by By Jon Land
Danielle unfolded the single piece of paper. There were about thirty names and accompanying addresses.
“I cannot tell you which did business with Hyram Levy.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to determine that,” she said, still studying it. “Why are these men still at large? I thought doing business with Jews was against the law.”
“Selling land to Jews is against the law. But these men are mostly brokers who sell merchandise on behalf of Palestinians who desperately need the money. It’s become quite a thriving industry, one of the few that has prospered during the bad times.”
Ben didn’t bother hiding the displeasure in his voice over what punitive measures dispensed over the past two years had done to the Palestinian economy. Danielle, though, did not react to it, not wanting to begin a rehash of the old arguments that had helped drive them apart from each other. Looking at Ben now, the good memories had started to resurface again, and she wanted to leave it that way.
Danielle refolded the list and pulled the videocassette Hershel Giott had provided from her pocket. “Quid pro quo, Inspector,” she said, and handed it to Ben.
His eyes bulged, scarcely believing she had managed the feat.
“It can’t leave the building and it can’t be copied,” she continued, recalling Giott’s conditions.
“I’ll have to watch it here, then.”
“That can be arranged,” Danielle told him.
* * * *
A
pair of quick phone calls allowed her to reserve one of the National Police’s four video labs, located on a subbasement level. In order to access that secure level, Danielle had to get Ben a pass with a high security clearance programmed into a bar code. With that and her identification card, they were finally permitted access to the video lab.
“Now let’s see what we’ve got here,” Danielle said, and moved for a videocassette recorder built into a NASA-like control panel.
Ben marveled at the level of technology around him in the cubicle-sized room. Since he had returned to the West Bank from Detroit, he had forgotten how much modern police work had come to depend on hightech equipment like this. It made him nostalgic as well as jealous, considering a simple computer was a rare commodity in Jericho, especially one allocated to the police.
Danielle popped the tape in and the VCR swallowed it. Instantly one of three twenty-seven-inch television screens before them came to life, then filled with a shot encompassing the front of Nazir Jalabad’s narrow home. Several seconds passed before a figure walked down the sidewalk in front of his house.
“Stop the tape!”
Danielle froze the screen. “Is that her?”
“I don’t know. Go back a little.”
She rewound until the shape was centered on the screen. “Hold on while I enhance this. ...”
Using a computer mouse, she maneuvered a red circle about so it enclosed the general area of the figure’s head. Danielle pressed a button and the next effect was similar to a camera zooming in for a close-up.
Ben continued to watch as a face filled almost the entire screen. He removed the picture of Leila Fatuk from his pocket and compared the two. The picture was faded, grainy and washed-out, but there was no doubt of the identity.
“That’s her.”
“Let’s go forward again.”
And with that Danielle worked the console. The red circle disappeared and Leila Fatuk returned to being a dark shape walking toward the edge of the screen. Disappointed, Ben had begun to think she was going to walk out of the frame, when something made her stop and retreat slightly.
The front end of a car appeared in the scene. Two people lunged from inside it and swallowed the girl in their bulk, dragging Leila Fatuk out of the frame toward the rear of their car.
“Can we get better shots of those two men?” Ben asked.
Danielle rewound and played the scene again in slow motion. The closer of the men who had grabbed Leila Fatuk had his back to the camera, but the face of the other was in plain view. Danielle planted the red circle over it and clicked on the mouse again. Seconds later that face, made ominous by the long dark shadows cast across it, filled the screen, enlarged enough to clearly reveal that one of the man’s eyes was sealed shut by scar tissue. The socket was empty and recessed behind it.
“Not the prettiest face I’ve ever seen,” Danielle commented. “Recognize him?”
Ben stood up, came right up to the screen as if he intended to introduce himself. “No,” he said distantly. “I’m going to need a hard copy of this.”
Danielle shrugged to herself “Well, my superior never said I couldn’t make a copy of an individual frame. ...” And she double-clicked on the mouse. “It’ll take a few minutes.”
“Can you try for the license plate?”
Danielle waited until the proceed command replaced working on the LED readout, then worked the mouse about on maximum magnification. “Sorry, the camera was pointed too high to catch any of the figures.”
“What about the color?”
Danielle zoomed in on a single corner of the plate the camera had caught. “White with green numerals.”
“Palestinian,” said Ben.
The hard copy of the abductor’s face churned out of a laser printer perched on a table against the side wall.
* * * *
CHAPTER 25
A
fter Ben left, Danielle began the arduous task of using the list of suspected Palestinian smugglers he had acquired for her to compile a list of possible suspects. The National Police database, networked as it was with Shin Bet’s, contained the files of every Palestinian ever incarcerated in an Israeli jail or detention center. Almost invariably, these files would include fingerprints.
Danielle intended to cross-reference the prints lifted from Hyram Levy’s shop with those of all Palestinians on the Israeli database in the hope that any name revealed would match one from the list Ben Kamal had provided. She gave the massive undertaking of sorting through years of files to a computer technician, who promised to get to it as soon as he could. Then Danielle returned to her office to set about finding the third man she felt certain was in grave danger:
David Wollchensky.
According to the files she was able to access, Wollchensky’s exploits following his retaliation for the murder of Jacob Rossovitch made him a hero in every sense of the word. He had led an elite group of commandos in a parachute drop behind Egyptian lines in the war of 1956. He had commanded a force of troops that helped take the Sinai in 1967. And he had overseen the defensive line that had repelled the initial Arab attacks from the Golan Heights in 1973.
Wollchensky’s entire military career was marked by assignments no one else wanted. Inevitably, he volunteered for and received the most dangerous commands where the percentage of casualties was likely to be the highest. But final tally of those casualties seldom exceeded figures for troops on much more mundane lines, as if Wollchensky was able to will the same determination and heart he possessed, so evident in the tales told her by Pearlman and Giott, into his troops. True to form, defeat became no more an option for them than it was for him.
According to everything Danielle read, Wollchensky had progressed beyond hero to legend. A number of his campaigns and operations still came up in formal Israeli military training. Danielle studied each of his files, waiting for one to reveal his current position, residence, and phone number. The problem was that every scrap of information she was able to access on Wollchensky ended in 1976, as if his very existence had ended there. He hadn’t died, or been wounded or reassigned, nor had he retired. He had simply disappeared.
Danielle was baffled, left with an Israeli war hero who hadn’t been seen or heard from in almost twenty-five years. She switched to another menu and logged on to the files of the major Israeli newspapers, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Mareev. If government files had stopped following David Wollchensky, it didn’t mean the press had too.
Apparently, though, th
ey had. Her search did not uncover a single mention of him in any of the papers from 1976 on. David Wollchensky, by all indications, had ceased to exist, and unless he happened to be listed in the phone book, Danielle had no idea now of how to go about finding him.
Suddenly she shivered.
Of course, what was I thinking?
Danielle realized she had something much better than a phone book:
Hyram Levy’s bills for the past several months!
If he had called Pearlman on so many occasions, it stood to reason he also would have called Wollchensky. And she seemed to recall a number of calls made to overseas exchanges. They hadn’t attracted much of her attention at first because she was much more interested in the most frequently called numbers, all inside Israel. Beyond that, the calls located outside the country were not identified by either person or address.
Excited, Danielle extracted the folder in which she had placed Levy’s phone records from her top desk drawer and opened it.
The folder was empty.
* * * *
CHAPTER 26
T
hey wouldn’t let you keep the tape this was pulled from,” Captain Wallid said regretfully, looking up from the uneven picture of Leila Fatuk’s abductor.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Ben told him.
“You realize we have no firm evidence without it.”
Ben took back the picture of the one-eyed man from his superior officer. “We need to find the man in this picture, Captain.”
Wallid ran his teeth over his lower lip. “That would require us to make the investigation official.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“With you in charge.”
“A chance I’m willing to take.”
“Assuming I am, as well.” Wallid seemed to be weighing the prospects. “And just how exactly would you propose we proceed?” he asked non-committally.
“Intensive distribution of his likeness through all the West Bank, for one thing. Alert the other Palestinian security agencies, for another.”
“Can I see that picture again, Inspector?”
Ben handed it across the desk to Wallid.
“Difficult to get a firm identification based only on this.”
“It’s all we have right now.”
“And it could cause significant complications. The request for such an alert would have to be signed by me. That means the responsibility will be mine, should anyone identify this man erroneously.”
“He has a rather distinctive look.”
“All the same, you are suggesting that I recommend dedicating a significant amount of manpower to a case most would rank considerably low on our list of priorities.”
“You have children, Captain?” Ben asked Wallid.
“Yes. Three. Haududallah.”
“You go home from here, secure in the knowledge they will be waiting for you, safe and sound. It is a terrible thing to come home and find that not to be the case. You can’t know, because you have not experienced it. But I have, and I can tell you that never since that time have I slept straight through the night.”
Captain Wallid simply sat there.
“How many mothers and fathers in the West Bank are facing that same fate already? How many more will follow them unless we act now?”
Wallid scribbled a note on a scratch pad. “I am going to allow this picture to be distributed through every Palestinian police headquarters both here and in Gaza. I do not want officers carrying it around, trying to match up faces. I do not want it posted all over our cities. Agreed?”
Ben nodded.
* * * *
I
’m sorry it’s not Armani, Colonel.”
Colonel al-Asi held the tie Ben had purchased for him in Jerusalem at arm’s distance, scrutinizing it under the light.
“The clerk said it was a Zegna,” Ben continued. “The next best thing.”
Al-Asi looked genuinely pleased. “I quite agree.” He stood up and moved to a seascape print covered in glass that made it an adequate mirror. Then he stripped off the tie he had donned that morning and began to knot the Zegna in its place. “The Israelis were pleased with the list of smugglers we came up with for them?”
“Very.”
Al-Asi looped the larger side of the tie around the smaller. “You haven’t mentioned the tape they were supposed to provide in return.”
“It was enlightening.”
“What you expected?”
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
Al-Asi tightened the knot and slid it upward. “That is one of your great strengths, Inspector. You are able to control your expectations.”
“I’ve learned not to set them too high.”
“All the more reason why you should consider coming to work for me.”
“I’m afraid I’d find the work . . . tiring.”
“At least there’s plenty of it, easily enough to keep you from making airline reservations anytime soon.” Al-Asi turned from the glass. “What do you think?”
“It goes well with that suit.”
“You know, I believe you’re right.”
Ben handed him a copy of the picture of Leila Fatuk’s abductor. “The Israelis were able to lift this off the tape.”
“I don’t know him,” al-Asi responded curtly after inspecting it.
“There’s something else. The bombing suspect they have in custody. The Israelis would like to know whether he is truly Hamas.”
“What does the suspect say?”
“His story is typical.”
“So is his file: Recruited from the Tukarim refugee camp several months ago. Two brothers, both dead. Minimal training. No brain. The perfect suicide bomber.” The colonel gave Ben a sharper look. “Why would they doubt he was really Hamas?”
“The Israelis are of the opinion that the Tel Aviv attack was not random, that there was a specific target.”
“Israelis plural or singular?”
“My contact,” Ben conceded.
“Your female friend again.”
“Yes.”
Al-Asi went back to the seascape and began checking his new tie once more. “You have good taste, Inspector, in more than just fashion.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 27
B
en found Fayed Kabir, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of finance, on the site of the lavish villa he was building on the eastern edge of Jericho. He had purchased a pair of abandoned, run-down houses with a view of the palm trees, banana groves, and even the Jordan River only to demolish them in order to build his new home. Kabir’s rationale, and the rationale of other Palestinian officials with similar projects under way, was the need to be close to the Authority headquarters.
The appointment of Kabir, a member of the political wing of Hamas, had been meant to placate the more militant elements of the movement. Whether it had or not was difficult to say. But it had obviously suited Kabir quite well.
Ben didn’t particularly care about Kabir’s politics. Nor did he care how Captain Wallid would respond should he find out that Ben was pursuing yet another unauthorized investigation. What mattered to him was the fact that Kabir had been one of the last, if not the last, person Zaid Jabral had interviewed. And if Kabir could shed any light on what had led to Jabral’s murder, then the risk was well worth it.
Kabir was a tall, thin man with a perpetual stoop caused by a childhood bout with meningitis—not a beating endured in an Israeli prison, as was often reported. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Inspector,” he greeted.
Ben shook his hand and noted the thin film of sawdust coating the man’s clothing. Kabir immediately turned his attention back to the heavy equipment flattening and clearing the last of his land. Wood was stacked up in huge piles covered by plastic that flapped in the breeze off the Jordan River. Bags of cement waited to be mixed and poured to form the villa’s base.
“Can you believe this?” Kabir asked, shaking his head. “Months behind sched
ule, months! I hired an American construction company that retained an all-Palestinian work crew. Then the Israelis canceled the Americans’ visas and told their company to send them home. Can you imagine?”
“Terrible luck.”