Covenant

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan said nothing.

  “Some fifteen individuals over a period of several years,” Woods added. “Half a dozen from inside the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Somalia, and many more prior to that in Mexico and Colombia.”

  Ethan glanced at Jarvis, who refused to catch his eye. He turned back to the two men. “What do you want?”

  “Reassurance,” Selby replied quickly, “that you can be trusted and that you can do what we require. We have … concerns. We understand what happened in Gaza and don’t wish to dredge up any unnecessary regrets.”

  A dense pall of sadness swelled in Ethan’s chest.

  “Help us with what we need,” Selby said, “and in return we can help you find closure.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Woods raised a pacifying hand as he spoke.

  “Israel is a powerful and influential nation, but they are not without diplomatic vulnerabilities. We could provide sufficient leverage to help you find out what happened to your fiancée in Gaza.”

  Ethan experienced a transient blurring of his vision, his fingernails digging into his palms as he shouted, “You want to tell me why you haven’t been doing that all along?”

  “We’re doing what we can,” Woods said immediately. “We’re as uncomfortable about this as you are, and felt that an incentive was required.”

  Selby stood and held a photograph out to Ethan. He reached for it, suddenly and inexplicably afraid. He looked down at the grainy image and felt something sharp sting the corners of his eyes as a gasp leaped unbidden from deep within his chest.

  A woman held firmly in the hands of masked men, being transferred from a building into a battered-looking sedan on a dusty street. Distress etched into her features. A Kalashnikov wedged against her side. Hair in disarray, wrists bound. Joanna.

  Tears that Ethan struggled to conceal burned like acid across his eyes, and his voice was a rasp as he spoke.

  “When? Where?”

  “January, near Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip,” Woods replied. “Israel only released this image after considerable diplomatic pressure.”

  Ethan looked at the picture for a moment longer, a face he hadn’t seen for three years, then cleared his eyes and throat. He glanced at Jarvis. The old man was watching him hopefully, as was Rachel.

  “A paleontologist has gone missing in Israel,” Ethan said as he pocketed the photograph.

  Woods looked down at his paperwork.

  “Dr. Lucy Morgan had been involved in an excavation for the Hebrew University near a place called Be’er Sheva in the Negev Desert, along with a team of scientists. The team completed its work and returned to Jerusalem but for reasons unknown Lucy remained in the field. Members of the university sounded the alarm after no contact with her for twenty-four hours.”

  Apparently sensing Ethan’s change of heart, Jarvis picked up the story.

  “Lucy has always complied with standard safety procedures in the past.”

  “She found something,” Ethan suggested with a clairvoyant flash.

  “That’s the last that was heard of her,” Jarvis said. “We’ve no idea where she went or why.”

  “Any news on possible abductors?”

  “Nothing,” Selby answered. “Most insurgent groups out there consider foreign hostages a major coup. They should be screaming at the top of their lungs by now.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Lucy’s research program was involved in the study of …” Woods hesitated. “Mitochondrial deoxy … ribo … nucleic acid.”

  Rachel Morgan spoke for the first time. “Mitochondrial DNA. You know, the double helix?”

  “There have been some major studies going on out in the Middle East and Africa,” Woods continued, “looking for traces of our earliest ancestors.”

  “Why would someone abduct her for that?” Ethan asked.

  Woods, Selby, and Jarvis all looked at Rachel.

  “My daughter was involved in an off-the-record dig at an excavation site she herself discovered. I only received a single e-mail from her, sent here to the museum and copied to me before she vanished. She also sent the museum a bone fragment from her discovery that the DIA has acquired. During her excavations, Lucy found the remains of a species of humanoid buried in the Negev Desert.”

  “So?” Ethan asked.

  “It was a species unknown to science.”

  The hall seemed oddly silent in the wake of Rachel’s words. Ethan stared blankly at her for a moment before Jarvis spoke.

  “Such remains are reputed to have immense financial value,” he said. “We believe that Lucy may have been abducted by groups seeking to sell the fossil on the black market.”

  “There’s a black market in bones?” Ethan asked. “But why would they take Lucy too? Surely they could just steal the remains?”

  Woods shot Ethan a look.

  “Not if they’re politically motivated too. The profits from the sale of such remains could fund weapons and explosives for insurgent groups, and a Western hostage could be used to derail the peace process.”

  “It sounds too complex,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “They’d never be able to get the remains out of Israel.”

  “We haven’t come to any firm conclusions yet,” Woods cautioned. “Right now our priority is to locate Dr. Morgan and the remains that she discovered, and repatriate them both to the United States.”

  “Israel’s position is sensitive,” Jarvis added. “Our embassy in Tel Aviv is doing everything that it can but they don’t want to push Israel too hard. You have friends, Ethan, contacts in Israel and Palestine, people on the ground. You can work without attracting attention.”

  Andrew Woods spoke solemnly.

  “We can’t conduct an official investigation without arousing suspicion in the Knesset and the media. You’ll need to be discreet.”

  Ethan felt something cold creep through his veins.

  “Israel doesn’t know what Lucy Morgan found out there,” he said quietly. “And why would you want these remains recovered too? Why not just focus on Lucy?”

  Selby winced.

  “We would prefer that this entire affair remain secret,” he said stiffly, “if you take my meaning.”

  “Just how much support will I actually have?” Ethan asked.

  Jarvis’s reply was swift.

  “The agency doesn’t consider Lucy’s disappearance a priority,” he said bitterly. “You’ll be able to call me for assistance from the Israeli Defense Force and maybe assets here in the States, but officially the department has no active investigation running there.”

  Ethan closed his eyes, running through his mind everything that he had just heard. He opened them and found himself looking down at the photograph of Joanna. If you’ve got nothing, you’ve everything to gain.

  “Can you get me into Gaza?” he asked.

  “We will do everything we can to support you,” Jarvis said. “Just call me once every day, so that we know you’re okay, understood?”

  Ethan hoped that his voice was not trembling as he spoke.

  “Okay, tell me how you want me to do this.”

  POTOMAC GARDENS PROJECTS

  G STREET ON 12TH, WASHINGTON DC

  What do we got?”

  Metropolitan Police Department detective Lucas Tyrell drove in a characteristically sedate fashion along a deserted G Street. Streetlights above drifted past against an overcast dawn sky that sealed in a sweltering blanket of late-summer heat. Beside him sat Detective Nicola Lopez, reading from a notebook.

  “Search request from the DC Housing Authority on an abandoned town house opposite the projects. Neighboring residents have reported unpleasant odors.”

  Tyrell winced, his black skin creasing around his eyes as he turned onto 12th. He looked in the rearview mirror to see a pair of brown eyes watching him from the rear seat. Bailey, his four-year-old dachshund, tilted his head and flopped an ear to listen to his voice.

  “Who’s down there?” he aske
d Lopez as he cruised toward ugly apartment blocks weathered by years of neglect.

  “Kaczynski and his guys are on site, coroner’s got jurisdiction. An FBI incident team’s on its way under Axel Cain.”

  “Cain,” Tyrell muttered, as though he had something unpleasant in his mouth.

  “Can’t have everything.”

  Tyrell watched from the corner of his eye as Lopez glanced over the paperwork, a strand of black hair dangling in front of her face. She was petite and slim, with butter-smooth skin, a third generation Latino from down on the gulf. Tyrell, on the other hand, was obese. Like two-hundred-eighty obese. Most all the detectives at the First District Station joked that if Tyrell ever caught a criminal red-handed, the perp had better hope that Lopez was the one to pin him down.

  Nicola closed the file in her lap.

  “It’s probably just another crack den.”

  “Never reach a conclusion without first evaluating all of the evidence,” Tyrell cautioned. “Most everybody does that and they usually get it wrong.”

  “This is it,” Lopez said, gesturing ahead. “Twelve fifty-five G Southeast.”

  Four MPD cruisers were parked across the road, incident tapes cordoning off the last in a row of abandoned town houses. The cruisers’ lights flashed like nightclub beacons in the pale dawn. A few dark-skinned faces appeared on balconies on the projects opposite, smoking and wiping sleep from their eyes but watching with interest.

  “Let’s go see what’s up,” Tyrell said, and turned to look at Bailey, who whined softly. “Now, you stay here and guard the wheels, ’kay, boy?”

  Tyrell levered himself from the car, pausing to catch his breath before leading Lopez through the police cordon. A cheerful-looking officer by the name of Kaczynski walked toward them.

  “Hope we didn’t get you guys up too early,” he said, glancing at the thin sheen of sweat glistening on Tyrell’s brow. “Warm enough for ya?”

  Tyrell shook Kaczynski’s hand and gestured to Nicola.

  “Detective Lopez, Lieutenant Terry Kaczynski. Any news from the inside?”

  “Nothing,” Kaczynski admitted, smiling at Lopez in a manner that suggested the only thing he’d ever successfully flirted with was rejection. “We’re just waiting for you to show us the way.”

  “What we’re here for,” Tyrell said without fanfare, wiping the sweat from his brow with a tissue.

  “Best get on with it then,” Kaczynski said with a shrug. “If there’s anyone inside lookin’ to give us trouble, they can’t have missed this goddamn circus.”

  Kaczynski turned and cleared the way for them to the windowless front door of the town house. Tyrell glanced at the trees growing outside the row of abandoned buildings, gnarled branches concealing the clapboard houses and their mangled chain-link fences. Dense weeds thrived in long-abandoned gardens. Living opposite the Potomac Gardens projects with its drug trade and gang warfare had driven the occupants out long ago.

  He could see that the front door of the house was blanketed with a kaleidoscope of sprayed tags and gang colors, the signature of misled youth on a citywide scale. Mara Salvatrucha 13 was the dominant gang in the District, an assortment of El Salvadoran gunrunners and drug dealers who had migrated across America over the past twenty years. Brutally violent, they complemented the local peppering of Crips, Bloods, Surenos, and La Razas fighting for turf as far out as Prince George’s and Maryland.

  The two detectives drew and checked their weapons one more time before Tyrell nodded to a tall, robustly built young officer. The officer hefted a black iron ram from where it had been leaning against the sidewalk.

  “You guys take the upstairs,” Tyrell murmured as Kaczynski took position outside of the door. “No heroics this mornin’, ’kay?”

  The young officer’s face was taut as he lifted the ram. Tyrell aimed at the door, Lopez covering his shoulder and flank. He checked everything one last time and raised the barrel of his pistol once, twice, and then with a final jerking third movement.

  The police officer lunged forward and slammed the ram into the door with all of his impressive physical strength. A dull crash echoed across the projects, the door splintering but holding firm. A chorus of whoops and obscenities drifted down from the balconies behind them. The officer swung again and the door smashed open, hanging from one twisted hinge.

  Tyrell rushed forward into the darkened maw of the house.

  “Police! Stay where you are!”

  Tyrell’s voice was muted by the narrow hallway ahead, lost in deep shadows. He crept forward into the darkness, Lopez close behind. An intense blanket of heat cloaked the inside of the house, sweat drenching his skin and trickling beneath his shirt.

  “Police! Stay still, face down on the floor!”

  The silence taunted him as he caught the sickly sweet aroma of putrefaction drifting on the air. The walls of the hall were bare but for a few tattered scraps of paper hanging entombed in gossamer webs, the carpet thin and caked in the filth of ages. Tyrell advanced toward a passage at the end of the hall that opened left and right.

  He gestured to the left, and Lopez silently shifted position against the left wall as Tyrell moved to the right, crouching down as she remained upright. The drill was ingrained into their respective psyche with the same intensity as the will to breathe. Without words, their weapons whipped simultaneously into the open corridors, each covering the other.

  “Clear,” Tyrell whispered.

  He covered Lopez as she moved left to the edge of a kitchen littered with spilled pans, tubs, and cutlery. The odor of congealing mold mingled with the musty, stale air. He watched as Lopez took a breath and then whirled into the kitchen, sweeping the boxlike room with her weapon.

  “Clear.”

  Tyrell turned and moved back down the hall. Another open door ahead led into what he presumed was the living room, while one to the left led into a bedroom. The sickly stench of decay became stronger, and a dull humming sound sent a spasm of disgust rippling down his throat.

  He turned, sweeping the bedroom with his pistol. A bare mattress lay upon the rusting springs of a double bed. Shredded curtains dangled limply from a small window, accompanied by the bodies of several dead rodents on the floor, tiny white teeth gaping from mortified bodies.

  “Clear.”

  The smell was overpowering now, and Tyrell already knew that his weapon was unlikely to be discharged. Still, he kept it trained ahead of him as he moved to the edge of the doorway, Lopez covering his back.

  With a final breath that felt as though it coated the back of his throat with something slimy, Tyrell lunged into the living room and stared into the half darkness.

  The room was dominated by two sagging couches. Plates of half-eaten food littered a table amid a crumpled sea of crushed beer cans and empty packets of potato chips. A handful of cockroaches scampered over rotten morsels of food. The hum of blowflies filled the room, a chorus of life flourishing in the presence of death.

  Three bodies sprawled naked across the couches. A handful of syringes lay discarded around them, while others dangled awkwardly from the blackened veins of bare arms or were wedged between lifeless toes. Crack pipes lay scattered on the thin carpet. Tyrell’s voice was raspy with repulsion as he called out.

  “Property clear, three dead.”

  He holstered his pistol before gingerly stepping across the grisly scene, donning latex gloves, and opening the curtains. The pale morning light filtered reluctantly into the room, illuminating the corpses and their attendant swarms of flies.

  “Jesus,” Lopez murmured, clearly struggling to prevent her breakfast from making a dramatic reappearance as she put on her own gloves.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Tyrell said quietly, surveying the scene.

  Kaczynski appeared in the doorway and winced. He was followed by a tall, portly man with mousy hair and a pockmarked face whose frame filled the doorway. He stood there, his jaw chomping loudly on a piece of gum until he saw the corpses and caught a
whiff of their scent.

  “Christ’s sake,” he muttered in disgust, covering his nose and mouth with one hand.

  Tyrell ignored FBI special agent Axel Cain, who gathered himself together as he surveyed the scene.

  “Crack den it is then,” he said. “Coronor can take it from here.”

  Tyrell didn’t reply, staring at the bodies. Lopez turned to Cain.

  “We’ll need forensics. Make sure nobody else comes in here until they’ve finished up.”

  “The District doesn’t have a forensic department,” Cain said with an oily smile. “They’ll have to go to Quantico.”

  “That’ll take months,” Lopez pointed out.

  Cain shrugged without interest as his lips began grinding around his gum again. “I don’t suppose these dudes are in any rush.”

  “We’ll handle it,” Kaczynski said. “Lucas, you done here?”

  Tyrell remained silent for a few moments, looking around the room before nodding vaguely. “Sure Terry, just give me a few minutes.”

  Cain rolled his eyes. “It’s a bust, let’s get this place swept clean.”

  Tyrell took a few careful paces amid the detritus on the carpet, skirting the table in the center of the room. He crouched down beside one of the bodies, the corpse’s dark skin graying with decay. Reaching out, he lifted the man’s lips with a plastic spatula and peered into his mouth.

  “Jesus,” Cain choked, “I’m sure he flossed before he took his ticket out of life.”

  Tyrell moved to another of the corpses and then to the third, performing the same task with each before finally standing up.

  “What’s up?” Lopez asked. “You smell somethin’?”

  Tyrell ignored Kaczynski’s chuckle. “This wasn’t a crack den.”

  “It sure as hell wasn’t a frat party,” Cain said.

  Tyrell gestured to the bodies.

  “One crackhead ODs himself, I can handle that. Three at once, simultaneously and naked? That’s pushing it.”

  Tyrell saw Cain shake his head wearily.

  “Isn’t the first time. These losers probably tripped each other out all night before going off the edge in some kind of binge. We’re wasting our time, let’s go.”