by Nick Carter
B'nai Megiddo, Yousef told me, was inspired by a group called Matzpen. Translation: the Compass. They think they're pointing in the right direction. The direction they're pointing is far left.
Matzpen has about eighty members, both Arabs and Jews, and most of them students. They want to see the state of Israel dissolved and replaced by a Communist form of government. They ran a guy for parliament on that idea and got nowhere at all. The fact that their candidate was in jail at the time, accused of spying for Syrian Intelligence, didn't add a lot to their chances.
Terror, however, isn't their style. Not so far. Mostly, they publish in Palestinian papers, aligning themselves with "Communists everywhere" which happens to include the Palestinian commandos. While they were running for office and trying to get their candidate freed, they went around speiling in local bars, hitting on places like El Jazzar Street where the living is hard and the siren song of their manifesto can sound like the lure of the Pied Piper.
And next thing you know, there's B'nai Megiddo. A bunch of frustrated angry kids who think "communism" just means "something for nothing." And not only that. It's also a way to blow off steam, break a few windows, bust a few jaws, and so establish the Better Way.
While we're on the subject, let's discuss the Better Way. There has to be one. There has to be a way to rule out poverty and dead-end slums, and hate and prejudice and all the other age-old evils. But Communist systems — with their purges and labor camps and regimentation, with their own kind of Yellow Brick Road illogic, with their rigid suppression and their king-like states — are not, if you ask me, providing the Better Way.
"And how are they connected with Al Shaitan?"
Yousef shook his head. "B'nai Megiddo? I'm not sure they are. At least not yet. Let me start at the start. I live a few blocks from El Jazzar, so it's easy for me to be in there often. I'm a Syrian, an artist. It's perfectly credible that I'd also be a revolutionary. So I talk party line and they talk to me too. Anyway, a few days before the Foxx kidnap, one of the guys there was talking big. He wanted Megiddo to buy a lot of guns, said he could pick up Kalashnikov rifles for twelve hundred pounds. That's three hundred dollars. Everybody got very excited.
"The thing is, this guy also pushes hashish. He's higher than clouds half of the time, so I thought this was maybe one of his pipe dreams. I said, "Will that money fall from the trees? Or do you plan to rob the vaults of the Hilton Hotel?" He told me no, he has a source of big money."
"And did he?"
"Who knows? It sounded like a lot of pie in the sky. He started talking about his brother who had a friend who was suddenly rich. His brother, he said, asked the friend where he got the money and the friend said he had a job lined up. The work involved a kidnap plan, and the payoff, he said, would be tremendous."
"And Megiddo was involved?"
"Don't jump to conclusions. As far as I know, no one was involved. No one's ever seen the brother or his friend. They live in Syria. Up in a village called Beit Nama. Just a few miles beyond the salient. When I tell you it sounded like pie in the sky I mean it was all a ladder of ifs. If the brother got in on the job, then he'd get Megiddo some work. And if Megiddo got in on the job, then they'd have the money for guns."
"And?"
"And I've seen no money and I've seen no guns and no one in Megiddo has bragged about a kidnap."
"And the guy who was shooting his mouth off about it?"
"Yes. There is that. The guy was murdered."
We were both quiet for a moment, except for the little wheels clicking in our heads.
"And you told this kidnap story to Robey."
He nodded. "Yes. As soon as I heard it."
"And when was the guy with the big mouth murdered?"
Yousef squinted at a spot on the air. "Wait a moment and I tell you exactly." The air-calendar flipped to a date. He snapped his fingers. "The twenty-fifth. Two days before Robey was killed. Four days before Leonard Foxx was returned. But no — to answer your next question — I don't know if there was any connection. I don't know if Robey even followed my lead."
I remembered what Benyamin had said about Robey. That he never paid off until he'd checked the information. "But he paid you?"
"Of course. The day he left town."
"Though, as far as you know, there was no guarantee that the group involved was Al Shaitan or the kidnap victim was to be Leonard Foxx."
He shook his head. "I tell Robey the truth. Whether or not it is useful truth is his business — not mine."
So Robey might have paid him in any case. Good faith. Goodwill.
"Do you know why Robey went to Jerusalem?"
Yousef smiled. "You don't understand. I gave Robey information. Not the other way around."
I smiled back. "It was worth a try." Something bothered me. "The brother's friend who was flashing the money…"
"Yeah. What about him?"
"He was flashing the money before the kidnap."
Yousef squinted. "So?"
"So a hired thug isn't paid before the action. At least nothing big."
Now we both stared at spots of air.
I turned to Yousef. "What was the name of the guy who was killed?"
"Mansour," he answered. "Khali Mansour. The brother, I believe, is called Ali."
"And the brother's still living up in Beit Nama?"
He shrugged. "If the brother's still living."
"Yeah," I said, "I see what you mean. Sometimes death can be contagious."
We arranged a place for me to send the money and Yousef called a friend who had a beat-up truck to come over and pick me up.
The friend was a Syrian but not an artist. He was, to be exact, a kind of a junk man — in the nineteenth-century sense of 'junk' — and the truck was filled with old clothes, dented pots, and a large, stained blue-striped mattress that kept pitching over on his shoulders as he drove. He'd turn around and curse it and punch it away and go on driving with the other hand. His name was Rafi, and when he dropped me off at the address I gave him, I wished him good fortune unto his seventh son.
He sighed and told me he had eight daughters.
Six
"Would you like some coffee?" It had been a long night. Coffee was probably a good idea. I said I would and she disappeared, leaving me alone in the usual Universal Modern living room. Brown striped sofa, glass tables, copy of a copy of a Barcelona chair.
Sarah Lavie took doorbells at midnight in perfect stride. In fact, I had a feeling she welcomed the intrusion. It seemed she wasn't trying for sleep these nights. The lights were on all over the apartment and a large needlepoint pillow cover-in-progress was lying where it dropped at the base of the chair, along with tangles of brightly colored wool. Music was playing, a pulsing bossa nova.
She came back with a pot and cups. "I didn't ask — do you take cream and sugar?"
"Sugar if you've got it."
She disappeared in a whirl of skirts. A colorful person, Sarah Lavie. All peasant-skirted and peasant-bloused with giant golden hoops in her ears. The outfit made me think of that paint store in Seattle. The one with the neon sign in the window: "If we don't have the color, it doesn't exist." Her hair was dark, almost black, pulled back severely, which suited her fine — it set off the fair, high-cheekboned face and the great big, lashy, almost black eyes. She was close to thirty and close to being what they call a real woman.
"So World sent you to take Jack's place." She handed me a bowl of sugar and a spoon.
"No small job, from what I'm told I hear he was good."
A small silence.
"There's another reason they sent me," I said "We'd like to know more about… why he died."
Her eyes slid quietly away from mine. She made a small, helpless shrug and then lapsed back into faraway silence.
I said, "I'd like to ask you a few questions. I… I'm sorry."
She looked back up and into my eyes. "I'm sorry" she said. "I didn't mean to act like a delicate flower. Go on. Ask your questions."
"Okay. First of all — do you know what land of a story he was working on?" I had to play along with Robey's cover. The girl either did or didn't know the truth. Most likely, it was both. She did and didn't know. Woman are pros at that kind of thing. They do and don't know when their husbands are cheating. They do and don't know when you're lying.
She was shaking her head. "He never told me about his work…" A slight lift at the end of the sentence, turning it into an unconscious question: Please tell me about his work."
I ignored the undertone. "Can you tell me anything about what he was doing. In general. Say, the week before he left."
Again she looked blank. "There were two nights he stayed out alone for dinner. Didn't get back till, oh, maybe midnight. Is that the kind of thing you mean?"
I said it was. I asked her if she knew where he'd gone those nights. She didn't. She said she never knew. She never asked. She colored slightly, and I thought I knew why.
"I doubt it was another woman," I told her.
She looked at me with a wry expression. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Really." She had to take her eyes away on the "really."
She sipped her coffee and put down the cup. "I'm afraid you'll find me a rather disappointing source of information. There's so little I knew about the rest of Jack's life. And it was part of our — well, 'bargain' — that I never tried to know." She'd been tracing the design on the cup with her finger. She did it again and then she said slowly, "I suppose I always knew it wouldn't last."
That last was an invitation to a conversation.
I asked what she meant.
"I mean, I wasn't very good at it. I knew his rules and I stuck to his rules, but I always wondered why are there rules?" Her eyes were like shiny searchlights on my face. They found nothing. They retreated to the cup. She shrugged, a practiced, graceful loser. "I was never sure. I was never really sure of anything. And Jack was so very sure of himself." She pulled at an earring and smiled wryly again. "A woman can never be sure of a man who's sure of himself."
"Did your mother teach you that?"
"Nope. Learned it all by myself. But I'm sure you're not here to learn about what I've learned about men. So ask your questions, Mr. MacKenzie."
I stopped to light a cigarette. Learning about a dead agent's girlfriend is the first thing I've learned to learn about. Is she smart enough to be an enemy agent? Ambitious enough to sell him out? Stupid enough to give him away? Or angry enough? I doubted Sarah was any of that But she wasn't sure of him. And that made her curious despite herself. And where a woman is curious, she's also likely to be incautious. Despite herself.
"We were talking about his last week here. Do you know anything he did — anyone he spoke to?"
She started to say no. "Well… wait. He did make a lot of long distance calls. I know because we… because I just got the bill."
"May I see it?"
She went over and rummaged through a desk and came back holding the telephone bill. I looked at it quickly. The calls were itemized. Beirut. Damascus. The numbers were listed. I said I'd like to keep it and shoved it my pocket. "His telephone book," I said. "Have you got it?" It was one of the things I'd come to get. The book could give me a line on his contacts. Without that line, I'd be working in the dark.
"N-no," she said. "It was in the box with the other things."
"What box?" I said. "With what other things."
"With his notes and papers. He kept them in the closet in a locked box."
"And what happened to the box?" I said slowly.
"Oh. The other American took it."
"The other American?"
"The other reporter."
"From World?"
"From World."
I'd started this round with a sinking feeling. The feeling was now in the sub-sub-basement.
"You wouldn't happen to know his name?"
She looked at me sharply. "Of course I do. I wouldn't just give Jack's things to a stranger."
"So what was his name?"
"Jehns," she said. "Ted Jehns."
I took a last drag on my cigarette and put it out slowly, slowly in the ashtray. "And when was this… Ted Jehns here?"
She was watching me quizzically. "Three or four days ago. Why?"
"No reason," I said quickly. "I was just curious. If Jehns comes around again, let me know, will you? A couple of things I'd like to ask him."
Her face relaxed. "Of course. But I doubt hell come around. He's in the Damascus office, you know."
I said, "I know."
I decided on another tack. "Aside from the papers that Jehns took, is there anything else of Jack's that's still here? How about the things he had with him in Jerusalem? Were they ever sent back?"
"They were. In fact, they arrived today. The hotel sent them. I've got the suitcase in the bedroom now. I didn't open it. I… I wasn't ready. But if you think it will help…"
I followed her into the bedroom. It was a big airy room with a tempest-tossed bed. She began to straighten the bed. "Over there," she pointed with her chin at a scuffed leather suitcase.
"Keys?" I said.
She shook her head. "Combination. The numbers are 4-11. My birthday."
"Your birthday?"
"It's my bag. Jack's fell apart."
I worked the combination and opened the bag. She'd finished with the bed. "Put it up here."
I lifted the suitcase and put it on the bed. She sat down next to it. I would have liked to tell her to leave the room. Not only so she wouldn't be over my shoulder but also because she was a damned attractive woman. And at the moment, a woman who needed to be held. I started going through Robey's belongings.
No papers. No gun. Nothing slipped in the lining of the bag. Which left the clothes. Jeans. Chinos. A couple of sweatshirts. A dark brown suit. A jacket. Boots.
Boots. Heavy boots. For the city of Jerusalem? I picked one up and looked at it closely, turning it over. There was orange dust clinging to the sole. I scratched it with my finger. Orange dust. And on tie bottoms of the chinos, orange dust. Robey had been someplace other than the city. He'd been on a plain. A plain that had chalky rust-colored rocks.
Sarah was watching me with puzzled alertness.
"Did you hear from Jack while he was away? Do you know if he went someplace out of Jerusalem?"
"Why, yes," she said. "How did you know? He went to Jerusalem straight from here. He stayed at the American Colony Hotel. I know he went there first because he called me that night. And then two nights later… no, three, it was the twenty-fifth. He called me again and said he was leaving for a few days and I shouldn't worry if I couldn't reach him." Again her statements held question marks. I didn't bother asking if she knew where he'd gone.
So all I knew was that Robey had gone from Jerusalem to X and back to Jerusalem. Wherever else he'd gone, he'd come back from there alive. He'd been killed in Jerusalem. On the twenty-seventh.
I went on examining Robey's clothes. With Sarah watching, I felt like a vulture. A cold-blooded bird, feasting on remains. In the pocket of the jacket, I found a matchbook. I palmed it into my own pocket. I could look at it later.
And that was that The last effects of Jackson Robey.
"What about the car? Is it still in Jerusalem?"
She shook her head. "He didn't take the car. He left it with me."
"Wallet, keys, money?"
She shook her head again. "Whoever killed him took everything. His watch, too. That's why I was sure it was — well, what the police said — a robbery. At least… I was sure until tonight" Another question.
I gave her the answer. The answer she would and wouldn't believe. "It probably was a robbery," I said.
I closed the suitcase.
She stayed on the bed.
Music drifted in from the other room. Sexy beat of the bossa nova.
"Well," she said. "If you've finished…" But she didn't move. It surprised her that she didn't move. But she still didn't move. Neither did I. I was looki
ng at her shoulders. The way the smooth curves arched up into her neck, and the long silky neck became a small upturned chin, and the chin led the way to the soft, puzzled lips.
"Yes," I said. "I guess I'm finished."
The week after someone stabs me in an alley, I don't want some other guy messing with my girl. I figured maybe Robey felt the same way.
I said goodnight and left.
Seven
It was a big four-course Sunday breakfast and room service set up a table on the balcony. It was late, 10:30. I'd slept a deep, cobwebby sleep and strings of it still tugged at my brain.
The weather was gentle and the sun was out and the balcony faced the Mediterranean. Sound of sea birds. Splash of waves. The day was like a sweet-smiling Mata Hari, trying to lure me away from duty.
I poured some more coffee and lit a cigarette and reached for the papaer I'd ordered with breakfast. A small item gave me the bad news.
Harrison Stol, owner and editor of Public Report, the free-wheeling, truth-telling monthly magazine had been kidnapped. Again by Al Shaitan. Again, for one hundred million dollars.
And four and one make five hundred million. Half a billion dollars.
For what?
I tried something else. I went over the list of kidnap victims. My mind automatically sifted for a pattern. There wasn't any reason for a pattern to exist but my mind is patterned to look for patterns.
Leonard Foxx, hotel czar. Big glass hotels in every city of the world. Giant Coke bottles, littering the skyline. Foxx had been in trouble. Big trouble. Among other things, it was money trouble. A private damage suit for two hundred million; now add what the government was likely to get. A couple of million in back taxes, plus fines on at least a dozen counts of fraud. Foxx had been living high in the Bahamas, but Foxx Hotels Inc. was on shaky ground.
Roger R. Jefferson: National Motors. Minor league car biz, major league headaches. Auto sales were falling for the whole industry from a combination of causes — the energy crisis, rising costs, and the invention of the eight-miles-per-gallon car. National Motors had closed two plants and was currently being struck by a third. Jefferson was just a guy on salary ($200,000 a year). Anyway, he couldn't raise the ransom. The demand had been issued to National itself.