by By Jon Land
Levy looked down, then up again, his eyes sad. “I should never have dismissed you from the Sayaret.” He shook his head. “Twelve years ago and it still pains me just as much.”
“What happened in Beirut didn’t leave you any choice,” Danielle said, trying not to show that it hurt her even more.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better. I feel I let you down, your father, too.”
“I felt I let the two of you down.”
“Then perhaps this is the chance for both of us to make amends. How would you like to return to special operations?”
Danielle felt herself about to jump at the opportunity, but pulled back. “I’m even more damaged goods than I was back then, General. With all that’s happened ...”
“You’re a detective, Danielle, and a detective is what I need now.”
“Why me, an outsider?”
“Because the insiders can’t be trusted with this.” Levy leaned back stiffly. “How much do you know about diamond smuggling?”
“A few cases have crossed my desk over the years.”
“I’m talking about diamonds being used to finance civil wars in developing countries all over the world, and to fund terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.”
Danielle shook her head.
“They’re called blood diamonds,” Levy continued. “Rough, unfinished stones smuggled into Israel from Africa and exchanged for huge amounts of weapons and ordnance.”
“Where are the weapons coming from?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“We,” Danielle echoed pointedly.
“This is a cabinet-level assignment,” the former head of the Sayaret explained. “I can’t tell you anything else because none of it is official. You won’t find anyone in authority able to confirm anything. It’s that way for a reason and that’s the way it’s got to stay until you bring me the proof I need.” Levy leaned forward again, his knees creaking and a slight grimace spreading across his face. “All I have is the identity of a courier, and a report that he’s due to arrive back in Israel tomorrow. It’s a simple surveillance operation.”
Danielle watched as Levy studied her with his still forceful eyes.
“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing.”
“Have I come to the right place? If you want me to look elsewhere, if you have any doubts, just say the word.”
Danielle had said nothing.
The problem was, Danielle had realized in the past forty-eight hours, was that she did have doubts. Thirty-six had seemed so old a decade ago, ancient by Sayaret standards, yet now that birthday had come and gone. She had spent the morning of her birthday three weeks before filling out yet more papers in her attempt to return to active investigative status, believing she could be the same person she had always been. The same person who had served under Dov Levy in the Sayaret.
But she wasn’t that person anymore. Too much had happened in the years since, too much baggage accumulated. Danielle felt no older physically. Still wore no makeup and could easily pass for a woman ten years younger. There was an edge, though, she recalled from that night in Beirut twelve years before that was missing now. Difficult to define. The way her heart could hold steady when bullets filled the air. How she could keep her breathing controlled when dug into the dirt or hiding in the back of the truck. Danielle couldn’t remember the last time she had felt that edge. Certainly not since her return from New York almost a year ago.
If the baby had survived, how old would he be now?
Danielle did the calculations every day.
Yesterday Ranieri had reemerged from the jewelry store’s back room before she could complete them. But he was no longer carrying the suitcase he had brought in, which made no sense to Danielle. So far as she knew, he had come here to pick something up, not drop something off. Clearly there was something going on here neither she nor Dov Levy had considered.
That night she had meticulously searched Ranieri’s hotel room at the Dan after he left for dinner. She found nothing of note, certainly nothing to suggest he was carrying the large sum Dov Levy had told her to expect.
Then this morning Ranieri had returned to the same jewelry store on Dizengoff Street he had visited yesterday, and picked up something at the counter Danielle lingered too far away to identify. Outside the store, she kept her distance, aware that Ranieri was constantly scanning for tails and altering his step in an attempt to trip them up.
He drove to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and she followed him undetected through the Old City into an East Jerusalem square, orsouq, dominated by the pungent smells of falafel, spicy kebab, and smoking ears of corn being sold from pushcart grills by smiling vendors. But Ranieri bypassed these in favor of a seat at an outdoor table on the patio of Café Europe, located on As-Zahra Street in the center of the square.
The quirky menu, featuring both Arabic and European fare, was posted on the café’s stone facade. A waiter came and took Ranieri’s order, returning a short time later with a small pot of coffee, tray of pastries, and a newspaper. The remaining tables were unoccupied, save for a Palestinian wearing a keffiyahand puffing clouds of thick white apple tobacco smoke from a chambered, water-coolednargeileh pipe. A young boy maneuvered between the empty tables, pushing a broom across the cobbled surface.
Danielle’s nerves jittered. She shrank back further amidst the shops and kiosks across the wide, pedestrian-only square, feeling the exchange Ranieri had come here to broker was about to take place.
But how was he going to pay to obtain the weapons Dov Levy had spoken of?
She watched Ranieri fumbling with his eyeglass case, taking the glasses out and then putting them back in. She was certain they hadn’t been in his room the night before and she’d never seen him with them before. Ranieri opened the newspaper and began to read, returned the glasses once more to his pocket.
Of course!
Danielle felt revived, recharged, everything clear to her as she pretended to browse through various leather goods, handmade jewelry, and assortments of knickknacks dominating the storefronts, waiting for the contact the courier was expecting to arrive.
* * * *
Chapter 3
I
n the side view mirror, Anatolyevich watched as Sergeant Khaled and another Palestinian policeman took his driver into custody. He looked at Ben expressionlessly. “I’ve heard of you. . . .”
“Likewise.” Stripping off the beard had taken the harshness from Ben’s face. He had blue eyes and wore his dark hair still parted to the side seven years after his return to Palestine from the U.S. His angular face emphasized his high, ridged cheekbones that cast shadows over his eyes and left his gaze perpetually somber.
“You’re the American . . .”
“I’m Palestinian.”
“. . . who came here to help train the Palestinian police. Your men are worthless,” Anatolyevich said, and made a spitting motion.
“We caught you.”
“You betray your own people in the process, comrade.”
“That makes two of us.”
Anatolyevich smirked. “Israel is not my country. Just a place to do business.”
“Too bad the right of return includes Russian thugs.”
Anatolyevich seemed unmoved. “We are much more than just thugs. You must know that. You think you’ll have me in custody long?”
“You think Israeli officials will fight for your release?”
“No.”
Ben nodded, understanding. “Your associates in the Russian mafia, then.”
Anatolyevich scoffed, puffed air through his mouth. “There’s no such thing, comrade. Don’t be naive.”
“The same thing used to be said about the American version. Now, get out of the truck and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Anatolyevich eased the door open and climbed down. “You’re wasting your time.”
Ben handed the submachine gun to the second of his officers and fastened handcuffs
around Anatolyevich’s wrists.
“You have a family, Inspector?”
Ben spun Anatolyevich around and glared at him. “My family is out of your reach.”
“You really think anyone is out of our reach?”
“They’re dead. Murdered by an animal even worse than you.”
The Russian resisted slightly. “Pity.”
“Let’s go,” Ben said, leading him toward the warehouse’s bay door, as Sergeant Khaled hoisted it upward.
Ben nudged Anatolyevich and his driver into the street where another four Palestinian policemen were standing beside a pair of jeeps with guns drawn. A crowd had gathered, seeming to tense when Ben led Anatolyevich toward a waiting van. The crowd was composed of people of all ages, women as well as men. A few jeered him. Others thrust threatening fists into the air. Ben sensed trouble even before the jostling began, followed swiftly by the shouts, growing in cadence and intensity with each chorus.
“Khay’in!”
Traitors.
The stone throwing started next, stinging Ben’s face and smacking his legs and torso. A larger rock struck Anatolyevich in the face and crumpled him. Ben hoisted the Russian up and calculated the remaining distance to the police van; even if they could reach it through the hail of rocks, he knew they’d have to drive over the crowd to get through it.
Ben held his ground briefly, shielding his face with an arm. More stones raked his head and shoulder. The crowd was approaching the police now, chanting the whole time.
“Khay’in!”
These uniformed Palestinian policemen who stood in their way seemed no different from the Israelis they had come to hate. The officers continued to backpedal, only the line of jeeps separating them from the crowd now. Some of the crowd began to rock those jeeps, trying to tip them over. The rest continued to advance, which left the officers no choice but to raise their weapons.
Before Ben could yell out not to fire, a rock struck his jaw, stunning him. His mouth filled with blood and the world went fuzzy and dim. The return of clarity brought with it the sight of assault rifles appearing at the front of the mob, thrust toward the pair of policemen who leveled theirs in kind.
“No!” Ben screamed, but the first shot drowned out his cry.
More shots followed, sounding like Fourth of July firecrackers. Ben watched two Palestinian police officers go down, followed by a third just after Anatolyevich’s driver collapsed. Ben dragged the Russian toward the warehouse and yanked him back into the steamy air as soon as he jerked the door up along its squeaky rails.
“Come on! Come on!” he shouted to Sergeant Khaled and a single uniformed officer who were following him, slamming the door as soon as they were inside.
“What do we do, Inspector?” Sergeant Khaled huffed breathlessly.
“The back! We get out through the—”
Ben broke off his words when he heard glass shatter in a hail of bullets in the warehouse’s rear. Then more gunfire slammed into the bay door, flooding the room with sunlight pouring through fresh holes dug out of the wood.
“A wonderful country you’re building here, comrade,” chided Anatolyevich.
* * * *
Chapter 4
R
anieri was on his fourth cup of Arabic coffee, still picking at the crisp barazak biscuits from his pastry platter. Danielle had been watching him for two hours now, having found a spot at the counter of an outdoor coffee bar across the square amidst a small group of American tourists. Her back was to the courier but she angled her chair to watch him in the glass of an adjacent storefront. He had begun checking his watch frequently. But it wasn’t until he began pulling bills from his pocket to pay the check that Danielle took a deep breath and strode straight across the square.
Ranieri had just counted out the proper amount of bills when she casually took a seat opposite him at his table.
“I think there must be some mistake,” he said, looking up in surprise.
“Since you were expecting someone else, of course. They’ve been detained,” she bluffed. “I’ve come in their place.”
Ranieri tilted his thin, almost skeletal face to the side. He tried not to appear rattled, but his brow furrowed and he pricked his bottom lip with his front teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You should leave. There are police about.”
“Yes, I know,” Danielle said and slid her identification across the table.
Ranieri sat back down and looked at her identification very briefly, fighting not to show a reaction. Danielle hoped he would not notice that the effective date on it had expired.
“I want to know who you were supposed to meet here,” she said, hoping to distract him.
“No one.”
“Where are the diamonds you brought into Israel?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ranieri said confidently, and shoved Danielle’s National Police identification back at her before lighting a cigarette.
“Then you won’t mind letting me take a look at your eyeglasses.”
The man stopped puffing. “I don’t wear glasses.”
“They’re in your right-hand jacket pocket. I saw you fiddling with them before I came over.”
The man lay his cigarette down on the sill of the ashtray. “Why not arrest me then?”
“I’d rather we just talked . . . after you’ve given me your glasses. You must have picked them up at Katz & Katz in Tel Aviv this morning. I almost missed it.”
“You have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with that suitcase you left with the jeweler yesterday.”
Ranieri started to reach for his cigarette, then changed his mind.
“How did you get your blood diamonds past customs?”
Ranieri’s lips trembled. “If you know so much, you must know how far out of your league you are right now.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I can’t give you the eyeglasses, or say anything about what I left with the jeweler. I’d be killed if I do. You think you know so much, you must know that.”
“In that case, I’ll just take the glasses after I place you in custody. Then the two of us will take a trip to Tel Aviv and see what they have to say at that jewelry store.”
Ranieri shook his head very slowly. “They’ll kill you, too, Chief Inspector.”
Danielle didn’t so much as flinch. “They won’t be the first to try.”
The courier’s eyes flashed with fear, uncertainty, for the first time. But he didn’t move, didn’t even budge. Then, slowly, he reached into his pocket and removed a hard eyeglass case.
“Can I consider this a negotiation?” he asked, laying the case down on the table before him.
“Why don’t we—”
The first bursts of gunfire made Danielle break off her words. She lurched up from her chair and spun in the same motion. Her initial thought was they must be aimed at her, the bullets fired by men providing backup for her quarry.
Then she saw armed figures rushing about the street, clacking off rounds wildly with their pistols as they ran. Two fell to the pavement and began to crawl off, fingers digging into the asphalt trying to pull themselves clear. Danielle kept her gun steady and swung back to the table.
Ranieri lurched forward and made a stab at the eyeglasses. But Danielle yanked the table back and toppled it over before he could reach them. She watched the case clatter against the asphalt at his feet, watched him lean over to grab it, and then kicked Ranieri hard in the stomach before his fingers could find the case. He crumpled backward into another table and spilled it over, scrambling away as soon as he regained his feet.
Danielle had started to reach down to retrieve the eyeglass case herself when she saw the boy with the broom standing in shock amidst the bullets whizzing past him. She dove through the air and tackled the boy, covering his body with hers as another burst of fire sprayed shards of broken glass from a nearby table over her back.
She twisted off the boy and lurched upward, pistol in hand, and found herself face-to-face with the glazed expression of a detective she recognized from National Police. He staggered forward, a pistol held loosely in his hand. Then his spine arched and he dropped to the curb, a victim of the wild spray of bullets.
What was this? What was happening?
More gunfire sheared the air around her as Danielle swept toward the detective, ignoring the danger. Stooped low over a spreading pool of blood to better cover him, she looked across the street just in time to see another figure steadying a submachine gun directly on her.
