The Last Prophecy - [Kamal & Barnea 07]

by By Jon Land

* * * *

  Chapter 26

  H

  ow is she today, Ruth?” Franklin Winters asked his wife’s aide, stepping into the kitchen.

  “Having one of her better days, Mr. Winters,” Ruth replied, her white nurse’s uniform stretched by her ever increasing weight. “She’s in the backyard. Don’t worry,” she continued, before Winters could voice his concern. “I’ve been keeping an eye out.”

  Winters moved through the sliders onto the deck and then down the stairs into the backyard. Before the Alzheimer’s, the yard had been his wife’s pride and joy, tended to with love and care that made it a landscaping showplace. Mary would prune, trim, and weed for hours, fashioning every individual part toward achieving a perfect whole.

  The gardens were run down now, dying of neglect, barely recognizable from what they had once been. Several times Winters had hired gardeners and landscapers to tend them, abandoning the process when it agitated and unnerved Mary to a degree that aggravated her condition. There was no real hope for improvement, only an attempt to slow the process slightly.

  From the deck, Winters could see his wife kneeling in a rock garden amidst the withered remains of flowers and shrubs. Mary’s nightgown was soiled at the knees and streaks of dirt marred the fabric where she had wiped off her hands. She looked up when she heard him coming down the stairs.

  “Hello, Franklin,” she greeted happily.

  At least she recognized him. One of the good days, then. Not telling the secretary of state the truth behind his resignation, trying to keep his wife’s illness a secret, had been meant to preserve her dignity. Now, though, gazing down at the woman whose entire world consisted of this yard and the four walls beyond, Winters wondered whether it was his own dignity he was out to save.

  “Spring’s coming,” Mary continued. “I thought I’d get a head start on things this year. The roses look beautiful, don’t you think?”

  In point of fact, they were long-dead stems and nothing more.

  “Beautiful,” Winters told his wife, forcing a smile.

  She climbed awkwardly to her feet and wiped more dirt onto her nightgown. “I’d better get lunch ready. It’s Wednesday, you know.”

  It was Tuesday.

  “And Jason comes home early from school on Wednesdays. Do we have milk?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Boy’s gotta have his milk. I think tuna fish today. Yes, tuna. That’s my husband’s favorite.” Mary narrowed her gaze at Winters, as if noticing him for the first time. “Do you know Franklin?”

  Winters could barely manage a nod.

  Mary peered toward the house. “He must be inside. I’ll go and get him. Did he invite you for lunch?”

  “Yes,” Winters said, the word nearly catching in his throat.

  “Tuna fish for three, then. I like the brand packed in water not oil. The oil’s too heavy. Upsets my stomach.”

  Mary stopped when she came to a hoe wedged into the ground and leaned over. For the first time, Winters noticed that she had started tiny holes all through the yard, as if digging for something she’d never be able to find. When she stood back up with the hoe in hand, she looked different, suddenly more alert.

  “Franklin, when did you get home?”

  “A few minutes ago.”

  “You drop Jason off at school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I tell you his teacher called? He got into another fight.” Mary shook her head. “You’re not firm enough with that boy, Franklin. You spoil him rotten.”

  She came up and gave him a hug before plodding up the wooden steps to the deck. Winters watched his wife lean the hoe against a cast-iron bench en route to the door. The disease had robbed her of everything, but life had robbed Winters of almost as much. He watched her stop suddenly, swing round, and retrace her steps to the railing. She placed a pair of withered hands atop the finished wood and peered into the once beautiful backyard gardens. Winters found himself envying her a little. Living in the past, happy at least in those few moments when life flashed back and froze happiness.

  Winters would never be happy again, and he knew it. Mary might be happy, but wouldn’t remember it.

  Which was worse?

  Winters would give anything to wake up one morning and believe, with all his heart, that Jason was coming home. He longed for the undoubting simplicity of that notion. Mary would prune nonexistent roses, dig holes for flowers she’d never plant, and return to the process the following day unimpeded by her ravaged mind.

  “Better times are ahead,” Mary said suddenly and strongly, a phrase she had used often before the disease had stolen her sense of reason. “Better times are ahead.”

  “Yes,” Winters said, even though she was paying no attention to him, “they are.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 27

  D

  anielle slowed the rental car to a jogger’s pace, consulting the street map doubled over and creased on her lap. According to the directions Charles Corstairs had provided over the phone, the turnoff she was looking for should be coming up any moment.

  Night had already fallen when she began her drive from New York City and now a thick blanket of fog had settled over the Pocono Mountains of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Charles Corstairs, one of the remaining survivors of the 121st Evacuation Unit, was the third person she had called on her list, having received no answer at the first two. She had remained cryptic about the reason for the call, saying only that she had information vital to the 121st.

  Corstairs, according to the brief bio on the unit’s Web site, was a rose farmer and had been for twenty years. He had sold his original, much larger spread in New York State three years back and downsized himself here following the death of his wife to cancer.

  Fearing she was lost, Danielle tried his number on her cell phone, only to discover no signal was available. So she pulled over and flipped on the car’s dome light to better study the map. A glance up at a hand-scrawled street sign told her she had found the route she was looking for. She turned off the dome light, tossed the crinkled remnants of the map to the passenger seat, and took a right down a flattened but unpaved road. A quarter mile up, she saw a white mailbox and turned into Corstairs’s driveway.

  He had told her to meet him at the house, but she saw lights on in a long, rectangular greenhouse and movement flickering about the rows. So she parked closer to the greenhouse and moved toward a rear entrance.

  The door flew from her grasp when she eased it open, banging against the inside wall with a rattling clang.

  “Mr. Corstairs?” she called, as she closed it, much more carefully. The pungently sweet smell of roses assaulted her. Their scent, so beautiful in a bouquet, was overwhelming in such a vast multitude. “Mr. Corstairs.”

  “Over here,” a voice greeted from the other side of the greenhouse. Slightly hoarse, but sounding powerful and much younger than Corstairs’s seventy-seven years. “You must be Ms. Barnea.”

  Corstairs emerged between two rows of long-stem roses, wearing a rubber apron and matching gloves. He was tall and still fit, looking a decade or more younger than his actual age. Beyond the glass of the greenhouse, the fog continued to flow in waves, obscuring the world beyond.

  Danielle met him halfway up the row, between symmetrical plantings of white and red long-stem roses. She kept breathing through her mouth until she grew accustomed to the powerful aroma that permeated the room. “Thank you for seeing me so soon.”

  “You mind if I see an ID?”

  Danielle produced it, still not used to the cumbersome size of the United Nations identification wallet. Corstairs took the ID, checked the face against hers, and then handed it back, apparently satisfied.

  “United Nations Safety and Security Service,” he then said.

  “That’s right, Mr. Corstairs.”

  “Call me Charlie, please. I’m a farmer, Inspector Barnea. No one’s called me mister in longer than I want to remember.”

  “They called you corporal in
World War Two, though, didn’t they?”

  Corstairs seemed to tense a little, recalling the reason for Danielle’s visit. “Inspector Barnea—”

  “Danielle, please.”

  “Danielle, you mind telling me what my old unit has to do with U.N. security?”

  “Nothing directly. It’s something that came up in another investigation I was pursuing.”

  “Something that came up,” Corstairs repeated.

  “Your commanding officer was a man named Walter Henley.”

  Corstairs nodded sadly. “He died a few weeks ago. A robbery or something. I . . . couldn’t make the funeral.”

  “His daughter believes he was murdered, along with a dozen other members of the 121st.”

  Corstairs remained expressionless, waiting for Danielle to continue.

  “Because of something your unit found in Buchenwald.”

  Corstairs stiffened. His upper lip crimped slightly upward. “Vicky tell you that, too?”

  “In Jerusalem. Before she was killed as well.”

  Charlie Corstairs started to walk away, then stopped, leaving his back turned to Danielle.

  “Was she right, Mr. Corstairs?”

  He turned and shook his head sadly, then looked at Danielle again. “Charlie, remember?” He pointed to the right. “Come this way, Danielle, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

  Three rows over Danielle found herself staring at beautiful plantings of peach-colored roses. At first she didn’t even think they were roses, so broad and thick were their petals.

  “Ever seen roses like this before?” Corstairs asked her.

  “No,” Danielle said, reaching out to touch one.

  “Of course not, because I created them. They’re hybrids, formed by crossing different species of roses.”

  Corstairs reached out and plucked one from its pot, handing it to Danielle who took it gently in hand.

  “I like to think when I do this I’m creating life,” he continued. “I started crossbreeding just after my wife died, for therapy I guess. But now I realize it wasn’t therapy for her death so much as for Buchenwald. What we saw there, how unprepared we were.” Corstairs shivered slightly. “You said on the phone you were Israeli.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you understand.”

  “All too well.”

  “My wife and I went back there not long before she died. The memories all came back. I couldn’t get them out of my head.”

  “What about sixty years ago? What was it the 121st found hidden in Buchenwald?”

  Corstairs cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “Found what, Corporal?” asked Colonel Walter Henley.

  “You’d better come over here, sir.”

  “On my way.”

  Henley came on foot to the other side of the camp where Trench Delta was located. He fit his surgical mask over his face and peered down at where Corstairs was standing, shovel in hand. In the process of searching for more bodies, he had cleared away the dirt in this portion of the trench, exposing something dull and gray.

  “It’s metallic, sir,” Corstairs said, tapping the object with his shovel.

  Henley heard the pinging sound and leaned farther over the edge. He nearly slipped and only a private’s quick grasp saved him from tumbling into the muck and collected lime.

  “I’ve dug a little around the outside,” Corstairs continued. “I think it’s a storage case for papers, documents.”

  “Belonging to the camp’s occupants, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps, sir.”

  “Then we should remove it and find out. We might learn more about those poor souls we’re trying to save. At least reunite them with what little we can.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Yes, Corporal.”

  “There are other cases, at least two more in this same trench.”

  Henley thought for a moment. “I’m going to send you a detail of men. I want those cases removed and I don’t want them damaged.”

  “There were three cases,” Corstairs finished, his mind sliding back to the present. “Each about three by five feet. Solid steel, almost like safes, and locked tight as a drum. A fourth we found last was smaller, more like a lockbox. I carried that one to Henley myself. The others we put on the back of a truck.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all, at least from my end. Except, well. . .”

  “What, Charlie?”

  “A day or so later two armed guards had been posted at the truck, and a few days after that, it was gone. I don’t know where. Colonel Henley never mentioned the cases again and neither did I.”

  “He never opened them.”

  “Not to my knowledge he didn’t. Henley was my commanding officer. The truth is I don’t know what happened to whatever was inside those cases from the time we loaded them on the truck.”

  “But we can assume they didn’t contain the possessions of the camp’s residents.”

  “Clearly not.”

  Danielle looked down at the hybrid rose in her hand. “And in all the years since you never asked Henley what those contents were?”

  “I don’t think I wanted to know,” Corstairs told her. “Besides, we were out of touch for decades after the war. It was only a few years ago that the unit started holding reunions and I’ve missed all of them.”

  “By choice?”

  Corstairs looked down at a floor speckled with stray droplets from a recent watering. “It helps some of them to get together and talk about Buchenwald. It doesn’t help me.” He looked around at the vast array of roses. “This does.”

  “Who else in the unit might have seen what was in those cases?”

  “Henley’s second in command, a captain named Jack Phills.”

  “Phills?” Danielle tried to recall that name from the roll of the 121st’s living and dead, but couldn’t.

  “He doesn’t go to reunions either, but for altogether different reasons. You see—”

  Glass shattered. Pots tipped over and smashed to the floor. Danielle barreled into Corstairs and took him down an instant before the next barrage of fire blew apart the plantings directly over their heads.

  * * * *

  Chapter 28

  D

  anielle could feel Corstairs trembling beneath her, his body otherwise stiff as a board.

  ”Are you all right?” she asked in his ear. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes. I think so. . . . Yes.”

  Another barrage shattered more of the greenhouse’s windows. Flowerpots exploded and debris rained down upon them.

  “Do you have a gun?” Danielle asked, starting to ease herself off Corstairs.

  “Yes, but hot here. In the house.”

  Danielle tried to recall the layout of the property. Too much ground separated Corstairs’s home from the greenhouse to make his gun of any use to her. She looked up at the fog wafting into the greenhouse through the broken windows, softening the bright light.

  Light. . .

  “Where’s the switch?”

  “What? I—”

  “The light switch!”

  “Front wall,” Corstairs answered, pointing tentatively from the floor. “Right side of the door.”

  Danielle calculated the distance. Fifty, maybe sixty feet. “What about weapons? Tools, insecticide—anything.”

  Corstairs stretched a hand beneath his apron and extended a spade to Danielle. The spade had three sharp, curved prongs currently crusted with soil and it fit neatly in her palm.

  “Roll under the planting table behind you,” she told Corstairs. “Stay there until I come get you.”

  Danielle crawled fast across the floor, holding the spade before her. This wasn’t the first time she’d traveled weaponless and been forced to improvise. Back in her days with Sayaret Makal in the Israeli Special Forces it was often a way of life, but it was something she had never liked or grown used to.

  Another burst of gunfire sent more glass spraying thr
oughout the greenhouse. Danielle could feel the cold moistness of the fog now, mixing with the heat burst rising off her body. She felt surprisingly calm, everything sharp and in focus. Little things suddenly standing out, like the light shimmer of sweat that coated the surface of her skin.