by By Jon Land
“Yeah, it figures. You’re also U.N., if what you say is true, and neither of you has any authority here. You’re on Israeli land.”
“Depends who you talk to,” Ben called back at him.
Ben turned and gazed down the hill, at the city of Nablus shimmering in the early-morning light. From this angle the pitted streets, the bombed-out buildings, and the barriers slicing the city into a labyrinth that led nowhere weren’t visible. Nablus circa 1995 when hope accompanied freshly paved streets and new construction projects. It was a pleasant view until thoughts of what lay beyond the distant façade intruded.
“So get your ass back to your refugee camp,” Barr continued, his voice seeming to grow more nasal, “and leave me the fuck alone.”
“It’d be better for you if we talk.”
“Or I could just shoot you and save myself the trouble.”
“You have a grandson serving a two-year term in an Israeli prison for throwing a grenade into a Palestinian school yard.”
“Grenade didn’t go off. It was a dud and the boy knew it. I’ll have him out in six months.”
“No, Mr. Barr. Terrorist acts now fall under a new heading of Crimes Against Humanity being heard by the International Criminal Court, administered by the U.N. I don’t think you want us to seek extradition, do you?”
Barr fired another burst, close enough to Ben this time to buckle his knees. “Israel doesn’t recognize this court, never signed the agreement. Good luck getting him extradited, you fuck.”
“I wasn’t talking about him, Mr. Barr, I was talking about you.”
“Hah, hah, hah!”
“It’s not funny. I understand your fingerprints were found on the grenade too,” Ben said, repeating what he had learned from Colonel al-Asi.
Barr stopped laughing and the sound’s echo drifted past Ben into the hills beyond.
“Good luck making it stick.”
“I don’t plan to. I just want to open an investigation. See how your adoring public feels about their hero trying to kill children.”
“My adoring public would love it. Besides, I knew the grenade was a dud.”
“But your grandson didn’t, and I think the publicity might just be enough to get the Israeli military to knock you down from your mighty world and off your high horse.”
“What’s your name?”
“Inspector Bayan Kamal.”
“Well, Inspector Bayan Kamal, come back in a couple hours and maybe we can have a chat.”
* * * *
Chapter 35
T
hing is,” Sammy Barr said from the other side of the fence, “I like to know who I’m talking to before I talk to them.”
He keyed open all three padlocks and yanked the gate inward. Ben gazed about, figuring there must be security guards patrolling the grounds. But none were visible anywhere. Just Sammy Barr, who liked to call himself the King of All Settlers, living just beyond rifle range of a million Palestinians who wanted him dead.
Up close Barr looked small and meek. His outfit, white shirt and dark slacks, was the same one he had been wearing earlier that morning. So, too, Ben guessed, was the assault rifle he was holding.
Ben stepped through the gate and watched Barr fasten it behind him, angling the locks back into place.
“Inspector Bayan Kamal, more frequently referred to as Ben—and appropriately so since you hold dual citizenship in the United States.” Barr spoke from memory as he struggled a bit to fit the locks home. “Born outside of Ramallah on the West Bank, but lived in the Dearborn area of Michigan from the time he was six until he was thirty-two, shortly after his wife and children were slain by the serial killer he was pursuing. Returns to West Bank where—”
“I get the point.”
“I don’t think you do,” Sammy Barr said, and picked up where he had left off. “Returns to the West Bank to help train a Palestinian detective force and ends up making waves everywhere he turns. Accurate assessment?”
“Pretty close.”
Barr finished relocking the gate and turned from the fence. “Can’t trust those Palestinians, Benny. You see my point. Come on, let’s take a walk.”
Barr slung his assault rifle around his shoulder and led Ben onto his property. “Only thing worse than Palestinians is the fucking U.N. Means I got two reasons to hate you, and that’s two reasons too many.”
“Your fingerprints on that grenade wouldn’t win you a lot of love either, Mr. Barr.”
Barr smiled broadly, coming up just short of giving Ben a friendly slap on the back. “You’re a fucking great detective. So’s your friend Barnea.”
Ben speared him with a look.
“You think I wouldn’t find out, put two and two together? You find out about the grenade business from her?”
“No,” Ben said, thinking of his conversation regarding Sammy Barr with Colonel al-Asi the night before.
“So what happened? She was running National Police, right?”
“Second in command, actually.”
“Under whom?”
“No one. She was promised the job and—”
“Don’t tell me: she got royally fucked.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I know all about that shit, Benny. Israelis aren’t the easiest people to deal with and your friend Barnea ran afoul of lots of the same ones that would like nothing better than to see my ass in a sling. Know how I get by? I don’t give a shit about them. Anyone doesn’t agree with me, I say fuck ‘em.”
“I don’t agree with you.”
Barr stopped and gave him a closer look. “I’m big on taking homes away from your people. You’d be an asshole if you did agree with me.”
“At least you admit it.”
“Know why I’m talking to you, Benny? Because you’re as stubborn an asshole as I am. You just won’t learn your lesson. Not with the Palestinian police and not with the U.N. either. They send you to Baghdad to play tenth fiddle in the orchestra and you end up leading the band. Too bad nobody followed. Russians blowing up the U.N. compound to destroy Cold War documents? Shit, where was your evidence?”
“Blown up. That’s the point.”
“You must’ve had something.”
“Just a few shreds. Nothing to make anyone look twice.”
“Didn’t stop you from pushing things, though, did it? I like a man who pushes. Right or wrong. The truth, Benny, is I’m one of those people who believes Israelis and Palestinians can’t coexist together. It’s just not in our nature. Means one of us has to go, and it’s not going to be the Israelis. But, hey, you don’t see me advocating forced expulsion like some do.”
“No, you just arrange to have grenades tossed into Palestinian school yards.”
“A dud grenade.”
“What about the next one? You’re inciting this Hilltop Youth to become a new generation of Jewish terrorists.”
“I’m teaching them to keep what’s theirs.”
“You mean, take it.”
“I mean, take it back. Read your Bible, Benny. The West Bank belongs to us. Share and share alike sounds good before the United Nations General Assembly, but it’s not worth shit when Jewish kids get blown up on the way to school.”
“So the grenade was your version of, what, a dry run? See if your young fanatics were up to spraying innocent villagers with machine gun fire?”
Ben had hoped to get a rise out of Sammy Barr with that. What he got instead was that familiar broad smile. “You’d like that to be true, wouldn’t you? Make it so you could tie this thing up all nice and neat for your bosses at the United Nations. Sorry to disappoint you, though, Benny. I had nothing to do with that massacre.”
“What about your Hilltop Youth?”
“Same thing.”
“Then why would they need to acquire Israeli military vehicles?”
Barr shook his head, the smile gone. “Give it a fucking rest, will you?”
“I can’t. See, we don’t know who fired the guns
in Bureij, but we know the vehicles that brought the gunmen there were purchased by three residents of Meitza Farm.”
“That’s fucking bullshit! What, you think making us look like assholes is enough to make your point for you? Well, let me tell you something, Benny. I don’t give a shit about that either.”
Ben’s cell phone rang and he excused himself to take the call when he saw it was from Colonel al-Asi, marked 911.
“You think I had something to do with that massacre?” Sammy Barr continued. “Forget it. Not my style. And if somebody says I did, they’re a liar. Maybe I better talk to these little pricks myself on your behalf.”
Ben finished his call and snapped his phone shut. “You can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because a bus carrying them to the detention center in Jerusalem was struck by a rocket twenty minutes ago.”
* * * *
Chapter 36
W
e owe you an apology,” Delbert Fisher said, entering Jake’s room with a box of doughnuts tucked under his arm.
“I told you I wasn’t a terrorist. Just drive me back to school and we’ll call it even,” Jake said, and sat up on his cot. There wasn’t much else in the windowless room to speak of. Just a bathroom about the size of a small closet containing a sink and toilet, but no shower. The bathroom didn’t have a door and Jake had been doing his best to avoid using it, considering he was certain some hidden camera had him under surveillance 24/7. He saw the box held in Fisher’s arm. “Hey, those for me?”
Delbert Fisher nodded and handed the doughnuts to Jake. The boy split open the top of the box and grabbed a chocolate frosted.
“Let’s talk about that latest Web site you set up.”
“I already told you. It’s about raves and dance clubs, reviews and listings—that sort of sh—, er, stuff. Not the kind of thing I’d expect you’d be interested in.”
“It’s been up and running for just over three weeks.”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s the problem.”
“Huh?”
Fisher sighed audibly. “Three weeks ago the German police raided an al-Qaeda stronghold in Hamburg. The men inside had enough warning to wipe out or erase all their computer files and records, before they went for their guns. There weren’t any survivors to interrogate. You understand what I’m saying here?”
Jake nodded.
“The very next day your Web site goes on-line, with a URL identical to the one belonging to the Web site the terrorists had shut down.”
“Uh-oh,” Jake said.
“The leaders had time to destroy their records but not to warn the cells, the operatives, they were controlling. So the operatives continued business as usual.” Fisher stopped and stared at Jake for a moment. “Updating reports as to their mission status.”
“Mission status?”
“That’s right, because something was about to go down. Something big.”
Jake looked down at the floor. “I was wondering why I was getting so many hits. . . .”
“They left encrypted messages on your chat board.”
“That explains why every time I tried to open them, all I got was gibberish. Figured it was a virus and trashed them.”
Fisher’s expression grew even more somber. “We figured you for the new conduit, picking up where the Hamburg cell left off.”
“You don’t figure me for that anymore, right?”
Fisher shook his head twice. “Not once we figured the coincidence out, no. But that left us with another problem, Jake: the terrorists are still out there and we’ve got no way to find them.”
Jake leaned back against the wall and stuffed the rest of the chocolate frosted into his mouth. “What’s that have to do with me?”
“We need to track them down, Jake. We need you to help us.”
“Me? Don’t you guys have a hall full of computer experts or something?”
“Sure, we do, and none of them can replicate whatever it is you did that kept the operatives posting.”
Jake started to reach for a second doughnut, then changed his mind. “Maybe something I did made them stop.”
“We don’t think so. And we can’t take the chance that we’re wrong because if we scare them off, we lose them for good.” Fisher knelt down so he was eye to eye with Jake Fleming. “Our tech people identified fifty distinct electronic signatures. You know what that means.”
“You keep asking me that,” Jake said, pursing his lips and blowing the shaggy hair from his face.
“It wasn’t a question, because you do know what that means. Fifty rogue cells prepared to launch an operation against this country.”
“Just take me back to school. I want out of here.”
“You can do that if you want,” Fisher replied, quite calmly. “I’ll drive you down myself. All you have to do is say the word.”
“I just did.”
Fisher nodded, looking sad. He straightened back up, knees cracking, and retreated toward the door. “Okay, let’s go.”
But Jake didn’t move. “Wait a minute.”
“Okay.”
Jake cocked his head to the side, worked his teeth over his upper lip. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”
* * * *
Chapter 37
T
he first thing Danielle saw when she stepped into the clearing was a man wearing a Confederate army uniform aiming a shotgun square at her.
“Avon don’t usually venture this far out, pretty lady.”
Major John Henry Phills stood on the porch of a perfectly crafted A-frame log cabin formed of wood identical in shade and texture to the surrounding trees.
“I’m Victoria Henley, Major Phills,” Danielle said, forming the lie she had settled upon back in Tom Spears’s office. “Colonel Walter Henley’s daughter.”
Phills tipped the shotgun’s barrel downward. “Didn’t know he had a daughter.”
Danielle came a few steps closer, then stopped. “Did you know he was dead?”
“Nope. Sorry to hear it, though. If you came here to tell me, you done your part. Now be on your way.”
“I need your help, Major. I need your help to figure out who killed him.”
Phills eyed her suspiciously. “You a Yankee or a Reb?”
“Yankee.”
“Too bad.”
“I’m also here because you might be next.”
“Not if the killers are as sloppy as you, pretty lady.”
“You knew I was coming?”
“Got me a very sophisticated early warning system.” With that, Phills slid a foot over to a barely visible wire and jiggled it with the toe box of his boot. Unseen soda and vegetable cans jangled together somewhere.
“I’m also here because I’m afraid I might be next,” Danielle told him.
“Then you better come inside, Yank. We’ll call ourselves a truce.”
They sat facing each other at a heavy wooden kitchen table. Inside the cabin smelled strongly of pine and cedar, and all of the furniture was built of heavy wood.
John Henry Phills had traded his shotgun for a pair of Colt pistols, one of which he laid before him on the table. “You ain’t Walt Henley’s daughter. You’re too pretty.”
“Then why’d you let me in?” Danielle asked.
Phills eyed her suspiciously. “You really a Yank?”
“Nope. Israeli.”
Phills narrowed his gaze further. “You come here in one of the black helicopters? They can run silent, you know.”
“I work for the United Nations, Major. The Safety and Security Service. My name is Danielle Barnea.”
Phills eased his hand a little closer to the pistol planted near him. His other hand sneaked down to his hip where the second Colt was waiting. “What call’s the U.N. got trespassing on my property under false pretenses?”
“I’m here because the real Victoria Henley came to me for help after her father and brother were killed. Now she’s dead
too and I’m trying to find out why.”
“Not my problem.”
“It is if the same people come gunning for you.”
