by By Jon Land
“So long as I’m not around when they are found, things can be squared. Take my advice and leave too, for your own sakes.”
“Not until I’ve seen what’s on that ship,” Danielle said adamantly.
Ben and Mathilde Faustin looked at each other.
“What ship?” Faustin was the first to ask.
Danielle stood up. “I’m going to board her. You can join me if you want.”
Faustin locked a hand on Danielle’s elbow when she tried to pass. The two women held stares, neither about to give.
Ben approached as Sabi disappeared into the fog. “The dead men are both Israelis,” he told Danielle. “We watched them take delivery of two Palestinian girls who walked out of refugee camps.”
“The ship,” she realized.
“It’s how they must get the missing children out of the country,” Ben said. “That’s why they brought the girls here.”
“And we were following them,” Faustin interjected, still having not let go of Danielle’s arm. “We had them.”
Danielle glared into the taller woman’s eyes. “The ship is called the Lucretia Maru. It’s docked at the end of the pier.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 56
Y
ou’re welcome to join me on board,” Danielle said staunchly, after both she and Ben had repeated the paths that had led them here. She stood eye to eye with Mathilde Faustin, neither about to back off.
“No,” Ben argued, maneuvering himself between the two women. “Sabi was right. We should get out of here while we still can.”
The Lucretia Maru was docked two hundred yards away from where the gunfight had ended just minutes before. The dock was already swarming with Israeli police and army officials, both having arrived at approximately the same time. The harbor was coming alive in the fog, which still provided sufficient camouflage for Danielle, Ben, and Faustin to slip away toward the cover of the ships bobbing in their berths. They had stopped just before the Lucretia Maru, hidden from the throngs of police investigating the scene but able to easily keep track of their presence by following the sweep of their flashlights.
Danielle shook her head. “I can’t do that. I can’t leave until I’ve seen what’s on board that ship.”
“You already know what you’ll find,” Faustin said. “We told you.”
“I have to see for myself. I have my reasons, believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe you. The gunfight will have already made whoever’s on board suspicious. If you’re caught, it will compromise my mission.”
“I don’t give a shit about your mission.”
Ben eased himself closer to Danielle. “It’s my mission too now, Pakad. We didn’t realize it at first, but it all fits. I was looking for missing children; you were after the killer of the man involved in making them disappear.”
“You really think that’s all there is to this?” Danielle posed.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Maybe, but it’s not even close to the whole truth.” She looked toward Ben. “Levy’s contact, the man in the picture who blinded Ibrahim Mudhil, is Esteban Ravel, a contract killer who’s got even his fellow agents in Mossad running scared.”
“A Mossad agent was involved in smuggling children?”
“Like I told you,” Faustin interjected. “Governments are always involved, or at least people well placed within them.”
“Ravel was involved through Levy,” Danielle said finally, “and he’s my number one suspect in Levy’s murder. But Hyram Levy wasn’t killed because he was smuggling children. He was killed because something terrified him two months ago and somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t tell anyone else what it was.”
Ben thought of Zaid Jabral’s ghost coaxing him to search for more, to put all the facts he had uncovered together. Could whatever Jabral had discovered be the same thing that led to Levy’s death?
“Whatever you’re looking for, you won’t find it on that ship,” Faustin insisted.
“Maybe I’ll find Al Safah for you.”
“Only his work.”
“Close enough.”
Danielle started to slip away, but Faustin’s voice chased her. “They’re going to pull your bullets out of the Israeli you shot back there, another rather well-connected man much like this Ravel, unless I miss my guess.”
Danielle stopped and turned back toward Faustin.
“You’ve given them what they need to destroy you,” Faustin continued.
Danielle looked briefly from her to Ben. “They’ve already got more than enough.”
* * * *
D
anielle waited until there was only one seaman left patrolling the freighter’s deck before covering the final stretch through the fog. The Lucretia Mam rode high in the water, indicating a light cargo for a ship her size. From what Sabi had been able to tell her, though, the freighter was manned by a skeleton crew at best. That probably accounted for why so few seamen had come topside in the aftermath of the battle, alerted not by the sound of gunshots so much as by the approaching sirens,
The last seaman on deck was no longer visible when she walked up the gangway. Approaching the end of the gangway, she could see the deck guard through the fog, smoking a cigarette. No way she could just walk onto the ship without being seen, so Danielle nimbly hoisted herself over the rail and grabbed hold of the rope truss that extended along the freighter’s starboard side. She shinnied sideways until a quick peek over the gunwale revealed that the guard’s view of her was blocked from this angle by a decaying chimney, then began to climb the rest of the way.
* * * *
C
ome on,” Faustin urged Ben as Danielle lifted herself over the gunwale onto the deck of the Lucretia Maru.
”And leave her?” he returned defiantly, holding his ground.
“It’s the ship we can’t leave, Inspector.”
”What are you talking about?”
”When the freighter departs Haifa, we’ve got to stay on her trail.”
“Follow her at sea?”
Faustin Faustin nodded. “First thing in the morning, I’ll find a captain to be ready as soon as she pulls out. You don’t have to join me.”
“Yes, I do. You’re after Al Safah, and I’m after the children this all-encompassing network you describe has taken. One way or another, we’ll both find what we’re looking for in the same place. I’ll just have to call in. Speak to my superiors.”
Faustin shook her head. “Haven’t you learned anything tonight?”
”What are you talking about?”
“Corruption, payoffs, bribes. You call in to report what you’re doing, and the Lucretia Maru will never reach another port. Al Safah will sink her and then come after us.”
”Al-Asi will listen. He might even be able to help us.”
Faustin’s face had taken on the flat empty expression that tolerated no argument, the face of a person who has seen so much she no longer has patience for those with a normal view. “You want to come with me, Inspector, we leave with the freighter and nobody hears about it.”
Ben gazed at the deck of theLucretia Maru, where Danielle had already disappeared from sight. “I’m not going anywhere until Chief Inspector Barnea comes back.”
”Suit yourself.”
“What’s she going to find on board, Superintendent?”
Faustin chose not to answer him.
* * * *
D
anielle crept to an open hatch and descended a stairway into the bowels of the ship. The air smelled stale, almost rancid. The coppery scent of baked rust mixed with a stink like that of sour earth. The ship creaked and groaned as the currents moved it slightly on its moorings.
The lower deck felt twenty degrees hotter than above, with the stench of dried sweat and urine added to the others. Danielle listened for a sound to tell her where to head next, but none came. She moved on, sliding her feet to keep her heavy soles from drawing any sound from the
steel floor that was peeling layers of paint like sunburned flesh. The walls were moist and sweating warm driplets that rolled to the floor to form more rust someday.
Danielle stopped suddenly, alerted by a faint sound. A moaning, or a whimpering maybe, that seemed to be coming from a hold just ahead. She reached it and pressed her ear against the sweating steel. The moaning was interspersed with whispers passed between what sounded like women. Danielle lowered her hand to the latch and tried to open the hold.
Nothing. It was locked.
She was considering how to break the latch off when a rattling sound from farther down the passageway froze her. Someone was coming, making no effort to be silent.
She needed to get out of sight fast. Knowing she couldn’t risk the time it would take to try the latches on the other doors she had already passed, Danielle retreated behind the stairs she had just climbed down. She ducked beneath them and crouched as low as she could.
A woman was coming straight for her, struggling with a small wooden crate loaded with bottles that jiggled against each other. The woman stopped briefly to better her grip and moved on, without ever looking Danielle’s way. Danielle watched her for a moment and caught a glimpse of the bottles.
Not ordinary bottles, but. . .
She told herself she was imagining things, that she hadn’t gotten a good enough look to be sure. When she started back down the passageway, though, her stride was quicker, a little more bold. She passed the hatch she had tried to open and followed the passage around to the right.
A black steel door lay directly before her, this one unlatched and open a foot or so. Danielle’s heart was racing as she reached the hold and pushed the door open just enough to let her squeeze through sideways.
A shriek pierced the silence and Danielle braced herself against the wall, grazing the door and forcing it further inward. Light splashed inside from the corridor in thin shafts like tiny spotlights. Danielle followed their path, looked down.
Went cold.
* * * *
Y
ou believe me now,” Mathilde Faustin said after Danielle had described to them what she had seen on board the ship.
“What I believe doesn’t matter.”
Ben caught the forlorn, beaten tone in Danielle’s voice.
“There’s something I have to do,” she finished. “Someone I have to see.”
“Are you going to summon the authorities, Chief Inspector?”
Danielle didn’t even look at Faustin. “No, Superintendent, I’m not.”
“They’re right over there still. I’m sure they’d be most interested to hear what you have to say.”
“That’s not who I’m going to see.”
“The answers we seek are not always pleasant, are they, Chief Inspector?”
Danielle’s eyes flared upon her. “Leave me alone.”
Faustin planted herself between Danielle and the nearest walkway. “I can’t, you see, because if you send anyone else onto that ship, I lose the first chance I’ve ever had to put an end to this madness.”
“I don’t think you’re up to it.”
“I’m going with her, Danielle,” Ben said hesitantly.
Danielle cast him a sidelong glance, then looked back at Faustin. “I won’t get in your way, either of you. Now, get out of mine.”
For a long moment, neither woman moved. Then Ben eased Mathilde Faustin aside.
“Don’t go to your authorities, Chief Inspector,” Faustin said as Danielle walked stiffly past her. “This is not an Israeli problem.”
Danielle stopped and turned back. “That’s right. It’s my problem now.”
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 57
A
s always, Hershel Giott, commissioner of the National Police, rose shortly after sunrise. Careful not to disturb his still-sleeping wife, he padded softly into the hall for the stairs and descended to the first floor of the home in the Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar, where he had lived for twenty years.
A lamp switched on in the living room as he reached the foyer. Giott swung fast, feeling his heart skip a beat.
“Good morning, Rav Nitzav,” greeted Danielle Barnea from a chair set against the drawn blinds.
Giott reflexively tightened his bathrobe. “I wish I could say the same, Pakad, but it is difficult after finding an intruder in my house.”
“It had started to rain outside.”
“So you broke in.”
“Actually, I picked the lock—a skill not limited to black bag operatives from Mossad.”
“And this is how you are spending your suspension?” Giott said regretfully. “I had hoped you would have put your time to better use.”
“I have been, believe me.”
“I would have also expected you to show greater respect for someone who has always supported you.”
“Until yesterday.”
“That couldn’t be helped.”
“And that’s why I’m here, Rav Nitzav.” Danielle rose and walked slowly forward, stopping halfway between the chair and Giott. “I came to speak to you before I went anywhere else. I want to hear the truth from you.”
“What truth?”
“Let’s start with my hospital stay.”
Giott rolled his small eyes indifferently. “So we are back to that again. . . .”
“It never stopped bothering me. A man who appeared in my room. A man who said he could help me. A man sent by you through Hyram Levy. . . .”
“I warned you that—”
“A man named Ravel who works for Mossad. A former member of the Paraguayan secret police known for his brutality. An assassin who I believe is the man behind Levy’s murder. I want Ravel, and I think you can help me get him.”
Giott reached out and grasped the railing of the staircase with his right hand for support.
“Ravel has also been identified as part of a ring that smuggled children out of the West Bank. His association with Levy indicates the Engineer was involved, too, at a much higher level.” Danielle stopped and swallowed hard. “So what could Ravel have done for me? For what reason had you arranged for him to come to my room?”
Giott bent slightly at the knees.
“I couldn’t see the answer, I wasafraid to see the answer. But I saw something else last night that makes it impossible to turn away.” Danielle stepped into the foyer. “Look at me! Ravel came to offer me a baby. That’s it, isn’t it?”
* * * *
T
hey had been lined up in dilapidated cribs in the hold she had entered on board theLucretia Maru. The slivers of stray light sneaking in from the steel hall beyond caught their softly sleeping faces. The occasional whine or whimper rose, but for the most part the children were quiet, having just been fed with the formula bottles Danielle had recognized when the woman walked past her near the stairway.
That woman would be coming back any moment. Danielle knew she had little time.
How much she wanted to pick these babies up and comfort them, tell them everything would be all right. But that would be a lie. The truth, very likely, was they had been stolen or purchased to be sold in other countries to people desperate enough for a child to pay top dollar through any means of procurement available.
People like herself, Danielle realized with a chill.
Accustomed to the darkness now, Danielle edged closer to study the infants’ faces. It was difficult to determine nationality without much closer inspection. But any of the children against the right-hand wall could have passed for Israeli, or French, or American, or British—all of whom made up the most likely customers. She had started to move to the left when the sound of approaching footsteps made her shrink back against the wall.
The woman who had passed her lugging a carton of empty formula bottles entered the hold empty-handed, not seeming to notice the door was open more now than when she had left. The cover of that door kept her from noticing Danielle, and when she began a careful round from crib to
crib, Danielle slipped back into the corridor.
Danielle’s breath came in deep heaves. She had to lean against the fetid bulkhead for support.
Then, while retracing her steps back to the deck, she remembered Ravel and his shadowy offer.