Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02]

by By Jon Land

  I can help you.

  A child like one of these could have been hers for the asking, probably at no charge. A benevolent gesture arranged by a man who honestly cared for her and thought he was doing the right thing.

  She felt nauseous and leaned over to vomit before mounting the stairs. She retched once but managed to keep the bile down.

  Danielle retraced her route off the Lucretia Maru, no longer nauseous but still in shock. She barely remembered her confrontation with Ben and Mathilde Faustin from Interpol when she reached the dock again. All she could focus on was coming here, to Hershel Giott, to challenge him with the truth. To find the answers that had been denied her at every turn.

  * * * *

  W

  hat do you expect me to say?” Giott asked when she had finished. He was sitting down on the carpeted steps now, thin patches of uncombed hair a disheveled mess atop the crown of his head usually covered by a yarmulke. He suddenly looked very old and frail.

  “I don’t expect you to say anything until I ask.”

  “What?”

  “I have some questions for you,” Danielle said flatly. The man before her, once mentor and protector, had let her down terribly. She had not thrown away her career; it had been stripped from her, punishment for coming too close to a secret that had been buried too long.

  But what was that secret?

  “Is this an interrogation?” Giott asked.

  “I prefer to call it a discussion. I came here out of courtesy, out of respect. If at all possible, I will keep your name out of the investigation.”

  “The investigation ended yesterday afternoon, Danielle. You were suspended, remember?”

  “By someone potentially affected by the results of that investigation. I think you should take a voluntary leave of absence, Rav Nitzav.”

  “And if I disagree?”

  “Tell me what I need to know and I will keep your name out of this.”

  “How very gracious of you.” Giott slapped the knees of his pajamas and stood up again. “Very well, what you need to know is that you have no idea of the depth of what you have stumbled upon.”

  “I think I do.”

  “No, you don’t. The offer I intended to extend to you in your time of need was genuine, from my heart.”

  “But you didn’t make the offer yourself.”

  “It was not my place. I knew Levy and had some knowledge of his dealings. I made one phone call, gave him your name and room number. That’s all.”

  “Did Ravel kill him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why was Levy killed?”

  “Who can say? A hundred reasons!”

  “And could there be a hundred reasons for his phone calls to Max Pearlman too, Rav Nitzav? Or his calls to the man he knew as David Wollchensky for a good part of his life? What happened two months ago to spur those calls? What was Levy afraid of?”

  Giott shook his head haplessly. “Besides my call in reference to you, I hadn’t spoken to Levy in a long time.”

  “So why suspend me?” Danielle demanded. “Who are you protecting?”

  “You, Danielle,” Giott told her, the old compassion back in his suddenly sad eyes. “I was protecting you from yourself. You were dredging up the past, and the past for all of us has secrets better left where they were. Have you forgotten the lessons of Solomon’s Pillars?”

  “Forget the past! Forget the Pillars of Solomon! Palestinian children are being smuggled out of the West Bank, sold into slavery, and Israelis are intimately involved!”

  Giott seemed unmoved by her assertion. “And what do you think men like Ravel do when they are cornered? What do you expect would have happened had I let your investigation proceed?”

  “The risk was mine.”

  “But not the responsibility. As your superior, that rests with me.”

  “As my superior, you should want this case pursued wherever it leads.”

  Giott looked at her blankly. “It led you to my door this morning, Danielle. How many other doors would you like to knock on? How many more locks do you intend to pick?”

  “The involvement is that widespread. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve said enough. It’s over for you, Danielle. Leave it alone. Don’t touch it. The doors are all closed and these doors don’t have locks you can pick. Stop trying and it might not be too late. You might be able to save yourself.”

  “I can handle Ravel,” she insisted.

  “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? I don’t know why Levy was killed. But I know enough to realize the reasons for his death are not accessible to people like you and me.”

  “So we give up? Let his killer go unpunished?”

  “You can’t touch these people, Danielle, nobody can. You think they will not come after you because you’re a woman, a hero?” He seemed to brush her aside with a flap of his hand. “Israel has more than enough of both. This is not a time to interfere. This is a time to let things be.”

  “All this from a man who claims not to know who’s involved.”

  “I’m doing this for you, Danielle. I know you don’t want to believe that now, but my main concern all along has been keeping you alive.”

  “No one bothered to keep Levy alive.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “And Pearlman would be dead now too, if not for Ben Kamal. What about David Wollchenksy, or Wolfe, if you prefer?”

  “He was contacted through the proper channels and advised of the situation.”

  “Advised,” Danielle repeated. “Is that the same thing as warned?”

  “Much is left up to individual discretion in such matters.”

  “In other words, no one ever says what they mean. That’s the unwritten law and you’re following it to the letter now.”

  Giott’s tired face sharpened. “You want me to speak plainly? Very well, I will. Yes, I tried to provide you with the option of adopting a baby and, yes, I knew the men behind that acquisition are also involved in a trade we have looked away from for years.”

  “Israel condoned the enslavement of Palestinian children, then, perhaps even supported it.”

  Giott didn’t bother denying her assertion.

  “That’s monstrous!”

  “But not worth losing your life over, Danielle. We are an open society only in what we choose to let the world see. I am assuming you have come to me with this first, that you have not taken this information anywhere else.”

  “You’re right; I haven’t.”

  “Not even shared it with your Palestinian friend?”

  “No.”

  Giott sighed a little easier. “Then I can still keep you out of this. No one has to know about your accusations, about the conclusions you’ve reached.”

  “How about what I saw on that freighter? Were those babies coming in or going out? Import and export?”

  Giott’s face remained impassive. “We’re running out of time, Danielle.”

  “What if I walk out of here and go to the next door?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Sooner or later someone will be waiting for you behind one. Maybe Ravel. Maybe it will be your own door. And at that point there will be nothing I can do to help.” He reached out to take her shoulders, but she stiffened and backed off. “It’s over, Danielle. Let it go.”

  “What’s the secret everyone’s protecting? What in God’s name is worth so many lives?”

  Giott shook his head, shrugging his bony shoulders. “There are some things the rest of us are better off not knowing.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 58

  B

  en stared into the distance from the raised bridge of the fishing boat.

  “I can’t see her,” he said, lowering his binoculars.

  Mathilde Faustin kept their speed steady. “If you could, that would mean she could see us. She’s out there, not more than a few miles ahead. Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the shipping lanes.”

 
; “And if we lose her?”

  “We’ll close the gap as she draws closer to the island of Crete. There, she’ll either take the southern channel toward Algiers, or the northern one for Athens. Any farther than that will tax her fuel supply.”

  Ben refocused his binoculars, not satisfied.

  The Lucretia Maru had headed out to sea without any warning just after dawn. Perhaps the crew had taken the missed “delivery” as a warning. Perhaps all the activity on the docks the previous night had spooked them. Either way, it was too early to hire a boat to follow the freighter, so Faustin had stolen a fishing boat used for small charters and day trips. The boat was small enough to hide on the sea and fast enough to stay close to the freighter. Her fuel tank had recently been topped off and Faustin estimated they could easily cover as much sea with it as the freighter before refueling.

  Ben slipped on the deck and hit his head shortly after they set out from the harbor. The throb he already felt from strain and fatigue worsened, wooziness added for good measure.

  “Get some rest,” Faustin advised, and he stumbled into the cabin below, where he collapsed on a waterproof couch.

  He awoke to a smell like meat left too long over charcoal and found Zaid Jabral hovering over him, a life jacket wrapped around his tattered suit coat.

  “How was your trip to the kibbutz yesterday?”

  “Not very informative.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t ask the right questions, Inspector.”

  “A man told me the ones you asked him. He didn’t have the answers.”

  “He told you the kibbutz’s records had been lost when they moved to their current location in 1967.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jabral just stood there, his burnt flesh popping and puckering. “What did you learn last night on the harbor?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “What did Pakad Barnea see on board that freighter?”

  “Babies, infants.”

  “There’s your answer,” Jabral’s ghost told him.

  “What was the question?”

  Jabral shook his head, like the teacher he had once been, disappointed by a student. “Do I have to do everything for you? I’m dead, remember? You’re making me angry. I don’t think I’ll be coming back anymore.”

  The ghost turned and his flesh squished across the deck.

  “I should have asked someone at the kibbutz about babies!” Ben yelled after him.

  “Too late now,” Jabral said without turning.

  “What did you learn? What did they tell you?”

  “You’ll have to put it together for yourself, Ben. You’ve got all the pieces. Think about it, where everything started for me.”

  “Ramira Taji,” Ben recalled, “the old woman who told you somebody had stolen her baby fifty years ago. By Al Safah.”

  What was left of Jabral’s features brightened a little. “Then you have learned something new.”

  “She claimed she saw Al Safah again recently.”

  “You go have a talk with her?”

  “She’s dead, Jabral.”

  “That’s right. I forgot.”

  Then something occurred to Ben. “Ramira Taji and Kabir, the finance minister you interviewed—they lived in the same refugee camp after the ‘48 war, didn’t they?”

  “Much better, Inspector.” The ghost started on again. “You’re almost there.”

  “Jabral!”

  The ghost stopped and looked back over his blackened shoulder. Ben thought he smiled, although without any lips it was difficult to tell. “That’s the best I can do, my friend. You’ll have to figure the rest out by yourself.”

  When Ben awoke, the sun was high in the sky and streaming through the cabin window onto his face. The throb in his head was not altogether gone, but it had lessened enough for him to move about without getting light-headed again. He found a pair of binoculars and climbed back on deck to rejoin Faustin.

  “Where are we?”

  “Halfway between Cyprus and Crete.”

  “How’s our fuel?”

  Faustin shrugged a little behind the wheel. “We’ll be okay as long as the freighter docks by nightfall.”

  Faustin increased the fishing boat’s speed as they drew closer to the island of Crete. The island appeared as a small speck on the horizon several minutes before the Lucretia Maru came back into view. Faustin kept her pace steady as the freighter slipped around the island toward the north.

  “She’s headed to Athens,” she said matter-of-factly.

  They held their distance long into the afternoon, skirting the islands that dotted the Mediterranean between Crete and Athens. The jagged Greek peninsula that held the ancient port city appeared just as the light began to bleed from the sky. It was a magnificent sunset, close enough along the horizon for Ben to think they could sail right into it if they hurried.

  The Lucretia Maru sounded her horn and blew huge plumes of smoke from her chimneys as she approached the harbor.

  “Is this her final stop?” Ben asked Faustin.

  “No,” she replied with typical reservation in her voice, “just another port of call.”

  “Pickup or delivery?”

  “We’ll see.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 59

  C

  oncession was a new feeling for her, and Danielle had done her best to embrace it.

  From the time she had left Hershel Giott’s home outside Jerusalem, she’d been trying to look at life differently. Trying to picture it all at once in a vast overview created a jumble of images in her mind, though, an incoherent mishmash of events and plans that in retrospect seemed forever unfulfilled.

  She wasn’t ready to give up this fight, but had to face the fact that she had no way to pursue it for the moment. Giott would close all the doors, all the possible venues of information otherwise open to her. She had to be patient. Bide her time until the opportunity to continue her investigation came.

  She thought of Ben following a different trail with Mathilde Faustin from Interpol. Perhaps they would find Al Safah. Perhaps that was the only true way to end this.

  But Danielle similarly couldn’t stop thinking that Ben was alone, out there somewhere, with a woman she was quite certain was mad. Faustin would sacrifice anything to get what she wanted, Ben Kamal included.

  I shouldn’t have left Haifa without him. I should have made him come with me.

  Another in a long line of misjudgments that would haunt her forever. This one, though, might her cost her Ben, the cold fear that she would never see him again rising above everything else.

  To distract herself, Danielle determined to throw herself into the everyday affairs she had painstakingly avoided since her release from the hospital. That meant giving her apartment a thorough cleaning, to make it feel like a home again. Pay all her bills, return her mail. Stop at the post office and pick up the parcels that must be gathering dust, a third one added to the first two.

  But first she stopped at a local market, packing groceries into her wagon until they threatened to spill over the top. She was going to fill the refrigerator and cupboards that had been empty for too long. That task concluded, she made herself breakfast, even though she wasn’t hungry. Lose herself in the routine and hope that the next time the phone rang, Ben would be on the other end.

  Later, Danielle opened the windows to air the rooms out. The apartment smelled better almost immediately, the staleness whisked away by the soft scents that blew in from the orange and olive groves located to the east. Dust followed the breeze as it always did in old cities made of stone, but she would wipe it away later.

  By afternoon, Danielle had washed the floors and counters, vacuumed the rugs, scrubbed the bathroom until her skin chafed and eyes burned from ammonia, and paid twenty-seven bills, many of which were weeks or even months past due.

  And Ben still had not called.

&nb
sp; So Danielle sat down to make a list of everything else she’d been putting off, only to remember the parcels that needed to be picked up. She located the notices she would have to hand over to receive them and decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring day by walking to the nearby post office.