Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02]

by By Jon Land

  For now Ben remained on his feet with eyes peeled through the generous slats. He thought again of the moment he found Mathilde Faustin’s body, and shuddered. But it wasn’t for her he was doing this, at least not solely. It was because the end of the journey would bring him to children who had been stolen from their homes, who would die the same death Mathilde Faustin had died long before Ben had met her, if someone did not intervene. He was going to save them, go up against Al Safah himself if that’s what it took, but he was determined to save them.

  Weeks after the murder of his family, Ben finally agreed to see a police psychiatrist. He had expected no results, had barely even uttered a word when the psychiatrist asked him what he wanted.

  Five minutes, Ben had said, surprising himself, I want the five minutes back that cost me my family. . . .

  Had he returned home those five minutes earlier, his children and wife would be alive today. He would have pumped his hollow points into the Sandman before the killer’s knife began its deadly work. The police psychiatrist had responded by cautioning Ben against living his life forever in search of those lost five minutes. Trying to get them back, though, had led him onto the Lucretia Maru hours before, and it would keep him on board until he found what Mathilde Faustin had spent much of her bleak life searching for.

  Ben continued to scan the deck, wetting his lips. The water he’d drunk straight from the pump-shack faucet had been too warm and rusty to enjoy, yet he missed it now. He wasn’t sure how many more hours would pass before he could drink again, never mind eat. He resolved to take his chances leaving the freighter at its next port of call to find food. Of course, he had no passport and carried only Arab currency, which meant he’d have to be creative.

  Ben thought if he sat down on the grated floor of the baffle and tried to sleep, maybe Zaid Jabral’s ghost would appear and tell him where the freighter was heading, what he should do when she got there. It seemed like a good idea to get some rest anyway, and he nodded in and out of consciousness as the sun sank from the sky. The night breeze first cooled, then chilled him.

  Ben had just cradled his arms around himself when he felt the freighter turn and list slightly to port. He stood up and noticed they were going through waters with lights on both sides of the ship. If his earlier bearings had been correct, they had very likely entered the Strait of Messina, passing between the southern tip of Italy and the island of Sicily. Perhaps the Lucretia Maru was headed to Rome or Naples or Salerno, all hours from her present position.

  But once clear of the strait, she made a wide sweep to the west. The freighter hugged the Sicilian coastline for a time before angling slightly to the north again, where the Lipari Islands dotted the southern stretches of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

  The Liparis were a group of volcanic islands located off the north shore of Sicily. Ben had heard of the major islands like Salina, Filicudi, and Panarea. The smaller ones were mostly abandoned, save for geological and archaelogical survey teams that made regular visits. There were boat stops among these and the larger islands, indicating that the coastlines were sale for even a freighter like the Lucretia Maru to negotiate.

  Ben remembered hearing rumors that a few of the smaller Liparis had been transformed into fortresses by Sicilian Mafia bosses many years before. Places to take refuge in times of gang warfare or flight from the authorities. Abandoned and forgotten now, hidden from view by their larger neighbors. Islands that, for all intents and purposes, no longer existed.

  The perfect place for Al Safah to gather his charges, just as Mathilde Faustin had suspected.

  Ben could feel his heart beating faster. His mouth had gone bone dry, but he forgot his thirst.

  He knew where the Lucretia Maru was headed.

  And she would be there in a very short while.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 63

  T

  he flight from Tel Aviv began its descent into Kennedy Airport after nightfall, two hours late. Danielle would rent a car upon arriving; she had a long drive ahead of her before she reached David Wolfe’s home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Before renting a car, though, she would have to get through customs and immigration, a none too easy task if they had been alerted to her pending arrival.

  Back in Israel, she had taken every step possible to keep her departure from drawing attention. But she knew if Hershel Giott had deemed her a security risk and alerted the proper authorities, there was nothing she could do. She had waited until the last possible moment to reserve a seat and board the El Al jet, her heart pounding until the flight was airborne nearly eighteen hours earlier.

  Only when it had reached its cruising altitude did Danielle turn again to the page she had marked in Hyram Levy’s journal, the story picking up almost where Hershel Giott had left off after the three surviving friends had gained revenge for the murder of Jacob Rossovitch. Now, feeling her stomach quiver a bit from the big jet’s descent toward New York, she began to read again.

  * * * *

  We gathered again at the kibbutz in Sefir, the three of us, six weeks after our vengeful raid, for the birth of our dead friend’s child. It was a truly solemn occasion where we came to honor our pledge to Jacob Rossovitch: that we be there for his son and wife always, no matter what it took.

  I believe in my heart that had it not been for that pledge our friendship might have ended the night of the raid on the Palestinian refugee camp. I could not resign myself to what we had done, the innocent lives we had taken, no matter how much I tried. And I know that Max Pearlman couldn’t either. Wollchensky was different. He had always been different. The War of Independence only expanded his madness, enlarged his capacity for violence. He grew immune to the horror to the extent I thank God I never did. For that reason I believe we would have gone our separate ways, if not for the imminent birth of our dead friend’s child.

  Jacob Rossovitch’s beloved wife Revkah was in the midst of a terribly difficult labor by the time we arrived. Usually midwives were entrusted to handle the entire birthing procedure, but on this night a doctor was summoned early on and had not left Revkah’s side for hours. We went together into the kibbutz infirmary to lend her the kind of strength Jacob would have, but she was already fading in and out of consciousness, delusional.

  The night passed. We waited. Ultimately the doctor had no choice but to operate. The facilities at the kibbutz, as impressive as they were, were not sufficient for the complicated procedure that needed to be performed. The doctor’s primary concern, of course, was for the life of the mother, but outside the walls and closed windows we could hear Revkah screaming for him to save her baby no matter what it took. She begged him to sacrifice her life for her child’s.

  We spoke not a word to each other while we waited. We had shared so much, but this night brought back only the most painful. The horror we had seen, the other friends we had lost. The glorious victory we had won, only to be faced with the reality that we would forever be at war.

  On this night, for the first and only time, maybe all three of us, at least Pearlman and I, began to question even the perilous journey that had brought us to Palestine. What was the use? What had we really accomplished? What kind of men were we?

  Little did I know that last question was going to be answered once and for all, before the next day was out. . . .

  * * * *

  Danielle looked up from yet another reading of Levy’s journal as the final landing preparations were announced over the PA. She checked to make sure her seat belt was fastened and tucked the book against her side when the stewardess passed by.

  She had become party to a secret that until this time had been kept to the three men who met at the kibbutz for the birth of their friend’s child. Again Danielle considered the impact of that secret Hyram Levy had revealed to her from his grave. She felt certain it had been responsible for his death and the attack on Pearlman’s life in Tel Aviv. But the journal did not say how or why, did not explain why a secret buried for almost fifty years could cause the havo
c that had erupted in the past week. Indeed, there remained one part of the story left to be told, and only David Wollchensky, now Wolfe, could tell it.

  Danielle had no idea how he would greet her appearance at his door, had no idea if he would own up to what he had been party to, assuming he spoke with her at all. She only knew she had to try and make him.

  Danielle settled back and returned to Levy’s journal as the jet broke the clouds and the lights of New York City flickered in the distance beneath her.

  * * * *

  We waited; it was all we could do. We paced, we smoked, we cried but mostly we waited. I remember dawn had just broken when the doctor stepped outside, his clothes covered in blood. We had heard no child crying inside, so we knew even before we saw the tears welling up in his eyes.

  “It was a boy,” he said.

  “Revkah?” David asked, but it didn’t sound like his voice at all. It was the most pained sound I had ever heard.

  The doctor tried to light a cigarette and failed. “She is holding the baby now in her arms. Humming to it. She keeps looking up and saying, ‘What a beautiful boy. What a beautiful boy.’ Over and over again. I tried to tell her but—”

  Wollchenksy grabbed the doctor by the arm before he could finish. His cigarette fluttered to the ground. David’s eyes were furious.

  “You will tell her nothing!”

  “I, I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand! All you have to do is what I say, exactly what I say.”

  “Please, you’re hurting me.”

  Wollchensky let go, but didn’t back off. “We are going inside now, all of us. You will follow my lead, Doctor. Then you will have breakfast and be gone from here. And you will forget last night. You will forget last night ever happened.”

  Inside we found Jacob Rossovitch’s wife Revkah sitting up in bed, cradling her dead child in her arms. Her wet hair was matted to her forehead. Her skin was sickly pale. Blood soaked the sheets atop which she lay before the eyes of the silent and horrified midwives. She looked up at us with eyes that glowed with happiness against this tragic backdrop.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked, holding her baby out just enough to see his limp legs. He looked more like a plastic doll somebody had spilled paint on.

  “Very,” said David Wollchensky, stepping ahead of Pearlman and me.

  “Would you like to hold him? It’s what Jacob would have wanted.”

  “Very much,” David said, and extended his hands.

  Revkah placed the baby in his arms and David cradled its bloody, still form against him, rocking it gently.

  “He looks like his father,” Revkah beamed. “Don’t you think he looks like his father?”

  David smiled. “You should rest now.”

  “I should watch my baby.”

  “I’ll keep him for a time. You’ve had a long night. You need to get your strength back.”

  “I’m very tired.”

  “And very brave. All you went through . . .Jacob would have been proud.”

  “I wish so much he were here.”

  Wollchensky gave the baby to a midwife and stroked Revkah’s steaming forehead. “We’re here, the three of us.”

  “My son will have three fathers then.”

  David glanced back at me and then Pearlman. “He will indeed.”

  “Promise me you’ll take care of him. Promise me you’ll watch over him always the way Jacob would have.”

  David didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “I promise.”

  We waited until Revkah finally faded off to sleep before leaving her room. Outside, I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling. Pearlman kept shaking his head.

  “What are we supposed to do when she wakes up?” I demanded harshly.

  “We keep our promise,” David insisted.

  “You’re as mad as she is!”

  He jammed himself close to me. “What did you see in there, Hyram?”

  “What did I...The same thing you did!”

  Wollchensky shook his head. “I don’t think so. I saw the same thing Revkah did, and when she wakes up I am going to make sure she sees it again.”

  “Her baby’s dead, David.”

  “He doesn’t have to be.”

  “She was having delusions. They will pass. And soon probably.”

  “I don’t think you heard what I said. “

  “You said her baby doesn’t have to be dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can’t bring him back to life, David.”

  Wollchensky was unmoved. “Maybe I can.”

  * * * *

  The jet’s tires hit the runway and bounced, jolting Danielle from her trance. Protectively, she closed the journal and tucked it in the single bag she had taken along.

  It was time to focus on the practical considerations of the present, the dangers just ahead. If American officials had been forewarned of her coming, she would know soon enough. They could be waiting for her at the end of the jetway, or lurking just beyond customs. They could even be lying in wait to arrange a more permanent solution, and with good reason.

  Danielle had not followed orders. By coming here without assignment or sanction, she had misbehaved in a very serious way. This trip broke almost every rule of intelligence and diplomatic etiquette, as well as procedure, she had ever learned.

  She reached the end of the jetway half expecting men in suits to be waiting there for her, their hands tucked into their jackets. But the gate was deserted.

  Danielle followed the flow of human traffic toward the customs and immigration area, cautious of everyone who passed her in the opposite direction. She scanned ahead in search of a misplaced stare, or glint of a weapon, intending to be ready if there was any sign of an ambush.

  She reached immigration and then customs without incident, though, and handed her passport over. It almost surprised her when the attendant asked her a few routine questions, stamped her passport, and sent her through with a casual smile.

  In the terminal she boarded the first car rental agency bus that came along. Ten minutes later she had rented a midsize car and requested explicit instructions to Greenwich, Connecticut. The clerk tore them off the printer at the perforation and handed them across the counter along with Danielle’s keys.

  She found her car quickly and set out through the night for the home of David Wollchenksy.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 64

  C

  oming into port at night was a godsend for Ben, permitting a freedom of movement he would never have allowed himself during the day. The island’s single pier, he could see, had been specially outfitted and reinforced to handle a ship the size of the Lucretia Maru. A tugboat was waiting to ease her the final stretch along the coastline.

  Once she docked, from his hiding place in the exhaust baffle, Ben was able to watch an additional complement of men join the crew already on board in off-loading the Lucretia Maru’s “cargo.” The boys who had boarded in Athens climbed off the freighter first, followed by a number of young women and girls he could not identify from this distance by nationality. A dozen babies came last, each man carrying two at a time.

  Ben climbed out of the baffle after all had disembarked but two hands on duty on the bridge. He hurried to the gunwale and ducked low beneath the cover it provided, watching a quartet of vans pulling away from the pier down a flattened dirt road barely wide enough to accommodate a single vehicle. The island couldn’t be large, so they wouldn’t have far to go. And Ben figured following this road on foot would lead him straight to their destination.

  Only a short distance from the shore he came upon a well-camouflaged airstrip which seemed to run virtually the entire length of the small island. A pair of small planes lay near one side, not far from a supply transport being worked on by a man wearing grease-splattered overalls. A man in a pilot’s one-piece jumpsuit stood nearby, watching intently.

  The airstrip indicated that the island was more t
han just a refuge for the Mafia chieftain who had once resided here. Most likely it had also been used to transport contraband such as guns or drugs on and off the island. With easy access by both water and air, the island could handle virtually anything, although Ben doubted its original owner had ever considered the merchandise it was holding now.

  He continued on along the road for another ten minutes before he came to the compound. An eight-foot stone wall enclosed the fortress on all sides. From this angle, Ben could see the sprawling three-story cream-colored structure built within. An old-fashioned bell tower rose another story above it. Ben caught a glimpse of a guard stationed inside, surveying the surroundings with a pair of binoculars.