by By Jon Land
Mudhil took the picture in his trembling hands. He gasped. His single eye gaped in terror.
“Who is he?”
Mudhil crushed the edges of the picture together. When he spoke, his voice was weak but flat. “The man who took my eye out with that hot poker.”
* * * *
D
anielle drove on through the mountains, her head starting to pound. The information was coming too fast for her to process, and what she did process made no sense.
Two men had been positively identified as being in Hyram Levy’s shop the day he was murdered, two men connected by an abduction ring that the Engineer himself was ostensibly involved in through a phantom named Al Safah. One of those men had paid an unannounced visit to Danielle in the hospital, sent by Levy as a favor to Commissioner Hershel Giott of the National Police. What could the man have wanted of her?
Everything was connected.
But nothing made sense.
“What’s his name?” she asked finally. “This man who took your eye out.”
“I don’t know. I never knew.”
“How were you paid?”
“In cash. On delivery.”
In the backseat, Ben kept glancing over his shoulder out into the stormy night. “What happened to the children after you dropped them off with your contacts?” he demanded.
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Let me phrase it a different way: Where were they taken?”
“I never asked, didn’t care.”
“None of these children were ever seen by their parents again.”
“No.”
“Never a ransom demand ...”
“Not from me.”
“... and nothing to do with revenge.”
“I don’t know the motive. I did what I was paid to do. They told me the kinds of children they were looking for. The rest was up to me.”
“Random selections?”
“Mostly.”
“For how many years?”
“A few. Several. Five or six, anyway.”
“You have been kidnapping children for five or six years?” Ben demanded, disbelievingly. “How many have you taken? How many families have you destroyed?”
“I don’t count.”
“Give me an estimate.”
“Between twenty and twenty-five.”
Ben could feel himself starting to quiver with rage and tried to calm himself with some deep breaths. “I’m going to ask you a few more questions, Mudhil. Your answers will determine whether I kill you or not.”
“I am dead anyway. Wherever I go, Al Safah will find me.”
“Did a parent ever give you a child willingly?” Ben asked, remembering the woman who denied her missing daughter had ever existed.
“For money, yes.”
“So you bought children as well,” Ben said, revolted.
“Sometimes, so long as they fit the specifications.”
“What about runaways from refugee camps who went with you of their own accord?”
“The least complicated operations of all.”
“Because they didn’t know what they were getting into. Because—”
Headlights pierced the heavy rain ahead of them, streaming through the jeep’s shattered windshield. Danielle twisted the wheel and felt for her pistol at the same time. Ben shoved Ibrahim Mudhil down to the floor and tried to steady his gun over the seat back.
The tires couldn’t hold the road through the rain and mud. The jeep skidded sideways across the road, headlights bearing down on it in the last instant before impact.
* * * *
CHAPTER 41
T
he onrushing vehicle screeched to a halt, tires acting like skates the last stretch of the way but stopping a yard from the jeep’s side. A passenger door flew open and Colonel Nabril al-Asi lunged out.
“What’s going on?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the rain. “What are you doing?”
Ben opened his window and leaned out. “We were attacked!” he shouted over a sudden burst of thunder. “Everyone else at the post is dead!”
Al-Asi stiffened. “Hal ‘arsat,” he sneered. “The bastards. . .”
“The bridge, Colonel, can we cross it?”
“It’s still impassable.”
“But can we cross it? They could be coming!”
Al-Asi and Ben gazed back down into Jordan. “We can try,” the colonel said. “Leave your jeep here, just like this. We’ll crowd into mine.”
“What’s happened? Where are my men?” Marash called out, sliding through the muck, his wounded arm pinned up in a makeshift sling.
“Get back inside, my friend,” al-Asi advised him.
Marash noticed the jeep’s condition. “Barrak Allah Feik ...”
Danielle and Ben hustled Ibrahim Mudhil into the other jeep. Marash squeezed up front with al-Asi and the Jordanian driver.
“How far are we from the bridge?” Ben asked.
“Twenty minutes in these conditions.” Al-Asi twisted sideways. “What happened back there? Who was it?”
“Mudhil claims it was someone called Al Safah.”
“Who?”
“Al Safah?” muttered Marash.
“I see you’ve heard of him.”
“My children still love to hear me tell the story my own father told me. The problem is that’s all Al Safah is—a story.”
“Let’s hope so,” Ben said, and left it at that.
* * * *
A
l-Asi helped Marash out of their jeep at the final checkpoint just before the Allenby Bridge.
“I expect you to return my vehicle tomorrow, my friend,” Marash said to him.
“You have my Mercedes as collateral.”
They embraced in the pouring rain before al-Asi rushed back to the jeep.
“You drive,” he told Danielle. Then, to both of them, “I have men waiting on the other side.”
“How did you know when we’d be crossing?” Ben asked.
“They’ve been waiting for hours now.”
“Someone you trust, obviously.”
“Your Captain Wallid,” al-Asi said noncommittally.
* * * *
I
t was a maddening drive, the wind forever on the verge of tipping the jeep over the side. The quarter-mile length was covered often in inches amid frantic stops and starts. The sway was terrifying, and the water that cascaded in sheets over them felt like ocean waves at high tide. The headlights and windshield wipers were for the most part useless.
Danielle leaned over the wheel, squinting to see well enough to keep them on the bridge roadway. Visibility worsened the closer they got to the center of the bridge to the point that she was driving almost purely on instinct. The West Bank was nothing more than a huge dark void on the other side. All Danielle could do was hold the wheel straight and steady against the determined efforts of the wind and water to twist them about.
Finally, a pair of high beams threw shafts of lights onto the bridge, illuminating the final stretch to the other side. Danielle headed the jeep directly at them, trying to keep her lights pointed into those facing her to hold the jeep on track.
The man behind the wheel of the car waiting for them outside the guard post on the West Bank side of the bridge backed up when she drew close, opening a path for Danielle to use. She slid to a stop, barely able to pry her fingers from the steering wheel because she had been squeezing it so hard.
“We must make all this worth it,” Colonel al-Asi said sharply before he stepped back out into the storm.
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Ben assured him.
* * * *
C
aptain Wallid took Ibrahim Mudhil into custody, promising around-the-clock surveillance on his holding cell. As politely as possible, Ben made it plain that Mudhil was being protected more than guarded.
“It’s after midnight,” al-Asi said to Danielle when it was just the three of them. “How are we to get you bac
k to Jerusalem?”
“She’ll be staying with me tonight,” Ben offered. “It makes the most sense.”
“Very well,” the colonel said. “Let me drop you.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 42
Y
ou should have asked me first,” Danielle said, sipping a piping hot instant coffee in Ben’s apartment.
“I knew what your answer would be.”
“How?”
“How often have you slept at home lately?”
“What makes you such an expert on my nighttime habits?”
“I was in your office, remember? It wasn’t too hard to figure out where you’d been sleeping. I am a detective, after all.”
The storm had let up, just a soft pattering against the windows now. Ben had turned on only a single light and the ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, casting long, rain-spotted shadows across the room.
They had both showered and changed, Danielle into Ben’s bathrobe while he washed her clothes in the ancient machine housed in the building’s basement. Ben kept checking his watch to see when he had to go down and flip her clothes into the dryer. In the meantime, he sat across from her in his chair, smelling the sweet scent of shampoo rising off her hair and trying not to let his stare linger too long on the healthy sheen the bath oil had given her skin. He would have been content to sit like this all night; if she fell asleep, he doubted he would move, would just watch over her until sunrise.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said suddenly.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“This is business—I think it might be anyway.”
“Then by all means, go ahead, Pakad.”
“It goes back to when I was in the hospital, after I lost the baby. A man I didn’t know came to my room and said there was a way he could help me. I was pretty groggy and didn’t pay much attention, but it seemed so strange I never really forgot about it.”
“What changed?”
“The man was identified as being with Hyram Levy the day he was murdered.”
Ben felt static rush up his spine. Gooseflesh prickled the hair on his arms.
“It was the same man who took Ibrahim Mudhil’s eye,” Danielle resumed.
Ben recalled the glimpse he’d gotten of the drawing. He moved to her on the couch but stopped short of reaching out, holding his ground as if a barrier had risen between them.
“Levy sent him after receiving a call from Commissioner Giott of the National Police.”
“Are you saying your superior is connected to Mudhil?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand—that’s what I’m saying.”
Danielle sipped some more of her coffee. She tried to imagine what it would be like now to be back in her apartment alone with the sounds she had come to dread and hate. The mere thought of it made her shudder. In spite of her exhaustion she knew she’d never have been able to sleep. She probably would have returned to her office instead, if Ben hadn’t extended his offer.
“Thanks for inviting me to stay,” she said finally.
“Don’t mention it.” But he was glad she had.
“It’s just that I haven’t liked being in my apartment for a while now. I didn’t realize how much until this case gave me an excuse to live out of my office.”
“No way to live.”
“The thing is I used to love living alone, being alone. Now it frightens me.”
“Since the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Makes sense.”
“How?”
Ben wondered if he had already said too much, but it was too late. “You weren’t expecting to be alone anymore.”
Danielle’s features sank. “I guess I knew that. Do you know I haven’t looked at my mail in over a week? I haven’t paid my bills. They keep calling me from the post office to pick up some parcels. The more I get into this case, the easier it gets to push everything else aside. Almost like I don’t care.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Your family?”
Ben nodded. “For months after they were killed. I lost track of the little things, just like you. I didn’t care anymore and there was no ‘almost’ about it. It didn’t matter if I was alone or not. I wasn’t really there when someone else was with me anyway.”
“That’s why you came back to Palestine.”
“When in doubt, go back home. And now I’m thinking about returning to the U.S.”
“Why?”
Ben hesitated. “There’s nothing here for me anymore. Things didn’t work out like I planned.”
“They seldom do.”
“I feel cheated. It’s gotten so I often forget why I came back in the first place.”
“You’re lucky to have a choice, somewhere else to go.”
“Not unless things prove different in Detroit.”
“Where do you think I should go?”
Here, Ben thought, but said, “You should have called me.”
“Some things you’ve got to bear alone.”
“Some things you can’t bear alone.”
“I wish you had come to see me.”
“I wish I had too. But I was angry, jealous.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Ben told her. “And neither do I. Unless you count living through history at the same time. After everything we did, everything we went through, I couldn’t go to a hospital in Jerusalem without a special pass.”
“Pointless,” Danielle agreed.
“It made me more than angry; it made me bitter. This world made it impossible for us to stay together because of who we were, even though we wanted to.” Ben hesitated. “You did want to, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“We had each other only as long as it suited the needs of our superiors, as long as we were working together to serve them.”
“We knew that when we started.”
“But then they lied to us, didn’t they? The peace process we had saved broke down. Things deteriorated, regressed. Makes me wonder why we bothered.”
She slid closer to him on the couch. “We’re both angry, Ben.”
He stared deeply into her eyes. “I’m angry because I didn’t know enough to say screw them and stay with you. Whatever it took.”
“I would’ve had to make sacrifices too. I’m not sure I was ready to do that. Even if we left this part of the world, nothing would change.”
“What about America?” Ben said, asking the question he had meant to ask eighteen months before. “For both of us.”
“Come on, neither of us was about to give up who we were to be together, and that’s what we would have had to do in the end. Our deepest dedications lie outside each other, always have, and once we were confronted by that again, we couldn’t make it work.” Her voice softened, quieted. “It isn’t just about being a Palestinian or an Israeli; it’s about how you and I defined ourselves, and those definitions are all wrapped up in the cultures we were born into.”
“Then why did it work for as long as it did?”
“Because for a while, with peace appearing to be a reality, the definitions we had lived by didn’t matter as much. When peace broke down, we were back where we started.”
“That I could have accepted,” Ben told her. “I had gotten used to living with sadness. But you showed me how to be happy again. You made me remember. And when you left, that made the return of the sadness almost impossible to bear.”
“When I left? I didn’t leave, Ben, and neither did you. Both of us just stayed where we were—that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You talk about what this has done to you. Have you thought about what it has done to me?”
“Maybe my child would have lived,” Ben said, instantly regretting it.
“And what would we have brought him up as? What if we had had him and then parted? My God, what if one of us died? Could the survivor have sufficiently filled the other half o
f his being?”