Blood Diamonds - [Kamal and Barnea 05] Read online

  He trudged on, thinking once again of his father’s final days. Anatolyevich died before telling him the rest of what had happened. Why the guns had never reached Palestine, why that had somehow led to Jafir Kamal’s assassination. He felt the path he was walking now would lead to those answers as well. That there was an eerie connection between these dual pursuits. Alone in the woods with no one to back him up, Ben thought he understood why:

  He wanted to be his father. The lost years, a fleeting glimpse of Jafir Kamal disappearing through a door at the airport leaving only a whiff of his aftershave behind. Ben sought in life the connection death had denied him by fighting a different battle the same way. Even now, past forty, wanting to make his father proud and live up to the esteem in which Jafir Kamal was still held.

  But the only clue he had left to that time was the nameless boy in a tattered black-and-white picture. Good as nothing.

  The woods began heading downhill. Ben made out a thinly disguised stretch of barbed wire layered atop a fence. Signs with biohazard symbols and warnings were posted at regular intervals.

  As he drew closer, Ben saw that portions of the fence were gone. Judging from the tread marks left in the half-frozen ground, he guessed the fencing had been removed to allow trucks easy passage to the building that came into clear view when he reached the bottom of the rise.

  Innocuous, even drab in design, the storage facility had been built bunker-style from layered concrete. A formless square hulk dropped in the otherwise pristine forest. It had been painted an ugly greenish-brown color to better disguise it from the air in the unlikely event anyone was looking. The windows were recessed and small, indicating a single story within, though Ben knew such a facility often contained numerous underground layers.

  Nearing one of the breaks in the fence, Ben ducked behind a tree and waited. He had expected some sort of military presence here, but the soldiers must have come and gone.

  Satisfied no guards were about, Ben proceeded into the compound and approached the building. There was no evidence of a door, so he swung around to the next side, choosing his steps carefully atop dried mud that smelled like spoiled fruit and listening for any stray sound that might give away the presence of another person in the area.

  Ben moved around to the front of the building and found the first sign of something truly amiss. The blackened char marks of blast residue were plainly evident on both sides of the frame and above the door. The door itself was steel, studded with patches of a slightly lighter shade— evidence that it had been repaired recently. The lock also looked new, a basic tumbler variety when one of the electronic variety would have been more appropriate.

  Ben searched his pockets for something to use as a tool and came up with the pen he had borrowed yesterday from the rental car counter. He disassembled it and filed the ballpoint against the concrete jam until the tip was sufficiently narrowed to serve as a pick. It took several minutes of trial and error before he got it right, but eventually the ballpoint inserted easily into the lock. Springing the tumblers remained a difficult task that Ben managed only after willing himself to be patient.

  The door swung open into a security ante-chamber. Ben recognized the lights as solar variety, explaining why the facility’s power was still functioning. He could see no evidence of any gunfire or explosions, as if once they had blown open the main door, the invaders had simply strolled into the facility.

  Moving cautiously, Ben entered the first of what could have been any number of secured sections containing the mothballed results of research conducted during the Cold War. A stockpile of weapons from the former Soviet Union that had never been used. Yet it was empty, stuffy with disuse, and looked as if it had been that way for a long time.

  The next eight chambers yielded the same results. Ben continued to walk from one to another, listening to the tinny echo of his own steps and trying to put this in perspective with what he knew already.

  Anatolyevich, the former KGB and Federal Security Service agent assigned to this facility, had pilfered crates containing a weapon that had been stored here, intending to sell it to a courier for ten million dollars worth of diamonds. But Anatolyevich had been clear on the fact that this had been a business arrangement, ongoing for some time. The invasion that had taken place here more recently, Ben concluded, had not been instigated by Anatolyevich at all. Another party had learned what was stored within these walls and had come here to steal it.

  Ben moved on, hoping for some clue. In the woods Victor Stepanski had said the deaths in Dubna had begun six days ago, the very same day, perhaps, the exchange in East Jerusalem between Anatolyevich and Ranieri was supposed to have taken place. And two days after that the Peter the Great was raided, its cargo removed.

  What did that all add up to?

  There were too many variables, too many pieces still outstanding.

  Perhaps the answers lay within the complex’s lower levels, but Ben wouldn’t know until he checked those as well. He found a door he believed led downward and thrust it open. Stepping through the door, he found himself at the top of what looked like an endless, dimly lit stairwell.

  He heard the door banged shut behind him, followed by a shuffling sound.

  “Move and I’ll kill you!” a voice said, pressing something cold and hard against Ben’s head.

  * * * *

  Chapter 61

  T

  wo more tapes followed the first one, each of them picturing the trawler’s progress north up the Mediterranean. The picture grew even more grainy and less distinct as darkness crept over the sea. The reconnaissance satellites that had tracked the boat clearly had some sort of light-enhancing abilities, but the light wasn’t sufficient to allow much on deck to be made out in detail.

  Danielle acclimated herself to the terminology scrolling across the screen and found she could follow the boat’s progress more easily that way; at least so far as her heading and progress north along the Mediterranean coast were concerned.

  “Ain’t that the way it always is,” Jim Black commented. “There’s never an Israeli patrol boat around when you need one. . . .”

  “The smugglers’ craft is probably outfitted with a device that jams radar. In the night, on the Mediterranean, it would be almost impossible to spot visually.”

  The final tape was two-thirds finished when a pier came into view. Danielle studied the coordinates scrolling across the screen, trying to get a fix on the position. She was still working on it when a series of jumpy shots showed the boat approaching the pier and then docking.

  “What are we looking at?” Borodin asked. He was now standing even closer to the screen than was Danielle, his interest obviously piqued. “What is this place?”

  “The Beirut coastline,” Danielle said, having just identified it herself.

  She turned toward Jim Black. “Just down the beach from where my Sayaret team came ashore twelve years ago.”

  A figure appeared near the end of the pier, his face caught briefly in the spill of a stray flashlight.

  “Two miles away from the home of this man,” Danielle continued, recognizing him instantly. “Sheik Hussein al-Akbar.”

  The glow off the screen caught both Danielle and Black in its spill, with Borodin hovering just beyond its reach.

  “He’d be dead now, if it weren’t for Mr. Black here,” Danielle added, glancing quickly at the cowboy.

  Black gave her a wink.

  “You’re saying this sheik is a terrorist?” Borodin asked.

  “Not just any terrorist. At last check, he was one of the leaders of the Hezbollah movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel.” Danielle tried not to show how scared she felt. She struggled to get her next words out through her suddenly constricted throat. “Looks like I’m going to need more of your help, Mr. Borodin.”

  “My part of the bargain is completed, Pakad.”

  “We’re not talking about bullets and bombs here,” Danielle said, straining to remain calm. “Whatever the sheik
took off that freighter could destroy this country. Your country. Very bad for business.”

  Borodin’s eyes flickered. His face tightened. “What do you need?” he asked Danielle.

  * * * *

  Chapter 62

  B

  en felt a hand shove him against the wall and spin him around. He smelled gun oil and his head ached where the barrel had dug a cold impression in his flesh.

  “Who are you? You’re not one of the soldiers,” said a man who looked a lot like Victor Stepanski, only frailer and more scared. He stank of unwashed hair and clothes. His eyes swam madly, as if unable to focus.

  “What happened here?” Ben asked him. “Who hit this place?”

  “Hit this place? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Ben realized his translation of the idiom into Russian hadn’t worked and tried again. “Someone blew up the door to get in here, didn’t they?”

  “Are you from the Federal Security Service?” the man asked, referring to the successor of the KGB. “Is that why you talk so funny?”

  “You’re not a guard,” Ben presumed, looking at the man’s rumpled and sullied civilian clothes.

  “God, no. Far from it.”

  “You’ve been hiding.”

  “Yes.”

  “From the army?”

  The man nodded.

  “For how long?”

  “Why do you want to know?” the man fumed, the pistol trembling in his grasp.

  “Let me see if I can work it out, then. You’ve been hiding here ever since the facility was raided by the group that stole whatever was left here.”

  The man steadied his pistol in both hands now. “If you’re one of them—”

  “I’m not,” Ben assured. “I’m not even armed. And I came alone.”

  “Then you’re an even greater fool than I thought!”

  “Who did you think I was a part of?”

  “I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen men just like them before. I recognized their look, their voices, their accents.” Fear flooded the man’s eyes. “Arabs,” he finished.

  “You’re telling me it was Arabs who stole what was left here?”

  “No, they didn’t. The Arabs stole nothing, because I stopped them. I had no choice. I knew what the price would be, but I had no choice!” The man’s lips trembled. He tried to swallow and failed. “It was all my fault. Dubna. The deaths.Everything!Because I let it out. It was the only way to stop them from stealing it, I’m telling you!”

  “Steal what?”

  “The Black Death.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 63

  A

  fter viewing the carnage at the Benguema Military Training Center outside of Freetown, President Kabbah thought nothing else in the world could scare him.

  He was wrong.

  Offering only a sparse explanation of the nature of the emergency, Defense Minister Daniel Sukahamin insisted they return to presidential headquarters at the State House in Freetown, accompanied by an American woman Kabbah had never met before. Someone had set up a television -and video recording machine, gifts from the British.

  “Mr. President,” Sukahamin said as the American woman, whose clothes were dirt-streaked and rumpled, rose stiffly from a chair, “this is Dr. Deirdre Cotter—”

  “Professor,” the woman corrected.

  “Professor Deirdre Cotter. Professor Cotter was kind enough to accompany me two days ago to the village of Katani that was the target of a Revolutionary United Front raid not long before that.”

  President Kabbah looked back and forth between his minister of defense and the American woman, still confused by her presence.

  “Professor Cotter is no stranger to our politics,” Sukahamin explained. “She came to our country with her husband as part of a U.N. mission. He was killed by the RUF two years ago.”

  President Kabbah shrugged apologetically.

  “Professor Cotter is also an experienced botanist and horticulturist whose expertise I enlisted once the scope of the devastation in Katani became clear.”

  “I thought we were talking about an RUF raid,” the President said to his defense minister, confused.

  “We are, sir.” Sukahamin and Cotter exchanged a worried glance. “That’s why I sought out Professor Cotter’s expertise.”

  With that, Deirdre Cotter moved to the television and switched both it, and the VCR, on.

  “What you are about to see, Mr. President,” she began, taking the remote control in her hand, “is footage taken yesterday of the village’s farmland.”

  The picture brightened. The VCR whirred softly to life, and President Kabbah stared at the screen in amazement, his lower lip trembling.

  “You’re telling me these are the rice fields of Katani?”

  “They used to be, Mr. President,” Deirdre Cotter nodded.

  * * * *

  Chapter 64

  I

  had no choice,” the Russian continued, his voice trembling, eyes turning fearful. “I couldn’t let them have the Black Death, no.”

  “What’s your name?” Ben asked him, fighting to remain calm.

  “Belush,” he said, pronouncing it Be-looosh. “Mikhail Belush.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  “I broke the rules,” Belush said, teetering on madness. “I was here alone. Who would know? And this was the last of them. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I let the eggs of the final batch thaw out. This was weeks ago. Just a few at first, then all of them.”

  “Eggs?” Ben interrupted.

  But Belush seemed not to hear him. “I was going to destroy the eggs, so the government would have no excuse to keep me here any longer. But I couldn’t. I createdthem, after all. I spawned them and bred them and froze their eggs, just as I was instructed so the Black Death would be forever ready if called upon.”

  “You let them out. That’s what you said.”

  “Not right away. Not until the terrorists came. I thawed them out so I could see one last time the wonder of what I had created. Such masterful work and no credit. The world could never know the miracles I performed here. But I could know, I could see. I thawed them out so I could breed more.”

  “You just said—”

  “That I intended to destroy them? That I wanted to leave? And go where? To what? This is my life; I realized that. Without the Black Death, I’d be nothing.”

  “Your new breeding program wasn’t authorized.”

  Belush almost laughed. “Look around you. Who else is here? Who else would ever know?” His gaze had gone distant, his ears primed as if listening to other voices. “The KGB, then the FSS, kept me posted here for years to watch over and monitor my creations, just in case they were ever needed again. But they never showed up even to check on my work. They took me for granted, took the Black Death for granted.”

  “What did you create here, Mr. Belush?” Ben asked, louder to get the man’s attention.

  “Doctor Belush. I’m a geneticist and a biological engineer.”

  “Okay, Doctor. What is the Black Death?”

  “It would be better if I show you,” Belush said, leading Ben toward the nearest exit.

  * * * *

  Chapter 65

  P

  resident Kabbah took a step back from the television, as if hoping the picture it showed might change.

  Before him on screen was a barren wasteland, an endless sea of dirt, devoid of any plant life.

  President Kabbah had spent much of his youth harvesting rice, had come to know the simple beauty, resiliency, and strength of the crop. But the crops the villagers of Katani had relied on for their livelihoods were . . . gone. As if washed away by a vast storm, only the ground was left desert dry and almost absurdly even. A machine couldn’t have leveled it any better.

  On screen, the view deepened, the camera adjusted to peer further into the distance and then refocused. Deirdre Cotter, who’d done
the filming herself, swallowed hard and decided to let the pictures speak for themselves:

  A vast black blanket moved across the rice fields of Katani, edging its way toward the crops that were still standing, utterly enveloping all it passed en route.