Blood Diamonds - [Kamal and Barnea 05] Page 14

  Swarms of bugs nipped at her flesh and Cotter kept swatting at them to no avail. They seemed immune to insect repellant in this part of the world. The only thing that worked was a mixture of mud and leaves a villager had shown her months before. But the pasty mixture stank horribly and left a grayish residue on the skin that was almost impossible to wash off, even with hot water and soap.

  Sukahamin took the lead, picking up the pace as the group neared the top of the ridge. Suddenly a stench pierced the breeze, something bitter and acidic like nothing Deirdre Cotter had ever smelled before. She slipped at the ridge’s steepest point and had to be helped to the top by the defense minister’s guards, who maintained a firm hold on their weapons as well. Her breath tasted bitter, made her want to retch. She finally drew even with Sukahamin and gazed down into the valley with him.”

  “The devil has come to my country, Professor, hasn’t he?”

  “Close enough,” Cotter said, not believing her eyes.

  * * * *

  Chapter 40

  B

  en had drawn his pistol when Danielle shouted, “No!”She took a step closer to Dov Levy, former head of the Sayaret. “This is General Levy, the man who gave me this assignment.”

  “Unofficial as it may have been,” Levy affirmed. “Thank you for not shooting me, Inspector. Don’t worry,” he continued to Ben, “introductions aren’t necessary.”

  “You forgot to tell me you were dead,” Danielle said.

  “Amazing how dying frees up one’s movements,” Levy replied. He must have been in his mid-fifties now. But his hair remained thick, his body hard and angular. “It allows me to look into things, with nobody the wiser.”

  “Or have others do it for you,” Danielle added.

  “Difficult to assemble an actual staff under the circumstances, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”

  “Just as I am not a general, and yet we still fight the same war we have always fought.” Levy stepped out of the hold into the murky light cast by dangling bulbs in the corridor beyond, followed closely by Ben and Danielle. A dark scruffy beard painted his face gray, as if he hadn’t shaved since the last time Danielle had seen him. “What has become of the guns, Lieutenant?”

  “Not guns,” Ben said before Danielle had a chance to.

  “Pardon me?”

  “He’s right,” Danielle explained. “This freighter wasn’t carrying guns; it was carrying something far more deadly. Tell him, Ben.”

  And Ben did, summarizing Anatolyevich’s evasive comments about the now missing cargo for which he would have been paid upwards of ten million dollars in diamonds.

  “This is all your fault,” Levy scowled when he was finished.

  “My fault?” Ben asked.

  “If all had gone according to plan, Anatolyevich would have led Lieutenant Barnea here from East Jerusalem three days ago.” Levy turned toward Ben, scowling. “Thanks to your arresting Anatolyevich, though, we have no idea what has become of that cargo, or even what it is.”

  “How did you find us?” Danielle asked Levy, suddenly suspicious.

  “I picked you up in Haifa. Sabi’s sources are not always as discreet as he would have you believe. In any case, I followed you into the West Bank.”

  “And after that?”

  “Your friend Colonel al-Asi had planted a bug on the Russian, and I was able to home in,” Levy said to Ben. “The colonel seems to like keeping track of you.”

  “Just as you like keeping track of me,” interjected Danielle.

  “I shadowed you to Gaza and then followed you out to sea.”

  “You used her,” Ben charged. “This is your fault, not mine. If you had used traditional authorities instead of Danielle-—”

  “Only I couldn’t.”

  “Why?” Danielle demanded.

  “Go back to East Jerusalem, Lieutenant. Tell me what went wrong.”

  “Commander Baruch was there.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Levy corrected.

  “What?”

  “Think!”

  “There was no record of Baruch ever going to East Jerusalem,” Ben remembered. “Nothing in the logs.”

  “Of course not, Inspector, because he was not there in his capacity as head of National Police.” Levy refocused on Danielle. “The position of his men, how they were spread through the square, what did it make you think of?”

  Danielle tried to recall the precise sequence of the deadly events in East Jerusalem, how they had unfolded.

  . . . she saw armed figures rushing about the street, clacking off rounds wildly with their pistols as they ran. Two fell to the pavement and began to crawl off, fingers digging into the asphalt trying to pull themselves clear. Danielle kept her gun steady and swung back to the table. . . .

  “Oh my God,” she thought, realizing.

  . . . She twisted off the boy and lurched upward, pistol in hand, and found herself face-to-face with the glazed expression of a detective she recognized from National Police. He staggered forward, a pistol held loosely in his hand. Then his spine arched and he dropped to the curb, a victim of the wild spray of bullets.

  The way Baruch’s team covered the East Jerusalem square, the way they were spread, indicated a protective operation, not an assault. There was only one person, though, they could have been there to protect: Anatolyevich.

  And only one person who could have posed a threat to him.

  “The police were shooting at me,” Danielle said distantly, as if not believing her own words. “They were shooting at me. . . .”

  * * * *

  Chapter 41

  I

  think you see my point now,” the former head of the Sayaret told her. “Understand why I needed you, Lieutenant?”

  “After Beirut. . .”

  “Because of Beirut. Reassigning you afterwards was mandated, but it was wrong. I knew that and so did your father, yet there was nothing either of us could do.”

  “The man who wiped out our team was the same one who tried to kill me in the jail. A cowboy.”

  “His name is James Allen Black. Impressive record in American Special Operations. Liked his work a little too much for the military’s taste. Very good. Very expensive.”

  “You know this and he’s still alive.”

  “I learned about him after the Israeli government had already made use of his skills on a number of occasions. From everything I know about Black, the two of you are very lucky to be alive.”

  “So is he,” Danielle said, and stepped forward into a thin shaft of light directly in front of Levy. “But I could just as easily have been killed in East Jerusalem, couldn’t I?”

  “Something I could never have foreseen occurred, remember? Inspector Kamal arrested Anatolyevich. And when he didn’t show up in the square as planned, and you did, Baruch panicked.”

  “Because he thought I was the one who intercepted the Russian, not Ben,” Danielle realized. “That I had penetrated the network Baruch was a part of.”

  “And had discovered his involvement. I suspect Commander Baruch was trying to cover his own ass when he ordered his men to fire on you.”

  “Because Baruch was being paid off.”

  “Not him alone. Believe me. This is a huge conspiracy in which many, many Israeli officials have gotten very rich, Lieutenant.”

  “Are you saying they know what was on board this freighter?”

  “No! No! Guns, rockets, plastic explosives—the less they knew about the shipments, the better.” Levy turned his attention back to Danielle. “Commander Baruch must have thought you were in East Jerusalem investigatinghim. He must have felt he had no other choice.”

  “Wait, you’re forgetting something,” Danielle said rapidly, her mind back in East Jerusalem. “During the gun battle,Palestiniansopened up on Baruch’s men from all angles.”

  “Palestinians no one could find any trace of, because there was only one shoote
r. And he wasn’t Palestinian.”

  Danielle’s eyes widened. She felt herself shudder, more memories of what had transpired in the square flooding back. The wounded detective, the bullets strafing the café . . .

  “It was you who shot the policemen,” she said, her voice barely audible, “including the one I tried to save.”

  “Only to stop them from shooting you.”

  “Just before I killed Moshe Baruch.”

  “Not exactly,” Levy said, softer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t kill Baruch; I did.”

  “The ballistics report would have proven that,” Levy continued, “had one been ordered. That’s why no trace of any Palestinian gunmen were found in the area.”

  Danielle found herself speechless, a mixture of relief and confusion flooding through her.

  She had killed no one in the square that day!

  “So what do we do now?” she managed.

  “Find someone in the government we can trust with what we’ve learned, Lieutenant. There’s too much at stake now to sidestep a scandal. Let the truth come out.” Levy thought briefly. “Stay in Gaza tonight. Meet me first thing tomorrow morning at the fish market.”

  “How will we find you?” Danielle asked.

  “Just be there,” Levy said to both of them. “I’ll find you.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 42

  M

  ayor Krilev and Colonel Petroskov made their way along the corridors of a converted maternity hospital in the center of Dubna, squeezing past the dead and the dying.

  “You promised me more medical personnel,” Krilev accused. He realized Petroskov couldn’t hear him and yanked the surgical mask from his mouth. “I said you promised me more medical personnel,” he repeated, finding his bravado after nearly two days of enduring the colonel’s overbearing manner and brusque orders. “You promised me experts, vaccines, help!”

  Petroskov interrupted the silent count of bodies he was making. “None of which would have made any difference at all.”

  “Your soldiers have turned my people into prisoners in their own homes.”

  “It’s for their own good.”

  “Why wasn’t I consulted about the curfew?”

  Petroskov stopped and swung toward the mayor of Dubna, scowling in impatience. “You are no longer in charge here, Mayor Krilev. I thought I had made that abundantly clear. Martial law has been declared.”

  “By you?”

  “By forces far beyond both of us.”

  “You’re telling me Moscow knows what’s going on.”

  “They know everything, believe me.”

  “And still they do nothing!”

  “They sent me.”

  “And the citizens of my city keep dying. Thousands now, more sure to follow.”

  “The worst is over.”

  “I am still Dubna’s highest elected official, Colonel. I have a duty to my people.”

  “Your duty is to Moscow, Mayor, as is mine.”

  Krilev and Petroskov flattened themselves up against a wall to allow a flood of orderlies to push dollies carrying sheet-covered corpses past them. The line stretched as far down the hall as they could see.

  “You said you had something you wanted to see me about, Colonel.”

  “Yes. My men rounded up dozens of your ‘people’ trying to flee Dubna through the woods. Three were shot when they refused to comply with the order to stop.”

  “Shot?” Krilev could scarcely believe what he had heard. “That’s monstrous!”

  Petroskov looked unmoved. “Your detention facilities are inadequate for the number of those we will need to incarcerate. Other arrangements must be made.”

  “What would you have me do, Colonel, build another jail?”

  “Any civic facility will suffice. Please select one for us to appropriate. And please warn your people that any further attempts to leave Dubna will continue to be met with the harshest response.”

  The line of corpses came at last to an end, and the two men continued toward the hospital lab commandeered for the small team of scientists who had arrived the day before. Krilev knew that water samples were being brought here from all over the city on a regular basis. So, too, soil and plants. And the bodies of a few of the most recently departed had gone missing. Krilev had a half dozen hysterical families waiting in the municipal building lobby he was using for an office since his had been commandeered.

  “That will be all, Mayor,” Petroskov said when he reached the armed guards standing rigidly at attention in front of the door.

  Krilev stood his ground. “What do your scientists say?”

  “They believe the situation has been contained and stabilized.”

  “That doesn’t help those who are dying, Colonel. Or those who might follow them.”

  “There will be no further infection, Mayor,” Petroskov said impatiently. “Just control your people and let me handle everything else.”

  Before Krilev could protest, the colonel had disappeared through the door which closed immediately behind him.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 43

  S

  o how does it feel to be Palestinian?” Ben asked Danielle, as they walked toward the Gaza fish market early the next morning.

  Danielle looked about, realizing that she was virtually indistinguishable from the Palestinian women she passed, thanks to Ben’s efforts. He had bought the proper clothes at an outdoor market the night before and showed Danielle exactly how to arrange them. The shapeless dress and scarf covering the lower part of her face had thus far been enough to get them past a number of Israeli foot and jeep patrols, none of whom gave her a second glance.

  “How far is the fish market?”

  “A few more blocks. You can smell it now.”

  “You’ll never be able to go home again now,” Danielle had said last night, lying next to Ben in bed. It was well after midnight but neither of them had been able to sleep.

  “Which home do you mean?” Ben asked her.

  “You should have gone back to Detroit months ago. You didn’t because of me.”

  “And never regretted it for a minute.”

  Danielle had reached over and flipped on a light. “Precisely why I got something for you from Sabi in Haifa.”

  Ben and Danielle had found a room in Gaza City at the Al-Amal Hotel located near the end of the beach. The Al-Amal was the last hotel open along the beachfront strip, home to journalists brave enough to come to Gaza and foreign dignitaries able to get clearance to come. It stood alone among other shuttered and crumbling structures built in the brief flurry that followed the signing of the Oslo Accords. Strangely none of the rooms offered a direct view of the sea, but they were spacious with high ceilings. Since there was no air-conditioning, they left the windows open through the night.

  The sounds were peaceful, the quiet lapping of the nearby sea, the occasional car horn, the distant din of a voice carried through the silence by the wind. No gunshots, no screams. Palestine at rest, at peace. An illusion fostered by the night that would melt away again come morning.

  This was the first night Ben and Danielle had stayed together in nearly a year, since their mission to New York had ended tragically in a hospital. When they first came back, battered and exhausted, there had been ample excuses to avoid each other. First Danielle was in need of considerable mending, the kind that only rest could accomplish. Ben was content to leave her alone, believing this time they could pick up where they had left off in New York when his days began and ended by her side in the hospital. Those had been long, taxing days but he sensed she needed him and that was a good feeling. Ben knew he could not make up for what she—and they—had lost. By just being there, though, he hoped to make his intentions clear.

  Just as Danielle had made her intentions clear in the weeks following her recovery by never phoning him.

  It would have been easy to blame her, even easier to blame
the political climate which virtually closed travel between Israel and the West Bank and all but forbade any contact between Israelis and Palestinians. Even Colonel al-Asi had warned him to avoid contact or risk being labeled a collaborator, for which dozens of ordinary Palestinians now faced death sentences.