by Jon Land
Danielle gazed at her untouched glass. “Wine makes me sad.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
She seemed far away, listening to other voices Ben couldn’t hear. “Tasting it reminds me of the holidays. What I don’t have anymore. I taste it and for just a second I can smell my mother’s cooking and see the table neatly set, my brothers and father sitting in their chairs arguing. I want to go back to that more than anything in the world. But I can’t. There’s no way. I have to realize that.”
“For you it’s the taste of wine, Pakad. For me, it was the smell of blood. It brings me back to the moment I walked into my house that night six years ago. I smelled it from downstairs and I knew. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t too late as I charged up the stairs, but I knew. I knew. . . .” Ben’s voice trailed off, then resumed, quieter. “Seeing my nephew’s body yesterday brought it all back to me. And you know the worst of it? Not recognizing him. He was a stranger to me in so many respects. And when I finally started remembering him growing up, I remembered him playing with my children and all the other memories flooded in.”
“I understand.”
Ben stared vacantly into space. “Then understand that if those were the men who murdered him tonight, I’m glad I killed them. And if more of them were inside your apartment, I’ll kill them too.”
“You don’t think I can take care of myself?”
“On the contrary, I understand you’re up for a major promotion.”
“Your friend Colonel al-Asi tell you that?”
Ben decided not to tell her Mordecai Lev had given him the news, posed as a threat. “Yes,” he lied.
“Anyway, the commissioner has decided to recommend me for a promotion to one of the top positions in National Police.”
“Then we have found something to toast,” Ben said and started to raise his wineglass again.
Danielle left hers on the table. “Not yet, because Commander Baruch and others are determined to see I don’t get it. They want to punish me.”
Ben pulled back a little. “For being on close terms with a Palestinian?”
“And they can go to hell for all I care.”
They exchanged a smile for the first time in longer than either could remember, and Ben felt a flutter in the empty hollow of his stomach, unable to take his eyes off her. He quickly drained half of his glass, but it was no use. His heart was hammering against his chest and his breath was suddenly short.
Ben knew what was going to happen next, and somehow the inevitability made it even more thrilling. He could never remember more pleasing seconds than the ones that passed before they reached each other. In that moment, Ben had everything in the world he needed to believe in right in his arms. The rest of his life vanished in the long kiss they shared before sinking to the Berber rug that thinly covered Ben’s stone floor.
Tonight they seemed to need each other more than ever, and together they went far away to a place so removed from that room and time that the very color and fabric of reality seemed to change. Ben felt he was somewhere in a different world and he clung to Danielle to hold on to this place he never wanted to leave. He could feel his heart still pounding, but realized he was barely breathing as was she. A window shade rattled. Outside a horn blew. Still joined, though, they heard neither, insulated from all except each other and the peace that brought them. Ben felt light, the whole time as if he were floating. Reluctant to come down and closing his eyes so he wouldn’t know the floor when it touched him again.
When he finally opened them, Danielle was starting away from him, toward the ceiling. He reached out and felt her stiffen under his touch.
“Do you regret what we’ve done?” she asked, still not looking his way.
He stroked her gently. “Yes, because I nearly pulled my stitches out.”
Danielle turned onto her side to face him. “You know what I mean.”
“You’re the only thing in my life that means anything.” Ben pulled his hand away. “What’s gotten into you? You never needed to ask before. Too much wine, that’s my excuse,” he said, looking at her untouched glass. “What’s yours, Pakad?”
“I’m pregnant.”
* * * *
S
he had hoped telling Ben would be a relief. Instead she felt herself sag, the burden increased. She longed to be able to snatch the words away from him, get her secret back so she could be spared the task of telling him what else was on her mind.
Danielle continued studying his face in the near darkness of the room. His eyes were like a child’s, confused and hopeful at the same time. They had walked a very fine line these last few months, finally succumbing to the urges both had managed to repress with the help of their mutually divisive cultures. They had realized, admitted, that they were happy only with each other. It wasn’t all the time, one night a week at most. Almost always here at Ben’s apartment since the checkpoints leading into Israel had become increasingly difficult for him to negotiate.
Until two weeks ago when Danielle first realized she was pregnant.
They slept together in Ben’s bed but did not make love again that night. They awoke on separate sides to the warm sun lapping at their faces. She knew she had to tell him the decision she had come to. It wasn’t fair to put the discussion off any longer, especially after last night.
“Ben,” she had started when the phone rang on his nightstand.
“What?”
He waited several rings, watching her swallowing hard, before he answered it. “Hello.”
“Kamal?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Ari Coen. I’ve had a look at your disc. How soon can you get up here?”
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 34
W
e can talk on the way,” Ben said as they walked down the stairs of his apartment building.
“It can wait,” Danielle insisted.
“I meant about what we each learned yesterday after we left the desert. What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
Danielle knew Ben could sense something was wrong, but he couldn’t know what, not yet. She harbored no thoughts of a happy life shared with a man she knew she loved, because there could be none of that, for both their sakes. Indeed, no Israeli had ever married a Palestinian and maintained the kind of position she now openly desired. In fact, most Israelis who dared break such a cultural taboo had ended up as outcasts in their own country. Pariahs accepted by neither side. Danielle would no longer be a Barnea, not in her eyes or Israel’s. This was one time she couldn’t have it both ways, the delicate fence she had straddled on the verge now of toppling her off to one side or the other.
What would her father think of this ultimate ignominy, especially now that the baby afforded Danielle the opportunity to preserve the Barnea name? If she raised him alone, that is.
But there was more, something she felt down deep and could admit only to herself. Danielle had felt it first when she and Ben had made love, and then later while she lay awake next to him through the night. Suddenly her need for him seemed depleted, as if all her emotion had been turned inward toward her baby. What Ben had given her, the security she could find nowhere else, the child would replace—was already replacing.
It wasn’t fair; she knew that, even as she knew she couldn’t change what she felt.
“An American showed up in my office yesterday and shed a different light on the situation,” Danielle said after they had set off in Ben’s car.
“An American connected to the dead archaeologists?”
“Not directly. He’s some sort of famous fortune hunter.”
Ben managed a smile. “Then what is he doing in Palestine?”
“Searching for the gold that according to legend the Israelites left out in the desert.”
Ben eased up on the accelerator pedal and a car behind them blared its horn.
“He thinks that the Americans figured out where it was,” Daniell
e continued. “At least uncovered the clues they needed to find it.”
“In that cave . . .”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe he’s holding something back.”
“Just like you are,” Ben said.
Danielle knew she couldn’t put this off until tomorrow night. “We need to talk about the baby.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think it would be best if I ... I think we should consider having me raise him alone.”
Danielle could see the genuine hurt on Ben’s face. “Oh,” he muttered.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”
“I see.”
“And trying to be realistic.”
“I don’t think that’s realistic,” Ben said, his voice as flat as the road ahead of them.
“I’m not saying I don’t want you to be a part of the child’s life,” Danielle tried, hoping to soften the blow she had inflicted.
“Aren’t you?”
“It makes the most sense, everything considered.”
“I don’t think so. I know what it’s like to grow up without a father.”
“So he should grow up and be like you. An outcast among his own people, both his peoples, which makes it twice as worse. Is that what you want?”
“I want a chance to make sure the same thing that happened to me doesn’t happen to him. But that’s not what this is about, is it? The truth is that it would be a lot easier for me to face renunciation from my own people, than you. After all, I’ve already been ostracized, haven’t I? For all intents and purposes, I’m a man without a country, so how hard would it be to face the recriminations of marrying an Israeli?”
“I don’t think we’d be happy together, not like this.”
“Because you still have a world beyond me you’re not ready to give up. And you know something? You’re right. I probably wouldn’t want to give it up either. I only have one question: why did you tell me about the baby in the first place?”
“It would still be yours.”
“And, once in a while, I could sneak across the border to spy on him. If I’m not arrested on the way.”
“We can make arrangements.”
“So long as they’re kept secret. Secret codes, how about pictures sent regularly to a post office drop? Maybe a Web site on the Internet, so I can talk to him that way.”
“Ben—”
“No, stop. Everything you’ve said is right. It makes sense and I don’t want to argue anymore. We’ve got work to do and that seems to be the only time we really get along, doesn’t it? Just let me hold on to that as long as I can.”
Danielle didn’t respond and Ben kept his eyes locked on the road before them.
* * * *
A
ril Coen had men waiting at the entrance to his property to again escort Ben to the headquarters of his operation. A slight delay occurred when those men found he wasn’t alone, and Ben had to speak to Coen personally over a walkie-talkie to set things straight.
“They think I’m dead in Israel, Inspector, remember?” Coen reminded. “And you bring an Israeli policeman here? I should have you both killed.”
“That might make Colonel al-Asi cut off your supply of pictures, don’t you think? And, believe me, Chief Inspector Barnea doesn’t have many more friends in Israel than you right now.”
There was a pause.
“Maybe I should have someone take the disc back to you, forget we ever met in the first place,” Coen said finally.
“No problem. I’ll just ask Colonel al-Asi if he can recommend someone else who can decipher it for me.”
“All right,” Coen relented. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * * *
A
t his house, the Israeli expatriate was clearly rattled by Danielle’s presence. He kept tugging at his ponytail as he led them to his office. Since it was morning, the shades were open, allowing sunlight to pour through the windows and fill the room until the day grew too hot.
Coen turned a computer monitor to an angle from which both Ben and Danielle could watch. “The encryption code was fairly basic,” he explained, “just as I expected. Definitely Shin Bet. Mossad would have taken me another day to crack at least.”
“It’s clear,” noted Danielle, “Shin Bet was determined to keep track of those Americans.”
“And you’re about to see why,” Coen said.
Although he permitted her to be present for the viewing, Coen had posted a number of armed guards within sight of the room’s windowed walls, wanting Danielle to know they were there.
“Here we go,” Coen said, and the picture caught on the disc came to life in brilliant focus on the monitor.
“What the hell is this?” Danielle couldn’t help but ask.
She just beat Ben to the question. He had expected to see any one of many things captured on the disc, but what he found himself watching was like none of them. The picture started to bounce a little as the bedouin guard who had been working for the Israelis reangled the camera. Steady enough, though, for Ben to make out a twenty-foot-high assemblage of pipes and rigging. A pair of the Americans stood in the center of an apparatus, looking on as the piping bore deeper into the ground. The tripod upon which the machinery was placed looked exactly like the one he had seen at Mordecai Lev’s settlement, except it was considerably larger.
“The depressions I found at the crime scene,” Ben noted. “Heavy machinery sitting on a tripod base. ...”
“Listen,” Coen added, reaching for the computer’s volume control.
He turned it up and a powerful rumble began to emanate in stereo from the machine’s twin speakers.
“I don’t know what all this means exactly,” Coen said, sounding dumbfounded, “but it looks like they’re drilling for something.”
“I’ve never heard of an archaeological team using a drill before,” Ben noted.
“That’s because the closest these Americans got to archaeology was their local museum.”
“What?”
Coen froze the screen briefly. “You’re looking at a geological survey team, my friend.”
* * * *
B
en looked at Danielle, unsure exactly what to think.
The murdered Americans were geologists, not archaeologists!
But what had they been looking for in the middle of the desert?
“They were drilling a thousand feet down,” Coen continued.
“A thousand feet?”
“By the look of the rigging, yes. I briefly served in the Israeli army’s engineering department.”
“Could they have been drilling for water?” Ben asked, recalling the explanation for the presence of a similar apparatus at Rabbi Lev’s.
“Why would they bother? Water might be the most valuable resource of any to Palestinians, but not to Israelis, and according to you, they’re the ones behind the Americans’ presence. Why would Israelis care about finding another water source in the West Bank? Besides, you wouldn’t need a drill this elaborate if you were only looking for water.”
“There’s another problem,” Danielle began. “When I arrived after the murders took place, the entire apparatus had been disassembled. There wasn’t any sign of it.”
“Thanks to the soldiers who were first on the scene?” Ben asked.
She nodded. “Under orders from someone else, someone who didn’t want anyone finding out what those Americans were really up to in the Judean.”
Ben moved closer to her. “All this equipment must have been inside those trucks we didn’t get to see at the site,” he said. He continued to search for his nephew on the screen but the young man must have been out of camera range. “Your friend Commander Baruch arrived at a very convenient moment.”
Danielle kept her eyes on the screen. “In time to have everything removed before anyone else could investigate what was really going on.”
“Speaking of which, I think yo
u’ll find this especially interesting,” Coen pronounced. On screen the pair of men in the center were overseeing the process of withdrawing the piping apparatus from the ground. Coen froze the screen when they were finished, worked an X over the spool’s very end and with his mouse, and clicked. The computer zoomed in for a close-up of a softball-sized object that looked like a closed mouth, lined on both top and bottom with steel prongs that might have been teeth.
