talking about the Winnebago.”
“Oh. The truth is I’ve never seen anything like it in Palestine, Colonel.”
“Of course, you haven’t. Our streets are too narrow to maneuver safely.” He tapped the nearest wall fondly. “But I couldn’t resist. Perfect for outings, camping trips ...”
“And a way you could be with your family if you had to move them in a hurry.”
“Precisely why I obtained it after the peace process broke down. It came in especially handy tonight, since we seem to be facing a determined army. And now you tell me that the animal Mahmoud Fasil was part of it.”
“A small part. A messenger, nothing more. His job was to destroy the hard drive on Shahir Falaya’s computer and pass the disc containing a certain portion of its contents on to someone else.”
“The soccer star, of course.”
“I’d like to take a look at that disc we found on him, Colonel. Can we get it?”
“Of course we can: It’s right here.”
“In the Winnebago?”
Al-Asi nodded. “Hidden among my children’s video games. For safekeeping.”
* * * *
B
en continued staring at the screen long after he had finished scrolling through the contents. He didn’t notice that his fingers had stiffened and his breathing had gone shallow.
“The disc is gibberish... nothing that seems in any way associated to the terrorist network we were hoping to identify. It’s also in English. Maybe you could take a look at it sometime, tell me what you think.”
Ben recalled al-Asi’s words to him from nearly a week ago, berated himself for not taking the colonel up on his offer sooner. Maybe Danielle would not be in danger. Maybe she would not have gone to Germany and would be here with him.
It’s all here on the disc. Everything I was looking for....
The disc contained the information the murdered students had gathered on the companies they had blackmailed. That information constituted the students’ proof, their fallback should one of their targets refuse to comply with their demands.
Hidden with the Palestinian student Shahir Falaya, because he had been the one to lift it off the pilfered circuit boards.
According to copies of the e-mails also contained on the disc, the four high school students had extorted a total of $1.3 million! Had it routed electronically into accounts they had closed immediately and transferred into others listed elsewhere in the database. A single withdrawal, for an amount slightly less than a hundred thousand American dollars, was noted, reflecting the sum required to buy Jane Wexler’s silence.
Ben could see why someone reading the disc’s contents with no prior knowledge of the information would be totally baffled. They read like gibberish, nonsense, unless the reader understood the basis.
Ben started over again at the beginning of the computer disc and concentrated on exactly what information the murdered students had threatened to reveal about the four companies in question. The Palestinian-Israeli consortium, Partners for Peace, was exactly what he thought: a sham in which Jewish businessmen like Max Price endeavored to get rich on Palestinian land. Their Palestinian partners in the deal, the students had uncovered, were paid a handsome sum merely for use of their names.
As for the prestigious law firm, the students had managed to accumulate a host of confidential affidavits and depositions taken in cases that would never go to trial because the information could not be allowe
d to go public.
The data concerning the brokerage house appeared on screen next. Here the students had collected memoranda indicating illegal insider trading at the brokerage house surrounding a number of IPOs, initial public offerings, in the European market Hundreds of years of jail time for those responsible if the truth ever came out.
The fourth packet of information Ben found pertained to a potential victim the students had never gotten around to contacting. A small private hospital that specialized in the discreet treatment of alcohol and drug addiction. Listed were the names of prominent Israelis who had resided there for varying lengths of time.
When Ben came to the final batch of information, he quickly realized why the students had skipped over the vulnerable clinic patients. Indeed, they had found something much bigger and more vulnerable to go after: Hessler Industries.
The other victims had all been charged a hundred thousand dollars. From Hessler Industries, the students had upped their demands to one million. Ben read on, quickly grasping what the circuit board stolen from the conglomerate’s Tel Aviv headquarters had yielded.
Ben’s breath quickened.
The e-mails to Hessler Industries in Tel Aviv made it very plain what the students had uncovered and what they planned to do with it. They knew the value of the information.
It concerned a project involving something called Lot 461.
Ben read on, skipping over the specifics at first until he realized what the confidential report claimed Lot 461 could do.
Oh my God...
“What is it, Inspector?” Colonel al-Asi asked him.
Ben continued to stare at the screen. Wondering. Was this the miracle he’d been looking for? Could it be he had found it while looking for something else entirely?
“Inspector.”
Ben turned to find al-Asi staring at the screen over his shoulder.
“You were mumbling. What is it? What have you found?”
For the first time he could remember, Ben chose to evade al-Asi’s question. “I need to see the soccer star Abdel Sidr, Colonel. I need to see him now.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 72
Y
ou told me that Paul Hessler killed your father.”
Hans Mundt had not responded to Danielle the first time she spoke those words, while standing over the empty grave.
“Come on,” he said instead and started back for his car.
Danielle had no choice but to follow him and they both climbed back into the Mercedes. Mundt continued driving briefly north toward the town of Leczyca, then turned off down a narrow, bumpy road that sliced through the forest and followed the Bzura River for a brief stretch. She lost track of the miles that passed with the silence hanging between them. But the drive took over two hours.
At last Mundt halted the car at the foot of a hillside topped with a flat plain. He climbed out and began walking up the hill, waiting for Danielle to fall into step alongside him before he finally spoke.
“We just retraced a large portion of the route Paul Hessler took west after he escaped from the labor camp.”
“Why did you tell me Paul Hessler killed your father?” she demanded.
“Because, in essence, he did,” Mundt said, finally responding. “Because on that last day in the camp, my father ceased to exist. Karl Mundt became Paul Hessler.” Mundt continued leading the way up the hill.
“Then the grave you found near the factory ...”
“The man buried there was Paul Hessler, buried in my father’s uniform. They must have exchanged clothes before my father shot him. That’s why Gunthar Weiss thought he witnessed Hessler shooting my father when, in fact, it was the other way around.”
“Then why did you need to see Israel’s detailed file on Hessler?”
“Final proof, Pakad Barnea. I was aware of certain scars and birthmarks on my father’s body, including one from a bayonet wound he suffered in training. I knew Paul Hessler’s confidential file would include mention of all such markings.” His features sank a little. “Unfortunately, the portion of the file I was allowed to see did not include what I was looking for.”
“Denying your final confirmation.”
“That only means I’ll have to get it from Hessler himself. Same as you.”
“Me?”
“Your father, Pakad. Hessler is the only man who can tell you the truth of his past.”
“You keep referring to him as Hessler, not Karl Mundt or your father.”
“Because he’s not my father; not anymore. He’s just another man, a stranger who must pay for what he did to my mother and myself.”
“And you need me to get to him.”
“I think I might, yes.”
“Because he knows me.”
“It’s in your best interests too, Pakad. You must see that.”
Danielle was glad for the steep climb after so many hours of riding in the car. It gave her a chance to digest all these new facts with the others she had already uncovered. She recalled what Gunthar Weiss claimed he had witnessed from his office window in the factory. He had seen what appeared to be Hessler shooting Mundt because the two had already switched clothes. For all these years that was the story the former labor camp Haupsturmfuehrer had told anyone who wanted to listen.
When they reached the top of the hill, Danielle planted herself in front of Hans Mundt defiantly. “No more games, do you hear me? I want to know what happened here.”
Mundt held his ground. “Fine. Turn around, Pakad Barnea, and tell me what you see.”
Danielle hesitated, then turned, angling her body sideways in order to keep a partial gaze on Mundt. Before her the hilltop was barren and desolate, devoid of anything living and dominated by chunks of brick and gray rocks mixing with brown dirt.
“Nothing,” she said.
“I see the ruins of a castle,” Mundt said almost dreamily as he stepped past her. “One of several in this area and the perfect place to seek refuge. This is where Karl Mundt came to escape a storm that would have otherwise killed him. For some reason the Gods were on his side that night. When the weather cleared, he continued on, rationing his supplies while he made his way west through the valley. He had almost reached the Warta River when he was rescued.”
“By the American commando team led by Sergeant Phipps...”
Mundt nodded only once. “Again Karl Mundt would have died if they had not come upon him. Perhaps, though, I’m not giving my father enough credit. This was a man, after all, who had planned everything from the first moment he laid eyes on Paul Hessler. He knew when he came to the camp the end was near for Germany—that was why my grandfather had worked so hard to keep him off the front. But my father was smart enough to realize what his fate would be once Germany surrendered to the Allies. He would be executed, at the very least jailed for the rest of his life. He knew when he kissed my mother before he left it was for the last time, and learning she was pregnant with me did not alter his plans in the slightest.”
Danielle moved closer to Mundt and straddled a cavernous rut in the shape of a huge tread. Other similar ruts lined the hilltop in an irregular, crisscrossing pattern. Clearly, massive machinery had claimed this hill in the relatively recent past, taking the remains of the castle with them, if Mundt’s information was correct.
“You don’t sound like you blame him,” she said softly.
“I’ve spent my whole life blaming him, but the truth is I might never have seen him again anyway. Or if I did it would have been in disgrace. I hate him for abandoning me, Barnea, at the same time I know it was the only thing he could have done.”
“Trade places with a Jew.”
“A Jew with no family left, no property, no identity other than whatever he took with him from the camp. Kill that Jew and become him. But I don’t think he planned on becoming a folk hero.”
“You’re defending him.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I am. He left my mother and me in poverty and disgrace, never contacted us t
hrough all the years he was alive. I wanted to believe he was a hero but I knew he was a monster like all the other Nazis. I tried very hard to forget him, but how could I when I had no memory of him in the first place? That’s what made everything so complicated. There was this vast hole at the edge of my consciousness and my life that I knew I could never fill. I gave up trying years ago.”