Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  Danielle didn’t respond. Someone had not only removed the details of Resnick’s report from the case file, but also the composite sketch arrived at by four witnesses to the East Jerusalem murder, the Wolfs first strike!

  “We’re just trying to tie up all the loose ends.” Danielle tried to cover her agitation so that the young lieutenant would not suspect her true intentions. “Would you happen to remember the name of the sketch artist?” she asked him.

  * * * *

  S

  iyad Hijjawi lived in Musa ‘Alfami, a town just to the south of Jericho. He was not home when Ben got to the white stone house he still shared with his family, one of a long row of virtually identical structures separated by alley-wide spaces. Ben was happy just to sit in his car and wait for the young man’s return for as long as it would take. Doctors in Jerusalem had told him rest was the best medicine right now to help him heal. Whether he rested here seated in his car or back in the hospital couldn’t much matter.

  It was three hours into a sparkling late afternoon before the gaunt, boyish-looking figure of a young man approached the front door with a key in his hand.

  Siyad Hijjawi had just opened the door when Ben stepped up behind him and spoke his name in as intimidating a fashion as he could manage. Startled, Hijjawi turned and viewed Ben’s police uniform with a mixture of concern and amazement. The young man was well groomed, wore his dark hair cut short, and had the shadowy beginnings of a beard.

  “We need to talk,” Ben said.

  * * * *

  Chapter 47

  T

  he young man reluctantly agreed to accompany Ben on a walk. The pain medication had worn off, and Ben could feel every ache and pain from the battering his body had suffered the day before. Each step was an effort.

  “I already told you everything I know,” Hijjawi protested.

  “Others. Not me.”

  Hijjawi looked at him more closely and his eyes widened suddenly. “You’re the one who killed al-Diib yesterday! I saw your picture in the paper!”

  Ben didn’t bother denying it.

  “I thought you were in the hospital.”

  “I was. I left to see you.”

  Hijjawi’s entire demeanor had changed, grown much more respectful, almost reverent. “I should be thanking you. I am grateful for this opportunity. After what the animal did to my girlfriend—”

  “She wasn’t your girlfriend, Siyad, and both of us know it.”

  A series of changing expressions followed one another across Hijjawi’s face. Ben noted the changes and slowed his pace.

  “Please spare me the denials, Siyad. We both have better things to do with our time.”

  Hijjawi shrugged. “You killed her murderer all the same.”

  “No, I didn’t, and both of us know that, too. I killed a man her murderer was imitating so no one would notice the difference.”

  Hijjawi was trying very hard not to look scared.

  Ben turned into the next alley they came to and stopped. It was deserted, leaving the two men entirely alone. “I’m going to tell you what I think, Siyad, and then I’m going to tell you how you can help me. I think Leila Khalil was a terrorist. I think she was part of Hamas, and I think you are too. That’s why the two of you were alone when you dropped her off, not in a group as you claimed.”

  “The other statements—”

  “Fabricated. There was no one else in the car. You were the only one with Leila Khalil before she was murdered.” Hijjawi started to protest again, but Ben steamrolled his words. “Now, your particular politics are of no concern to me, but catching the man who actually killed her is. To do that, I need the truth.”

  “You are talking madness!”

  Ben clamped a hand on Hijjawi’s shoulder. “Listen to what I’m going to do for you, Siyad, in exchange for your cooperation. I am going to forget that you are Hamas too. I am going to leave it out of my report, on the condition that you tell me about the meeting the two of you were coming from just before Leila Khalil was killed.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Mohammed Fasil was there,” Ben continued, convincing even himself with his words. “And when he returned for another meeting in Jericho two weeks later, he was killed too.” Ben softened his tone. “But you know that, of course. All of you must know there’s a killer out there who’s marked terrorists for his victims. And you know what, Siyad? He’s still out there. Maybe you’ll be next.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Hijjawi’s eyes flicked rapidly about, as if searching for the best way to flee from the alley.

  Ben tightened his grip on the young man’s shoulder. “Let’s see, judging by your age and naïveté I’d say you’d be an ideal candidate for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. Suicide bombings are their specialty. Is that what they had planned for you, Siyad?”

  “No! No! It wasn’t like that!”

  Ben steered the boy to a stop. “Then what was it like? Leila Khalil recruited you, stroked your libido to trap you in the fervor of the terrorist movement, make you give up your life in exchange for getting your dick wet? I don’t blame you. I saw her picture. A truly beautiful girl. That probably explains why Hamas wanted her.”

  “No! Not her!”

  “Then who brought you in?”

  “Her father.”

  * * * *

  T

  he sketch artist was an older man who looked as though he belonged behind an easel instead of a computer. Better fit for elegant tapestries than carefully drawn composites of criminals. He worked out of his house just outside of Jerusalem, instead of National Police headquarters, ready whenever he was called upon to breathe life into the often disconnected and contradictory words of witnesses.

  “Copies?” Moshe Goldblatt asked unsurely, looking up at her from the wheelchair he had lived in since taking a bullet in the spine in one of Israel’s more recent wars.

  “Of your past works,” Danielle elaborated. “There is a sketch missing from a file on a case I’m working on. This was the only way I could think of to replace it.”

  “I scan them into the computer, include the sketches in the disk when I submit my report.”

  That accounted for more of the missing bits of information she was seeking, Danielle reflected. “I’m afraid that portion was inadvertently deleted during a recent purging of the system.”

  “What’s going on there at the National Police building?” he asked, switching on his computer.

  “I wish I knew,” Danielle replied.

  * * * *

  Y

  ou’re telling me Leila Khalil’s father is Hamas?” Ben managed, trying to keep his thoughts collected.

  “I grew up with Leila. We were friends. There was never anything like . . . what you suggest. And I went to him,” Hijjawi continued, almost boasting. “I wanted to be part of the movement, help change our hopeless way of life.”

  “And now, as a result, you have as many enemies among Palestinians as Israelis.”

  “They will see we are right, that ours is the only way. It will take time, but they will see. Peace changes nothing!”

  “Spare me the rhetoric. I care only about the meeting that occurred the night Leila was murdered. Was Fasil there?”

  “Why should I tell you anything?” the young man challenged bitterly. “You’re one of them.”

  Ben smiled warmly and released his grasp on Hijjawi’s shoulder. “You know, Siyad, my most recent assignment has left me with a number of very close Israeli friends. They’re not bad people once you get to know them, more like us than different. I think they’d be interested in accumulating names of Hamas members, especially those of the Qassam Brigades.”

  “Bastard!”

  “You’ll find them infinitely less patient than I am, Siyad.”

  The boy’s eyes had stopped roving; it was perfectly clear there would be nowhere for him to run to now. “What do you want?”

  “The meeting. Was Fasil there?”
>
  “Yes.”

  “What was discussed?”

  “I don’t know. I drove Leila, guarded the villa’s front door—that’s all.” Hajjawi’s expression turned almost sad, dejected. “It was my first real assignment and I couldn’t even keep her alive.”

  “Did her father know what the meeting was about?”

  “I don’t know. It was a Qassam Brigade cell—you’re right. We are not his domain. But ...”

  “But what?”

  “I can’t tell you any more,” Hijjawi said fearfully. “They’ll kill me, you know they will.”

  “They won’t find out.”

  “They always find out.”

  “It’s not them I’m after. I’m after the real killer of Fasil and Leila.” Ben paused and looked squarely at Hijjawi, hoping his eyes did a passable job of disguising the half-truth. “Help me find him.”

  “Leila’s father is very high in the movement, but he stays away from anything that might incriminate him. He believes in his work, but there is his family to consider.”

  “I understand.”

  “He must have known what the meeting was about. Why else would everything have been coordinated through Leila?”

  “Go home,” Ben said suddenly. But then something else occurred to him, something that had been lurking in the back of his mind until the boy’s words had pushed it forward. “Wait!”

  Hijjawi turned stiffly.

  “A woman named Dalia Mikhail. Think very hard now. Was she one of you? Was she part of the cell?”

  Hijjawi looked at him for what seemed like a long time before speaking. “The night Leila was killed, the meeting was held in Dalia Mikhail’s villa.”

  * * * *

  D

  anielle held the black-and-white portrait in her hand as Gold-blatt’s laser printer hummed softly in the background.

  “Do you recognize him?” the artist asked her.

  Danielle moved toward the window into the light. Goldblatt truly deserved his reputation as a brilliant artist. The suspect’s face, even sketched in black strokes further enhanced by the computer, was as particular as a photograph and more; after all, a photo could not capture the fiery intent of a subject’s expression as Goldblatt apparently could, and that was more than enough to help Danielle recognize the face of Abu Garib.

  The Wolf.

  The Palestinian who’d been mutilated by his fellow inmates at Ansar 3 was a perfect match for the man Radji had described, except he was indeed missing the scar the boy had been adamant about seeing on the face of Mohammed Fasil’s murderer.

  “Pakad?” Goldblatt prodded.

  Garib’s composite sketch had been deleted from the case files, just as his very presence, and motive, had been deleted at Ansar 3. That meant Israeli authorities not only had known a serial killer was operating from the beginning, they had determined exactly who it was and had still failed to act. Instead, they had used this information to create a second killer, dispatched to kill terrorist targets with impunity. And under normal circumstances the murders of Mohammed Fasil and Leila Khalil would have simply been attributed to the Wolf. But whoever had run this masterful ruse had neglected to factor one variable into the equation: Ben Kamal. And now a second variable had been added: herself.

  “He’s the one who was killed yesterday in Gaza, isn’t he, Pakad?” the artist asked curiously.

  “Yes, this man is dead,” she acknowledged, leaving it at that.

  * * * *

  I

  t was almost dark by the time Ben reached Akram Khalil’s home. No backup accompanied him. He had not stopped off at the Palestinian Authority building to brief Mayor Sumaya on his progress or to ask for reinforcements before he paid a visit to Khalil. He thought he had a very strong reason to believe the terrorist would cooperate willingly and fully with him. And by this time he was indifferent to the possibility that instead, Khalil might simply have him killed.

  Dalia Mikhail was one of them!

  He could no longer deny the fact; the meeting on the night Leila Khalil was murdered had been held in her villa, of all places, amid the priceless treasures Ben had thought were her only companions. How wrong he had been. No wonder Nabril al-Asi’s Protective Security Service had been investigating her. Al-Asi’s interest in Dalia had nothing to do with her infamous editorials. He must have suspected she was leading a double life, allowing Ben to see only a small part. Had it been the same for his father? Had she snared him using a different kind of bait?

  He should have figured it out before; it had been obvious for some time. Once he formulated the theory that Leila Khalil was Hamas, then Dalia had to be as well, since the Jericho pattern had been clearly established.

  But the reality nonetheless numbed him, the lie grating. A lie even though it was unspoken, and because he was certain his father had been no wiser than he. Ben recalled the sketchy details of the ambush that had claimed his father’s life, electricity surging through him now, the tips of his fingers going numb.

  He could almost hear it this time, the blood in his veins replaced by current. If Danielle was right about the Israelis not being responsible for his father’s death, then the true perpetrators could only be Palestinian. Why not? Jafir Kamal had made his share of enemies when he left for America. When he returned to the West Bank in the wake of the Six-Day War, the resentment would have been further compounded even before he advocated a dialogue with the Israelis, negotiations with those who had stolen their land. He saw the futility of continued violence, but it was a picture other Palestinian leaders opted not to see. So he had to be silenced, and who better to arrange it than the woman whose terrorist roots dated all the way back to the birth of the Fatah movement itself?

  The logic of it sickened him. The fact that he didn’t doubt she had really loved his father made the whole scenario even harder to stomach.

  At their last meeting she must have known she was in danger. Yet Ben hadn’t been paying enough attention to her to recognize it because he was too busy spilling out his own problems to her.

  My God, I told her everything!

  He felt violated. Brickland had it right all along: he was out of his element. This world was meant for men like the colonel and al-Asi. Ben should have run while he still could. But now it was too late. He had to finish what he had started.

  Ben made no attempt to be subtle. He approached the door to the Khalil home in full uniform and in view of any of the few neighbors who might have been watching. He did not believe for an instant that Sayed Hijjawi would have dared alert Akram Khalil to his coming and the reason for it. To do so would be to admit that he had talked, and for that the young man would suffer the same punishment all collaborators did.

  He knocked on the door and a boy of eleven or so answered this time. Before Ben had finished his greeting, a hand eased the boy away and his older sister Amal, whom Ben had met on his previous visit here, took his place.

  “I told you we had nothing to say, cop.”

  “I’m here to see your father.”

  “And you’re a fool for it,” she snapped.

  Ben was still forming his response when he felt a thud against his skull. The pain exploded through him as he crumpled, actually conscious until his body hit the ground half inside the house and half out.

  * * * *

  Chapter 48

  J

  ust past dusk on Sunday, Danielle stepped out of the elevator on the second sublevel, which contained the forensics offices of the National Police. She entered one of the labs and located a pathologist she knew had worked on at least two of the murders investigated prior to the Israeli pullout. The man recognized her and rose from his stool.

  “Pakad, what a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect to see you—I mean with your transfer and all.”

  “I need you to conduct a very simple test.”

  “Now?”

  “We would like to wrap up a certain matter to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  “A matter concluded ye
sterday?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled at her, coming up just short of a wink. “No one officially knows it was you in Jericho, of course. So please accept my unofficial congratulations, and let me know what I can unofficially do for you.”

  From her handbag she removed a small laboratory vial, a third full of a thick, murky substance. She held up the vial before the pathologist.