The Last Prophecy - [Kamal & Barnea 07]
Page 6
“And you’re just as predictable.”
“In any case, there’s a good reason for this meeting.”
“And that is?”
“First, tell me what the perpetrators were apparently looking for in Bureij.”
“A terrorist named Rahim Naddahr.”
Vordi started to slide past her. “Then you need to accompany me somewhere.”
“Why?”
“So I can prove to you that Israel had nothing to do with the massacre.”
* * * *
Chapter 13
T
he picture was grainy, out of focus, and further blurred by the proximity of the camcorder’s lens to the window after Raifa Assir’s teacher, the late David Lister, had turned it around to capture the complement of Israeli soldiers dispersing through the town. Minutes later, the tape caught the soldiers herding residents into the square, the throng increasing gradually until the school’s teachers were escorted into the frame to join them.
“I count a dozen soldiers,” noted al-Asi.
“Look at the way they’re holding their weapons,” Ben added.
The colonel leaned closer to the screen. “Fingers on the triggers. They intended to open fire all along.”
From the village, Ben and al-Asi had driven to Ramallah, bypassing the leveled complex of Palestinian government buildings for a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The colonel’s driver stopped in front of a tight cluster of concrete homes and pulled away quickly as soon as the two of them had climbed out.
“We’ve learned to improvise, Inspector,” al-Asi had explained as they headed up the walk. “Welcome to the new headquarters of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior.”
Inside Ben saw that walls connecting the three homes had been knocked down to create an officelike effect for the colonel’s staff.
“We have limitations, of course,” al-Asi continued. “To put any communication antennas or satellites on the roof, for example, would invite a punitive Israeli attack, so we make do with what we can.”
That included a single twenty-seven-inch television and ordinary VCR, hardly the sophisticated video equipment required to adequately analyze the tape Raifa Assir had made. Ben rewound the tape in Search mode and froze the frame on the two soldiers who walked into the square with their rifles already unslung.
“A massacre was their intention from the beginning,” Colonel al-Asi said again.
“The right equipment can zoom in on the soldiers’ faces and enhance the frames. That would enable us to identify them.”
“With the help of the Israeli government and army, you mean, Inspector.”
“That is, if the soldiers were Israeli at all.”
Al-Asi turned his gaze on the screen, his smooth face half-lit by the soft glow emanating from it. “This tape would seem to offer all the proof we need. The uniforms, the weapons, the vehicles—it’s all there.”
“Unless that’s exactly what the real perpetrators wanted us to think.”
“You’re not thinking like a Palestinian, Inspector.”
“No, I’m thinking like a detective.”
Ben pushed Play and watched the teachers being absorbed into the mass herded into the square. Then, suddenly, he pressed Freeze again.
“What is it?” al-Asi asked him.
Ben focused on a still frame of the soldiers who had escorted the teachers from the school into the square, caught from the rear. “The soldiers who came out of the school haven’t moved to rejoin the others. They’re holding their positions near the teachers. Look at their weapons,” he added. “Fingers on the triggers, ready to shoot in attack, not self-defense.”
Ben ran the tape forward again in slow motion. The three soldiers he had pointed out opened fire into the crowd, which scattered in all directions as bodies dropped like dominoes, clogging the street. The picture then filled with the fleeing crowd, their screams drowning out the muted sounds of gunshots. The throng jolted to the right, and the camera caught another pair of soldiers firing into the mass as if it were target practice. More bodies fell.
The tape ended.
Ben hit the Stop button. “The massacre wasn’t provoked, Colonel, it was premeditated. The gunmen came to Bureij to kill as many as they could and then leave. But why this town?”
“If we knew that, we’d be a lot closer to catching the perpetrators.”
“Exactly,” Ben said and pressed Rewind.
“What is it, Inspector?”
“Something I just realized.”
* * * *
Chapter 14
W
hat are we doing here, Commissioner?” Danielle asked again.
“As I told you, you’ll see soon enough,” David Vordi said evasively.
They had been driving for nearly two hours, Danielle in the SUV’s backseat next to Vordi while a plainclothes National Police officer drove.
“I should think that you wouldn’t want a U.N. official to see what goes on inside this place, Commissioner,” she noted.
“We’re here looking for the truth, Inspector,” Vordi said impersonally. “Not further complications.”
Even up close, Ketsiot Prison in the Negev Desert was virtually indistinguishable from the desert that surrounded it. Everything, including the steel perimeter fence, was painted a sand color to help disguise its presence. Within, Danielle knew, there were four separate one-story buildings where prisoners were held in individual cells. Those held at Ketsiot never mixed, the idea being to forcefully construct a new routine out of anything that passed for ordinary.
Sleep deprivation blurred the distinctions between night and day. When prisoners shed their clothes and begged for relief from the overpowering heat, powerful air conditioning compressors would drastically reduce the temperature and humidity, leaving them chilled and shaking from the sudden wash of cold. The prisoners were fed well but not on a regular schedule to further mask the passage of time. Reward for talking could be as simple as restoring a normal routine coupled with a trip, however brief, outside.
The gate was manned by a quartet of Israeli soldiers, one of whom activated it remotely after checking Vordi’s and Danielle’s credentials. She knew Ketsiot had been closed down years ago, an event that drew praise from the world community and was greeted with celebration by the Palestinians. Now she realized that had been a sham. The government she had been part of for nearly half her life had mastered the art of misinformation. Informing the world that Ketsiot had been shut down, even providing pictures of its supposed demolition, provided a public relations coup along with the perfect dumping ground for the most serious of Palestinian prisoners.
Contrary to that, though, Danielle saw ample evidence of new and ongoing construction, as they drew farther into the compound.
“You were never here,” Vordi said, following her gaze. “Not officially.”
“What’s going on?”
“It was the Americans’ idea,” he told her. “Guantanamo’s running at capacity and operating a prisoner-of-war camp is not to their liking politically. So we entered into an agreement to handle the overflow and all new prisoners. I suppose the Americans decided they wanted something for all their foreign aid.”
Vordi had meant that as a joke, but the remark didn’t even draw a smile from Danielle. Their driver halted the SUV in a parking area so sand-strewn that the asphalt was barely visible. Other than theirs, all the vehicles were military issue.
Climbing out, Danielle shielded her eyes from the sand, noticing a captain in the Israeli army approaching from the direction of a nearby building. The captain saluted Vordi, eyed Danielle derisively, and pursed his lips.
“If you’ll follow me, sir,” he said, purposefully ignoring her.
The inside of this particular building was just as she remembered it on the few occasions when circumstances drew her to the most brutal of all Israeli prisons. Dark and quiet, save for the hum of fans fighting to circulate air through the desert-heated bare walls. Danielle noticed tha
t the air smelled of sweat and dried urine, as the captain led them past an endless series of steel doors outfitted with old-fashioned key locks. Soldiers were posed every fifteen yards or so, apparently oblivious to the visitors’ presence.
They stopped in front of the last cell on the right, manned by a mammoth soldier. Vordi nodded to him, and the soldier unclasped a single key from his gun belt, then jiggled it into the ancient lock. He pulled the door open and shouted coarsely in Arabic before shifting his massive frame enough to provide space to pass by, never taking his eyes from the prisoner within.
Danielle entered the cell just behind Vordi, saw a bearded Palestinian man seated on a bed cot with his elbows resting on his knees.
“Inspector Barnea,” Vordi said, “may I present Rahim Naddahr.”
* * * *
Chapter 15
W
atch this part again,” Ben said, pointing at the screen.
He started the tape from the point the teachers walked into the frame, herded toward the square from the direction of the school.
“I’m watching,” al-Asi said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“There should have been some provocation to set off the shooting. There wasn’t.”
“We’ve already been over that.”
“But not this.” Ben stopped the tape just after the teachers were absorbed into the front of the crowd gathered in the square. “The gunmen here,” he started, touching the screen with his finger.
“The Israeli soldiers, you mean.”
“The gunmen,” Ben persisted, “right here were the ones who started the shooting. The rest joined in to cover up the truth.”
“Which is . . .”
“This wasn’t a massacre, it was a murder. Those teachers from the school were the targets.”
Colonel al-Asi squinted toward the screen. “Four of them were killed.”
“Two being members of the United Nations relief team. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it, Colonel?”
“None, Inspector. But I have their files right here. If there’s any sense to this, perhaps we’ll find it inside them.”
Al-Asi produced a pair of manila folders and watched Ben read them quickly.
“Salemme was American,” he noted. “Twenty-six years old. Signed on with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency right out of college and re-upped for a second two-year stint. Attended Brandeis University and requested assignment to the Palestinian territories.”
“Palestine,” al-Asi corrected.
“That’s not what he wrote on his application.”
“All the same, Inspector, they must not have taught him much at this Brandeis University.”
“He thought he could make a difference.”
“My point exactly. What about the second man?”
“David Lister, age thirty-two. Another American. Veteran of the Peace Corps. Joined the United Nations Relief Agency as part of a plea agreement following repeated arrests for antiwar and anti-Israeli protests in the United States.”
“Interesting, don’t you think?”
“Not especially, Colonel. Israel would’ve had no idea of his identity. Host governments are not permitted to vet U.N. employees and representatives.”
Al-Asi reached over and switched off the television. “Anything else in either man’s background that stands out?”
Ben scanned the files again and shook his head. “Not a thing,” he said, just before his satellite phone rang.
“Kamal. . . . What?. . . You’re sure? . . . No, hold him there. I’m on my way.”
Ben pocketed the satellite phone and looked back at al-Asi, clearly stunned.
“What is it, Inspector?”
“David Lister. They found him.”
“His body?”
Ben shook his head slowly. “Very much alive. He’s waiting for us at United Nations Relief Agency headquarters in Nablus.”
* * * *
Chapter 16
M
r. Naddahr was transferred from the detention camp on the outskirts of Ramallah just last month. Isn’t that right, Ramir?”
Naddahr looked up hatefully at Vordi. One of his eyes was swollen closed and Danielle could see all of his front teeth were either missing or broken.
“This following an escape he orchestrated in which three prisoners managed to get away briefly before they were tracked down and killed,” Vordi continued, staring down at the man seated on the cot. “Mr. Naddahr was recaptured before he was able to leave the grounds, but not before he killed a twenty-three-year-old sergeant with a wife and two children. We thought he might find spending the rest of his days here at Ketsiot a bit less stimulating. Isn’t that right, Ramir?”
Vordi leaned over and Naddahr recoiled fearfully. Danielle noticed his right arm hung limp and useless. She studied the man now cowering against the wall more carefully. The bruised and puffy patches on his face still left it whole enough to make him recognizable as the terrorist the Israeli army troops were hunting when they stormed the village of Bureij.
“I think you can see my point,” Vordi said when they were back in the hallway.
Danielle heard the door of Naddahr’s cell rattle closed behind them, remain silent.
“It’s quite clear, Inspector,” Vordi continued. “If the parties responsible for this massacre were truly Israeli troops, they wouldn’t have come to the village on the pretext of arresting someone the military knows is already in custody.”
Danielle tried not to show how relieved she felt. The thought that Israelis, her people, could behave that way sickened her.
Her people . . . Strange how quickly she fell into her old thinking patterns.
“I must ask you to keep this visit secret, of course,” Vordi was saying.
“Then why bring me here, if I can’t use the information as part of my investigation?” Danielle challenged.
“Because clearly you must take that investigation in another direction.” Vordi stopped before they reached the door at the end of the hall. “After all, Inspector, if we weren’t behind this massacre, then who was?”
* * * *
Chapter 17
C
hief Inspector Barnea is certain?” al-Asi posed.
Ben tucked the satellite phone back into his pocket. “Naddahr’s been in Israeli custody for months. She just came from seeing him.”
Al-Asi eased his head back against the SUV’s rear-seat headrest, as his driver slowed to let an Israeli patrol zoom past. “This is most disturbing, Inspector, most disturbing.”
The driver accelerated again after the patrol had passed by uneventfully and, minutes later, the city of Nablus came into view. United Nations Relief Agency headquarters for the West Bank was housed in a bunkerlike slab of a building on the outskirts of the city. It had been built originally in 1984, one of several diplomatically sensitive public relations steps taken by Israel to mend its image following the disastrous invasion of Lebanon. The government had supplied all building materials free of charge and allowed the U.N. to hire a Palestinian construction crew to perform the work. The headquarters was originally constructed to blend in with the rest of the structures in the area. But a huge un had been painted in red atop the roof to make the building easily visible from the air in the hope of keeping it safe from retaliatory Israeli air strikes launched on Nablus.
“What’s troubling you, Colonel?” Ben asked al-Asi.
Al-Asi kept his eyes fixed forward. “That the Israeli military might have had nothing to do with the massacre.”
“And that disturbs you? You’ve been one of the strongest advocates for peace all along, behind the scenes anyway.”
“My point exactly, Inspector. Because I hesitate to think where the investigation might go now, where the finger of blame may be cast.”
“Palestinians killing Palestinians?”
“Hoping to cast the blame on Israel, why not? The furor over this incident is already sending ordinary Palestinian citizens into the st
reets. Israeli forces are clamping down again, tighter than ever. I fear this could scuttle what remains of the peace process forever and silence those of us who support it.” Al-Asi finally looked toward Ben again. “You will be under great pressure not just to find who is responsible, but also to prove who is not. This theory of yours ...”