Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04] Page 13

  The general’s thoughts burned with visions of his children. Pictures of them lined his study. Their deaths had ruined his life, filled him with a hate he was powerless to relieve and control until he happened upon this rather unique means. The psychiatrists the government had insisted he see as a matter of policy said he had to put his grief out of his head, to displace it onto something else. How right they were. The pain of others proved the only way to vanquish his own. And the pain of an Arab, well, that stretched far beyond relief to the onset of ecstasy.

  On the screen the masked man sliced off the woman’s right nipple. Her wail filled his ear. The sound drove Janush to moan with pleasure. As if on cue, the door from the room adjoining the study opened and the nude form of the woman emerged. She slid forward through the dark, her path illuminated by the dull haze of the television. She took her position in front of the general and crouched down. The picture’s dull light splotched over her as she slid her fingers over the general’s crotch and found his zipper. His hands were working through her dark hair now. Whether she was Arabic or not he could not say. Close enough, though.

  On the big screen, the Arab woman reeled agonizingly back against her binds as her left nipple was severed.

  The general enjoyed the irony. One of them slowly dying while another provided him pleasure. Slaves to the whims of his mind just as he had been turned into a slave of grief by their fanaticism. To live with what they had done to him, General Efrain Janush had made this the part of his life that allowed him to endure the rest of it.

  The woman took him in her mouth as on screen the masked figure drew the Arab woman’s head back to expose her throat. Blood slid down from the right corner of her mouth. Terror and pain had silenced her terror but her whimpers were delicious in the general’s ears. The camera drew in close to capture her pleading face and then pulled back to include the knife poised for its next thrust. The general’s hands dug into the head sliding back and forth over his groin.

  The woman drew her hands upward, smiling to herself. Men were weak creatures, truly weak, so vulnerable to pleasure, so lost in it. How fitting that this assignment would allow her to make use of the most special skills she had developed over the years.

  And the special weapon.

  The idea had developed while she was watching a television commercial for artificial fingernails. A bit of glue, press on, and voila! The woman made her own nails, frosted the tips with melted steel, let them harden, and then filed them razor sharp. A glancing twitch to any major artery was all it took.

  The woman waited, the gray shadows from the television shimmering on her naked back. She could follow the action on screen from the general’s responses, his moment sure to mirror that of the blade being drawn across the Arab woman’s throat.

  The general watched the blade’s steel touch the throat of the woman on the film, her bleeding chest lost to this angle. In his ears her final pleas emerged weakly, hopelessly. The general saw the knife begin its sweep, saw the spurt of blood lunge toward the camera as the woman’s gasp filled his ears. His pleasure in that instant was so great that he felt only a slight twinge at his own throat. It was the screen again that showed him the truth because the next instant found it splattered with blood, seeming to mix almost with the dying woman’s in the shot.

  The general’s final thought was that he must force up the air bottlenecked in his throat. At last he realized the dying gurgle in his ears was his own, since the sounds of the Arab woman dying on the screen had already been stilled.

  The dead Arab stared blankly at him just as he stared at her, his corpse lit only by the pulsing glow off the television screen which had turned to static with the end of the tape.

  Captain Bain didn’t enter the study until he was sure it was the sound of static that filled his ears. His key swept the door’s deadbolt aside and he burst inside. What he saw shocked and stunned him at the same time.

  The general was sitting in his chair, blood pooling biblike down his chest from the neat tear in his throat. His eyes bulged open, seeing nothing.

  Bain saw the open window. His soldier’s mind took it all in, prioritized his actions, realizing instantly that the assassin he had allowed into the house was gone.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 29

  P

  aul Hessler had dreamed once again of the labor camp. Every time he thought the memories were buried too deep to gnaw at him, they resurfaced with a fury and rage that made it seem like yesterday. His conscious mind had learned to control them. But Hessler enjoyed no such control over the unconscious that took over when he slept, especially in times of great stress.

  Upon his return to New York, he had been met at the airport by Franklin Russett, an ex-FBI agent who currently headed up security for Hessler Industries. Russett came accompanied by a phalanx of armed men with tiny earpieces showing in their ears.

  “What is this?” Hessler demanded.

  “Precautions, sir,” Russett reported. “Under the circumstances, I have ordered your personal security stepped up.”

  “Good. Now order it stepped down to the normal level.”

  “Sir—”

  “Listen to me. I’m not going to change the way I live. I’ve already had to do that once in my life and I don’t plan on doing it again. I’m going to do the things I always do, keep to my regular schedule. Take my walk in the morning and visit the schools every Wednesday. As much as possible, anyway.”

  Hessler arose as dawn was breaking over the Manhattan skyline. He had not shared his bed with another woman since his second wife divorced him, and had no desire to. But he wanted, desperately at times, to share his life with his children. Other than Ari, though, they had their own lives with no desire to follow the path he had worked so hard to fashion.

  He had once envisioned a life in which all his children and grandchildren would settle in Manhattan, close enough for him to see whenever he desired. He had seen them yesterday as the family gathered in New York for Ari’s funeral. A few days more, a week at most, and they would scatter again. Promises made, sure to be broken. Offers to reconsider past decisions. But the truth was none of his other children cared about the business. Only Ari.

  And Ari would be buried this morning.

  Hessler drew on his slippers and robe, then sat on the edge of the bed, watching the sky brighten beyond the naked windows. He thought of the camp again where the sun seemed to shine only in summer, baking the fetid ground and drawing a rancid sewer stench from it. Inside, the factory would reek of chemicals and astringents. At night, whenever possible, Hessler would scrub himself with a pilfered bar of soap. No matter how much he washed, though, he could not rid his skin of the stink like sour iodine and sulphur. At times, even today once in a while, he fancied he could catch a whiff of it rising through the fancy soaps, colognes, and silk shirts. Climbing out of his pores to remind him that it was no more gone than the memories that had produced it.

  The forecast for the funeral day was hot and dry, stifling by midafternoon. The neatly trimmed cemetery grass would smell clean and the flowers fresh, but Hessler had no doubt the camp stench would rise to his nostrils before the day was done. Carve its way through skin moisturized and powdered. Lingering forever beneath the surface to remind him of how little actually separated himself from those years and that life.

  Ari’s death had reminded him of that, the killer’s identity as impossible as it was unavoidable.

  How could this have happened?

  Just when Paul Hessler’s life was at last coming together, the past fled and gone, and the future bright with Ari at the helm of his vast empire.

  Ari had been the one since birth, taking an interest in his father’s business almost from the time he could speak. Trying to spell the names of Hessler Industries’ vast holdings on his alphabet blocks. Asking his father for a list as soon as he could read it. Reading the daily reports and stock quotes before he had learned to multiply.

  Paul
Hessler’s shoulders slumped. He sat on the edge of his bed and sobbed. The past held nothing but pain and now the future, just days before so promising, held the same. Paul knew all too well what it was like to live without hope and now he would know it again.

  Perhaps he should care more about who the killer at Ben-Gurion Airport had been working with, let Chief Inspector Danielle Barnea do the job he had chosen her for just two days before. But he couldn’t take the chance. Better to let whoever was really behind his son’s death remain free than to risk destroying the legacy that would have been his.

  Hessler knew Franklin Russett was right about the need to increase security. He didn’t believe for a minute that the attempt on his life in Tel Aviv was an isolated incident. Someone had looked into the past and found the truth. And Hessler knew such things tended to become more complicated rather than less.

  But today, for now, none of that mattered. Today the ghosts of his past would walk by his side, bringing with them the nose-curdling chemical stink that had hung like a weight in the air of the labor camp outside of Lodz.

  Today he was burying his son.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 30

  D

  anielle arrived at her office to find the door locked. She searched her chain for the proper key, inserted it, and turned.

  Nothing happened. The key wouldn’t budge.

  She turned, forcing a smile and trying to appear nonchalant. A few subordinates, Mefakeah misneh and Sgan mefakeah, sub and deputy inspectors, turned away to avoid meeting her glance. Danielle slid past them to the elevator where she pressed 4.

  On the top floor of National Police headquarters, Moshe Baruch’s assistant wasn’t at his desk, but the commander’s door was open. Danielle approached it to find him sitting comfortably behind his desk, his expression just short of a smile.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Pakad.”

  “I can’t get into my office.”

  “I know. I had the lock changed.”

  Danielle felt heat rising inside her, a furnace switched on.

  Baruch leaned forward and studied her. “It looks as if you’ve been in quite a scrap. Finally met your match, eh?”

  Danielle looked him square in the eye. “No, not yet.”

  The commander suddenly turned from her gaze. “Would you like to tell me what happened, Pakad?”

  Danielle hesitated. “I was going to. In time.”

  Baruch rested his thick elbows on the blotter. She hated seeing him behind the desk used by her mentor Hershel Giott for so many years, listened to it creak from the strain of his bulk. “And whose time would that be? Yours? Mine? Your Palestinian friend’s?”

  “You’d be wise to listen to what we uncovered.”

  “Totally against protocol in a time when contact with Palestinian officials is strictly prohibited without official authorization.”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “And finally pissed your career away in the process.”

  Danielle could see that Baruch was actually enjoying himself. But suddenly his huge jowls puckered and tightened, lips quivering as his eyes seemed to dip deeper into his head like an animal ready to pounce. He picked up a two-sided piece of paper and let it flutter back to the desk.

  “This is an exhumation and autopsy order on a deceased girl named Beth Jacober that’s been given a level one priority.” Baruch picked the paper up again, as if to study it anew. Then he flapped it before her. “It is signed by your superior, the Rav pakad, superintendent, who never saw the order until I snowed it to him. Who do you suppose forged his signature?”

  Danielle could do nothing but stand there.

  “You have an explanation for this, Pakad?”

  “I was following orders.”

  “You were? Whose?”

  “Yours.”

  Baruch shook his head disdainfully. “So now, Pakad, you are reduced to lying.”

  “You gave me the files of two deceased children to close.”

  “Neither of which has crossed my desk ...”

  “Because I have elected to keep open one of the files, that of Michael Saltzman.”

  “But it wasn’t his body you ordered exhumed and autopsied under level one status.”

  “No.”

  “It was the body of this teenage girl on a case already closed by the police in Tel Aviv. Routine driving accident. The girl’s parents are very, very irate. They were, in fact, quite adamant about filing civil charges against you and the department, when I spoke with them this morning.”

  “You sound like you hope that they do, Commander.”

  “You understand I would have no choice but to testify on their behalf, Pakad. To tell the court you were not acting on my orders or performing within the acceptable limits of the investigation given you.”

  “Investigation?” Danielle’s head was burning now, and there was a pressure building behind her eyes. Static bounced between her ears. “You call following up the routine deaths of children an investigation? How many more of these cases were you expecting to give me, Commander?”

  “As many as it takes.”

  “To what? Make me quit? I won’t, you know.”

  “You no longer have a choice.”

  Danielle’s cheeks sizzled. “I’ll file a grievance.”

  “Because I treated you so badly?”

  “You’re damn right.”

  “You had just completed an especially difficult case when I was named head of National Police.”

  “So what?”

  “And you were pregnant.”

  “And that’s your excuse for locking me out of my office?”

  “I’m sorry you have misinterpreted my intentions, Pakad. I gave a pregnant investigator who had nearly been killed a series of simple assignments so she could maintain her rank and standing. I see that providing you such a consideration was a mistake.”

  Danielle could only look at him. Baruch had her and she knew it. “Then let me do my job.”

  “The job you never completed?”

  “Michael Saltzman didn’t commit suicide. Beth Jacober’s accident was anything but. Order the autopsy. It will prove that.”

  “Prove what?”

  “That she was dead before the crash. She and Michael Saltzman were friends, classmates. They attended the same school for a time—a Palestinian-Israeli collaborative outside of Jerusalem. And at least two other students from their class are dead as well, all in the past week or so, including a boy named Katavi living in the Golan Heights. His entire family was murdered yesterday and this time the killers didn’t bother to make it look like an accident”

  Baruch seemed to be studying her bruises. “And how do you know this?”

  “Because we were there!”

  “We?”

  Danielle tried to wet her lips, but her tongue had turned dry.

  “National Police is actively investigating the killing of this family,” Baruch resumed.

  “What about the bodies?”

  “We have them.”

  “I’m talking about the bodies of the killers.”

  “We only found the murdered family.”

  “The killers were there. Check the fields. Check for blood.”

  “We intend to, Pakad. And when we do will we find any of your blood at the scene?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone else’s I should know about?”

  Danielle tried not to hesitate. “Ben Kamal’s.”

  “So you saw fit to involve a Palestinian in your investigation?”

  “It’s not just my investigation. There’s at least one Palestinian student from the same school who’s been killed as well. All the students were friends.”

  “The Israelis and this Palestinian?”

  “You find that very hard to believe, don’t you, Commander?”

  Baruch shook his head disparagingly. “Where have you been these last few months, Pakad? Open your eyes. Face reality. There is no longer any spirit of cooperati
on between our peoples; there never was really. It was all just a myth and you fell for it.”

  “That has nothing to do with this investigation.”

  “It has everything to do with it. You have committed an act of gross insubordination. Grounds for suspension, even termination, if not actual arrest.” Baruch lowered his voice and laced it with a false ring of compassion. “I’m not going to do that, though, under the circumstances. Instead, I’m going to reassign you to administration on the first floor. We will discuss your future in more detail following the maternity leave I’m sure you were about to file for. Do you find that fair, Pakad?”