The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  She lifted out the codex and sifted through the pages that told the story of Jacob’s taking away his older brother Esau’s birthright for a bowl of soup, and his dressing in sheep’s clothing to trick his father into giving him, rather than Esau, his blessing upon his deathbed, and Jacob’s having fled like a coward from his brother and years later trembling and sending gifts of cattle herds and extra wives ahead of him when he learned that Esau was nearby, hoping to pay his brother back for the horrible way he treated the poor guy.

  On the last page of the parchment, another set of words fell under the light. “But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him. He threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.”

  No, the codex was not the cause of her problems. She got a very real sense that the precious document could be the solution. If only the agency would let her deliver it to Dean.

  At last, she wrapped the whole package up and reached for the phone. First, she would have to get permission from the cultural property lawyers.

  “Legal department, please.”

  Chapter 46

  Dean had lived in Cairo for years and arriving in Egypt felt like coming home.

  He had spent all Sunday in a hotel at London Heathrow Airport. He had lost sleep wondering whether he could get a seat on a flight to Cairo. Flying standby was always a crapshoot. Finally, on Monday afternoon, a seat became available.

  He felt the vibration of jet engines and the gentle rocking of the plane from the steady air currents over Africa. A few reading lamps were on, but most people were asleep.

  Just like the ancient feluccas that still plied the Nile, using the river’s current to bring goods northward and the steady northerly wind to sail back south, the jet was overcoming the laws of nature to fly into Cairo.

  Similarly, Dean had managed to fly above the law. Take the cop that pulled him over on the Dulles Access Road. It wasn’t for manslaughter, which others accused him of doing. It wasn’t for harboring the Aleppo Codex, which he wasn’t. It was because he had panicked and hit his brakes upon seeing the patrol car.

  He was stopped on suspicion of speeding. The cop had taken his driver’s license, typed in the number and checked against police records for outstanding arrests.

  In the end, he had let Dean go, but with a ticket for a moving violation. Given that the road led to the airport, the episode left him wondering if the police used any excuse they could to stop vehicles and check for terrorists.

  If so, why not just set up a checkpoint and stop all motorists?

  Fortunately, he had gotten the phone call off to Rachel Levy. He needed those codex pages to keep his tax preparer and the IRS off his back and buy him time to complete his work. Had he exaggerated that Middle East peace rode on his obtaining the codex? Perhaps, but the Palestinian Authority getting co-opted by al-Qaeda would be a very bad thing.

  It was time to review the delicate mission that lay ahead. Blackmailing Omar would require stealth and flexibility. Just how much chicanery could he pull off in Egypt? Any gap between the harebrained schemes he developed in Langley and the reality on the ground would soon become apparent.

  He would have to bridge that difference with his trump card, his deep understanding of the Egyptian culture.

  It was just past midnight when the airplane began its descent into Cairo. The waxing moon reflected off hazy patches of water. It was the marshy delta of the Nile River. Like most great rivers, the world’s longest river ended in a maze of silt.

  Distant streetlights began to blemish the purity of the night. The plane descended over small streets and alleys. Soon, a sprawling metropolis emerged. Egypt was the most populous Arab country in the world, and a fifth of Egypt’s eighty million people lived in Cairo. He passed over poor neighborhoods and apartment buildings that poked up through a bank of fog.

  Fog emanated from the river where warm, wet air met the chilly desert. He could barely make out the island in the middle of the river where he had belonged to the Gezira Sporting Club with its squash and tennis courts, golf course and swimming pool. The gardens, riding trails and pet cemetery were testaments to wealth and privilege.

  As the plane’s wings tilted slightly for a final approach, he stared out at the western bank of the Nile. It was the Giza area where the Pyramids and Sphinx and Step Pyramids sat upon the desert. Though Giza was recently developed to handle the burgeoning population of the city, few Cairo natives had ever crossed to that side of the Nile, mostly out of superstition. The west was where the sun set and thus, where people were buried.

  The plane touched down without incident and lights came on in the cabin. Soon Dean was lost in a swarm of passengers heading toward immigration. The airport had built three new additions in the past twenty years, and he could no longer tell if he was in the original terminal.

  Unlike his excursion to Hebron, he had not arranged for someone to meet him at the airport. On this mission, he didn’t want vehicles with diplomatic or government license plates. Although he did carry a diplomatic passport, it was better to enter the country as a tourist.

  And that was how he presented himself to the immigration officer. The man gave his tourist passport a cursory glance and checked if the entry visa was still valid. It was. He stamped the passport and waved at Dean to pass. Soon Dean was lugging his things up to a bank window to exchange money. After that, he waded into a throng of waiting relatives, drivers, hotel shuttle operators and touts of every sort imaginable.

  He paused to inhale the scents of the land and let the voices sink in. He had served for years in Cairo, lived the high life, mingled with the European residents, and traveled to the storied landmarks of the past. He had adored the streets of Alexandria, been awed by the remaining pillars of Luxor and barely dared to breathe in the Valley of the Kings.

  He knew Egyptians from all walks of life. He could stroll to the souk and bargain for food, he could enjoy a shisha pipe at a coffee house like any other Egyptian who liked his tobacco, he could tip his local policeman to keep the man happy, and he could drown in the luxury of Egyptian cotton every night.

  But he couldn’t do any of that at the moment. He needed to bypass Cairo and go straight to the Red Sea. Sharm el-Sheikh was a six-hour drive away. He had two options to get there. One was to take a long-distance bus, with its inexpensive price and equivalent experience. Or he could hire a taxi for the trip.

  A white Peugeot sedan was idling against the curb in the car park. The sign in the window read “Sharm” in Arabic. That would be perfect.

  He had the driver roll his window down. Under a plastic dust shield, he felt a gust of air conditioning from the car’s interior. “Sharm el-Sheikh?” he inquired.

  The man nodded indifferently and pointed for him to climb in back. The trunk was open, but it didn’t feel safe placing his attaché case and flight bag where someone could steal them. So he leaned into the back seat and looked for a place to stash them.

  He was met by three pairs of eyes. A local couple and their small daughter were going on vacation. There was no room to share their seat. So he circled to the right side of the car and packed into the front passenger seat.

  Still, the driver did not go.

  A young Western couple eyed the car. Surely there was no room for them. The driver gestured for them to get in the back seat. The small girl hopped into her mother’s lap and they all squeezed in.

  The driver slammed the trunk shut and they were off.

  The initial jolt of the accelerator was matched only by a heavy foot on the brakes. They were no sooner out of the parking lot than they had to stop at a checkpoint. The police guard examined the passengers and had them sign a receipt, then asked for a tip.

  Dean told the driver to go on without paying a tip and they careened out of the checkpoint, narrowly missing a city bus that veered in from the side. Dean grabbed his seat with both hands. Driving habits hadn’t changed one bit in Cairo.

  He wasn’t sure that he and the driver had the same destination i
n mind until they turned northeast. They would take the tunnel under the Suez Canal and head south toward the coast.

  The late-hour flight was catching up with him, and the trip through the dark desert held no interest. Rocking back and forth in the bosom of the Arab world, he finally fell asleep.

  He awoke to a rich red glow out the driver’s window. The landscape consisted of rocky hills with no vegetation or signs of habitation. It was like looking at the moon.

  It was the homeland of a fiercely independent and self-reliant people, the Bedouin. The nomads, marginalized by the Arab population, had organized into loosely associated groups of insurgencies. But they were subverting Israel as much as the Egyptian government. When Israel tried to blockade the Gaza Strip, Bedouins profited by helping Palestinians escape through hundreds of illegal tunnels and by smuggling food, medicine, cigarettes, weapons and even automobiles into Gaza.

  The sky brightened and mountains, rising like sandy monoliths began to change color from purple to pink to lavender. The car passed an animal track, a path that headed from nowhere to nowhere in the interior of the Sinai.

  The driver looked with large eyes at the hoof prints in the sand. No one wanted to be attacked by Bedouin. After all, city folks didn’t associate with the desert people. They could be in cahoots with the Israelis or worse, themselves Israeli.

  The driver caught Dean’s smile. “What are you laughing at?”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  The driver cleared his throat as if preparing to spit. “How do these people live out here? There’s no food, no water, no electricity.”

  “They’re herders,” Dean said. “They’ve lived on this land for thousands of years.”

  The driver growled. “I’ll tell you how they live. They all have illegal sources of income.”

  The driver was slowing and Dean saw why. It wasn’t a camel caravan. It was an Egyptian Army checkpoint.

  The soldier approached the car, his semi-automatic rifle at the ready. Without being told, the driver lowered his window, and Dean and the other passengers did the same.

  The young man sat forward and whispered in a British accent, “What’s this all about?”

  “Don’t worry,” Dean said. “They’re checking for insurgents.”

  A flashlight probed the faces in back and roved slowly over the sleeping girl.

  “Ma-shi.” Okay. The soldier said and waved them on.

  “Boy, that was unnerving,” the man said.

  “Being bombed in Sharm el-Sheikh would be even more unnerving,” Dean said.

  “You approve of this heavy-handedness?” the man said.

  “They won’t ask for your identification as long as you look like a tourist,” Dean said.

  The man grumbled and put an arm protectively around the woman.

  The sky turned bright blue without a single cloud, and their movement seemed insignificant against the landscape.

  When things stood still, time almost disappeared. Dean could be living among famous figures who had passed through the Sinai centuries before. Moses had wandered in the wilderness and spoken to a burning bush. Later, he parted the Red Sea and led his people to freedom. On one of the highest peaks, God had inscribed the Ten Commandments and Moses had delivered it to his people.

  More recent history had pivoted on the Sinai Peninsula. As a piece of land jutting southward between two bodies of water, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba, the Sinai was a thousand times smaller than its giant cousin, the Arabian Peninsula immediately to the east. But its geographic location had given it outsized importance.

  The Red Sea had been explored and traversed by Egyptian Pharaohs, Alexander the Great, and Roman ships trading with India where they bought goods from China. General Napoleon Bonaparte had launched a campaign in 1798 to seize Egypt and the Red Sea to establish a French presence and prevent the British from reaching India. He had marched along the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai in a failed attempt to oust the Turks from the area.

  Dean looked out his window and studied a most incongruous sight. Amidst the sand that was occasionally kicked up in a swirl of wind, he saw the hulls of cruise ships and cargo vessels parading back and forth in a straight line.

  Engineers had dug and dredged a canal through a hundred miles of desert and lakes between Port Said on the Mediterranean coast to the city of Suez on the Red Sea. The task was completed in 1869, and the British, French and Italians proceeded to man posts along the canal that linked Europe with Asia.

  The driver slowed for another checkpoint. At that stop, the Brit didn’t bother to complain, if he was even awake.

  Now Dean had a closer look at the freighters. The strip of water on which they steamed had long been a pawn in a geopolitical game.

  In 1956, President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, and the British and French, who oversaw its operation, withdrew. A joint Anglo-French force in cooperation with Israel then invaded the Suez Canal Zone and the Israelis occupied the Sinai. In order to curry favor with President Nasser, the Americans condemned the invasion. The peace negotiations led to establishment of a UN force to patrol the Egyptian-Israeli border in the Sinai.

  In 1967, Nasser ordered the UN force out of Sinai and blockaded Israeli shipping from the straits at Sharm el-Sheikh, though the Gulf had been effectively closed to Israeli trans-shipping across the Red Sea since 1948.

  That sparked the most ferocious counterattack the world had ever seen. Within six days, Israel Defense Forces seized the entire Sinai Peninsula, took the West Bank from Jordan and snatched the Golan Heights from Syria.

  Six years later, in 1973, President Sadat of Egypt teamed up with Syria to launch a surprise attack on Israeli forces on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Syria briefly took back the Golan Heights, but after a week of fighting was repelled by the Israeli military. Meanwhile, Sadat’s soldiers crossed the heavily fortified Suez Canal into the Sinai, but the Israelis soon encircled the Egyptian army. The Israelis then crossed the canal and came to within sixty miles of Cairo before a ceasefire was negotiated.

  As a result of all the hostilities between Egypt and Israel, the Suez Canal was closed from 1967 until 1975, severely crippling commerce between Europe and the East. During its occupation of the Sinai, Israel built military posts and airports around the peninsula. It took two years of intensive minesweeping operations by the U.S. and Britain to finally reopen the canal. The Israeli military left the Sinai in 1979 when the land was returned to the Egyptian government following the Camp David Accords, and a multinational force was stationed in the Sinai to oversee the peace.

  The soldier studied the faces, checked the Egyptian family’s identification cards and opened the hood to look for bombs. At last he pointed down the road with his rifle and the cab pulled away. Soon, they were alone again in the desert.

  Dean squinted into the brilliant sunlight. Was that a camel and rider on the ridgeline?

  In the end, who really owned the Sinai? It wasn’t Greece or Rome, England or France, Israel or Egypt. It was the Bedouin, who had lived there before the Pharaohs. And would probably be there long after Cairo turned to dust.

  Chapter 47

  It took half a day for the legal department at the CIA to get back to Rachel on how to proceed with the codex.

  A young man contacted her and chose his words carefully. “We studied the ownership issue in some detail and even held a roundtable this afternoon.”

  She was impressed by their thoroughness. Maybe the legal department had little else to do that day. “So who gets to keep it?”

  “First we must determine ownership.”

  “We own it,” Rachel said. “The CIA owns it. It’s in my office.”

  “Ah, we possess it. But ownership has a legal definition and is regulated by law.”

  She didn’t have patience for people who preferred to split hairs rather than seek clarity. “So, who owns it?”

  “What we have is a case of muddied ownership. Assumin
g that an individual in Syria gave the document freely to an American diplomat, it becomes the property of the United States of America. It is doubtful that the previous owner would divulge his or her name and stake a claim to it, since it was hidden from view for so many years while Israel publicly searched for any fragments of the document.”

  “Okay, so we own it.”

  “The next question is, should the United States turn it over to Israel? I’ve checked with the State Department on this, and their Cultural Heritage Center claims that it rightfully belongs to Israel, since the bulk of the codex resides there.”

  “I agree.” It was as simple as that.

  “However, just handing it over without some sense of its provenance, its origins and ownership, might throw its authenticity into doubt.”

  “We can tell the truth. A man gave it to Dean Wells.”

  “See, that’s the problem. The State Department doesn’t want to expose our operations in Syria. It might compromise Mr. Wells and the safety of our embassy staff in Damascus.”

  “Are you telling me that even the State Department doesn’t want to turn it over to Israel?”

  “Not only that, but should we ever turn it over, it should be done properly to achieve maximum diplomatic effect.”

  “They want the president to hand it over?”

  “No, that would draw attention to how we obtained it.”

  Rachel was confused. “So we should sneak it over to Jerusalem?”

  “No. That would cause scholars to question its authenticity.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Sit on it.”

  “What? Keep it here in my office?”

  “Even that presents a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a legal issue. The CIA doesn’t want to take responsibility for the care of valuable antiquities without enacting proper security measures.”

  “So, what are those security measures?”