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

by Jon Land

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “I don’t know.” He held her by the shoulders. “But he won’t get them all. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 70

  B

  en and Danielle rushed through the park, sometimes mistaking the rattle of branches shifting in the wind for the rush of footsteps toward them. There were no sounds of pursuit, no other noise at all. Behind them, even the shrill sound of screams had passed, evidence the sniper had either completed his work or been killed himself.

  Danielle felt herself coming back to life during their dash, her mind clearing. She concentrated on moving as fast as she could, struggling against the fatigue that threatened to overcome her.

  Ben led the way through a nest of buildings housing various museums, circling round the Giardino del Lago, or Garden of the Lake. The water bounced the reflection of the moon and lantern light off its surface, making the night seem much brighter here. They came to a thick line of trees, and Ben yanked Danielle off the path into their covering darkness.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. I think I heard something. I can’t be sure. But we’ve got to get out of here—I know that much. Hurry, this way!”

  The gates to the park’s zoo, Giardino Zoologico, were closed but not locked. Ben led the way in, making sure to relatch the gates from the inside.

  The earthy scents of the many animals and pungent stench of manure hung in the air. The night gave up reflective signs pointing the way toward the antelope, wolves, giraffes, tigers, and elephants. Some of the animals were stirring in their enclosures, making noises that were fine for Ben and Danielle, since it would help mask any sound they made in the course of their escape.

  “This has got to lead to a road on the other side of the park,” Danielle said softly.

  “And an exit.”

  They continued on, leery of every shadow and sound. But Ben felt free, almost weightless. They were back together again, with only each other to depend upon. For these moments anyway, the world that had come between them didn’t matter. The decision Danielle had made didn’t matter, although every time Ben thought of that, he let himself hope she would change her mind.

  What else do I have to do to prove myself?

  Was that why he had come to the Vatican? Did he fear more for his unborn child than Danielle when he learned of her fate? Ben could no longer make the distinction.

  They were well past the lions’ den when he heard a few of the big cats growl, a deep rumble coming from the back of their throats, ominous enough to freeze time. Ben gazed back briefly.

  “They’re coming,” he whispered to Danielle, sweeping the scene again with his eyes, following the sounds of traffic. “There’s a street directly before us, just on the right. A ten-foot fence, no gate.”

  “We can make it,” Danielle assured him.

  “Topped with barbed wire.”

  “Take your jacket off,” she advised, already removing hers. “Cover your hands with it.”

  Reaching the fence meant risking a dash to it in a flat open space, no matter which route they chose. The shortest cut directly between a pair of night-lights placed atop buildings, and that was the one they opted for.

  Ben and Danielle ran from the darkness into the light, springing onto the fence with their jackets ready to save their hands from the barbed wire. The gunshots started as they reached the top and spilled over, grasping the wire with their covered hands. Ben felt the sharp prods dig through the fabric and tear into his palm. He yanked his grasp off and went flying, sprawling to the ground with a sickening thud, his breath pouring from him.

  Danielle dropped down next to him. “Are you shot?”

  “Just cut,” Ben gasped.

  Fresh gunfire burst from inside the zoo, figures darting forward as they fired.

  “We’ve got to move!” Danielle wailed, helping Ben reach the main road, where he fought to get his breath back, doubled over with his hands on his knees.

  They could hear heavy feet clanging off the fence, coming fast in their wake. Ben had just eased himself from Danielle’s grasp, both of them searching futilely about for their next move, when a dark car screeched to a halt on a diagonal before them.

  “Get in!” ordered a voice from behind the wheel, a voice that was somehow familiar to Ben. “Quickly if you want to live!”

  A bullet slammed into the car’s quarter panel. Another shattered its rear window. Ben pulled Danielle with him into the backseat, slammed the door hard.

  “Stay low!” the driver ordered. “And keep your heads down!”

  The voice grew more familiar to Ben with each word. But only when the driver swung to check on them, and Ben got his first clear look at the man’s face, especially a birthmark marring his left eyebrow, did he remember where from:

  This is the man who a week ago saved me from the Israeli soldiers on Mordecai Lev’s behalf! He is a member of the Pillars of the Land!

  The Israeli screeched around a corner.

  Ben saw the long black rifle with infrared scope affixed to its bore propped on the front seat next to him. “You were the one shooting in there!”

  “Yes, I was. I followed you here on Rabbi Lev’s orders.”

  “Lev?”

  “He still wants the lost scroll, Inspector, the story that cost him his eyes.”

  “It’s gone,” Ben said as he clutched Danielle’s hand, afraid to let go lest she slip away from him again. “Reduced to dust.”

  “Not entirely,” the big man said confidently.

  “What do you mean?”

  The man weaved his way through a traffic-snarled street, nearly colliding with a dozen vehicles before he sped through an intersection just as the light turned red. Certain that they weren’t being followed, he slowed the car and looked back at Ben.

  “Winston Daws took pictures, Inspector. Somewhere there is still a record of everything.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 71

  N

  ice to hear your voice, Inspector,” Colonel al-Asi greeted when Ben reached him on the cell phone al-Asi had provided prior to his departure for Rome.

  Lev’s sniper continued to drive on through the night as Ben spoke, ever aware of the view in the rearview mirror. He introduced himself as Asher Katz. He had dark skin and the kind of hard glare to his eyes that Ben had come to know all too well. Katz kept his hair short, but it had turned tangled and knotty from the sniper’s mask he must have worn while perched on the hillside back in the Villa Borghese. Hair grew wild from his ears and nose as well, and his eyebrows were thick and curly, except for the fleshy streak through the left one Ben recalled from their previous meeting in Israel.

  “You sound tired, Colonel,” Ben continued. His hands continued to ache from the antiseptic stored in a small first-aid kit Katz had provided. Ben had done his best to apply gauze bandages, but they wouldn’t stay on. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “You didn’t; I’m at the casino. The Israelis are complaining that the roulette wheel is rigged. So far everything seems to be in order. Do you have a favorite number?”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind, Inspector.”

  “Have you learned anything else about Winston Daws? Some kind of report listing his personal effects catalogued on the scene in Ephesus, maybe, or any records of correspondence?”

  “Of course I have. But tell me first how is Chief Inspector Barnea?”

  Ben looked across the seat. “Right here beside me.”

  “Truly wonderful news. Once I found out... In any case, may I conclude that congratulations are in order? What is it the Jews say? Mazel tov!”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Ben said, feeling the familiar clog in his throat.

  “I told you about my children,” al-Asi continued. “After the last birthday party when no one showed up, I changed their names so they don’t become targets and can have friends. I hardly ever see them an
ymore. It is a terrible thing when we must live that way.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It was the Israelis who caught on to a Hamas plot against my youngest boys. They’d be dead now otherwise. Good people to work with, the Israelis. Very reliable and responsible, but also very stubborn. I keep that in mind in all my dealings with them. You would be well advised to do the same thing,” al-Asi added.

  “I’ve learned that much, believe me. What about Winston Daws, Colonel?”

  “Let’s start with the inventory recovered from the site of the murders in Ephesus. What is it you were specifically interested in, Inspector?”

  Ben recalled the camera dangling from Winston Daws’s neck in the picture, along now with Mordecai Lev’s recollection of the shots Daws had taken prior to the massacre. “A camera.”

  “Hold on a minute, I have the list right in my pocket. The Turkish police were not very helpful, but you were right about Britain conducting their own investigation. . . . Here it is. A camera, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Unfortunately,” said al-Asi, “no camera was found among Daws’s personal effects either. I’m not surprised. Gianni Lorenzo is nothing if not thorough.”

  “But Winston Daws could still have taken pictures of the scroll he uncovered and sent them away before he was murdered. Which brings me to the correspondence coming in and out of the camp. . . .”

  “The British must have come to the same conclusion, Inspector: they found that a mail shipment did go out between the time Daws made his discovery and the time his team was murdered. None of the addresses were logged anywhere, so that turned out to be a dead end.”

  “Phone calls,” Ben said, feeling his hope slipping away.

  He could almost see al-Asi nodding on the other end. “The British were able to trace several made by Daws prior to the start of his final expedition, and a few during it. But none of those he spoke with reported receiving any pictures.”

  Ben knew it was gone now, any hope, just wanted to be home. “More dead ends.”

  “Not quite, Inspector. You see, the British authorities were only interested in following up calls going to Britain. I, though, was able to learn that Daws had a sister in the United States. Outside of Boston, actually.”

  Ben felt his hope slip back in, rejuvenated. “Brilliant, Colonel. How?”

  “I read a copy of Daws’s obituary. That’s all.”

  * * * *

  T

  he sister’s name was Florence,” al-Asi continued. “I was able to trace phone calls made by Daws to a number in Lexington, Massachusetts. The number has been disconnected. All I have is an address.”

  “Good enough.”

  Al-Asi hesitated on the other end of the line. “It’s been over fifty years, Inspector. She couldn’t possibly still live there.”

  “But it’s a start, Colonel. And that’s all we’ve got.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 72

  Y

  ou don’t have to come with me, you know,” Ben said to Danielle. Katz had stopped the car to make contact with someone close to Mordecai Lev, leaving them alone in the backseat. “Katz is going back to Israel. You can go home with him.”

  “And why do you have to go to America?”

  “To find Daws’s pictures, if they still exist. You know that. This is my fight now.”

  “What makes it your fight?”

  “Lorenzo and his private army of Knights Templars killed my nephew. I don’t know if I can ever expose them, but with those pictures I can expose the truth they’re trying so desperately to protect.”

  Danielle waited for a moment before responding. “So who are you really trying to hurt?”

  “I just told you.”

  “No, you didn’t. These pictures could change the way people think about religion, the way they think about God.”

  “The world has a right to hear the truth. Let everyone make up their own minds, be their own judge, instead of being suckered and played for a fool.”

  Danielle remained silent for a moment before responding. “It’s not the church you’re trying to punish, Ben: it’s me. By getting yourself hurt or killed and leaving me the blame if I leave you alone.”

  “This has nothing to do with you, Pakad.”

  “It has everything to do with me!”

  “Because of the oil?”

  “It’s what your nephew really died for. Billions and billions of barrels of it. One of the greatest strikes in modern history.”

  “Which Israel wanted to keep secret from the Palestinians, of course,” Ben said bitterly.

  Danielle nodded. “A job given to Moshe Baruch, who had me taken to that oil platform where I almost died.”

  “You’ll find Baruch in Israel, Pakad, not where I’m going.”

  “That’s the point! You said so yourself: the Amudei Ha’aretz were watching the Americans all along. That means Lev and Baruch must be in this together. And it also means Lev knew all along what those Americans were really doing in the Judean.”

  “Why would Mordecai Lev care about oil being found in the West Bank?”

  “Whatever the reason, he and Baruch can’t afford to have its existence made public. You wanted to know why I have to go to the United States with you? Because we both know about the oil and I’m in as much danger as you are.” She hesitated. “That means the baby is too.”

  “Are you including me in a discussion about his welfare, Pakad?”

  “If he’s going to live, if we’re going to live, it’s because of whatever’s waiting for us in America. Baruch and Lev can’t afford to let either of us come back with the truth, and neither of us can make it back alone.” Danielle’s voice became softer, almost pleading. “The only way we can beat them is together.”

  Katz climbed into the car and closed the door behind him. “Are the two of you ready?”

  * * * *

  T

  he suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts, was located thirty minutes from Boston’s Logan Airport. Ben and Danielle’s flight arrived on schedule early Saturday afternoon. Exhausted, they both slept soundly during the entire trip. Colonel al-Asi had arranged a rental car for them which was waiting in the special Hertz Number-one covered area of the lot.

  Lexington, Massachusetts, maintained a rustic, colonial feel that was true to its roots. The main road leading through the town was lined by old houses in comfortable yards with low fences people could talk to each other over. The commercial center was laid out around an old-fashioned common where parking remained hardly a dollar for the whole day. The promenadelike rows of shops and stores were finished in painted wood or brick facades. If it wasn’t for the cars and the fancy equipment in stores like Starbucks, it could have been a hundred years ago here.

  They had to stop and ask on three separate occasions for directions to the address Colonel al-Asi had provided for Florence Daws, finally realizing why they couldn’t find it: it didn’t exist anymore. The building that had once occupied that address and several others had been razed decades earlier to make room for the expansion of the commercial district. The Town Hall was closed on Saturdays and no one in any of the stores currently occupying the land knew anything of what had become of the building that used to be here.

  Ben and Danielle split up to better canvas the area. They agreed to meet in an hour’s time in a Starbucks that to Danielle looked identical to the Starbucks that had recently opened in Tel Aviv. The second shop on Ben’s list was a Waldenbooks tucked into the center of a tight nest of shops. When none of the employees could provide information about the building that had once occupied the nearby square, he turned his attention to finding a local history book that might. He was repeating his request to a young clerk chewing a huge wad of gum when a woman in the next aisle overheard him.

  “You’re talking about the Monsignor Alley School,” she said, peeking over the top shelf.

  “School?”

  The woman nodded. She looked to be in her early fift
ies, wore thin glasses and an inviting smile. “A sad day for many of us when they razed it in ‘72. Still, enrollment was down and the church couldn’t afford to keep it open. The alumni got together to try to save it, but we—”

  “We,” Ben interrupted. “You attended the school.”

  The woman nodded again. “Grades one through six, a thousand years ago.”