The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06] Page 14

  “Old?”

  Glickstein nodded. “I’d say so, yes, because of their cut.”

  “Heirlooms, then.”

  “But finished and set by a jeweler somewhere else.” He examined the last stone the old woman had brought him again. “America, I’d say.”

  “Did you notice anything different the last time you saw her?”

  “Nothing special. Oh, just that her leg seemed to be bothering her. I helped her down the stairs, waited a few minutes with her until the bus came. That’s all.” Glickstein’s eyes narrowed, as if he had just remembered something else. “Well. . .”

  ‘What, Mr. Glickstein?”

  “I noticed a man watching from across the street. I thought he was watching me. But when I returned after helping the old woman onto the bus he was gone.”

  Danielle exchanged a glance with Ehud Cohen. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “Not particularly, Commander. He was big, though, at least a head taller than those who passed him on the street. And his eyes. . .”

  “What about them?”

  “He wore a patch over one.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 34

  H

  ow long has he been here?” Colonel Walter McClendon yelled at one of the guards manning the front gate of USAMRIID on the grounds of Fort Detrick.

  “Twenty minutes, a half hour maybe, sir.”

  McClendon’s eyes swept the grounds beyond the building, searching. “And you just let him walk on?”

  “He had clearance, sir. I’ve never seen clearance like he had, direct from the White House. We tried to call you, several times.”

  “You should have kept trying.” McClendon felt the sweat lifting off his flesh, creeping down his shirt, thickening with each word. “We’re in a state of high alert and . . . Damn it, never mind. Just point me in the right direction. Which way did he go?”

  Colonel McClendon found Professor Albert Paulsen in an open stretch of field halfway to the security fence at the tree line. He was kneeling in the grass, leaning over as if to sniff the ground. McClendon approached, and with each step his shoes seemed to sink a little deeper into the soft ground.

  “What are you doing, Albert?” he called, quickening his pace the last stretch of the way.

  Paulsen flapped a hand in the air as if to silence him. He wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe over a pair of old jeans and penny loafers. The bathrobe was badly soiled around the edges from being dragged through the mud. Frayed strands dangled from the sleeves.

  Paulsen lifted his face from the turf. “I’m trying to pick up their trail,” he told McClendon finally. Then he rose and faced him. “It’s gone cold. Sorry. Smell’s the most underrated of our senses, you know. Nose can do amazing things. Not here, though, not today.”

  “I heard you were coming.”

  “Interesting, since I didn’t know myself.” He brushed his hands off on his bathrobe, dragging fresh streaks of brown down the white of the robe. There were patches on the knees of his jeans. The tip of his flattened nose had some dirt on it. Paulsen looked around him, sniffed the air. “I was here when this place was built. This used to be a leaching field, you know, until they built that new drainage system. Thing gave me an idea. Want to hear it?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No. Forget traditional ordnance, bios and nukes. Daisy cutters and bunker busters. You want to fuck the enemy up? Drop a shit bomb on a city. Ultimate antipersonnel weapon. Can you picture it, people walking around covered in the stuff? Imagine the effect on morale. Think about it.”

  “Jesus, Albert. I told them they were wasting their time bringing you in on this.”

  “A Code Seventeen. That’s the word for a major fuck-up these days. My opinion they should just call it a fuck-up. First class in this case. You check the garbage, by the way?”

  “For what?” McClendon asked, shaking his head.

  “You’d know if you found it.”

  Paulsen sank back to his knees and lowered his face to the ground again. McClendon observed he was using his eyes more than his nose this time, and watched the old man’s spine stiffen just before he parted the grass and began smoothing the topsoil away with a hand.

  “Here,” he called to McClendon, “take a look.”

  The colonel moved close enough to peer over Paulsen’s shoulder, saw something white poking out of the ground. “Is that—”

  “One of the HazMat suits used by the impostors? Very observant, Walter. The others must be in this area somewhere. . . .” Paulsen shifted sideways and recommenced his inspection of the ground.

  “How did you—”

  “You’ve been busy these last couple days. The obvious was bound to slip your mind. The imposters couldn’t get off the premises in their isolation suits, so they took them off.”

  “They obviously had something on beneath them.”

  “Right again, Walter. I suspect your security cameras might have picked up six naked men streaking toward the security fence.” Paulsen turned and looked up at McClendon, squinting into the sun. “Try army uniforms. The impostors have them on underneath. Strip off their isolation suits and they look like soldiers securing the fields. Think about it.”

  It was clear from his face that this idea had never occurred to McClendon. “That still doesn’t explain how they got the storage cases off the premises. You remember those, don’t you, Albert?”

  “The ones rigged with an explosive device that can be remote-detonated in the event of just this sort of emergency? Sure. I designed them.”

  “Then what happened to your digital coding system that’s supposed to prevent the cases from being opened? A million different combinations that change every sixty seconds, you said.”

  Yes, Walter, I did.” The sun dipped behind a cloud, and Paulsen stopped squinting. “Twelve years ago. Before the days of handheld computer encoders, the hundred-gigabyte machines that used to take up a wall and now fit in your palm. Steel-belted radials that don’t go flat, progressive-scan DVD players, e-mail, DHL . . . The only thing that hasn’t changed are Girl Scout cookies. Think about it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Come on, Walter, you get my point. But you must not have gotten the memos I wrote my first few years out, warning you to upgrade the system. I gave up when I moved to the woods.”

  “I asked for the upgrades, but we weren’t considered a priority anymore. Our system was thought to be adequate, given the nature of reliable threats we could reasonably expect to face.”

  Paulsen looked around at the soldiers and vehicles dotting the perimeter of the USAMRIID complex. “What you’re telling me is that the Fifth Army got here late,” he said.

  “The world changed in September 2001, Albert, after you moved to the woods. Before then nobody anticipated something like this. We’ve been slow catching up.”

  Paulsen climbed to his feet and brushed the dirt from his knees. “I’m off to the White House. President invited me for a sleep-over.”

  McClendon’s face paled a bit. “You’ll have to tell him about—”

  “I know,” Paulsen said. “More good news to brighten up his day.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 35

  T

  here’s something you’re not telling me, Colonel,” Danielle said, climbing into the backseat of a cab driven by Nabril al-Asi. She had noticed al-Asi seated behind the wheel of the taxi as soon as she and Sergeant Ehud Cohen reached the bottom of the stairs outside Glickstein’s shop. She told the confused detective she wanted to check a few other things on her own and approached the waiting cab as Cohen retraced his path up the stairs to ask the jeweler some follow-up questions.

  Al-Asi flipped on his meter as soon as she closed the door behind her. “You don’t have to tip me.”

  “You knew I was coming here.”

  “Actually, I followed you. Couldn’t wait for you to update me on your investigation into Zanah Fahury’s murder, so I thought I’d come in per
son. Besides, I may need a new line of work before too long.” Al-Asi’s bright smile flickered in the rearview mirror. “What did you find inside the jeweler’s?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re holding back first?”

  Al-Asi smiled devilishly. “A man in my position never tells everything he knows. Besides, if I told you everything at once, then I’d risk losing the pleasure of your company. Since Inspector Kamal left, I must say I’ve come to enjoy our visits.”

  Danielle saw no reason not to share her information. “According to the jeweler, the murdered old woman was selling diamonds. One every few months.”

  “You’ve been to her apartment, I imagine.”

  “As have you, I’m sure.”

  “Odd place, don’t you think?”

  “She was hiding from something.”

  “Interesting assumption, Chief Inspector.”

  “It’s more than that. The jeweler noticed a man in the street outside his shop the day she was killed.” Danielle paused. “A big man with an eye patch.”

  Al-Asi’s face twisted tightly, the way it did on those rare occasions when he learned something he didn’t know, or suspect, already. “Hakim’s giant,” he recalled. “One of the gunmen who killed Khalil and his guards.”

  “What does an old Arab-Israeli woman have to do with a ranking Hamas terrorist, Colonel? How could this kind of man possibly be involved in both their deaths?”

  “We’d need to know a good deal more about the old woman in order to answer those questions, Chief Inspector.”

  “That’s where I was hoping you could help out. You know something about Zanah Fahury you’re not telling me, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t before,” al-Asi said, nodding slightly. “I believe I do now.”

  “Your turn,” Danielle said. “I’m listening.”

  “Are you a student of history, Chief Inspector?”

  “All Israelis are students of history, Colonel.”

  “Good.” The colonel pulled out into traffic to a chorus of horns and squealing brakes protesting his sudden move. “I’ll explain everything on the way.”

  “Where are we going?” Danielle asked him, looking about.

  “You’ll see when we get there.” He slammed on his brakes, jostling Danielle forward in the backseat, traffic caught in a typical Jerusalem snarl. “Which should give me plenty of time to tell you a story I’ve managed to piece together over the years that began in the wake of the Six-Day War. . . .”

  “We’re all in agreement, then,” Prime Minister Golda Meir said to the two men seated in twin chairs before her desk.

  Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Foreign Minister Abba Eban were disparate thinkers, the former narrow and soldierlike, the latter inspired too much bolder, more intellectual strokes. While their methods may have been different, though, their vision was the same: the survival of Israel.

  Now that survival, nearly two years after the Six-Day War of 1967, seemed precarious at best. Although Israel had masterfully beaten back a multipronged attack in swift and furious fashion, her Arab enemies would learn from their mistakes and regroup. The next war promised to end differently.

  “We are agreed on the problem, yes,” said Abba Eban, “but not on the means to deal with it.”

  “The means are obvious,” Dayan disagreed. “We must attack. Not the armies that sit by our borders, but the source that continues to fund their intrusions into our land. “

  “Saudi Arabia,” said Prime Minister Meir. “You would have us attack Saudi Arabia.”

  “You said you were confident of your intelligence in this matter.”

  “I am. The Saudis may remain passive in their actions, but not their bank accounts. Saudi money has been flowing unchecked into Syria, Jordan, and Egypt ever since we crushed them in the Six-Day War. They mean the next war to be the last.”

  “Precisely why we should crush them now,” Dayan avowed. “Believe me, things will get much worse before they get better.”

  “Our American friends would never sanction that,” said Eban.

  “The solution to that is simple: We tell the Americans nothing of our plans.”

  “And risk losing the only ally we have in the world?” Abba Eban shook his head violently as he retrained his gaze on Golda Meir. “That is pure madness, Madame Prime Minister. “

  “What would you suggest as an alternative?” she asked him.

  “We bring the Americans into this. Now. They‘re the ones who are in bed with the Saudis over oil. Let them deal with the situation, through back channels if necessary.”

  “We all agree that we have relied on the Americans too much in the past. Now you want to entrust them with our future?” Moshe Dayan shook his head just as adamantly as his counterpart had. “I think not. I know not.”

  “I agree that we need to act ourselves,” argued Israel’s aging prime minister, “but I also agree that an overt military response is not an option. Do that and we risk losing America’s friendship, and that, gentlemen, is something we can’t afford.”

  “Which puts us back where we started,” said Dayan, obviously frustrated.

  In that instant Golda Meir smiled ever so tightly and both men realized whatever she was about to say had been well thought out in advance of their coming. “Not necessarily. What if there were a way we could infiltrate Saudi Arabia at the highest levels?”

  “Impossible!” roared Eban.

  Golda Meir rose from behind her desk. The effort taxed her, betraying her age and infirmity. The years had blessed her with a mind as sharp as ever but had cursed her with a body that was rapidly decaying. Her hands trembled. She rested them on the edge of the desk to support herself.

  “Not at all, gentlemen. One of our young generals has conceived a plan that is low in risk, fiendish in simplicity, and with high potential for tremendous reward. We call it Operation Blue Widow, and I have summoned him to explain it to you himself.” Meir smiled and looked to a closed door that led into a conference room adjoining her office. “General, “ she called.

  The door opened and a man in Israeli military dress entered, coming immediately to attention. He was of medium height and build, unimpressive in stature except for the rigid cast of his gaze. He looked straight ahead, not even acknowledging the presence of Dayan and Eban.

  “Gentlemen,” Golda Meir resumed, “I would like you to meet General Yakov Barnea. ...”

  “My father,” Danielle muttered, shocked by al-Asi’s tale.

  “Operation Blue Widow was his plan,” al-Asi continued. “One of the most daring in your country’s storied history and perhaps the least known of any. Also one of the most tragic. Buried by your government for all these years for good reason.”

  “Except to you.”

  Al-Asi smiled humbly. “Based on rumors and half-truths accumulated over the years. Too many similar tales told to be easily dismissed.”

  Traffic started moving again and the colonel began to edge the taxi forward.

  “And what, Colonel, do these rumors and half-truths have to do with a murdered old Arab-Israeli woman selling diamonds to support herself?”

  Al-Asi looked across the seat at Danielle. “Why don’t we go see if we can find out?”

  * * * *

  Chapter 36

  L

  ayla Aziz Rahani took two Xanax before boarding her plane and a third when she still didn’t feel relaxed enough to sleep. A sedative-induced sleep was usually dreamless, and dreams were something to be avoided now.

  She remembered what had felt like a dream from long ago. So painful she had begged for waking to relieve her, only to realize as her thoughts cleared that the hospital around her was not the product of a dream at all. Nor was the pain that ravaged her insides. She had lain in that hospital bed remembering its origins. The boy thrusting himself into her again and again. His stale breath, reeking of beer, blowing into her face. The sheets stank with his sweat and Layla remembered almost vomiting but swallowing it back down when it
flooded her throat.

  Stop. . .

  Had she said the word or only thought it?

  Stop! Stop! Stop!

  Her mind clouded, a memory of the boy handing her the soft drink she had requested at a party. Wrinkling her nose at the strange aftertaste. Finishing it anyway so as not to hurt his feelings. Keeping her hands in her pockets when he walked her back to her dorm room before everything went dark and she had awoken in the hospital with the first of the memories coming alive, accompanied by the pain.