by By Jon Land
“We loved each other!”
“I think we did. Maybe we still do. And that’s why we ended things, because we could see where they were going and it wasn’t someplace good.”
Ben reached out and touched her hair. “So look where we ended up.”
Danielle smiled sadly. “At least we’re together again.”
“Until we solve this case.”
“It could take a while.”
“I hope so,” Ben said, holding her at arm’s length and knowing that was as close as they could be.
* * * *
CHAPTER 43
W
hy are you crying?” David Wolfe asked his granddaughter as he stroked her hair.
Tali looked up at him from her pillows and dabbed at her eyes. “That part of the story is so sad. I hate it. Poor Revkah Rossovitch ...” Her large brown eyes brightened a little. “Can’t you change that part of the story, Papa?”
“Then it wouldn’t be true anymore, would it? Then you wouldn’t enjoy the part when I pick up the story next time.”
The little girl propped herself up on her elbows. “Can you tell me that part now? Can you tell me what the friends did to, ah, how do you say it? . . .”
“Make things right.”
“. . . make things right.” She grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go, David Wolfe trying not to show how much it hurt. “Please, please, please!”
“Then you would have nothing to look forward to tomorrow.” He finally extracted himself from his granddaughter’s determined grasp. “Besides, you know my friends are waiting downstairs.”
“What about the secret?”
“We haven’t come to it yet.”
“But you’ll tell me,” Tali implored. “You promised you’d tell me!”
Wolfe moved for the door. “You enjoy the ending so much the way I’ve always told it.”
“Does the secret the friends kept change the ending?”
“I’m not sure yet,” David Wolfe said, and flipped off the light.
* * * *
W
olfe insisted on pouring the three men snifters of imported Israeli brandy before the meeting got under way in his book-lined study.
“I would like to propose a toast,” he said, passing the glasses out. He raised his own into the air. “To the great fortune that caused the attempt on Max Pearlman’s life to fail.”
Stern, Belfidi, and Davies looked at each other.
“Come now,” Wolfe resumed, “did you think I wouldn’t hear of the measures resorted to?” His face wrinkled in disgust. “Suicide bombers in Atarim Square?”
“The operatives retained never submitted their plan for approval,” said Marcus Stern.
“That is supposed to pacify me?”
“We trusted their judgment.”
“Then you are all fools. All those innocent lives almost lost. My God, how could we ever have lived with ourselves. ...”
“Don’t forget, time was of the essence,” Abraham Belfidi reminded.
“So in the interest of time, we sacrifice sound judgment. Is that it?”
Belfidi and Stern looked at each other. “From the beginning,” Stern said, “you were the one who stressed the magnitude of the stakes involved here.”
“At least,” picked up Joshua Davies, “we succeeded in forcing Max Pearlman into hiding.”
“You succeeded in nothing. Max will try to finish what he and Levy started from wherever he is.”
“Perhaps,” said Stern, rising from his chair, “we should let him.”
David Wolfe swung his way in a motion that surprised both of them. Some of his brandy spilled over the rim of his glass. “No! I swore an oath, do you hear me?”
“All three of you swore an oath,” said Belfidi.
“And the other two decided to play God.”
“You all decided to play God,” reminded Belfidi. “That was how all this started, David.”
“You don’t need to remind me. I tried to talk them out of it,” Wolfe said distantly. “God knows I tried.”
“Only their convictions were as strong as yours.”
Wolfe gazed wearily at Stern. “Tell me something, Marcus: Whose side are you on?”
“Yours.”
“And whom do you agree with?”
“Them.”
“Abraham?”
Belfidi nodded.
Wolfe turned to Joshua Davies. “Joshua.”
The younger man’s eyes gave his answer.
“You all think I’m wrong.” Wolfe sighed. “Maybe you’re correct. But this isn’t about right and wrong, it’s about duty and obligation, commitment. And I am committed to keeping a promise I made almost fifty years ago.”
“Regardless of cost?” Stern wondered.
“That’s right.”
“And where does that leave Israel, David?”
“She has seen her way through a half dozen wars,” Wolfe responded. “She’ll see her way through this, too.”
“With your help,” Belfidi added.
“You keep saying that, all of you, but it’s not true. I told Pearlman and Levy to do nothing, to leave things alone.”
“A risk they could not accept.”
“So they chose to try to play God a second time,” said Wolfe. “And I chose to stop them.”
“But what if you haven’t?” Marcus Stern asked solemnly. “There are only four days left, and we have another problem confronting us now.” Stern looked toward Davies. “Joshua, tell him.”
“Yesterday, Chief Inspector Barnea followed the trail of one of Levy’s smugglers into Jordan, a man named Ibrahim Mudhil.”
“What do Levy’s smugglers have to do with me?”
“She is piecing things together, that’s what,” Stern snapped. “She is following a trail to the truth, and that means to you and the others— everything!”
“Danielle Barnea’s investigation could eventually expose the same truth Levy and Pearlman wanted to erase and you sought to protect,” Belfidi elaborated.
Wolfe sipped some more of his brandy, reluctant to meet any of his guests’ eyes. “How close is she?”
Stern and Belfidi again looked toward Joshua Davies, who took his cue. “Our information indicates she has uncovered a link between her investigation of Levy’s murder and an investigation being conducted by a Palestinian detective named Ben Kamal, the same one she was partnered with two years ago. We believe they were in Jordan together last night.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Kamal’s investigation concerns the search for missing Palestinian children.”
Wolfe moved to the bookshelves and turned away from his guests.
Stern’s voice followed him. “If we stop Pearlman and Levy’s plan, we win. If we fail, we still do not lose. Only if the truth is exposed do we lose, does everyone lose.”
Wolfe heaved a deep sigh, his shoulders slumped. “There was a time, my friends, when truth was not something to be feared. When it was all we had.”
“It still is all we have, David,” said Belfidi. “It’s merely a different truth. Just like you use a different name.”
“But I’m the same man, Abraham.”
“And you face losing everything you have worked for. The dreams you fought for, the world you helped to build, unless we put an end to these investigations. Through whatever means are necessary.”
“We don’t have any other choice,” Stern agreed.
“There may be one,” Wolfe persisted.
“For God’s sake, David, what?”
“The truth, my friends,” Wolfe said, straightening his shoulders and turning back around. “We use the truth.”
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 44
D
anielle drove her car back to Jerusalem first thing the next morning, having woken stiff on the couch after a sleep that started by being blissfully restful but was soon haunted by dreams. She hadn’t told Ben about the dreams that had plagu
ed her since her stay in the hospital, and last night they had seemed the most vivid and unsettling yet.
Her baby was always in them; alive, well, and with her. In the dream she found the security and love that reality had denied her. She basked in the glory of not just a new mother, but an Israeli mother doing her biblical duty to sustain the race. Every woman in Israel bore children. It wasn’t like the United States, where so many more choices were open and available. In Israel it wasn’t a choice so much as an obligation all women willingly, and lovingly, took on. To not bear children was a betrayal of sorts. To be unable to bear children was a tragedy. She wanted so much to try to have a child again, yet the doctors weren’t sure if she would be able until she tried.
Ben was still sleeping when she left, and Danielle was careful not to disturb him. He could have taken her last night. She wouldn’t have resisted; a part of her was hoping he would. He had shown how much he cared by not trying; how well he knew her.
Strange. The man she had conceived a child with didn’t know her, her father was dead, and Hershel Giott had become a man shrouded in mystery. That left Ben Kamal, a Palestinian, as the man who knew her best. A part of her had wanted to stay with him. A part of her had wanted to climb into bed alongside Ben and couldn’t explain what had stopped her in the end.
Back in Jerusalem, Danielle stopped at her apartment long enough to sort through the hefty pile of mail, dividing it into three separate piles to be further scrutinized later. She didn’t open any of the envelopes, but felt better all the same just to have tackled the job. She stuffed into her bag the two postcards alerting her that parcels were waiting to be picked up at the local postal branch. The oldest had been there for exactly a week.
She did some quick cleaning and emptied the dishwasher she had run a week before too. Then she took a long, hot shower and changed into fresh clothes from the ones Ben had washed for her the night before. She thought she could still smell the scent of his home on her blouse and hung it in the closet apart from the others.
Finally she went back to the book filled with names of those who had attended her father’s funeral or one of the shivah sittings, trying to remember who had been there and what exactly they had said.
If you ever need anything . . .
Everyone says it a lot, but few really mean it. Danielle needed to find someone who really did.
Perusing the book, she came across the name of Harry Walls, a man a little older than she who had gone through training for the Sayaret, the Israeli Special Forces, at the same time she had. His brother had been critically wounded at Entebbe, and although she and Harry had served in different branches of the Sayaret, they had kept in touch from time to time afterward. After his name in her father’s memorial book, Harry Walls had written his phone number and underlined it twice. Danielle picked up the phone and dialed.
She wasn’t disappointed: it rang twice, was answered, then there was a beep.
“Danielle Barnea, Harry. Could you call me, please.”
She didn’t leave her number; if she was right about Harry, she didn’t have to.
Sure enough, her phone rang less than two minutes later.
“Harry?”
“Hello, Danielle.”
She pressed the receiver tighter to her ear. Harry Walls had given her a special number rigged into a network reserved for intelligence operatives.
Operatives of the elite Mossad.
“It’s been a long time,” Walls continued.
“My father’s funeral. You said if I ever needed anything I could call you.”
“Name it.”
“I need an ID on a photo.”
“I was hoping it was a date,” Walls said, sounding disappointed, and Danielle remembered hearing something about a divorce.
“Not this time.”
“National Police data banks come up empty for you?”
“I see you heard I came back.”
“I told you I’d be checking up from time to time.”
“And I’m sure you know the National Police data banks are not, how should I say it, as thorough as yours.”
“True enough.”
“How can I get the photo to you?”
“Do you have a fax?”
“Yes, but sending a picture, the quality . . .”
“Don’t worry about the quality.” Danielle could almost see Harry Walls smiling smugly on the other end. “Our machine will take care of that. Here’s the number . . .”
“I’ll send it through now,” Danielle said after jotting the exchange down. “When can I expect to hear from you?”
“Later today.”
“I don’t know where I’ll be.”
“Don’t worry,” Walls told her. “I’ll find you.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 45
I
n spite of being exhausted, Ben had slept fitfully through the night. Thoughts of Danielle sleeping in the next room were too disturbing and he kept being awoken by intense dreams, one after the other. In some, he went to her. In others, she came to him. In all, they found each other and the result was a bliss he hadn’t known since they had parted eighteen months before. But each time the dream ended he was still alone, his sleep growing more and more choppy as the night wore on. Worst of all, Ben knew in the morning she would be gone, back to Israel, and he wanted her near him, even on these terms—on any terms.
When he finally woke up, or thought he did, the ghost of Zaid Jabral was back in the corner chair. The creaking noise the chair made as the ghost rocked itself sounded strangely peaceful and soothing. Finally Jabral stopped and sat still. Part of his smoldering suit fell away and his exposed flesh squished against the chair’s fabric.
“You still haven’t figured it out, have you, Inspector?”
“No. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”
“You haven’t tried hard enough. I’m beginning to think my faith in you was mislaid, since I made you a national hero.”
“After you made me an outcast.”
“Both were called for. Just doing my job. And if you would do yours, you could clean up this mess. Finish the work I started.”
“Tell me how.”
“I just did.”
“I must not have been listening.”
“It’s right in front of you.”
“Do all ghosts speak in riddles?”
Jabral’s bulging eyes, like cue balls stuck in his patchwork face, flicked toward the living room, where Danielle was sleeping.
Ben sat up straighter in bed. “What does she have to do with it, Jabral?”
“We’re all connected, the three of us. And if you don’t start thinking, you’ll both be joining me.”
“Ramira Taji is dead.”
“I know.”
“She was murdered, wasn’t she?”
“What do you think, Inspector?”
“I think she was murdered by the same people who had you killed.”
“So do I.”
“You could be a little bit more help than that.”
“Sorry. They make us play by the rules here. Go back to my apartment, Inspector. Try again.” And he started to fade out, just as he had the last time.
”Wait, Jabral, wait!”
What was left of him held thinly to the darkness. “Make it fast.”
”Does Al Safah really exist?”
”How should I know?”
”I just thought that maybe ...”
”He wouldn’t be with me, Inspector. He’d be somewhere else entirely.”
And then the rest of him faded away.
When Ben finally woke up hours later, Danielle was gone. He went into the bathroom, cupped his hands, and drank water until he felt he might burst. Twenty minutes later his mouth was dry again, and he tried a piece of fruit.
Go back to my apartment, Inspector.
Advice Jabral’s ghost had given him. What had he missed or failed to give sufficient weight to? By now, though, the apartment would have been ransac
ked by his fellow policemen. Once again, Ben reran the taped interview with Ari Bar-Rosen in his mind, searching for a clue that wasn’t there. Then he went over everything he had done, step by step, searching for something he had found and brushed aside.
