by Jon Land
Sayeed seemed on the verge of losing his balance. He reached out and leaned against the classic MG’s fender for support. “What happened to this evidence? Did you destroy it?”
“I didn’t have to. The years took care of that for me.”
“Thank God...”
“But Winston Daws, the archaeologist who originally uncovered the find a half century ago, took pictures.” Ben fished the envelope out of his pocket. “These.”
Sayeed’s eyes widened. He pulled his hand from the MG’s fender, leaving in its place a perfect imprint on the glossy finish that began to fade immediately. He started to reach for the photos, then changed his mind. “You’re telling me this is what my son died for?”
“The secret they represent, yes.”
“Can you, can you get these people who did this thing?”
Ben nodded. “Yes, I think I can.”
“And you trust this Israeli woman to help you?”
“As much as I trust anyone.” Ben took a few shallow breaths. “I stopped at my old house on the way here. It looks a lot different.”
“Nothing stays the same.”
“You want to help me, Sayeed?”
“I want to go back to Palestine with you and find the people who killed my son.”
Ben reached out and grasped his brother’s shoulders. “There’s something you can do more important than that.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 79
T
hey spoke in a corner of the room by the window, the rest of the Kamal family clearly respecting their privacy.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Umm Kamal,” said Danielle. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“It’s the least I can do for the woman about to make me a grandmother again,” Ben’s mother returned, tapping her fondly on the arm. She tried to smile but her eyes teared up instead.
Danielle felt her heart skip a beat, taken aback. How much did Hanna Kamal know? “Did Ben, did he . . .”
Hanna Kamal shook her head before Danielle could finish. “He didn’t have to. I could see it on your faces; his a little, but yours mostly. Boy or girl, I don’t care. Let it just be healthy. After all we have been through, that much we deserve. . . .”
Danielle felt tears stinging her eyes, couldn’t find any words to respond.
“You haven’t had children before.”
“No.”
Hanna Kamal tried to smile again. “Something else a woman can always tell. Just like I can tell my response surprises you.”
“It does.”
“Of course it does. The fact that you’re a Jew and my son is Palestinian, it should bother me, yes? Well, years ago it would have. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him happy.” Hanna Kamal leaned very close to Danielle and lowered her voice. “My question is how do you feel about it?”
“I—”
“You are troubled,” Ben’s mother completed for her.
“I lost a baby once before,” Danielle said, hoping that explanation would suffice. But deeper, below the surface, saying that to a stranger made her realize how much she missed her own mother, missed her desperately for the private and personal moments, both good and bad, Danielle could share with no one else. Gone for so many years now and the void was still no less easy to bear.
Hanna Kamal flapped a hand between the two of them. Danielle thought she smelled Evian hand cream, the same kind her mother used.
“Is that all? I lost two myself,” said Hanna Kamal. “One before my oldest was born, another between my second and third. But I knew losing one would not affect me having others, as it obviously hasn’t affected you.”
“I’m scared of losing this one too.”
“As you will be until he takes his first breath free of your belly. We have a saying: fear for what you cannot control, but control your fear. It gets easier after a few months.”
“I barely got that far the last time.”
Hanna Kamal nodded firmly. “This time will be different. My son deserves this.” She studied Danielle closer, waited for a few of Ben’s nieces and nephews to drift away before continuing. “And so do you, from what I understand, even more so.”
Now it was Danielle who hesitated. “It doesn’t bother you, Umm Kamal?”
“What?”
“The two of us, Ben and I . . .”
Hanna Kamal reached out and took her hand when Danielle’s voice trailed off. “We have a saying, Danielle:Inshalla binnisr, inshalla diddawlah. It means ‘May we meet at the victory, may we meet in our country.’ Well, the United States is our country now and our battles are different from what they used to be.”
“You’ve made me feel very welcome.”
“Kull emleeha. Everything is good between you and my son. That is all that matters.”
Danielle almost told her the truth, but couldn’t find the words to start. “Thank you, Umm Kamal,” she managed softly, instead.
Hanna Kamal let go of Danielle’s hand and smiled. “You are the first person to address me as ‘Umm’ in a very long time, Danielle. My friends here, Palestinian and otherwise, call me ‘Mrs.’ My grandchildren call me ‘Nana.’ I’ve been an American for almost thirty years. I haven’t been back to my homeland in even longer than that and wonder if I ever will. So this difference in cultures does not bother me. You know what does bother me? My son being unhappy bothers me. Him being alone bothers me.”
“I understand . . . Mrs. Kamal.”
“Hanna.”
“Hanna.”
Hanna Kamal reached over and squeezed Danielle’s hand. “My son is troubled, isn’t he, Danielle?”
“Yes.”
“Always he has been this way, since he was a boy, always a project. He didn’t always succeed but he never left anything unfinished. Just like his lather. My husband had to go back, to Palestine, and it killed him.”
“He had enemies.”
“My son has told you?”
“I put things together.”
“You are troubled too?”
“Because Ben has enemies as well, even more powerful ones than his father.”
“This is what brought you here. ...”
“And what will take us back.”
Hanna Kamal sighed. “I wish you could stay here, both of you. Palestine has already taken enough of us.”
“We are going back to do what must be done.”
Hanna Kamal’s eyes finally filled with tears, her grief overflowing. She turned away from Danielle toward the window. “That’s exactly what my husband said before he left.”
* * * *
G
ianni Lorenzo once again reviewed the reports lying on his desk. By all indications, Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea had inexplicably fled to America following their escape in Rome. Clearly something was waiting for them there and Lorenzo felt certain it was connected to Winston Daws and the lost scroll of Josephus.
If Lorenzo’s information was correct, they had flown into Boston. After that, what he’d been able to learn became sketchy at best. But no matter. Where they had gone, where in America they were now, was irrelevant. Very soon, inevitably, they would be returning to Israel with whatever they had found.
Seven of his best Knights Templars, under Major Flave Pocacinni’s leadership, remained in Israel now still searching for the blind madman, Rabbi Mordecai Lev. Gianni Lorenzo, captain commandant of the Swiss Guard, would join his men there now.
And wait.
* * * *
M
oshe Baruch walked past the guards he had planted at the safehouse where Rabbi Mordecai Lev was staying. The safehouse was located on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Abu Dis primarily because it was among the last places enemies of Shin Bet would think to look for someone in the organization’s care.
Lev was seated by the window when Baruch stepped through the door, looking out as if he could see. “What have you to tell me, Commander?”
“My people failed. Barnea and the Palesti
nian got away.”
“Can we keep them out of the country?”
“We can try, but Barnea is good, well trained.”
“You ignore the Palestinian?”
“None of them worry me with their cleverness.”
“This one should, Commander. It would not surprise me if he has figured out the truth by now.”
“Impossible, Rabbi.”
Lev tilted his head slightly to the side. “You said the same thing about the two of them escaping your people in the United States.”
Baruch was glad Lev couldn’t see the uncertainty flutter across his features. “In any case, Pakad Barnea is in for a surprise when and if she returns.”
“Just make sure the surprise lasts another day, Commander,” said Lev. “After that, it won’t matter.”
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 80
S
ayeed’s arrangements to get Ben and Danielle back to Israel were surprisingly simple. He was aided by the fact that an exiled Palestinian delegation out of Cairo had received permission from Arafat himself to attend a meeting of the entire Palestinian Council.
Ben and Danielle would reach Cairo by way of Paris, where, as part of the delegation, they would pose as former exiles in order to reach the Palestinian airport in Gaza. Israeli scrutiny was certain to be intense there, but Ben’s brother Sayeed had promised to devise a way to expedite matters for them, calling in favors owed to him by those he had smuggled back into Palestine.
For Ben and Danielle, the early legs of their journey passed for the most part in uncomfortable silence. They had argued mightily back in Dearborn, and then again while their plane was delayed in New York, about whether or not Danielle should remain behind.
“You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s too dangerous. You’re not thinking of the baby.”
Ben watched her expression change in response to his charge. “Yes, I am,” she said.
“Do you want to lose it?”
“What? How could you ask such a thing?”
“Because that’s how you’re acting, like you don’t want a child at all.”
Danielle felt hot tears brewing behind her eyes. “Did I lose the first one on purpose too?”
“Why don’t you tell me? It’s not just about you this time, though. It’s about me too, whether you raise him yourself or not.”
The tears began to slide down her cheeks. “Then you should have tied me up and left me in Dearborn.”
“So once you lost the child you could blame me.”
“Why don’t you go to hell?”
“I’ve already been there, Pakad, both of us have. The difference is I’m trying to work my way out—I thought I had—with you. But I only found myself in a different one.”
Danielle tasted warm salt on her lips. “I guess you’re right: I am going back, because of you and the baby.” Her tone sharpened. “Because I don’t want to see you dead. Because I intend to do everything I can to keep the father of my child alive.”
“Too bad he won’t know me as his father.”
Danielle lapsed into silence.
Ben leaned back with a sigh.
The plane out of New York’s Kennedy Airport, comprising the second leg of their journey, took off two hours late. Another twenty hours remained before they were scheduled to at last land in Gaza, after the rendezvous with the group of Palestinian exiles in Cairo. Ben couldn’t even imagine how the journey might go based on the contentious atmosphere with which it had started.
“The truth is,” he said finally, glad to change the subject, “I don’t even know what we should do once we get back.”
“Are you talking about Winston Daws’s pictures?”
“I’ve almost tossed them in the trash a dozen times already. I still might before we get home.”
“Why?”
“Because you were right: proving there was no resurrection, that the entire basis of Christianity is a sham,is about punishing God, the world . . . you. Show everyone else that they were as much fools as I was for believing.”
“What changed?”
Ben gave her a long look as the pilot announced yet another delay. “Nothing—that’s the problem. Going home. Seeing my family, my old house. If I keep fighting God, nothing will ever change. But I’ve got to try to put it behind me. I’m not sure if I can, but I’ve got to try.”
“Does that include me, Inspector?”
Ben tried to wet his lips but his mouth was dry, thanks to the stale, recirculated plane air. “That’s your decision, Pakad.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t destroy the pictures, because they might be the only leverage we have once all this is over.”
“Leverage over whom? Not the Israeli government, of course, who can’t afford to have us running around telling the world they’ve discovered oil in the West Bank.”
“My brother told me the oil was worthless, at least for the foreseeable future. The expense doesn’t justify bringing it up.”
“That’s not the way my government, through Baruch, has been behaving.”
“Exactly.”
“So what are we missing, Inspector?”
“We know Rabbi Mordecai Lev, for some reason, was involved in the search for oil in the Judean. He knew the truth about the American geologists from the beginning and he was following their progress well before they had unearthed the remains of the ancient scroll. But why would Lev care? Why did he become so involved in a secret operation to find oil everyone should have known was too expensive to pursue?”
Danielle shrugged in response as the plane began to taxi toward the runway.
* * * *
CHAPTER 81
T
he final flight of their long journey was made out of Cairo in an ancient propeller plane packed with Palestinians. It finally ended with a bumpy, thumping landing on the Gaza Airport’s main runway late Tuesday afternoon. Danielle had been uncomfortable and tense since arriving in Cairo. Harsh glances cast at her quickly gave way to the exchange of hushed whispers. Despite her disguise of a dark dress and cloak to cover most of her face, it was clear she stood out. As it was, fortunately, the Palestinians kept to themselves and there was almost no talking in the brief duration of the flight from Cairo to Gaza.
The plane’s jolting taxi toward the gate area in Gaza provided a clear view of a troop of Israeli soldiers surrounding the entire airport complex. There were personnel carriers and jeeps present as well, each threatening additional firepower if it was needed. Perhaps most ominously, a few empty trucks were parked on the edge of the tarmac, just in case the Israelis decided to off-load the entire group of passengers onto them as soon as they deplaned.
“Welcoming committee,” Ben noted, peering out the window.
“They’re expecting us. Apparently, your brother’s contacts must not be too discreet.”
Ben thought briefly. “If they were sure we were onboard, they would have the plane surrounded already. They must be checking all planes into Gaza as a precaution.”
“Which doesn’t seem to help us out very much.”
Ben felt his neck and spine stiffen. “Our papers are all in order. If it’s just a cursory check ...”
“It won’t be. I can assure you of that.”
“Those are your people out there, Pakad.”
“I’m being hunted as much as you, maybe even more so, Ben. Commander Baruch knows I know about the oil he was ordered to safeguard.”
Ben leaned forward in his seat. “Baruch,” he muttered, thinking. The only thing Baruch and Mordecai Lev had in common was a hatred for Palestinians and a desire to see them evicted from the West Bank. Might that somehow be connected to their mutually obsessive interest in the discovery of oil in the Judean Desert? And if so, how?
Ben’s search for answers was cut short as the plane halted well short of the gate, and he turned his attention to a scene out the window. A pair of Palestinian police cars sat just to the plane’s right. Ben was confu
sed until he saw a familiar Mercedes parked behind them. As the plane came to a complete stop, Nabril al-Asi climbed out of the backseat of the Mercedes. Almost instantly, four Palestinian policemen joined the colonel, a pair flanking him on either side.
