by Fritz Galt
“We don’t have the physical environment required to preserve the pages, nor to secure them.”
“So what are you telling me?”
He said nothing.
She quietly set the phone in its cradle.
She got the message. It was up to her to hide and preserve the parchment, much like the Jews of Aleppo had done for five centuries.
In effect, the codex pages were hers to do with whatever she wanted.
There was only one path forward, riddled with security violations and broken laws. She had to smuggle the pages to Dean. Where had he said he was going in his phone message? Sharm el-Sheikh? That was the name Carla kept mentioning that weekend.
Dean’s phone message had been clear. “I need to return it to Israel as quickly as possible. Middle East peace rides on this.”
She picked up the phone and dialed the travel office.
A young woman answered. “This is Mary. How may I help you?”
“Do I need a visa for Egypt?” Rachel asked, removing her lab coat.
“You do.”
“Well, I need a visa and a ticket to Sharm el-Sheikh as soon as possible.”
“Hmm,” Mary said. “That is a popular destination these days.”
When Rachel finished with the travel reservations, she looked around the lab for a convenient way to carry the pages. They had gotten curled in Dean’s attaché case. She needed something bigger, but not as big as the wooden frame. She had just pulled out a black portfolio when there was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
The door creaked open. It was Barry Wiseman.
She would be happy if she never saw that expressionless face and those unblinking eyes behind those thick glasses again. She kicked off her pumps and put on walking shoes.
“Going somewhere?” Barry asked.
Chapter 48
Out the taxi window, Dean saw a body of water shimmering on the horizon. It was the Gulf of Suez. After hours of desert vistas, water seemed like a mirage. They had passed the canal and the seaport of Suez and the road would soon converge with the Red Sea.
The car came over a small rise and a new world opened up before them. Dean heard a gasp from the back seat. The view included sailboats, catamarans and yachts. In the distance, ocean-going vessels plied the gulf.
Created in the ever-widening gap between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea Rift that swallowed up seawater from the Indian Ocean would one day become a vast body of water as large as the Indian Ocean.
For the moment, Egypt owned prime real estate on the world’s northernmost tropical sea. Fringed by countries from Israel to Eritrea, the Red Sea had over one thousand miles of coral reef with exotic formations in the shapes of atolls, platforms and holes. And the crystal clear water was like a giant aquarium swimming with over 1,200 species of fish, a hundred of them unique to the region.
The sea was a lucky freak of nature and provided the best scuba diving and snorkeling in the world. The only problem with diving in the Red Sea was that once one had swum there, no other diving spot in the world could match the experience. One was spoiled for life.
But the Red Sea was as much a victim as a beneficiary of geography. The northern end was bordered by the Sinai Peninsula, a land battled over for centuries by competing civilizations, and on the south by the Gulf of Aden also known as Pirate Alley.
Dean rolled down his window and inhaled the salt air. Due to the steady northwesterly winds and constant heat, water evaporated quickly and left great quantities of salt in the sea. In fact, the Red Sea was ten percent saltier than normal ocean water.
It felt good to be back. But unfortunately work would intervene.
Chapter 49
Carla settled into her seat on the EgyptAir jumbo jet and tried to think of anything she had forgotten. Dusk fell early at that time of year, and the gate area was already bathed in artificial light. A steady rain rippled the puddles on the tarmac.
There was no time to stop newspaper and mail delivery. But she counted on Rachel to keep the house in order.
Her phone call to Rachel that morning had gone smoothly. Carla didn’t want to divulge her destination, so she described it merely as a business trip. She had put the keys to her car and a second set of house keys in interoffice mail. Rachel should receive them by noon. Carla had her ticket and passport back by 1:00 p.m. and caught a taxi home at once.
There, she had packed an overnight bag. She had thrown in several changes of clothes, including two summer dresses for what she anticipated would be a tropical climate. She even threw in her bikini swimsuit, but didn’t have time to try it on. She doubted it still fit. Nor would she look good in it, given the fact that her normally olive complexion had nearly bleached white over the winter.
She had taken a cab to the airport and boarded with all the other passengers with plenty of time to spare. It was an interesting bunch of people headed to Cairo. Nobody wore resort attire. The plane was full of professionals, a relaxed group of retirees looking forward to a trip on the Nile, and American expatriate families returning to Cairo after spring break visiting relatives in America.
But she was going to Egypt on urgent business.
In her frantic preparations, she hadn’t had time to formulate a plan. She leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes to visualize the future. The first hurdle would be to find Dean. She was hoping that Sharm el-Sheikh was little more than a beach resort. If she combed the waterfront thoroughly, she was sure to find him, perhaps lurking in some poolside bar. If Sharm el-Sheikh turned out to be a city, she was in trouble.
Once she warned him that he was wanted in the United States, what would he do? Where would he go? Maybe he would tap into his fortune and live a life on the run, dodging the long arm of the law in one dubious, but highly exotic country after another.
All she knew was she had to warn him that he had been outed and the IRS was after him. She listened to the public address system over the purr of air vents. The purser announced a final cabin check before takeoff, and the captain chimed in to add that the weather would be calm en route, to expect a smooth flight, and that he would receive word from the tower to push back from the gate at any moment.
The exit door whooshed shut, and she felt the comfortable sensation of being cocooned, safe from law enforcement and all the cares of the world. Until she opened her eyes.
Rachel Levy must have entered the cabin just before the door swung shut.
There she stood, her long, dark hair bedraggled, her formfitting, robin’s egg blue dress from Seven Corners askew and her poise destroyed by a look of frantic breathlessness.
What had happened to her? And why was she there?
Carla’s first impulse was to wave and shout, “Here I am. Are you looking for me?”
But when it became apparent that Rachel was looking for a seat, not her, suspicion took hold, followed shortly by an unfamiliar discomfort tinged with spite. Was it jealousy?
Could it be that once Carla informed her she was leaving town, Rachel decided to slip off for a little holiday with Dean in Egypt?
She bowed her head to avoid being seen, but couldn’t help sneaking a peek.
Six rows ahead of her, Rachel tried to slip a black portfolio under her seat. But the flight attendant interfered.
“That’s too big,” the woman said.
“I need to keep it with me at all times.”
The attendant was adamant. Several passengers grumbled at the delay they were causing.
Finally, Rachel settled on storing it in an overhead compartment within her view. The portfolio was an awkward shape and size, and in the end, the attendant bent it slightly and arched it over a carry-on bag that was already in the compartment.
Rachel whisked her hair behind her ears and fell into her seat with audible exasperation.
Once buckled in, Rachel removed a cell phone from her waist pack and typed in a text message as if she were still at work. Her natural composure had already
returned.
But Carla had lost hers.
Chapter 50
CIA Inspector General Hart Baxter fingered the replica of a grizzly bear that sat on his desk. He was doing a slow burn over the lack of progress on the Dean Wells case. His little office was simply outgunned by other agencies.
The IRS had Dean on tax fraud, so Treasury was after him. The State Department wanted to bury the codex. The FBI was tracking Dean down for two murders. Hell, they were all light-years ahead of the IG office.
He was on the verge of calling Barry for a status report on evidence collection when the phone rang.
It was the Director of the CIA.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“We’re catching flak from the press about one of our employees working for the Yemenis,” the director said in a grave voice. “I called Gomez in the area office, and he said you were handling the investigation.”
“That’s right, sir. We’re looking into the activities of Dean Wells, an undercover officer for the agency.”
“Isn’t he the one who murdered someone in Syria?”
“Most likely. We’ve linked the murder weapon to him.”
“So why are you dragging your feet?”
“There are several other potential charges we’re working on.”
“Hart, I don’t know what kind of circus you’re running down there, but I want this situation resolved at once. I need the press off my back and all criminals behind bars. Is that clear?”
While the director was upbraiding Baxter over the phone, Barry Wiseman slipped into the office and took a seat.
Baxter hung up with a frown. “Do you know who that was?”
“The director?”
“Yes. And he’s shitting mortars that Dean Wells made it into the papers. Why can’t we close this case?”
Wiseman waved a flash drive in the air. “We just got evidence from the Mossad investigation.”
Baxter recalled his Friday meeting where the idea had first come up to ask the Mossad for hard evidence. “And?”
“Look at this. You’ll find it interesting.”
Wiseman plugged the drive into Baxter’s laptop. A picture came up. It showed a stiletto with a polished silver handle.
“Get this. Since the murder took place between the Muslim and Jewish sections of the tomb, the Palestinian Authority took the lead on the investigation, but shared crime scene data with the Israeli military, including this picture of the murder weapon.”
“That doesn’t tell us anything.”
“But this does.” Wiseman leaned over the keyboard and zoomed in on the picture.
Suddenly a fingerprint came into sharp focus.
“We have the killer’s fingerprint.”
“And?”
Wiseman stood back and folded his arms, a look of vindication on his face. “We cross-referenced the fingerprint with that of Dean Wells on record in Security.”
“And?” Baxter was growing irritated with all the drama.
“It was Dean Wells.”
Baxter tried to subdue the emotions that bubbled up in him, a sickening brew of anger and regret.
“Is that all the Mossad can come up with?” he finally said.
Wiseman shrugged. “Dean was with Ari Ben-Yosef, his Mossad contact, the whole trip. Ari says the Mossad is holding some photographs that may seal the case.”
“Why don’t they turn the photos over?”
“Look at it this way,” Wiseman said. “The whole incident is embarrassing to the Israelis. They’d rather put it behind them. As far as they’re concerned, sure a man died, but he was one of the leading militants on the West Bank. How bad can that be?”
Baxter had to admit that there was some merit to the Israelis’ approach. Eliminating a terrorist was not a bad thing. But how could they tolerate Americans running around within their borders and carrying out assassinations? The thought of someone doing such a thing in the United States would freak him out.
Baxter stood up and pointed at the image of the fingerprint on the computer. “How does this look for the agency?”
“Bad, sir.”
“You’re damned right. It looks awful. It shows us meddling in Israel’s business, if not carrying out their dirty work.”
“We still don’t know how it got into the papers, sir.”
“Did you call the IRS?” Baxter said, his angry side showing.
Wiseman flipped back through his notepad. “Funny thing is, I got stonewalled. The IRS Criminal Investigations Division said that they couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
“Baloney. They do comment on ongoing cases. They blabbed it all to the newspaper.”
Barry shook his head, powerless to explain it.
“I’ll have the director call over to the IRS and knock some heads together,” Baxter said. “We’re talking about the IRS disclosing the identity of a covert operative for heaven’ sake.”
Wiseman pulled the flash drive out of his boss’s machine. “Should I share the photo with special agent Ferguson?”
“Yeah. Might as well start a full-scale counterintelligence probe.”
It was a difficult admission of defeat.
Baxter picked up the phone to tell the director the bad news. They would have to turn the whole case over to the FBI. He had kept his finger in the dike far too long. Maybe going public would put a stop to Dean Wells.
Chapter 51
Dean’s taxi entered a parking lot in Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Aside from a ticket booth for out-of-town buses, the place was empty.
Dean picked up his attaché case and folded his suit coat that had kept him warm during the chilly night. Outside, he was greeted by a wall of heat. The day would be a scorcher.
No matter where he looked, there were half-built, decaying buildings in every direction. They were white, flat-topped structures that petered out quickly into the desert. Factory buildings lent the place an industrial feel, with the predominant odor being that of fish processing. He was in Old Sharm.
It hardly felt like the place he had first visited in the late 1980s. Then, there was only one hotel, the Marina, and a number of Quonset huts left by the Israeli army. The Austrians and Swiss had just “discovered” the Red Sea and were exploring its pristine coral reefs with their high-tech diving equipment, but Sharm el-Sheikh had nothing approaching a tourist industry in those days.
He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock. He had arranged to meet Bruce Johnson, the brilliant young case officer from Cairo, in the souk at eleven. That gave him time to grab a bite and look around.
The old town was struggling, with a handful of restaurants and a souk selling curios to the budget-minded tourist. It was hard to believe that the President of the United States had met with regional heads of state there in 2008 for the World Economic Forum on the Middle East.
The president had called for action on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The Palestinians should combat terror and continue building the institutions of a free and peaceful society, while he told Israel to make tough sacrifices for peace and to ease restrictions on Palestinians.
Mere words had produced no results.
Numerous other international forums and summits had taken place and treaties were signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, most relating to the Palestinian issue.
There Dean was, at a seaside resort in Egypt, and he still couldn’t escape the Palestinian conflict.
That brought him back to why he was there. He was no longer hoping to bring peace to the region. He merely wanted to prevent all-out war.
With luck and Bruce Johnson from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo at his side, he might be able to convince Omar al-Farak to abandon the road to fundamentalism and follow a different path to peace. But words would have little effect on the powerful al-Farak. It would take coercion.
With a partially built wall to keep Bedouin tribesmen from wandering unbidden onto the streets, Old Sharm seemed like a fro
ntier town. But, with a marina of pleasure craft, ferryboats to the Egyptian mainland and Jordan, and one large cruise ship lying at anchor, the port could not be more cosmopolitan. New buildings stretched up the coast toward Naama Bay. And a major airport lay beyond that.
At the moment, Dean’s stomach was growling. He needed a place to eat.
Jet lagged, he wasn’t sure if it was time for breakfast or dinner. He entered a place where a cook was chopping onions. From the smell of frying meat, he guessed it was lunchtime.
That was fine with him. He chose a formica table by a window and under a ceiling fan.
When a waiter showed up, he ordered a kabob sandwich.
“Of course. And to drink, sir?”
“What do you have?”
“We have soft drinks, juice…”
“What kind of juice?”
“Hibiscus karkade, lemonade, tamar hindi…”
That brought back memories.
For a moment he was back in downtown Cairo, with its blend of belle époque and art deco facades, the traffic circles with their attractive fountains, and the outdoor cafés up and down the narrow streets.
The only way to get through a long, hot weekend in Cairo was to sip a drink made from the ripened fruit of his “Indian date” tree. He used to suffuse the tamarind with lots of sugar. Then he would chill the concoction before drinking it. It went down cool, wet and sour while he reclined in his shaded veranda overlooking his garden.
“Tamar hindi, please, but add a lot of sugar.”
“Of course, sir.”
His kabob arrived wrapped in warm pita bread. He didn’t hesitate and plunged right in. Afterward, he leaned back and sipped his drink. All the time, he was under the watchful eye of the former President of Egypt, whose photograph still hung prominently over the counter.
One was never far from politics in the Middle East. He looked out toward the souk where a truck bomb had ruined everything that fateful night in July of 2005 when tourists were still out partying. The city was rocked by two additional blasts that night. Eighty-eight people were killed including the Egyptian Health Minister. Over 200 people were injured. The attacks had another chilling effect. It brought tourism to a standstill for over a year.
