Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02]

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  The Pillars of Solomon

  [Kamal & Barnea 02]

  By John Land

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  T

  ell me a story, Papa.”

  The old man lifted his granddaughter onto his lap, his aged body strained even by so small an effort. “Which story would you like to hear, Tali?”

  “You know, the one about the four friends. That night they first met.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s my favorite, Papa. Please,” Tali pleaded, and widened her eyes.

  The old man could never refuse her anything when she looked at him like that. She urns ten years old; he would have thought the much told tale from his past would bore her now. But Tali never tired of hearing it, just as he never tired of telling it.

  “Very well,” the old man said, letting his mind drift backward. “This is how the story starts. . . .”

  * * * *

  The Mediterranean Sea, 1947

  The freighter thrashed against the choppy seas, battling each swell as it drew closer to land. The storm had ended hours before, but its residue of wind and waves made the final stretch of the long journey the most difficult of all.

  Two days after slipping out of port under cover of darkness, she was now approaching the British blockade lying in wait at the three-mile limit off the coast of Palestine. Blockade runners had not encountered much success getting past the British, but tonight God must have been in a generous mood; the patrolling boats would be hard-pressed to find the freighter in the thick fog that had settled over the sea before she off-loaded her cargo of 206 Jewish men, women, and children.

  There had been 209 at the outset, but the journey had taken the lives of 3, 2 elderly and 1 infant. The seas were too rough to risk opening the hatches to ventilate the cargo hold that had become their home. As a result, the stench of sweat, mixed with urine and vomit from seasickness, hung in the stale air like a thick paste. But most of the passengers had experienced much worse than this. First in the concentration camps of the Nazis, who knew exactly what they wanted to do with them, and then in the refugee camps of European nations, who had no idea what to do with them at all.

  According to the registration filed at her port of call, the freighter was named the Silver Princess, after her original color before rust had taken over during long years at sea. Before setting out on this voyage, though, she had been rechristened with a name more befitting the nature of her journey:

  The Gideon.

  Her passengers had been “liberated” from a French camp by the Jewish underground determined to populate Palestine with the future of a Jewish state. All the refugees knew where they were headed, just as they knew that the odds of making it were long. Few spoke of that, and most, after the first few exciting hours, did not speak at all.

  But some did.

  In the darkness of the hold, three young men had found each other early in the journey and remained together through its duration.

  “They’ll be sending us to the lifeboats soon,” said Hyram Levy, his voice cracked with fatigue and thirst. He was the smallest of the three, a slight, bespectacled young man who had not weathered the trip well at all, but never complained.

  “How can you know that?” demanded Max Pearlman, squeezing a filthy rubber ball to make his forearm flex, keeping his muscles strong. Pearlman had exercised moderately throughout the entire voyage, increasing his efforts as it wore on. His lean, sinewy muscles looked like coiled bands of steel beneath his thin flesh. His veins protruded obscenely.

  “I just do, that’s all.”

  “Wait,” said Jacob Rossovitch in a deep voice that resonated through his barrel chest. He was a monster of a man, every bit as strong as he looked and, incredibly, none the worse for wear, it seemed, after their time at sea. His hair remained knotted in thick strands the texture of steel wool and his features retained their granitelike immutability, as ridged and angled as a statue’s. “I think he’s right. I think we’re slowing down.”

  “Take to the lifeboats in this sea?” moaned Pearlman. “Hell, the waves will get us before the British have a chance to.”

  “Where will they leave us off?” asked Levy.

  “Caesarea,” Pearlman answered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Not very much anymore. An ancient port built by Herod. Just rubble and ruins now.”

  “Rubble and ruins,” Levy repeated, shaking his head.

  “Places to hide,” said Pearlman.

  “Quiet!” ordered Rossovitch, as the clanking sound of a hatch being opened echoed through the hold.

  The vague shape of the captain’s oil-streaked face appeared behind a wavering flashlight almost directly above them. “It’s time.”

  Pearlman, Levy, and Rossovitch were among the first to climb the ladder to the deck, settling into one of the eight lifeboats that had been readied in the dark. The ship’s crew lowered it gently, and it kissed the surface with a soft plop. The water smelled rancid and dank, and the bite of the cool fog felt like needles prickling their flesh.

  “The Palmach spotters we were told to look for will never see us,” said Pearlman, referring to the Jewish group dedicated to bringing settlers safely to Palestine. He pulled his oar powerfully through the thick, motionless sea, a torrid pace set for the boats following in their wake.

  “But neither will the British,” followed Rossovitch.

  “We’ll never reach shore.”

  “Rubble and ruins coming up any second now,” said Levy breathlessly, and both Pearlman and Rossovitch turned as a beam of light swept back and forth from what must have been the shoreline. Little more than a flicker that looked to be only a few hundred yards away through the fog.

  “The spotters!” yelled Pearlman.

  “I told you.” Levy smiled, and inhaled deeply to catch his breath.

  The three friends reached the beachhead minutes later. Tempted to join the first wave of refugees rushing away, they decided instead to help their fellow pilgrims in the next boat disembark. By then, though, another two boats, packed with elderly, had come in, and the one after that carried mostly children. Before they knew it, Rossovitch, Levy, and Pearlman had fought the crashing waves to off-load all their fellow refugees, turning them over to the Palmach escorts to be hustled across the beach toward safety.

  “Trouble,” said Levy when the last boat was almost to shore.

  Suddenly the lights of a British patrol jeep swept down the beach and surged toward the dozens of refugees fleeing across the sand. If they ran, the three friends would have a chance too. But that would mean abandoning eight others now struggling to pull their boat through the last of the shallows.

  “Go!” Rossovitch yelled, and he dragged the final boat ashore by himself.

  The eight passengers scampered out of it and rushed in all directions. Machine-gun fire sounded and one man went down, then another. The three friends swung together and saw the headlights of a second patrol jeep burning closer toward them through the night, riding the shoreline.

  “Bastards!” wailed Pearlman, arms held like iron bars by his sides. “Damn British bastards!”

  He rushed the jeep with nothing but his scraped raw hands as weapons. Bullets kicked up the sand around him as Rossovitch and Levy hurried to give chase, screaming for Pearlman to get down.

  Rossovitch got there first and tackled him to the sand. Levy dove next to them and watched the jeep bear down close. It twisted to the side and skidded to a halt to give the shooter a clear shot as he stood upon the rear floorboards.

  All at once a single gunshot split
the night from somewhere behind the three friends. The British gunman who had them dead in his sights crumpled in the backseat. A second shot followed, and the driver slumped over the wheel. A third soldier in the passenger seat just managed to draw his side arm before a final shot snapped his head backward.

  Heavy footsteps pounded the sand, and the three friends turned to see a lone figure streaking toward them with an old carbine rifle in his hands. He stopped almost nonchalantly and extended a hand down to Pearlman first.

  “I’m David Wollchenksy. Welcome to Palestine.”

  * * * *

  M

  ore, Papa,” Tali whined sleepily. “Don’t stop.”

  “It’s late,” the old man said, and lowered her gingerly out of his lap. It was a well-practiced ritual between them, a shared moment the old man cherished above everything else. Someday his granddaughter would no longer hunger to hear the story of his life. Someday he would lower her from his lap and she would never return.

  “I’m not tired. Please.”

  This time even his granddaughter’s pleading eyes were not enough to dissuade him. His legs felt as if someone had wrapped tight steel cord around them, and he knew if he tried to stand right now they might give out beneath him. “Tomorrow.”

  “Does David save his friends?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What happens when they get off the beach?”

  “Tomorrow,” the old man repeated.

  Tali looked at him quizzically. “What about the part of the story you always leave out?”

  The old man felt a chill pass through him. “What part?”

  “The secret you’ve never told me. I know there’s a secret the four friends kept to themselves. I can tell.”

  “It comes much later in the story,” the old man said, unable to lie.

  “I’m old enough to hear it now. You know I am, Papa.”

  “Someday.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Promise?”

  “We’ll see,” the old man said, stroking his granddaughter’s hair. “We’ll see.”

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  CHAPTER 1

  M

  y Daughter,” Hanna Fatuk pleaded, clutching the framed color snapshot tightly in her hands. “You will find her. You must find her!Min fadlak! Please!”

  Ben Kamal set the sweet mint tea she had served him down on the table and leaned forward. “How long has she been missing, Umm Fatuk?”

  “Three days. I called the police the first day, but no one came. Same thing yesterday. This morning I called again.” Hanna Fatuk extended the picture frame toward Ben’s outstretched hand. Her fingers were still trembling after he took it. She laced them together in what could have been a position of prayer. “And now you are here.Haududallah!”

  The look of utter reverence she gave him embarrassed Ben because it was pure luck that had led him to the Fatuk home in the center of Jericho this morning. He happened to be walking past the desks where calls to the ancient city’s Palestinian police headquarters came in when Hanna Fatuk phoned; he could hear the anguish in her shrill voice through a receiver six feet away. He had the call transferred to his office before he even knew what it was about. This in spite of the fact that he hadn’t worked on a case himself in over six months.

  Ben sipped some more of his tea, his teeth filtering the cooling liquid through the mint leaves that floated on top, and studied the missing girl’s picture again. It was a casual pose, catching Leila Fatuk leaning over the kitchen table he had seen as he entered the home, dark hair tumbling leisurely over her shoulders. Her smile looked very natural, her teeth perfect and very white. He thought of the pictures of his own daughter he still kept, cherished since there would be no more, and did some fast calculations in his head. If his daughter had lived, she would have been about the same age as this missing girl.

  The Fatuks lived on the outskirts of Jericho in a two-story stone house that showed the rectangular abutments of several additions made as the family grew. Based on the home’s age and the number of additions, Ben could tell it had been in the family for several generations. He had passed through a gate at the edge of the property into a garden full of roses and geraniums. Ivylike vines wrapped themselves about the front of the house, adding to the fresh and succulent aroma that had greeted him.

  Inside, that scent was replaced by a strong, fresh smell Ben recognized as malfulf, a cabbage dish stuffed with rice. He remembered the same smell as a child, both in Detroit and Nablus.

  His eyes looked up at Hanna Fatuk and her husband, Amir. They were holding hands now. Another man, big and brawny, wearing a wrinkled white shirt untucked, hanging over his trousers, hovered by the window. Arms crossed. Sneering. The impatient look of a man already late for work. Ben hadn’t been introduced to him yet, but guessed he was a relative. The number of plates stacked neatly in the kitchen sink indicated he had joined the Fatuks for breakfast. The lack of other place settings told Ben the older generation that had once shared this house had passed on, just as he assumed that the two young men pictured with Amir and Hanna Fatuk on the wall must have moved off on their own.

  “Umm and Abu Fatuk,” Ben began, “there are questions I must ask you. Some of them might be uncomfortable and I want to apologize in advance.”

  “There is no need, sidi,” Amir Fatuk said humbly.

  “Inspector will do. Please.”

  “Inspector,” Amir repeated.

  Ben nodded, flipped open his notebook.

  “Why don’t you wear a uniform?”

  Ben turned toward the big man still standing by the window. “Excuse me?”

  “You are a policeman, but you don’t wear a uniform.”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “I know what you are. I knowwho you are.”

  “And who are you?”

  The man gestured toward Hanna Fatuk. “Her brother. The missing girl’s uncle.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “You said you knew who I was. I’d just like to know who you are.”

  “Nazir Jalabad. I came to watch the great Bayan Kamal, the famous hero. I came to watch you do nothing like the rest of them.” The man made a slight spitting motion. “Three days, it takesthree days before they send you over so you can ask your useless questions. Like always.”

  Ben felt something scratch at his spine. “This has happened before?”

  “Not with my Leila,” Hanna Fatuk answered. “Please excuse my brother’s temper, but he is her godfather.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “Thirteen. My youngest. Her brothers are gone. One lives in Jordan.”

  “Then this picture ...”

  “Taken over a year ago. But it is still a close likeness.”

  “She left the house at what time Monday?”

  “Nine o’clock at night. She was going to the store on an errand.” Hanna Fatuk’s hands shook a little. “I . . . sent her.”

  “What store?”

  “The grocer up the street. Number ninety-one.”

  “Six blocks away,” Ben noted. “That means she disappeared within five minutes of leaving here. But you said the grocer never saw her.”

  “No. No one saw her after she left the house.”

  “Always the same,” Nazir Jalabad snickered. “The damn Israelis never leave witnesses.”

  “Why do you think the Israelis are responsible?” Ben asked him.

  “Everyone knows their soldiers steal our girls, Take them back to their bases, have their way with them, and then drop them off whenever they are finished. Usually not this young, though. They must be getting desperate.”

  Hanna Fatuk shuddered at her brother’s comment.

  “There are no longer Israeli patrols active in Jericho,” Ben said, but he didn’t sound very convincing. The truth was, withdrawing from Jericho and other cities in the West Bank had done little to curb th
e power of the Israeli army and at times seemed to only increase it. Patrols continued to ride in whenever they liked, although they didn’t stay very long. The homes of suspected terrorists were still bulldozed, entire villages punished for the crimes of the few terrorists who seemed as determined to destroy their own people as the Israelis.

  The big man snickered. “They are still here. Everyone knows. For a while the girls filed reports. They stopped bothering when none of your police would listen.”