“It would do you no good,” I said. “I don’t know what’s in the scroll. The man who decoded it left a message on my answering machine, but I wasn’t able to get back to him before I had to leave for Israel.”
“We’ll see if you’re lying,” he said.
I glanced down at Jill. She had a puzzled look on her face. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t know what’s going on?”
“Sorry, babe. It gets pretty complicated. Remember that so-called Dead Sea Scroll souvenir we bought in Jaffa?”
“I wondered about that when they kidnapped me. They never told me what it was all about, though. Then, after they took me to that shopping mall where I saw you, they raced down the interstate until they cut off somewhere and were stopped by two men in a Toyota–I think it was a 4Runner. One of them was the man who left here just now.”
“Eli Zalman,” I said.
“Something’s happened to his nose. It looks broken. Anyway, he told me they would return me to my husband. I thought I was being rescued, but when I got into the truck, I felt a needle jab into my arm. That’s about the last thing I remember until I woke up here.”
“For your information, Mrs. McKenzie,” Levin said, “the scroll tells the location of ten gold menorahs from Solomon’s Temple, buried somewhere in Jerusalem. They would be worth several millions of dollars just for the gold content. But the people I represent wish to return them to their proper place–in the Third Temple, which we will reconstruct on the Temple Mount.”
Jill looked around at me, struggling against hunger and fatigue to understand. “Isn’t that occupied by a couple of Muslim holy places?”
Levin’s voice grew in intensity. I was reminded of some radio evangelists I’d heard back home.
“When we are ready to move, it will be a massive rally of the Jewish people. No one will dare stand in our way. No one can stop us. Not a spineless, compromising government, nor a militant, immoral religious movement that claims to believe in God.”
That little speech brought a shudder as I considered the consequences and realized the scroll and its secret lay only a few feet away in the back of Warren Jarvis’ Jeep. I needed to do something drastic, and do it in a hurry.
Jake Cohen, noble soul that he is, couldn’t keep silent at Levin’s outburst. “You’re totally misreading history as well as theology, Mr. Levin,” he said. “If you think Hitler and his boys were involved in a holocaust, you haven’t seen anything compared to how the Muslim world would react to that. The Crusaders got away with tearing down holy sites for a while, but they were eventually trampled under foot. Things have evolved in frightening ways since those days. Now we have jet planes and laser-guided bombs, nuclear weapons and nerve gas. God put us on this earth to live with each other, not fight each other to the death. The Muslims have as much right to their beliefs as any Jew in Israel.”
“What do you know about Jews? You’re a turncoat, Cohen.” He was practically shouting now.
As I watched the fire in his eyes and his grotesque face, I realized what I had to do. I recalled Jarvis’ comment about Levin’s turning demonic when he was highly agitated. I saw how Levin had narrowed his ire onto Jake and I reasoned that kind of concentration would leave a person vulnerable. I stood a few feet away and to his right. I needed to get close enough to swing a foot or karate chop his gun arm. A good chop would break bone.
The two men were having a full-fledged shouting match now, Jake lost in some righteousness of his own. He was quoting scripture and Levin was making dire predictions. I edged to the left and prayed that Jake would keep the argument going long enough.
In his frenzy, Levin had switched from pointing the Beretta at Jake to shaking it up and down angrily in front of his chest. As he raised his arm again, I lunged at him and chopped down near his wrist with all the power I possessed. It sounded like bone cracking, but I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine. Regardless, the gun fell from his grasp and he gripped his arm.
I dove for the gun, but he was too quick. I watched helplessly as he kicked it with his foot and sent it flying into a clump of bushes.
Chapter 42
Levin let out a maniacal shout that may have been Hebrew, though it sounded like pure animal rage. I knew my sixty-five years would be no match for him. My only hope was to put some physical distance between us.
“Let’s see you try and break my nose, McKenzie. I’m no Eli Zalman.”
While he was talking, I drove a kick energized by adrenaline into his groin and he went down.
I took off running toward the tractor shed. There I hoped to find something that would serve as a weapon–an equalizer. Traipsing around the Holy Land had provided some exercise the last couple of weeks, but as I sprinted up the gravel road, I knew it wouldn’t take much of this to leave me winded.
Glancing back as I reached the shed, I saw Levin on his feet, starting my way. I looked frantically around the clutter of machinery. I felt a bit of warmth coming from the first tractor I passed, meaning the engine had been run within the past hour or so. The hood was off and leaning against a tire. Most likely a mechanic had been working on it. Against the wall behind it were tools–shovels, hoes, a posthole digger, a sledgehammer, implements too unwieldy to use as a weapon. Then I spotted a cooper’s adz hanging on the wall, a little gizmo my dad had shown me when I was a kid. It’s a tool with a curved blade, sharpened on each end, mounted at right angles to the handle. Coopers were barrel-makers, and they used the tool to shape the wood for the staves. I grabbed it and turned back toward the road.
Levin was about thirty feet away now and closing fast. My best chance would be to disappear into the darkness and shelter of the arbors. I got across the road and plunged into the dismal wet grapevines. The hazards became obvious. I tripped on a vine and fell into mud. As I scrambled to my feet, clutching the adz, I heard Levin shouting from the road.
“You have no place to go, McKenzie. The compound is fenced in and I have people watching the front gate. I also have your wife. For her sake, you had better come out of there.”
I would give up my cover on my own terms. The rows of grapevines ran parallel to the road, and I began to struggle my way toward where the superintendent’s house stood. I stayed a couple of rows back, far enough that I was sure he couldn’t see me.
I had moved only a short distance when I heard a tractor engine start. I wondered if it was the one I had seen, an old Massey-Ferguson with solid rubber front tires and a long engine compartment that had been left with the hood removed. Moments later, I saw headlights glowing above the arbors as the tractor rumbled in the direction I was taking. When it stopped somewhere in the vicinity of the house, I broke into a trot, hoping to find an opening where I could see what he was up to. The result was what I should have expected. I tripped again and went down.
About the time I thought I was near the house, a loud crash of breaking glass shattered the quiet of the night. I wondered if Jake had helped Jill into the house and locked the door. Was Levin breaking a window to get at them?
I edged my way closer to the road in an attempt to determine what was happening. As I did, I found I had moved farther down than I had thought. I was past the house, near the construction area marked by the flare pots. Keeping low, I eased to the side of the road and started walking slowly toward the parking area in front of the house. That was when I saw him, darting away from Colonel Jarvis’ Jeep, swinging something in his hand.
The tractor sat in the road facing me. Levin got painfully into the high seat and started the engine, switching on the lights. As the beams picked me out at the edge of the road, he stood and held something bulky out in front of him.
“I found it, McKenzie!” he yelled, and then laughed like a madman. “You had it with you all the time.”
He sat down, threw the tractor in gear and poured the gas to it, heading straight for me. I backed off, ducking beneath a tangle of grapevines.
When he kept bearing down on me, I turned and struggled back toward the
next row of vines. He didn’t falter. The tractor ripped through the arbors, uprooting grapevines and tearing down the posts they were anchored to. The night was filled with a scraping, howling racket. The headlights seemed to spear me, and when I changed directions, they followed like a locked-on radar.
He was getting too close. I finally turned and heaved the cooper’s adz at him. My aim wasn’t high enough. It struck something on top of the engine and stuck there. I could see the adz handle poking up. Then I was running again.
“You’re a dead man, McKenzie!” I heard him scream above the roar of the engine. “They won’t even find your bones.”
I jumped through another row of arbors and found I was back on the gravel road. I was only a few feet from the spot where dirt had been piled beside a wide but shallow hole. The flames in the flare pots swayed like dancers weaving back and forth in the night. I turned to see Levin’s tractor bearing down on me. In seconds it would have me.
I had nowhere to go. The hole gaped to one side; the open road would provide a clear shot at me on the other.
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled as Levin bore down. I grabbed one of the flare pots and lofted it toward the tractor. The thing was a lot heavier than I had imagined, and it pulled me off balance. I tripped over the dirt pile and toppled into the hole. It seemed somehow a fitting end–I was burying myself in my own grave.
Chapter 43
I fell into about an inch of cold water, just in time to hear the most God-awful explosion I have ever witnessed. It shook the ground around me. As I looked up, I saw flames shooting skyward and shards of molten metal flew past my crypt.
Struggling up, I managed to get my head above the rim of the excavation and was shocked at what I saw. Nothing was left of the tractor but a pile of smoldering debris and a small fire that must have been the remains of the padded seat. The tires had been blown yards away. There was no sign of Moshe Levin. Whatever remained of him lay elsewhere, tossed by the blast.
I climbed out of the muddy hole that had saved my life, checking to see if I had broken anything. Thanks to the soft mud I seemed to be intact, but my hands tingled and my breathing was labored. Looking around in the faint light of two remaining flare pots and the destroyed tractor, I finally saw what appeared to be the major part of a torso. As I walked toward it, I noticed bloody stumps where legs should have been. It was then I spotted a few tattered scroll scraps scattered about the road. Even if somebody found enough of it to reassemble, there would be enough gaps to rule out deciphering any coded message.
“Greg!”
I saw Jill trying to walk toward me with Jake Cohen assisting her.
“I’m okay,” I called. I hurried in their direction.
When I reached her, Jill stared at me as if I were a ghost. And I must have looked like some sort of apparition–clothes, hands, face covered with muck.
I grinned. What could I say?
She threw her arms around me and sobbed.
“Where is Levin?” Jake asked with a wary expression.
I jerked a thumb at the smoldering wreckage. “He was sitting on that tractor when it blew. I saw part of him on the road nearby.”
“What happened?”
I stroked Jill’s hair, savoring her even as she cried out her fears. It had been so long without her.
“The hood had been taken off the tractor. It must have left the gas tank exposed. I threw a cooper’s adz at him and it apparently pierced the tank. Then I threw one of those flare pots–I guess it set off the gasoline in the tank.”
From somewhere in the distance, we heard people shouting.
“We’d better get the hell out of here,” I said. “Help Jill toward the house while I pick up something.”
I returned to the blast site and gathered up a handful of scroll scraps. I thought they might be useful in explaining the situation. I hurried back to Jill and stuck them in the pocket of my jacket, which she was wearing.
“Do you think we can get this golf cart started?” Jake asked.
“We’ll use Colonel Jarvis’s Jeep.”
“But we don’t have the keys.”
I waved him on. “Maybe we do.”
When we reached the area where the Mercedes had been parked, I stooped down and searched for the spot I had seen the colonel drop something. After a few moments, my fingers snared a small chain. And there they were.
The noise in the darkness of the road up ahead was getting louder.
“Climb in,” I said. “Let’s move.”
We drove up to where the road branched off beside the tractor shed and found a gate in the fence. It was tightly secured with a chain and padlock.
“What do we do now?” Jill asked.
“Hang on a minute.” I jumped out of the car and rushed over to the shed. I found the sledgehammer where I had seen it earlier. When I picked it up, it seemed to weigh a ton. I realized I was exhausted from all the running and wallowing and falling I had been subjected to in the past half hour.
When I got back to the gate with the tool, Jake offered to take a swing at the lock and I didn’t object. I wasn’t sure I had enough heft left to peel a banana. But a few solid licks by Jake and the lock broke, letting the chain fall free.
Flashlights and lanterns suddenly appeared beyond the tractor shed.
“Get in back and take care of your wife,” Jake shouted. “I’ll drive.”
He got no argument. I was beginning to shake from the cold and wet and near exhaustion. As Jake smashed the Jeep through the gate. I fished a towel out of the colonel’s laundry bag and used it to plug the hole in the window where Levin had broken it. Then I lay back wearily and snuggled against Jill.
I awoke when we arrived at Colonel Jarvis’ apartment in Tel Aviv. He rushed out to greet us.
“Thank God you made it! What the hell happened to you?” he asked, questions tumbling. “How did you get away?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Where are Zalman and the woman?”
“When we got here, I told them I was damned certain you hadn’t left any scroll at my place. They searched around for a bit, then Zalman tried Levin on the cell phone but got no answer. Then he called the kibbutz. From what he told the woman, I gathered there had been some kind of explosion back of the vineyards. A body had been found, but they weren’t sure whose. I don’t think Zalman was too happy getting involved with diplomatic personnel to start with. He didn’t say anything to me, just grabbed the woman and high-tailed it out of here. They haven’t been gone for long.”
After I related the gory details and handed over the scroll scraps, Jarvis said we should head for the embassy. He had already called for the ambassador, who was due there shortly. I pleaded for time to get a shower, then borrowed a clean shirt and pair of pants from the colonel. Since we were about the same height, they fit fairly well, except the pants were tight. I had to rely on my belt to cinch me in.
For the next couple of hours, we sat around a highly-polished conference table flanked by American flags, with Ambassador Hamilton, his counselor and a political attaché who was obviously the CIA station chief. They brought in food for us, which was something Jill definitely needed, though I ate the most. The interrogation began immediately. I found it difficult to concentrate on the questions with Jill so close. Neither of us could go for long without looking around to catch the other’s eye.
After we had finished eating, I held Jill’s hand as I told our story forwards and backwards, starting with the souvenir purchase in Jaffa less than a week ago, and winding up on the gravel road at Kibbutz Kerem. My emotions nearly got the best of me when it came to the moment in the farmhouse when I first saw Jill. I kept feeling the squeeze of her hand while I told my story.
Afterward, Jake Cohen was sent on his way home with a stern admonition to say nothing, while Jill and I were escorted to a suite in a first class hotel and told the same thing. A driver would pick us up in the morning and return us to the embassy.
I was impressed by the clout
of the U. S. Government when a clothing shop in the hotel was opened just for us, but I noticed Uncle Sam let us use our Visa card when it came time to pay the bill. At any rate, Jill appeared almost totally revived with a fashionable new wardrobe in hand.
When we got to our room, where my suitcase had been delivered, I reached into a zippered pocket.
“Here’s something you lost along the way,” I said, unfolding some tissues.
“My ring!” Her eyes and her mouth were open wide. “Where did you find it? I thought it was gone forever.”
“Zalman presented it to me about the time you took off for Israel. It was his way of proving they really had you.” I grinned. “Did you like the plaster on his nose? I got him with a good left hook.”
I took the ring and placed it on her finger, and we retired to the fancy king-size bed where I held her like the world was coming to an end. Or just beginning.
“At times, when the drugs would wear off,” she said, “I had moments when I was quite lucid. When it happened this morning, I had a strange feeling that you were near. Talking to me, telling me not to worry, that you’d come after me.”
I smiled and kissed her, then told her about my little ESP trick. Had it really worked?
“I don’t know,” she said. “But thank God you found me when you did.”
Despite all the fatigue and furor of the past few hours, I remembered. “Speaking of thanks, do you realize what this is?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“At home they’re sitting down to carve the turkey. It’s Thanksgiving Day.”
Chapter 44
The next morning around ten, looking much brighter and considerably more presentable, we were ushered into the same conference room at the embassy, with the same players around the table. Vases of colorful, cheery, fresh cut flowers had been placed at either end. The scent of roses tinged the air. I wasn’t sure if it meant we were getting the royal treatment, or about to get the royal shaft. Ambassador Hamilton, a suave, white-haired man in his early sixties with an easy-going manner and a look of serenity, no doubt wanted to put us at ease. He leaned back in his chair and smiled.
Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries) Page 22
