by By Jon Land
“There is one exception.”
“What’s that?”
“Information.”
“That is what you want, Pakad Danielle Barnea?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of information?”
“Smuggling.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place.” He pulled another of Havana’s best from a suit jacket that looked like a linen sheet with arms. “But try a cigar first. It’s a Cohiba Siglio. Perfectly aged and very mellow.”
Danielle eased the end into her mouth, let Sabi light it for her. Puffed a few times.
“Not bad, eh, Pakad Danielle Barnea?”
“I don’t have much to compare it to.”
“Then you’ll have to trust me, won’t you? Shouldn’t be a problem since here we are, two new friends sharing a smoke.”
“My business here doesn’t concern you.”
“If it involves Haifa, it concerns me.”
“Not directly,” Danielle said pointedly.
Sabi smiled, looking as though he had swallowed a football and now had laces for teeth. “Very good. I like you, Pakad Danielle Barnea. Especially if we have no trouble between us.”
“We have none.”
“That is good.” Sabi leaned as far forward as his bulk allowed. “Now, what kind of smuggling are you interested in?”
“Children.”
Sabi stopped puffing and eyed her questioningly.
“Palestinian children are being kidnapped and handed over to Israeli middlemen. I believe those middlemen are then smuggling them out of the country.”
“Via Haifa?”
“Is there anywhere else?”
“Not really. We are two professionals sitting here sharing more than an ashtray, eh, Pakad Danielle Barnea? We must keep everything between us in the open. For instance, I trust you are not accusing me of having something to do with such an operation.”
“Not at all. I assured you of that before.”
“That is good. I’m a father, you know. Many children, both Jew and Palestinian ... A few Turkish, one Egyptian I believe, even an American. I would hate for someone to think that badly of me.”
Danielle puffed her cigar, recalling the day her father finally let her smoke one of his as a teenager, after having let his sons do the same. Finally she spoke. “I thought you might share my concern.”
“My concern, Pakad Danielle Barnea, is that you are describing something I have never heard of.”
“I think a rival of yours may be involved.”
“I have no rival.”
“What about Al Safah?”
Sabi reared his head back for a throaty laugh that made the flesh of his midsection ripple and quiver. “You have not come to Haifa looking for him, I hope. You wouldn’t be the first, you know. People have been hunting Al Safah for years. Many of them stop here. I send them different places, pretend I am terrified by the mere mention of his name. And when they get there, someone I have waiting sends them somewhere else. We have a good time. Once we kept a writer looking for six months.”
“I take it you don’t believe Al Safah exists.”
“And I take it you believe he is the one behind your missing children.”
“I’m considering the possibility.”
“I always heard he ate his victims, left their bones behind in their beds.”
“We haven’t found any bones left.”
“Perhaps Al Safah’s appetite has grown over the years, eh, Pakad Danielle Barnea?” Sabi laughed heartily again at his own joke. “What’s the matter? You don’t think I’m funny?”
“I don’t think missing children are funny.”
Sabi sat back in the booth. Danielle could hear the leather creak from the strain as it receded, conforming to his shape. She could see him thinking, trying to size her up. Finally he pointed his smoldering Cohiba Siglio cigar across the booth.
“You know something, Pakad Danielle Barnea?”
“What?”
“I like you. Few people can come in here, sit in this booth, and tell me something I don’t already know. In Haifa, I know everything.” The tone of his voice changed. “But I don’t know anything about children being smuggled out under my nose. This I don’t like. So I’m going to look into it. Mish mushkeleh. No problem. I’m going to look very hard. I will probably find you are mistaken.”
“I hope so.”
“But if I find you are not mistaken, I am going to call you. I am going to call you and together we will deal with the bastards behind this. And should we run into Al Safah, we will end his legend once and for all. What do you say to that, Pakad Danielle Barnea?”
Sabi wedged the cigar back into his mouth, and Danielle puffed right along with him.
* * * *
CHAPTER 48
D
anielle had just unlocked the door to her car parked a block away from the restaurant when a dark sedan pulled up alongside her, stopping. She swung fast, gun whipped from her belt.
“Get in,” said Harry Walls from the driver’s seat. “Come on, hurry!”
Danielle relocked her car and climbed into the sedan. Walls drove off as soon as she had closed the door behind her, checking the rearview mirror repeatedly. She remembered him fondly from their training in the Sayaret: someone who was always there for her, always with a smile.
But Walls wasn’t smiling today.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded. His taut biceps and forearms flexed against the steering wheel, the lean muscles of his face stiffening to the point where his mouth barely seemed to move when he spoke.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If you don’t, you’re a bigger fool than I am. What are you into here?”
“This is about the man I asked you to identify,” she realized.
His eyes blazed at her from the driver’s seat. “You’re damn right it is, and somebody’s going to catch hell for it!”
“What are you—”
“You sent me to check out one of our own men!”
Something heavy sank in Danielle’s stomach as she pictured the gaunt man who had jabbed a poker into Ibrahim Mudhil’s eye and later visited her in the hospital.
“He’s Mossad, goddamn it! I ran with his file and ended up in our own backyard. And I did it sub rosa. Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea what that means?”
“I didn’t know!”
“His name is Esteban Ravel, a South American Jew who immigrated in 1985. Formerly of the Paraguayan secret police. Strictly a black bag operator. Likes to get his hands dirty. In Paraguay, he was the man they sent when someone was getting out of hand.Nothing was beneath him: women, children, torture. Would you like to hear why he left Paraguay?”
Danielle didn’t say yes, but Walls continued anyway.
“A general, a rival to the country’s president, was allegedly planning a coup. He was guarded twenty-four hours a day by dozens of soldiers. No one outside of his own people had even seen him for weeks.” Walls stopped and swallowed hard. “They found the general in bed one morning with his throat cut. Nobody knows how Ravel got in. Nobody knows how he got out. Even the security cameras didn’t pick up a thing.”
Walls screeched around a corner, eyes still darting back and forth from the rearview mirror.
“This guy’s a fucking ghost, Danielle. You can’t mess around with somebody like this. How in the hell did you even obtain his picture?”
“My God . . .”
“Talk to me!”
“Stop the car.”
“Danielle—”
“Let me out!”
Walls screeched to a halt on a side street running uphill, pinning Danielle’s door too close to a parked car to open. “Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on!”
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“Listen to me, you can’t fuck with this guy. Whatever Ravel’s done, whatever you’re investigating him for, there are ways we can hand
le it. Channels.”
“Forget channels. We’re way past that.”
“Ravel’s a stone killer! If he finds out somebody’s—”
“Ravel’s a lot more than a killer. Check that black bag of his, Harry; he’s got plenty of surprises inside.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Pull up and let me out.”
Walls didn’t move. “You don’t go after a man like this, whatever he’s done, especially by yourself. We need to handle this in-house. I need to bring you in.”
“To Mossad?”
“To people who can help. Ravel’s not one of our regulars. He’s a specialist they might be willing to pull, if you tell what you know.”
Danielle slammed open her door and tried to squeeze herself through. Walls lunged over, grabbing her arm. Danielle latched a hand onto his wrist and twisted, felt something give. Walls grunted in agony and pulled the hand away.
Danielle smashed the window with her elbow. “I don’t know anything! That’s the problem. Maybe I will soon, but I don’t now.”
Walls was cradling his now trembling hand. “Just let me help you.”
Danielle hit the window again and the glass broke away along the fracture lines left by her first strike. “You want to help me? Then listen: Ravel is connected to something that may go back fifty years. Back to men who have been heroes in this country longer than we’ve been alive, back to the time of our fathers. And now, for some reason, somebody wants them dead. You want to help me? Go back to your files and dig up everything you can on Al Safah.”
“Al Safah?”
“It means ‘the Butcher.’ “
“What else does it mean?”
Danielle started to ease herself out backward through the window, knocking the stubborn remnants aside. “That’s what I need to find out.”
And then she was gone.
* * * *
CHAPTER 49
I
wasn’t aware that Interpol conducted criminal investigations, Superintendent Faustin,” Ben said, after al-Asi had ushered the two of them into his office at the Palestinian Authority building. Neither had taken a chair. “I was under the impression it was no more than a records clearinghouse that collates and communicates information from one country’s police to another’s.”
“There you have it then,” Faustin told him. “I have come to the West Bank to gather records for future collating and communicating.”
“You shoot and fight pretty well for a clerk.”
“Gathering records can be more dangerous than most realize,” Faustin said, not varying her tone at all. Standing, she was almost as tall as Ben was: five foot ten, at least. Bands of lean, sinewy muscle were clearly visible beneath her tight-fitting black slacks and shirt. Her hair was ink black too, cut and layered so short that it made her look even taller. Faustin’s complexion was a combination of tones, not quite dark enough to make her Semitic, but too dark to be simply European. Her cheekbones were high and sharply defined. Her small, tight mouth looked as though it were a stranger to smiling. “It pays to be cautious.”
“Deadly would be the way I’d describe it.”
“When you’re in the business of gathering records some don’t want you to have, things tend to get dangerous.”
“Records on what?”
“Records on whom, actually, in this case: Al Safah.”
Ben and Colonel al-Asi exchanged a wary glance.
“Then,” Ben started, “what would indeed be closer to the truth.”
“Make no mistake about it, Inspector. Al Safah is a man.”
“If he really exists.”
“Oh, he exists all right,” Faustin said, her voice chilling in its certainty and matter-of-factness. Her accent defied easy recognition. Ben thought at first there was a French base to it, then changed his mind to German before finally settling on English learned young outside the United States and England. “And not just in Palestine either. He exists in dozens of other countries. Always the same man, always the same deeds, the same methods; only the name is different.”
“I get the point, Superintendent.”
“Do you? Few others have over the years. Even my superiors continue to doubt Al Safah’s existence despite the ‘records’ I have already accumulated for them.”
“So you came to Palestine.”
“To obtain indisputable proof.”
“And what would that be?”
“Al Safah himself: he’s here. At least he has left the warmest trail I’ve been lucky enough to find. I’m going to trace it back to him. And I’m going to get him.”
There was a resolve in Faustin’s voice that Ben found eerie and unnerving. He had known plenty of determined people before. He had known plenty of single-minded people. But this woman was operating on a level so intense Ben felt uncomfortable being around her.
The intensity showed foremost in her eyes, which were as black as her clothes and hair. They were wide and deep-set and never seemed to blink, as if afraid to lose their focus. Distrustful eyes. The eyes of someone who wanted no one looking in.
“Al Safah would not have remained a legend this long if he left any trail at all,” Ben said finally.
“I know that better than anyone. There’s never anything direct. But I’ve uncovered pieces that seem especially pronounced right in your backyard, Inspector.”
“The missing Palestinian children,” Ben realized.
“His approach here is especially bold. I would venture to say he has little faith in your investigative capabilities.”
“Then he’s in for a surprise, isn’t he?”
Faustin shrugged, yet seemed to accept Ben’s words. “In the past five days, you’ve gotten closer to Al Safah than any other local authority I have ever encountered.”
“And you know that, of course, because you’ve been following me.”
Faustin nodded. “Colonel al-Asi has been gracious enough to keep me updated on your progress.”
Al-Asi shrugged. “The superintendent came to see me the morning after the incident in the butcher shop. She requested that I not say anything until she was ready to approach you.”
”What took you so long?” Ben asked her.
”I’ve gotten close myself, but Al Safah and his henchmen always pull back before I can make my move. I figured I’d take my chances with you.”
“Assuming I wouldn’t concern them enough to pull back.”
“You and the entire Palestinian investigative apparatus. Al Safah has staked his claim here in Palestine for the time being. That is how he operates, Inspector,” Faustin continued, almost emotionlessly, as if these were words she had spoken too often before. “That is how he avoids detection and hides behind the myth of a legend. Here for a while, then he will move into another country. Always varying the pattern. Resisting any of our attempts to outmaneuver him. I honestly don’t think he knows what his next step is going to be until he takes it, so how can we?”
”But it’s always children, mostly young girls, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no.”
”What do you mean?”
”It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Al Safah is known for what he wishes to be known as: a monster who steals children in the night. The name they gave him in France translates to ‘Taker of Young Souls.’ In Russia they call him Maniak, which means ‘monster.’ It’s pretty much the same everywhere else. Fear keeps anyone from looking any deeper, fear and ignorance.”
“And what would they find if they did look deeper?”
”The same thing I have, I imagine.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell the colonel and me what that is, do you?”
Faustin took one step toward him. “I’d rather show it to you, Inspector. Tonight.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 50
A
security guard stopped Danielle as soon as she signed in upon entering National Police headquarters.
“I have orders to esc
ort you upstairs to the Rav Nitzav’s office the moment you arrived, Pakad.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I’m afraid it is,” he retorted stiffly.