A Walk in the Darkness - [Kamal & Barnea 03]

by Jon Land

  CHAPTER 5

  T

  he body of Ben’s nephew lay on a cot in the second of the four prefabricated huts, motel six, equipped with corrugated tin sides and roofs, and canvas flaps covering the front and rear. The Israeli soldiers had used white toe tags to mark the bodies with the identifications believed to belong to each. As Danielle hovered back by the entrance, Ben slowly pulled a plastic sheet down to reveal the corpse’s face.

  “I don’t recognize him,” he said, his voice cracking. “A young man’s face changes so much in five years. I never saw him with a beard before. He always looked so young. ...”

  “When was the last time you did see him?”

  “I missed his high school graduation, missed a lot of things.”

  Danielle met Ben’s eyes and tried to remember what that had felt like before. “You can go now. Call your family. Help with the arrangements.”

  “Not yet,” Ben said.

  * * * *

  I

  can handle this myself,” Danielle insisted as Ben moved toward the two dead bedouin guards covered by plastic on the camp’s perimeter.

  “You missed those depressions made by some kind of tripod in the ground.”

  “Meaningless probably,” she said irritably.

  “All the same, you may miss something else.”

  “Look, Inspector, I called you here to identify your nephew’s body. That and no more.”

  “After three weeks...”

  “What?”

  “That’s what it took for you to call me after we hadn’t spoken for three weeks,” Ben said and continued on past her toward the guards who had been felled first.

  Drawing closer, he saw the plastic covers had been staked into the scorched earth to prevent them from being blown off. Ben pulled one of the stakes free and drew the plastic away to reveal a body lying as it had been found: on its stomach with a wide pool of dark, dried blood staining the earth beneath the guard’s head.

  “Shot from behind at close range,” he said to Danielle, who had knelt down next to him. Ben noticed something dark and metallic hidden by the guard’s splayed left arm, continued to talk to cover his intentions. “Low-caliber bullet. Professional.”

  “Not likely to be the work of marauding tribesmen,” Danielle said, aware of the caustic stare being cast their way by Captain Aroche.

  Ben shifted his weight forward and eased his hand nearer the corpse. His palm closed over the metallic object. He felt several recessed buttons and, finally, a thick circular protrusion.

  A lens . . .

  “If it was bedouins,” he said, noting Danielle’s attention was still fixed on the wound as he pocketed the object, “this could have been the result of a feud between that tribe and the one which claimed this as its territory.”

  “Bedouins don’t have territories.”

  “True enough, Pakad. But to avoid trouble archaeological teams are best advised to hire the members of one tribe to protect against incursions from others. It’s been this way among the bedouin for hundreds of years.”

  Danielle stood up, shaking her head. “This doesn’t have the look of a tribal dispute.”

  Ben rose and followed Danielle to the body of the second guard and again stripped back the plastic. This man, he saw instantly, had been shot in almost identical fashion. The pool of blood looked to be almost the same size.

  “Interesting,” said Ben, trying to remain detached. He had been at enough crime scenes to know the victims had to be regarded first and foremost as bearing evidence. He couldn’t afford to let emotion creep in, had to remain objective and professional. It was easier when the bodies were stiff and cold, their blood dried into the ground. Much different when the scene was fresher, each sight and smell chilling. Ben could remember crime scenes in Detroit, before he’d returned to Palestine, where he’d had to put plastic bags over his shoes because the blood was still wet and spreading.

  “What is?” Danielle asked.

  “The way the bodies fell indicates they were facing opposite directions, fifty feet apart.”

  “Doing their jobs,” she said. “While you are doing mine.”

  Ben ignored her. “Close enough to hear even a silenced gunshot at night. Unless they were killed at the exact moment.” Ben rose and brushed the dirt from his pants. “Now, let’s go have a look at the rest of the bodies.”

  Danielle stood determinedly in his way. “You’ve already seen the only one you have a right to.”

  “My nephew’s death gives me a right to see anything I want here.”

  “Perhaps I made a mistake by calling you.”

  “But I’m here now and I’m not leaving.”

  Danielle took a deep breath. “All the victims were killed as your nephew was, with single bullets to the head. In bed, on narrow portable cots, as they slept. In all cases, the killings were neat, quick, and extremely efficient. Carried out within seconds of each other, by all indications.”

  “There was no evidence of a struggle in any of the tents?” asked Ben.

  She shook his head. “Nor have we been able to find a single gun fired in self-defense.”

  “Enough killers to enter all four tents simultaneously.”

  “The generators had ample supplies of gasoline and were not running when the first troops arrived,” said Danielle.

  “The killers could have been waiting in the hills for the power to be turned off, Pakad,” Ben theorized. “That was their cue. Not like marauding bedouins to exercise such patience, is it?”

  “Or thieves,” Danielle added, “since there’s no indication that any of the tents was searched, much less ransacked.”

  “Professionals, then. But professionals kill for a reason.” Ben fixed his gaze on the cave opening. “Perhaps we’ll find it up there.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  T

  he goat tracks worn in the cliff face were steeper than they looked, too narrow to allow climbers to ascend side by side. Embarrassed, Danielle followed closely behind Ben as he started to climb.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said, not hiding her frustration over his behavior.

  “Don’t want your fellow Israelis to think we get along, do you?”

  Dirt and stones crunched underfoot, and Danielle slipped a few times thanks to her smooth-soled boots in her attempt to keep up with Ben. She had never seen him this driven before, this obsessed. She wondered if there was anything she could do to stop him.

  “That’s far enough, Pakad Barnea!” She was halfway to the cave entrance when she heard a voice from below, sounding gravelly and slightly out of breath.

  Danielle stopped and swung round, muttering, “Great,” under her breath. Then, “Now you’ve done it,” just loud enough for Ben to hear.

  “I said that’s far enough, Chief Inspector Barnea.”

  Danielle looked down to see Commander Moshe Baruch, operations chief of Israel’s General Security Service, or Shin Bet, standing at the base of the hill. A bear of a man, Baruch was flanked on both sides by several equally towering men dressed in plainclothes stretched taut over their frames. His face had a dark, almost Neanderthal look to it; slightly recessed with the eyes set far back in his head. The knees of his dark uniform were scuffed and stained with dirt, evidence he had already made at least a cursory inspection of the scene.

  “I heard you, Commander,” Danielle yelled down to him. Baruch had been her direct superior during her short-lived transfer to Shin Bet several years before. He had taken an instant disliking to her and later Danielle learned that a formal reprimand Baruch had received from her father, an army general, had stalled his advancement and short-circuited his plans for a career in the military. “I was only wondering why you would waste your time coming out here on a case assigned to National Police. I don’t suppose it’s to wish me good luck with my investigation.”

  “Whoever called your office made a mistake. I am here to relieve you.”

  “The mistake must be your
s. This crime clearly falls under National Police authority.”

  “This American archaeological team was here under the protection of the Israeli government, Chief Inspector. That makes this a matter for the government, and not a civilian agency.”

  “Protecting the Americans was the government’s responsibility, Commander. Now that you’ve failed, it becomes ours.”

  “I’ve spoken to Commissioner Giott. He disagrees.”

  “I’ll wait to hear that from him myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Very well. He wishes to see you immediately upon your return to Jerusalem.” Baruch’s huge, dark eyes fixed on Ben. “You may want to inform him about the unauthorized presence of a Palestinian on the scene of an Israeli investigation before I do.”

  “Inspector Kamal was summoned on my request to act as translator,” she insisted, hoping Ben would keep quiet. He stood sideways on the steps, as if on the verge of continuing up to the cave in spite of the Shin Bet commander’s arrival.

  “Yes,” Baruch said smugly, “I’m sure he was. Now take him and leave before he does any further damage.”

  “Damage?”

  Baruch advanced up the steps, swallowing them with his boots, stopping when he was a handshake’s distance from Ben. “I would appreciate the item you removed from the guard’s possession.” And he extended a meaty hand past Danielle, ignoring her.

  “The bedouin guard, you mean,” Ben said to Baruch.

  “Just hand over what you took.”

  Ben kept his stare locked with Baruch’s as he reached into his pocket and extracted the tiny video camera he had palmed. “That guard didn’t seem to have much use for it anymore,” he said, feeling Danielle’s burning gaze upon him.

  Baruch accepted the camera but left his hand in place, not breaking the stare. “The disc too, please.”

  Ben frowned and produced a single recording disc from the same pocket. “It must have fallen out.”

  * * * *

  Y

  ou’re lucky Baruch didn’t arrest you,” Danielle said when they got back to her Jeep. A thin film of desert dirt and dust had turned it a pale oatmeal color, including the windows.

  “I was half surprised you didn’t beat him to it.”

  “I’m sorry about your nephew . . .”

  “Thank you.”

  “. . . but it doesn’t give you the right to remove items from a crime scene.” She tried to soften her tone, make it seem less harsh. “When were you going to tell me about the camera?”

  “I wasn’t. Under the circumstances.”

  “I’m starting to regret extending you the courtesy of that call.”

  Ben looked at her. “The nights you were supposed to come to my apartment, I sat by the phone waiting for you to call.”

  “You could have called me.”

  “I did. Kept getting your answering machine, but didn’t want to leave a message you probably wouldn’t return. When you finally answered, I hung up.”

  Danielle remembered the call that had awoken her in the early-morning hours, certain it was Ben even then. She had just fallen back to sleep after vomiting in the bathroom.

  “I was so relieved you were all right,” he continued, “I almost didn’t care you never showed up.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll explain, but later, not now. I have to figure out how to respond to Commander Baruch’s charges.”

  “Be prepared for more,” Ben said.

  After climbing inside, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed a mini-disc identical to the one he had handed over to Moshe Baruch.

  “What’s that?” Danielle asked.

  “I hope your former commander enjoys listening to ‘Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits—Volume One.’ “

  She looked at the disc in Ben’s hand. “You’re telling me that’s the disc that came from the camera? You’re a damn fool, Ben.”

  “So turn me in.”

  Danielle slammed the door behind her, the sun-baked upholstery singeing her skin through the fabric of her shirt and slacks. She turned on the engine and pressed a knob that sent a stream of washer fluid across the windshield. The wipers swirled the collected dirt into a streaky paste that only worsened her view.

  “How did the commander know the bedouin guard had a camera, Pakad?”

  Danielle tried the windshield washer again with little improvement.

  “Baruch must have been keeping a very close eye on that American archaeological team, yes?” Ben rolled the disc around in his hand. “And perhaps this will tell me why.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 7

  B

  en had been staring at the phone in his office for what seemed like hours, going as far as reaching for it but never quite picking it up.

  “I have something terrible to tell you, my brother. ...”

  The news of his nephew’s death had to come from Ben, in spite of their relative estrangement over the five years Ben had been back in Palestine. It was seven hours earlier in Detroit, roughly eight o’clock in the morning. His brother Sayeed and his sister-in-law might barely be out of bed.

  Putting off the call only gave Ben more reason to stew over Danielle’s increasingly cold behavior toward him. It had made him realize with frightening clarity how much he had grown to depend on her. Palestine might have been his homeland by birth, but she was the only person with whom he had forged a meaningful relationship since returning. He recalled a trip they made together to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial outside Jerusalem he had never visited before. The walk through the eerie darkness, listening to the soft haunting chant of the names of the murdered and then viewing the horrifying memorabilia, had left him shaken and speechless. Danielle had taken his hand but he barely felt it until they were outside.

  To Ben that had been a defining moment of their relationship, because Danielle had introduced him to an intensely personal and painful part of her world and her life. She had kept hold of his hand for a very long time after they left, the gesture as important as any intimate moment they had shared. Ben hadn’t wanted her to let go and now, found himself clinging to the memory. The longer his own people refused to accept him fully, the more dependent he had become upon her friendship and her love. Contemplating the loss of both terrified him, left him as chilled as the corridors of Yad Vashem, and made it even harder to summon the courage he needed to contact his family back in the States.

  Fighting the hammering of his heart, Ben forced himself to lift the receiver and bring it to his ear. The dial tone sounded and he began to dial.

  “Inspector Kamal,” huffed an out-of-breath Palestinian police officer who had appeared suddenly in his doorway, “Captain Wallid says you are to come to Baladiya Square at once!”

  Ben looked up, distracted. “What?”

  “It is an emergency! Please, come quickly!”

  Ben hung up the phone, the call to his brother left uncompleted.

  * * * *

  J

  ust Thirty-One years old, Captain Fawzi Wallid had become chief of the Jericho police district thanks in large part to Ben’s efforts nearly a year before. To reach him after leaving the Municipal Building, Ben had to fight through a crowd of people pouring from the popular shopping square, eyes peering back over their shoulders as if expecting some predator to strike. Ben pushed his way forward, badge clipped to his shirt the way he used to do in Detroit.

  Captain Wallid, a short, squat man with a prematurely old face and ruddy complexion, was waiting at the rear of the crowd. “Over here, Inspector!” he called, and Ben veered toward him. “We have a hostage situation,” Wallid continued, cupping a hand around Ben’s shoulder. “A crazy man has already wounded a woman with a sword and two others are trapped. You’re the only one on staff with experience in such matters.”

  Still numb from the pending call to his brother, Ben let Wallid lead him forward.

  “Listen to me!” he heard a voice bellow from the center of the outdoor marketplace. “Stay back or I’ll kill h
er!”

  They neared a ring of policemen standing with pistols and rifles drawn at the front of the crowd. In the street before them, Ben saw the sword Wallid spoke of and then the man wielding it precariously close to a woman lying at his feet, already wounded. Two other women cowered beneath a nearby kiosk, a mere lunge away for the swordsman.

  “Ordinarily,” the chief of Jericho’s police department explained, “we would handle things in a more traditional manner, but the Oasis Casino has brought an influx of tourism to the area and my orders are to avoid anything that might discourage that trend. Shootings are bad for business.”