by By Jon Land
He descended the ladder and was immediately ordered to spread-eagle on the ground. He was searched roughly, handcuffed, and brought to a detention center within the airport, where he was locked in a small windowless room, a pair of armed guards standing on opposite sides of the wall.
The interrogation began twenty minutes later when a surprisingly young soldier entered the room and began pounding him with questions. The young man was in his mid-twenties, with bushy eyebrows that seemed almost to grow out of his thick head of dark hair. Already exhausted, Ben totally lost track of time, saved only by the hearty meal his captors served him after he asked for it. He answered all their questions truthfully, although it was obvious from their faces that they were having trouble making sense of his fantastic tale.
“You say you went to this island all by yourself without a plan. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And then you rescued these children, also all by yourself”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why bring them to Israel?”
“Because it was the only country within our flying range I could trust to take them.”
Ben’s young inquisitor wrinkled his brow.
“You’ve got to let me go,” Ben said simply.
“So you keep telling me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You keep telling me that, too. Why don’t you help me to understand.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure myself. I need to see someone in Jericho. Then I’ll know.”
“Know what, Inspector?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Ben said, thinking of the incredible discovery that had finally dawned on him outside the plane on Al Safah’s island.
“But that has not stopped you from leveling serious charges here against prominent Israeli citizens, Inspector,” his inquisitor snapped.
“Check them out, Captain or Major or Colonel, or whatever you are.”
“Lieutenant,” the officer said, and he leaned farther over the table, almost nose to nose with Ben, when a knock came on the door.
The lieutenant backed off and opened it, then spoke briefly to a figure in the hall. When he turned back toward Ben, his face was red and his expression fuming. He said nothing, just signaled his men and the guards to leave the room with a stiff wave of his hand. Then he removed Ben’s handcuffs and followed them out, disappearing into the hall.
“Not a very pleasant young man,” said Colonel Nabril al-Asi, entering in the lieutenant’s wake.
Ben could scarcely believe his eyes.
“I would have been here sooner, but I couldn’t resist stopping in the duty-free shop.”
Ben saw he was holding a shopping bag in his hand. “Ties?”
Al-Asi nodded. “No Armani, unfortunately.”
Ben rose. “How did you . . .”
Al-Asi waved him off routinely. “I received a call from one of my Israeli counterparts. I promised him the arrest of two terrorist leaders in exchange for you.” He stroked his chin. “Now if only I could decide which two they will be . . .”
“Maybe you won’t have to.”
“Really?”
“I may have something much bigger for you to trade with, Colonel.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 73
F
ayed Kabir was again at his construction site in eastern Jericho, this time holding the plans of his house-to-be in his hands as he watched the crew begin work on the framing. He turned on hearing Ben’s approach and spotted Nabril al-Asi hovering outside his Mercedes.
“Good afternoon, Minister,” Ben greeted affably.
“I’m surprised to see you again so soon, Inspector,” Kabir said, but his gaze continued to stray toward the colonel.
“We didn’t finish our discussion the last time we spoke.”
“We didn’t?”
“Apparently not. You left out a few things I have since become aware of.”
Kabir’s eyes shifted nervously from Ben to the colonel. “Is this an official investigation?”
“That depends. If you cooperate with me, no.” Ben glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the Mercedes. “If Colonel al-Asi gets involved, well then I’m afraid you will not be here when your home is finally completed.”
Kabir hunched over a little more than usual. “What is it you want to know?”
“You told me last time we spoke that in the refugee camp where you grew up, you did whatever it took to survive.”
Kabir eyed him warily. “We all did, Inspector. You would have too.”
“Of that I’m sure. That’s why I’m not here to accuse you of anything. You are, however, part of another investigation. Only if Colonel al-Asi gets involved might that change.”
“I will tell you anything I can.”
“Zaid Jabral came here as a result of a story he had recently published. A story about an old woman, a resident of the same refugee camp as you, who claimed her baby was stolen from her fifty years ago. Jabral’s research indicated you had something to do with the theft of that baby. Yes or no?”
“I told Jabral no.”
“Is that what you would like to tell me?”
The Palestinian Authority’s minister of finance looked once again at al-Asi before responding. “That woman’s was not the only baby taken, and I was not the only one involved.”
“But you dealt with Jews, didn’t you? At least once. They would have come from a kibbutz,” Ben said, thinking of Jabral’s mysterious visit to a kibbutz in search of birth records.
“I don’t know where they came from. They paid extremely well, in American dollars.”
“It was a boy, wasn’t it?”
Kabir nodded.
“And this would have been 1950.”
“Yes. In the spring.”
“Forty-nine years ago . . .”
“Almost to the day.”
“And the woman’s name, it was Ramira Taji?”
“After all these years you expect me to remem—”
“Yes, I do.”
Kabir tried to look away from Ben’s intense stare, couldn’t. “I don’t know. It could have been. I mean, the name sounds right.”
Ben suddenly felt revulsion for the man hunched over before him. “You don’t know what you started, do you?”
“I looked into your file, Inspector. I know what you’re working on, and I can tell you that I had nothing to do with these missing children you are investigating. I haven’t been involved in such things since I escaped that refugee camp.”
“Not directly. But the ones who are involved today are your successors. For that, you bear part of the blame.”
Kabir cast his eyes fearfully toward Nabril al-Asi. The colonel’s white dress shirt billowed in the wind. His tie flapped against his chest.
Kabir swallowed hard. “Why does it matter? After all these years, why bring this up again?”
“Because somebody else already has.”
* * * *
D
anielle’s flight back to Israel seemed to take much longer than the one to New York. She did not have Hyram Levy’s journals to occupy her time, nor endless questions to ponder. She had answers now, enough, perhaps, to make her wish she had never left Israel to find David Wollchensky in the first place.
“There is still one part of the story left to tell? ...”
Danielle knew before it was told that she didn’t want to hear the rest of the story that had begun on a beach in Caesarea on a night in 1947.
“Our pledge did not end that day we gave Revkah Rossovitch back her baby,” David Wolfe had continued. “The three of us continued to watch over them, remained a part of their lives even after Revkah remarried.” He smiled sadly at that memory. “None of us blamed her; she was still a young woman and she deserved a rich, full life. She married a doctor, but he had been a so
ldier first, much decorated on the battlefield for all the lives he had saved by stitching men back together as bullets hummed over his head. I served with him in the ‘56 war at Mitla Pass in Egypt.”
Wolfe said that as if it was very important to him. Then his face emptied once again of both emotion and color.
“Revkah named her son Ari, and two years later the boy was given the last name of the only father he would ever know.” Wolfe’s despondent eyes locked with Danielle’s. “Bar-Rosen, Chief Inspector. The Palestinian baby we took from that refugee camp is now the prime minister of Israel.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 74
A
t that instant, Danielle had been struck not by fear or shock, but by the cold logic behind David Wolfe’s words. She took strange comfort in the fact that she now understood everything that had taken place in the past week. But that comfort lasted only until Wolfe spoke again.
“Levy called me after the special election two months ago. He asked what I thought we should do. I told him nothing. I told him it wasn’t our place. He said we had made it our place when we gave Revkah Rossovitch a Palestinian child. How could we have known this would happen?”
“And if you had known, would it have changed anything?”
Wolfe shook his head. “The boy was raised a Jew by the only mother he ever knew. Today he is as good a Jew as you or I.”
“Then the truth . . .”
“The three of us never shared it with another living soul. I say living because we all shared the truth with Jacob Rossovitch.”
“So Ari Bar-Rosen doesn’t know.”
“He couldn’t. It’s not possible.”
“But Levy and Pearlman did. They disagreed with you, decided they could not let a Palestinian become prime minister of Israel.”
“They were worried for themselves, not Israel. Responsibility for the stands Bar-Rosen has advocated was something they could not accept. They believed he was going to make Israel weaker and that it was their fault, our fault. They decided he could never take office.”
“Bar-Rosen takes office officially in two days.”
“At Masada. In a public ceremony.”
“My God, Pearlman and Levy planned to assassinate him there! That explains it. . . .”
“Explains what?”
“Levy’s connection to a black bag Mossad agent named Ravel. A killer. And the plan must still be active!”
Wolfe didn’t look surprised, just grim. “You must stop it. You’re the only one who can.”
“No. You’ve got to call someone else, someone official.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“Why?”
“I would have to tell the truth. What do you think the truth would do to the State of Israel, Chief Inspector?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“I do. You must believe me, my way is best. This secret must be kept, and so must my pledge. I cannot go back on that pledge now, even after all these years.”
“You couldn’t have known all those years ago.”
“Do you think it would have made any difference if I had, Chief Inspector? Would betraying my pledge then be any worse than betraying it now?”
“You made me the fourth person to know the secret, but you haven’t asked me if I believe what you did was right.”
“Because what happened in the past doesn’t matter. What matters is Israel’s present and her future. Youwill stop those who would destroy that future, Chief Inspector. No matter how you feel yourself, you will not let this happen. You will stop them and that will ensure the secret remains safe.”
“And you never once thought Pearlman and Levy might be right?”
“I told you, it doesn’t matter.”
“But you haven’t told me how you really felt about having a man born a Palestinian serve as prime minister of Israel. Do you really think his moderate stance, his desire to make the concessions necessary to achieve a full and total peace, are merely acoincidence?”
“He is a product of his times, Chief Inspector, more even than his upbringing and certainly more than his birth.”
“What if he learns the truth someday?”
“He won’t.”
“But Pearlman—”
“Pearlman is dead now too, Chief Inspector. I can assure you of that.” Wolfe’s eyes moistened. “I knew him too well, you see. He could not evade me long. There remains only this assassin Ravel and whomever else he and Levy might have retained.”
“They don’t need anyone else, not with Ravel. You don’t understand. You believe the mystery of Ai Safah begins and ends with you. But it’s not true. The story of Al Safah may have been just a legend, but somebody else has been keeping it alive for the last few years. That means a trail of bodies left of anyone who gets too close or tries to move in. Who do you think Levy used to leave that trail? I’ve seen this man,” Danielle said after a pause, recalling her one brief meeting with Ravel in the hospital. “And believe me, he’s someone I don’t want to see again.”
“You’ll find a way to stop him.”
“Find someone else!”
“There is no one else,” Wolfe said flatly, and for a fleeting instant his eyes were young and sure again, the dedicated soldier fighting to make a country. In that same instant, Danielle saw him the same way the younger Pearlman and Levy must have: a man they would have followed to the grave. “The day after tomorrow, Chief Inspector. At Masada. Go with God.”
* * * *
N
abril Al-Asi listened to Ben’s story impassively, without comment, but growing visibly shaken by the tale’s end. “Your friend Jabral figured all this out himself?”
Ben nodded. “Someone killed him because he was on the verge of breaking the story of the incoming Israeli prime minister’s true background.” Ben watched al-Asi shift uneasily in the backseat of his Mercedes. “It bothers you, doesn’t it, Colonel?”
“It bothers me that I didn’t figure it out myself. I think I may be slipping. Can you imagine the outcry if this had come out? Or if it ever does?”
“I was thinking that letting it out might be in our best interests.”
“Whose interests exactly, Inspector? The Israelis would never allow Bar-Rosen to stay in office, and the Palestinians would cry foul when another election was called for. The end result would almost surely be the reelection of the old hard-line government, and that would serve no one.”
“You think Bar-Rosen may favor our cause because he’s Palestinian, even though he doesn’t know it?”
“An interesting moral dilemma,” al-Asi agreed. “I wish I had the answer. Perhaps he is the one we should tell. Let him make his own decision.”
“If he ever gets the chance, Jabral could only have been murdered by an Israeli faction determined to make sure the truth is never revealed. That same faction can never allow Ari Bar-Rosen to take office.”
“He takes office tomorrow in a ceremony on Masada. Puts us in quite a spot, doesn’t it, Inspector?”
“We need to be there, Colonel.”
“To stop the Israelis from assassinating their own prime minister,” al-Asi said, sounding as though he didn’t believe it himself.
“Can you get us on Masada?”
Al-Asi thought briefly. “Bar-Rosen has invited a rather large Palestinian contingent to be present at the ceremony. I think I can secure places for you and myself.”
“That’s a start.”
Al-Asi didn’t look pleased with the prospects. “We’ll have to go unarmed, Inspector, and if we so much as look at Bar-Rosen the wrong way, Israeli security will bury us with the rest of the skeletons on that rock.”
“We’ll think of something.”
* * * *
D
anielle stood on the mountain plateau of Masada, looking down upon the desolation that surrounded it. She had come here many times as a child, always in the company of her father, who very early wanted to ingrain the Jewish fighting tradition i
n her and her brothers. Except for the day she had raced up the serpentine Snake Path with the rest of her graduating army class, she had never been here without him. For that reason she had walked up that same winding path from the mountain’s base this afternoon.
