Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02]
Page 26
Sabi didn’t waste time. “A freighter has been docked in Haifa for two days now, presumably laid up for repairs. It is of Liberian registry and is called the Lucretia Maru.”
“What else?”
“They have ordered no parts, commissioned no repairs. The crew never leaves the ship. I have made some discreet inquiries and learned that the Lucretia Maru sank three years ago off the coast of Algiers. Her owners were most surprised when I informed them their ship was docked in my harbor, especially when her description did not match that of the freighter they had lost.”
“Have you boarded her?”
“I wanted to speak to you first, in case you wanted this handled by more traditional authorities.”
“I don’t.”
Sabi smiled thinly, further inflating the size of his jowls. “I didn’t think so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come to me in the first place.”
“Where is she?” Danielle asked, gazing over the myriad of ships lining the port of Haifa.
“There is something else you should know first, Pakad Danielle Barnea: I have been told that strange sounds have been heard on the ship in the night.”
“Then let’s you and I go find out where they’re coming from.”
* * * *
B
en snailed his car down Habankim Street along the dock-side of the port of Haifa, keeping a few blocks behind the Mercedes.
“He’s turning in there,” Mathilde Faustin said from the passenger seat. “I think he’s parking.”
Ben drove on.
“They always work in teams,” Faustin had explained after the girls had been led out of the Volvo and ushered into the Mercedes back in the West Bank. “Eliminates uncertainty and reduces the chances of betrayal, especially when different cultures are involved.”
“The men in the Mercedes are Israelis?” Ben had asked, focusing his binoculars on the license plates. The plates were yellow, indeed Israeli.
“Definitely. They’re the next rung up the ladder, Inspector.”
“What happens now?”
“They get the girls out of the country, possibly direct to a city but more likely to a central distribution point.”
Ben looked at Faustin questioningly.
“Everything I’ve uncovered points to the fact that Al Safah has a facility where he keeps the children until they can be permanently settled,” she explained. “Some of the victims I’ve interrogated have tried to describe it, but many were either drugged or terrified the whole time they were there, so their memories are clouded and unreliable. The one thing they all seem to agree on was that it was an island.”
“Even if they went along willingly like the two we’re following?”
Faustin’s stare hardened. “They did not willingly give themselves up to slavery. They were promised something else entirely. A better life at the very least, a job or even a career, and when they realize they were lied to and are no better than slaves, their terror can be as bad as that experienced by the victims procured by kidnapping or sold into the trade by their families.”
Ben shook his head, sighing deeply.
“Selling children is nothing new in this part of the world, Inspector. Instances of it in Persian and Arab cultures have been recorded for thousands of years. History has been kinder to the practice, explaining it off as a means of keeping peace, or establishing trade, or—”
“That doesn’t make it any less barbaric.”
“What’s truly barbaric is that one force has taken over the entire trade, giving it a kind of clandestine legitimacy like selling drugs or moving arms.”
In the dead quiet of the night, Ben had followed the Mercedes to a border crossing into Israel beyond Nablus, lagging back as it was swiftly passed through.
“What are you doing?” Faustin demanded.
“We can’t go into Israel.”
“We can!”
“I’m not cleared.”
“I am! Forget about your license plates and drive up there before we lose them!”
Ben had done as she instructed, then stopped and rolled down his window for the approaching Israeli soldier. Before Ben could say a word, Faustin had thrust her identification and a letter folded into quarters across him. The soldier inspected the ID, then read the letter. His eyes lingered on Faustin after he finished. Then he passed them through.
“Well done, Superintendent.”
“The Mercedes made it through even faster.”
“Even with two girls without any papers sitting in the backseat.”
“I’m glad you noticed.”
“You’re saying the soldiers were bribed?”
She shook her head. “Only that the IDs presented stopped them from checking any further.”
“Like yours.”
“Even better.”
* * * *
D
anielle stood wit Sabi and his henchmen behind a supply hut that overlooked theLucretia Maru’s berth against the pier from two hundred feet away, camouflaged by the fog that continued to roll in.
“She’s seen better days,” he said softly, both to Danielle and to the five men who had accompanied him to the harbor.
The men shrugged, readying their weapons. The three Danielle had never seen no longer bothered to hide the Uzis tucked under their coats.
“Israeli military surplus,” Sabi explained. “I got a good buy.”
Danielle returned her gaze to theLucretia Maru. With binoculars, she could see the freighter wobbling in her berth amid the currents, bleeding rust along the hull and looking pale and discolored below the waterline. Her chimneys were decaying, and Danielle could make out slabs of irregularly shaded steel where her deck plate had been repeatedly welded. The two doors on deck in her view stood ajar, swollen beyond the girth of their frames, impossible to close without a total refitting the freighter wasn’t going to receive anytime soon.
Danielle couldn’t help but remember the story of a similar freighter called the Gideon, convinced that was where the origins of this mystery actually lay. More than fifty years earlier, three young men had come aboard the Gideon to Palestine, where they were joined by a fourth until tragedy struck. Something had happened in the months or years after Jacob Rossovitch’s death that had forever changed the lives of the three surviving friends. Hyram Levy was dead because of it, Max Pearlman had gone into hiding, and David Wollchensky, now Wolfe, was in America. Like the Gideon before her, the Lucretia Maru held a secret that could kill, had killed. And somehow that secret was connected to something only two men left alive knew.
“What do you expect to find on board, Pakad Danielle Barnea?” Sabi asked her.
“I’m not sure. The reason why a man was murdered, I hope.”
“Hyram Levy?”
Danielle couldn’t hide her surprise. “You knew him?”
“We did some business from time to time. I also know that until earlier today you were in charge of the investigation to find his killer.”
“I congratulate you on your sources.”
“A good thing I have them, Pakad Danielle Barnea. Otherwise, you might have been waiting a very long time for my call.” Sabi looked back at the Lucretia Maru. “What exactly was my friend the Engineer involved in?”
“Far more than everyone realized, obviously, or he wouldn’t have been doing business with you.”
Sabi stifled a hearty laugh. “And now you are doing business with me. I doubt your friends at the National Police would approve.”
“You said it yourself: after today, I have no friends at the National Police.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To find out for myself.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Sabi asked, turning to his men.
He had just signaled a pair of his men to lead the way onto the dock holding the Lucretia Maru when Danielle froze them with a raised hand.
“Stop!” She swung around and lowered her voice. “Someone’s coming!”
* * * *
CHAPTER 55
B
en and Mathilde Faustin waited until the two men from the Mercedes escorted their charges down toward the docks before emerging from the car across the street.
“What now?” Ben asked.
“We find out which ship they board.”
“I mean after that.”
“Good question,” Faustin replied.
“We could call the Israeli authorities.”
“And what would we gain from that? A few arrests? A few children returned to their homes?”
Ben thought of taking Leila Fatuk back to her family and almost said yes. “Maybe the answers you’re seeking.”
“No one on any boat here has those.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
Instead of answering his question, Faustin led the way slowly down into the harbor, making sure to keep her distance. “Do you have a gun?” she asked Ben softly.
He was about to say no, accustomed to leaving it behind whenever he entered Israel. Then he remembered the unforeseen and unorthodox entry they had made tonight and said, “Yes. Why?”
“Just in case.”
* * * *
D
anielle peered out from behind the cover of the storage shed as the footsteps came closer. Sabi’s men had edged farther out into the darkness and fog, guns ready, wary of an attack.
The walkway extended down from the street and then leveled out closer to the docks. It ended about thirty feet from their position, the thickening mist making that distance seem much greater.
“Perhaps they were expecting us,” Sabi whispered.
“How?”
“This could be a trap meant for you, Pakad Danielle Barnea.”
“No,” Danielle insisted halfheartedly.
“You have crossed the wrong people. Bad mistake in Israel. It’s a good thing you called me.”
“Tell your men not to shoot!”
“They know.”
The footsteps sounded louder against the wooden slats of the walkway. Danielle caught a glimpse of four shapes, an odd group of two men and two young women, proceeding in the general direction of the dock accessing the Lucretia Mam. No way to tell for sure yet if that was their destination.
Sabi’s three gunmen wielding silenced Uzi submachine guns edged closer to the walkway, trying to better their vantage point and angle of fire. Danielle noticed one of the figures slow for a moment, then head on again through the fog.
“Tell your men to back up,” she whispered to Sabi.
“What?”
“Call them off! They’ve been—”
A gunshot sounded in the night, a soft pop dulled by the thick, fetid air. One of Sabi’s men twisted sideways, clutching his shoulder as the familiar spitting sound of silenced gunshots burst from his Uzi’s barrel. Then the other two of Sabi’s henchmen spun away from the fat man, pistols leveled before them.
“No!” Danielle called, but no one heard her.
She saw one of the men up on the walkway go down, followed closely by one of the young women. Danielle spun out from behind the storage shed, and the window immediately over her head exploded.
“Stop!”
It was no use. The second man who had just walked down from the street lunged off the walkway and took cover behind a guard post Sabi’s gunmen instantly splintered with bullets. The other young woman panicked and tore off, running back up the walkway for the street. Danielle watched long hair splaying out behind the figure and realized she was more a girl than a woman. Then, through the window of the empty guard post, Danielle saw the man who had escorted the girl toward the docks turn his own gun upon her.
No! Danielle thought, and bolted into the open. Skirting the relentless fire of Sabi’s henchmen, though, cost her critical moments. By the time she reached the shed’s window on the opposite side, the man fired and the girl’s spine arched, standing her straight up.
Danielle watched him steadying his pistol again as she fired hers. The glass popped away from her bullet’s path and the man’s head snapped sideways. He thudded to the deck and slipped over into the water.
Up the walkway, the girl staggered forward a few more steps, then collapsed. Danielle rushed out, Sabi’s gunmen not far behind her.
“Damn!” she screeched in frustration. “Goddamn it!”
She heard Sabi chugging up behind her just as a fresh hail of bullets rained down from the top of the walkway. She dove hard to the wet wood and retrained her pistol. Around her two of Sabi’s Uzi-wielding henchmen went down in matching heaps. The two with pistols sprayed a wild barrage at an elusive shape that seemed to disappear into the mist, their bullets not even coming close.
Danielle fought for a bead on the shape that moved like a shadow. She had actually begun to wonder if that’s what she had seen when the shape emerged directly in line with her unprotected flank. No way she could possibly get a shot off in time, but she twisted around to try, as the shape’s pistol steadied on her through the fog.
* * * *
G
oddamn it!”
It was Danielle! Ben realized as Faustin rushed ahead of him toward the docks. He recognized her voice, confirming the few earlier glimpses he had caught after the shooting that had claimed both Palestinian girls had started.
Ben charged down the walkway after Faustin. He had cut the gap between them in half when her sudden burst felled two men wielding submachine guns. He watched Faustin turn her attention on Danielle and launched himself into motion, closing to within a lunge of the woman from Interpol when her finger began to close on the trigger.
* * * *
D
anielle brought her gun up, facing death in the form of a lithe figure in black, a female Grim Reaper. Just as the woman fired, though, a man crashed into her and spilled her to the walkway, sending her bullet errant.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled before Danielle could pull her own trigger.
My God, she thought, that voice . . .
“Danielle, it’s me!”
Ben!
Sabi’s remaining three men rushed out, one holding an Uzi with one arm while the other arm dangled uselessly by his side. They closed on Ben and the figure he was wrestling with on the walkway.
“Hold your fire!” Danielle screamed, lurching to her feet and throwing herself between Ben and the gunmen. “Hold your fire!”
Only then did she realize she had steadied her pistol on them, would have shot the men had they showed any signs of not following her order.
The three men stopped, unsure, as Sabi lumbered forward. “What is this? What’s going on?”
“Get off me!” Faustin rasped at Ben. She twisted the wrist he had fastened around her into a painful hold that made him gasp and let go.
Faustin resteadied her gun.
Sabi’s men resteadied theirs.
Danielle lowered her pistol, stiffening as she stood there. Ben struggled to his feet and rushed to her, hand hanging limp by his side.
“Who are you?” Mathilde Faustin demanded, standing with her gun held low but taut, seemingly unfazed by the weapons trained upon her.
“Who are you?” Sabi’s eyes shifted rapidly from Ben to Faustin.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Danielle moved past a stunned Sabi toward the body of one of the girls she had seen gunned down.
“She’s my partner, Superintendent,” Ben said.
“What have we done here?” Danielle muttered, kneeling over the body.
“Your Israeli friend, eh?” Faustin asked Ben. “Perhaps one of us should tell her she shot one of her own people.”
Danielle spun round. “What?”
“The man behind the guardhouse who spilled into the water. The other one, too.”
“Israelis?” gasped Sabi.
“Tell her,” Faustin urged Ben in disgust. “Tell them both.”
“Leave me out of this. I’m getting out of here,” Sabi said, already starting back up the walkway under close escort by his henchmen.
>
Danielle stepped out, coming up just short of blocking his way. “The bodies . . . Your men ...”