Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02]

by By Jon Land

  But reaching its buffeted summit out of breath and drenched in sweat did nothing to ease her melancholy or make the task at hand any less daunting. She pulled a mineral water from her backpack, drank it quickly, and then went to work on another as workers swarmed over the site, readying it for the next day’s ceremony.

  Gazing around her in the afternoon light, Danielle found it easy to understand why Ari Bar-Rosen would have chosen this place to officially become Israel’s prime minister. More than any other single symbol, Masada typified the plight of the Jewish people through history. King Herod built it originally as a royal sanctuary and fortress. But its historical significance came over a half century after his death, when Jewish Zealots, who had revolted against Rome, took refuge on its rock-strewn precipice. The Zealots held the mountain stronghold for three years, the final one against the continuous onslaught of the entire Tenth Roman Legion, which outnumbered them by more than ten to one. Entering the fortress to claim their victory at last, the Romans found 973 corpses, victims of a mass suicide, waiting for them inside the walls it had taken them three years to penetrate.

  And no wonder. Standing on the border between the Judaean Desert and the Dead Sea valley, Masada rises 1,400 feet above ground level on a summit that covers five acres. The past lives and breathes on the desert wind and amid the reconstructed buildings, swirling with the ever-present dust. Her father used to tell Danielle and her brothers that if they listened hard enough, they would hear the cries of those who had died here on that wind.

  And tomorrow she would come to Masada to prevent one more from joining them.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 75

  T

  he Palestinian delegation had been asked to arrive at the base of Masada three hours before the ceremony. Although Israeli security would not subject the members to the indignity of a search, the officers did escort the Palestinians through an elaborate metal detector and then an explosives sensor. Their identities were carefully checked and matched against a list received from the Palestinian Authority the night before.

  After learning of the precautions to be taken, Yasir Arafat had opted out of attending. Five members of the Palestinian Council had come in his place. As with the rest of the delegates, they were required to leave all bags and briefcases behind in a designated area. When all that was done, they were confined under constant surveillance to an open tent that had been erected at dawn.

  A buffet table had been set up inside and Colonel al-Asi was one of those to take full advantage.

  “You really should eat something,” he advised Ben.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “These bagels are excellent. I understand they used to be shipped frozen from New York. Now the Israelis bake their own. I have two dozen sent to my office every week,” al-Asi said, and took another bite.

  Ben rose from his folding chair. “It’s no good.”

  Al-Asi looked up at him between chews. “You haven’t even tried one.”

  “I was talking about our plan. The Israeli’s will be watching us like hawks. We won’t be able to make a move.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “You could still call your Israeli counterparts. There’s time.”

  The colonel held off taking another bite. “They’re probably here right now, eating breakfast in one of the other tents. But we discussed this yesterday, and the problems haven’t changed: if I tell them an Israeli is going to assassinate Bar-Rosen, they will want proof. And if I tell them a Palestinian is going to assassinate Bar-Rosen, they will cancel the ceremony, and the assassin will choose to strike another time when we are not so close.”

  “Makes sense,” Ben acknowledged.

  “It’s what you told me yourself yesterday, Inspector. And you also told me we can’t even be absolutely sure there’s a plan to assassinate Bar-Rosen at all.”

  “I’m as certain as I can be.”

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “You never needed permission before, Colonel.”

  “That’s because you never hijacked a plane at gunpoint to whisk sixty children away to freedom. I understand the Israelis are in quite a quandary over what to do with them. It seems you have created an international incident.”

  “What about the ones I didn’t get out?”

  “I filed your entire report with Interpol, on behalf of their late Inspector Faustin. I’m sure they will act quickly, but I doubt it will be quickly enough.”

  “Of course,” Ben sighed, as if that didn’t surprise him.

  Al-Asi returned his half-eaten bagel to his paper plate. “When was the last time you slept more than two hours straight, Inspector?”

  “When my wife and children were still alive, Colonel.”

  * * * *

  W

  ork crews had labored through the entire night to ready Masada for the ceremony to install Israel’s newest prime minister. Chairs had been set up in neat rows all across the summit’s northern front, just beyond the reconstructed remains of Herod’s palace. The extensive restorations to the large bathhouse, terraces, and labyrinth of storehouses, completed years before, made them the ideal backdrop. The ceremony would take place on the flat plain between the palace and the remainder of Masada’s structures scattered across its dusty vastness.

  With constant surveillance by security personnel and regular stops for random explosives checks, the process of setting up took much longer than it ordinarily would have. A stage was erected, angled so Ari Bar-Rosen would not have to look into the sun and canopied so the heat and blowing debris would not conspire to dishevel him. Power for the event would be drawn from the same underground lines that fed Masada’s lights, which had burned throughout the night.

  But the lights could not show everything. No one was watching when late at night the gaunt figure of a narrow-shouldered workman, whose skin seemed painted onto his skeletal face, buried something just beneath the surface of the dry ground.

  * * * *

  I

  n all, one thousand guests were expected, including delegations from a dozen countries. Because of the inordinately long period of time it would take to ferry so many up by cable car, all foreign delegations had been asked to arrive early. They would be the first to be seated. By protocol, the Palestinians would be the second to the last to take their chairs and the Americans last, just before the nonpolitical invitees were channeled up.

  Since they had been the first group to arrive at the base of Masada, Ben Kamal and Nabril al-Asi were able to watch the entire process unfold from the start. They estimated there were two soldiers present for every guest expected. The security precautions were unprecedented in Israel, those in charge having learned their lesson from the Rabin assassination several years earlier.

  Ben watched al-Asi return with a third cup of coffee and retake his seat in the Palestinian tent. “Our Israeli friends seem to be expecting something.”

  “If they were expecting something, the ceremony would have been canceled. They’re just going by the book on this one.”

  “I noticed a few with those earpieces the American Secret Service uses.”

  “What’s your point, Colonel?”

  “I think we will witness history being made today; we will not witness an assassination.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “On the summit I’ll bet our delegation will be seated facing the sun, to make sighting for a quick shot all the more difficult.”

  Ben had a thought. “Have all the members of our delegation been checked out?”

  “Three or four separate times. You saw the precautions being exercised yourself.”

  “But not by you.”

  “Not personally. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Ben muttered. Something still nagged at him, even though he couldn’t identify exactly what it was.

  Al-Asi rose and deposited his coffee cup on the table. “Our escorts are coming for us, Ben. It looks like it’s time.
”

  * * * *

  D

  anielle, too, had arrived early, but the lines to board the cable cars were already backed up. Everyone at ground level was doing the best they could; the cable cars just ran too slowly to comfortably accommodate all those present.

  She had hoped to arrive in time to search for Esteban Ravel. Find him at the base and whatever he had in store at the summit could be preempted altogether. Professionals like Ravel never worked in teams, especially in a situation like this one, where a single, crazed gunman would make for the best explanation for an international tragedy.

  Danielle thought she caught a glimpse of Hershel Giott riding up to the summit in the cable car just ahead of her. Her heart fluttered briefly, and then she remembered she was here as a citizen who had been privately invited. She doubted he would cause a scene, even if he noticed her.

  Danielle reached the summit in one of the last five cars to make the climb, one hour after the ceremony’s scheduled start, a start that had already been delayed twice. Upon reaching the northern front, she was horrified to see Ari Bar-Rosen mingling with the crowd, concentrating his efforts on the foreign delegations. Were his security men crazy? Did they think their high-tech earphones would prevent a single man with the skills of a Ravel from extending a pistol instead of a hand?

  She tensed when she saw Bar-Rosen had reached the front of the Palestinian delegation, the delegates rising en masse to shower him with greetings. It was almost as though she was the only one here who knew the punch line of a joke. Still she scanned the faces of the Palestinians with whom Bar-Rosen exchanged handshakes to see if one of them might have somehow known it as well.

  Bar-Rosen stopped before he reached a pair of figures seated near the end of the row she was approaching. When his security detail moved to one side, she recognized Colonel Nabril al-Asi and then . . .

  Ben Kamal!

  What was he doing here? A guest of al-Asi’s, perhaps, or could it be that his investigation had led to Masada as well? She would have to get his attention when she passed by his chair. A slight squeeze of his hand, a shift of her eyes—anything to let him know she was here to stop an assassination.

  A man seated a dozen rows behind Ben amid the Palestinian delegation looked briefly up, then down again. But his face was visible long enough for Danielle to note the skeletal wedge-shaped head, sunken cheeks, and olive skin that looked shiny with makeup.

  She had found Esteban Ravel.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 76

  Q

  uite a spectacle,” noted Nabril al-Asi. “Don’t you agree?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Relax, Inspector. The Israelis have everything under control.”

  “I’d like to believe you’re right.”

  “I think you may have overreacted.”

  Ben looked away from al-Asi just in time to see Danielle Barnea heading straight for him up the aisle.

  * * * *

  D

  anielle pretended to lose her footing on the rocky earth. She went down hard, breaking her fall with her hands.

  She saw Ben bounce out of his chair to lend assistance, picking up on her ruse. She felt his hands upon her and whispered,

  * * * *

  R

  avel...”

  It was all Danielle had a chance to say before a sea of hands joined his in hoisting her back to her feet. To the crowd that had turned their way, she looked simply embarrassed.

  But Ben could see something else dancing in her eyes as they continued to glance sidelong to the rear of the Palestinian delegation. Could she be telling him that Ravel, the master assassin he recalled from an Israeli artist’s drawing, was hiding among the Palestinians?

  Ben sat back down and turned to al-Asi. “He’s here,” he whispered, fighting an urge to swing round and search the killer out.

  “Who?”

  “Ravel. The assassin. He’s sitting in our delegation.”

  Al-Asi’s features suddenly went pale. “The Palestinians will be pinned with the blame after he strikes.”

  “Not if we stop him.”

  A rumbling like a thunderclap shook Masada.

  * * * *

  T

  he ovation began just as Danielle reached her seat. She fought to keep her focus on Ravel, twelve rows back from where Ben Kamal was sitting. But the members of all the delegations had risen to their feet, cheering and applauding as Ari Bar-Rosen strode across the stage.

  Bar-Rosen walked hand in hand with his wife, their three teenage children following slightly behind. The prime minister was smiling, beaming to the crowd, a picture for the ages that captured both the family man and the war hero who had served under Danielle’s father. Bar-Rosen exuded confidence and charisma, the perfect man to usher in a new millennium as well as a new government.

  Bar-Rosen reached the dais with his arms raised triumphantly in the air. His family settled into chairs set immediately behind him. Danielle turned away from the stage and began searching the crowd again for Esteban Ravel. Even if she could find the assassin, though, it seemed impossible to cover the distance between them with security so tight.

  But maybe she could make that security work for her.

  She knew where the killer was. If she pointed Ravel out to any of the multitude of soldiers and police, they would have to act on her claim. None of them would dare take a chance she was making the story up.

  “People of Israel and the world,” Ari Bar-Rosen began as Danielle rose again and slid toward the aisle, “a new era . . .

  * * * *

  I

  s upon us.’’

  Ben gripped his knees hard with both hands and tried to concentrate on the words of the new prime minister of Israel, a man who had been born fifty years before to a woman named Ramira Taji in the squalor of a Palestinian refugee camp. Bar-Rosen spoke without benefit of notes, rotating his gaze from group to group, from his own people to the representatives from dozens of countries.

  “The time has come to cast aside a past marred by prejudice and antagonism, where each side, in thinking only of itself, betrayed the goals of both. I speak of an Israel that after fifty years of bloodshed rightfully demands that her people live in peace. . . .”

  The words faded from Ben’s consciousness as he tried to picture the assassin Ravel seated somewhere behind him.

  “He couldn’t have been part of our delegation,” al-Asi whispered. “He never would have gotten through.”

  “Then he was already up here. Somehow. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What are we going to do, Inspector?”

  Ben cocked his head backward, trying futilely to find Ravel in the mass of tightly clustered bodies. “I don’t know.”

  * * * *

  I

  speak of the Palestinians, who have the right to a homeland just as they have a right to be treated as neighbors and not outcasts in the land where they have lived for centuries. If we are to continue to deny them this right, and the hope that goes with it, then we must expect them to turn away from the one hand we extend in friendship while the other clings fast to a gun. . . .”

  A second rousing ovation echoed through Masada as Danielle finally reached the aisle. A pair of soldiers intercepted her before she took even a step.

  “Listen to me,” she began, “there’s an—”

  Danielle felt something slam into her from behind and suddenly she was being taken down, a sea of arms engulfing her, holding her against the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Danielle tried to ask, but almost all her words were swallowed by the dust and rubble she sucked into her lungs with each breath.

  Hands brutally frisked her. A pair of handcuffs were slapped on her wrists. The ovation ended as she was rushed up the aisle by her captors. She glimpsed people shuffling around in their seats, casting their eyes upon her.

  Hershel Giott turned away too late to avoid her gaze.