by By Jon Land
The two men looked at each other, exchanged a nervous glance, then unhitched the wagon and dragged it toward their leader.
“You think I do not know what loss is? You think I do not know what it is to suffer?” Latisse Matabu challenged the villagers clustered before her, eyes bulging in terror as they watched the soldiers stop the wagon holding the crate directly in front of the Dragon. “I know these things all too well, better than any of you will ever know them. That is where my strength comes from, a strength I would have used to liberate each and every one of you.” She shook her head in honest disappointment. “But now you have betrayed me, and you have betrayed your country. And for that you must pay.”
Matabu reached for her gun belt and the villagers shrank back in fear, whimpering en masse. But all she grabbed was a chisel with which she began to pry open the crate, as one of her captains approached from the structures her soldiers had been dutifully searching.
“General,” he began softly, “there is no trace of the Americans.”
“Of course there isn’t. They only passed through here, never intending to stay.”
He looked at her quizzically. “But I thought—”
“What you thought doesn’t matter. What matters is I am setting an example to make sure none of the villages between here and Kono dare support our enemies again.”
Then Latisse Matabu returned her attention to the residents of Katani.
“Behold the end of your world,” she said and started to lift off the top of the crate. “Behold the sight of hell itself.”
* * * *
Chapter 9
S
hlomo Davies steadied the legal pad atop his legs. “Where should we begin?” he said, seated on the cot alongside Danielle.
True to Davies’ prediction, the night before she had been transferred to this six-by-eight cell in Megrash Haruseim, the newer of the two police stations on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road and the only one equipped with a jail. The concrete had been cold to the touch then, but baked quickly under the heat of the morning sun. The cell stank of urine and sweat and the last occupant’s misery.
“Is General Levy coming? Did you get him on the phone?” Danielle asked eagerly.
“I’d like us to talk about what happened in East Jerusalem first,” the old lawyer said instead of responding. He kept dabbing his nose with a handkerchief, as if that might do something about the stench. “You were not part of the team led by Commander Baruch?”
“I told you that yesterday. What about General Levy?”
“And Baruch had no knowledge of your presence?” Davies asked, instead of responding.
“No, at least as far as I know.”
Davies made some notes and looked up. “Was your presence in East Jerusalem authorized by someone other than General Levy?”
“No.”
“It was an independent investigation then.”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Which your current status strictly prohibits.”
“Technically.”
This time the old lawyer made no note. “Let me explain something, Pakad. In order to build your defense, I need to establish the totality of the picture. For instance, if we can show you were in East Jerusalem pursuing legitimate concerns, as opposed to a reckless pursuit of Commander Baruch, we will find ourselves on much firmer ground.”
“Reckless pursuit... Is that what they’re calling it?”
“It’s a legal term.”
“Which means premeditated murder.”
Davies let Danielle see him flick his pen closed. “Is that what happened?”
“Not in any way.”
“Then we need to introduce the true purpose for your presence somewhere you didn’t belong.”
“I keep telling you, General Levy can corroborate everything.”
Davies shook his head slowly. “No, he can’t.”
“But you said—”
“I didn’t finish, Pakad. General Dov Levy died six months ago.”
* * * *
Chapter 10
B
en looked at the clothes spread around the living room floor of his small apartment in Jericho. Neat piles with the creases perfect, the briefs and socks folded. It was the only order Ben felt he was in a position to enforce.
There were six other apartments squeezed into the building, all of them occupied by families. He was the only person who lived alone and, come to think of it, he couldn’t think of another Palestinian who did not share his home with others. Mostly family, and sometimes friends. Sometimes out of convenience, but increasingly out of necessity.
As the Israelis bulldozed more homes and raided an increasing number of towns in search of suspected agitators, more and more Palestinians were forced to seek shelter with family and friends. The result was a society layered upon itself and clustered in tiny, fearful pockets. Children seldom played outside anymore. The few businesses that remained open lacked customers capable of paying for their wares.
Things had been different when Ben had first returned to Palestine almost eight years ago. There had been hope then. For the first time in generations, maybe ever, the Palestinian people could look forward and see a future. But that future had dissolved in an endless cycle of violence that seemed to know no end.
Eight years ago, upon his arrival, it had taken Ben weeks to muster the resolve to unpack, and now it was taking him a similar amount of time to pack up his meager belongings to leave. He kept putting it off just as he kept postponing the phone call to John Najarian in Detroit to accept Najarian’s offer to work for his personal security firm in the United States. But Ben couldn’t leave now, not while Danielle was in an Israeli jail, and so his clothes would remain stacked on the floor and furniture in a kind of limbo trapped between coming and going.
In spite of their recent estrangement, Danielle remained the only thing keeping him in Palestine. Somehow he couldn’t bear the thought of being half a world away from her; certainly he could bear being that distance from anything else he had found here. Enemies almost entirely. Very few friends, although Colonel al-Asi more than made up for that.
While the colonel could keep Ben safe from his many enemies, he couldn’t make the Palestinians Ben had returned to help accept him. From the ones who could never bring themselves to trust an outsider to those who hated him for his knowledge, skills, and relentless efforts to modernize their thinking. Palestine, though, was no place for modern police work. The need was there, yes, but not the desire on the part of those charged with the duty. The Palestinian police, he had found, could not separate themselves from the masses out of which they had risen. The vast majority had stopped patrolling the streets in favor of leading violent attacks upon those same streets, in many cases taking up arms supplied by the Israelis against them.
As for the detective force Ben had envisioned as elite enough to rise above this fray, too many of the recruits he had personally selected had taken their skills to the paramilitary Tanzim or President Arafat’s elite Force 17, or been transferred to more prestigious security services. They, too, had turned their weapons and training against Israel instead of the criminal element in Palestine they had been conceived to control.
Ben began to feel he had been used, a public relations tool toyed with for a time and then discarded when public relations ceased to matter. The final straw had come when the Israelis shelled the police academy outside of Jericho, destroying the one thing that gave him hope in his own pursuits.
Danielle was all he had left, even though he didn’t really have her at all anymore. The irony of coming home to Palestine only to fall in love with an Israeli. . . Ben would be leaving with more than he came with; it just didn’t feel that way.
Ben paced the small apartment, careful to avoid the neat stacks of clothes. Only one other time in his life had he felt this helpless, and that was the night he had come home in Detroit to find a serial killer called the Sandman had slain his wife and children. He had shot the Sandman de
ad and felt no better as a result. Returned home from his family’s funerals to find he had worn two different color socks, accounting for the anal nature of the clothes piles lining his living room like speed bumps to slow down his emotions.
His cell phone rang. Ben plucked it off the desk and pressed it against his ear.
“Yes?”
“How is the packing coming, Inspector?” greeted the voice of Nabril al-Asi.
Ben resisted the urge to draw back the blinds to see if the colonel was standing down in the street, watching him.
“Very slowly.”
“Good. I’m glad. You won’t need much for where you’re going tomorrow anyway.”
“And where’s that, Colonel?”
“Jerusalem, Inspector, to see Pakad Barnea.”
* * * *
Chapter 11
T
hat’s impossible!” Danielle insisted, her breathing suddenly rapid. “Levy can’t be dead!”
“I’m afraid he is.”
“But I spoke to him!”
Shlomo Davies shook his head. “It couldn’t have been Levy. Perhaps you were being set up, Pakad.”
“I wasn’t being set up,” Danielle insisted, recalling the conversation in her bedroom just four days earlier. Could the man she thought was Levy have been an imposter? No, it had to have been him. She took a deep breath, feeling the cell’s musty stench coat her throat. “I’m telling you, Levy’s alive!”
Shlomo Davies frowned. “And it was what the man claiming to be Levy said that led you to East Jerusalem?”
Danielle nodded. “Yes.”
“Go back to the start of the gunfight. Could you tell where the gunfire was coming from?”
“All directions, it seemed.”
“Palestinians and Commander Baruch’s people exchanging bullets.”
“That’s what I assumed.”
“There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“Not a single Palestinian gunman was found on the scene; none arrested, wounded, or killed.”
Danielle looked baffled. “I don’t see how that could be.”
“According to the reports I’ve read, that’s what it is. When did you first see the commander?”
“I saw other National Police officers I recognized first, in addition to the one I dragged to safety after he’d been shot.”
Davies made a notation on his legal pad. “That detail was left out of the scene reports.”
“The officer was badly wounded. I saw Commander Baruch for the first time while I was crouched over him.”
“Did Commander Baruch see you?”
“We looked directly at each other. Then he raised his gun and pointed it straight at me. He was getting ready to fire. I could see it in his eyes. I thought when he realized it was me, he would . . .”
“Go on,” Davies prodded.
“He was about to shoot me. I’m sure of it.”
“And you . . .”
“Fired after he did.”
“That’s not what the witnesses say.”
“What do they say?”
“That you fired at Baruch first. That you shot the policeman you claim you were protecting.”
“No! Ask the policeman, for God’s sake! Just ask him!”
Davies swallowed hard. “I can’t. The last of the wounded died in surgery last night.”
Danielle felt her heart skip a beat.
“Is there anyone else who can corroborate your version of the events? What about this man you came to East Jerusalem to see, the one in the café?”
“He got away.”
“It occurs to me that he may have witnessed at least a part of this.”
Danielle almost laughed. “He’s not about to testify in my behalf.”
“Who was he, Danielle?” the old lawyer persisted. “What was so important about him that you risked everything to pursue an unauthorized investigation?”
Danielle stopped, remembering something. It had slipped her mind up until now, clouded over by the terrible reality of what had taken place the day before.
The eyeglass case! The courier, Ranieri, had placed it on the table just before the shooting started! Danielle remembered tipping the table over to keep it from his grasp. . . .
Danielle looked back up at Shlomo Davies. “What if I could prove the validity of what I was doing in East Jerusalem?”
The old lawyer seemed to perk up. “Anything that can prove you did not go there with the express purpose of killing Commander Baruch would be extremely helpful in making our case.”
The eyeglasses had spilled off the table when she shoved it aside once the shooting started. Danielle was certain of that, just as she was certain that Ranieri had run off without retrieving them!
“Do you have the name of the café in East Jerusalem?” Danielle asked Davies.
He flipped through his notes awkwardly, suddenly confused. “I’m sure I must have written it down somewhere ...”
“They may have found a pair of eyeglasses on the ground in a black case.”
“Eyeglasses?”
“Please, just ask them. But don’t call. Go there in person.”
“To East Jerusalem?”
“Or send someone you trust. Tell him to say the glasses were his, or yours, and he’s come to retrieve them.”
Davies narrowed his gaze. “What’s so important about these glasses?”
“They’re the key, Mr. Davies. They can prove everything I’m saying is the truth.”
* * * *
Chapter 12
R
elax,” said one of the guards, trying to reassure Ranieri, “you have nothing to worry about. You’re safe. Have some food,” the guard added, hovering over a luscious tray of seafood which included chilled whelks and periwinkles layered next to tiny crevettes grises and lobster tails.
“No, thank you,” he responded meekly.
The big man was one of four assigned in three separate shifts to watch him at the Antwerp Hilton, the city’s newest, and most secure, luxury hotel. Following the gun battle in East Jerusalem, Ranieri had fled Israel and flown to Antwerp by way of Athens, seeking refuge. He had no idea what had gone wrong yesterday, only that the meeting’s disastrous results would leave him a marked man since he had lost what he had come to exchange.
Antwerp was his best possible destination because the only item of value Ranieri had left was information that would be of extreme interest to powerful forces headquartered in the city. Enough interest, anyway, to assure he was kept safe and alive long enough to tell his tale.
He had met them early this morning in the Grote Market located in the heart of the Old Town district. As instructed, he stood near the huge fountain set in the center of a triangular square lined on two sides by beautifully restored guild houses and on the third by the ancient Town Hall. Ranieri didn’t like the feeling of being enclosed, especially after yesterday’s incident in the East Jerusalem souq.
But the men he was expecting showed up on time and brought him straight to the Hilton, where he had been safely under guard ever since. His debriefing was scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. Ranieri had the terms for his cooperation well rehearsed, hoping he could summon the strength to issue them forcefully.
Ranieri retreated into the suite’s bedroom to change into some of the new clothes his guards had obtained for him, but hesitated at the sight of a window washer wearing a strange hat busily scraping at the windows with his rubber squeegee.
“I have to use the bathroom,” he said, back in the living room.
The head guard looked bemused, winked at his fellows. “Be my guest.”
Ranieri entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He splashed water on his face and, embarrassed, left the water running when he sat down on the toilet, wishing he had brought something in with him to read.
It’s nice to worry about something unimportant,he thought, looking forward to tomorrow. He washed his hands carefully before opening the door a
nd stepping back into the living room section of the suite.
An unfamiliar man sat on a chair turned to face the bathroom, a pair of workman’s boots crossed casually before him with the heels digging into the carpet. Ranieri assumed the man was part of the next security detail.
