The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06] Read online

  Just sell the damn place, Ben had chided. He remembered the look on his mother’s face when he had said that, his brother across the room shaking his head, glad the words hadn’t been his.

  His hand cramped, and he yanked it back from the door. The bedspring wire dropped to the floor. He leaned over to retrieve it and had just reinserted it into the door when a hollow click sounded and the door popped open.

  Ben figured, incredibly, he must have hit the spot, springing upright from a crouch when the door swung open before him.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” greeted Danielle Barnea.

  * * * *

  Chapter 59

  B

  en lost himself in Danielle’s arms, not believing it was really her until he smelled her hair, her skin. Missing for so long but never forgotten and always familiar.

  “God, this feels good,” he said softly as he held her.

  A moment later he felt Danielle ease him away. “We’ve got to get out of here right now.”

  Ben fought the urge to take her back in his grasp. “Yes,” he agreed, thinking of his brother and the cabin on Saginaw Bay, “we do.”

  With Ben at her side, Danielle retraced her steps down through the stairwell, checking her watch when they reached the tunnels.

  “We only have a few more minutes before the security cameras go active again.”

  “How’d you manage that? No, don’t tell me: It must have been al-Asi.”

  Danielle nodded.

  “Is that how you found me too, how you learned I was here?”

  “No, I found that out from a Mossad agent,” Danielle replied, setting a brisk pace down the sprawling expanse of the tunnels.

  “I never mentioned a thing about you. Your name barely even came up.”

  “They traced our communications, knew about the fax I sent you. Apparently our intelligence services exchanged notes. Has anything changed since we spoke two days ago?”

  “My mother’s dead.” Ben was surprised the words emerged so plainly, so flatly, especially when the news was still so raw, like a sucking wound.

  “Oh, my God . . . I’m so sorry.” Danielle stopped in the tunnel and took his hands in hers again. “How?”

  “I told you about my brothel’s involvement. He went into hiding, assured me he was safe.”

  “Someone got to him.”

  “The People’s Brigade.”

  Danielle shook her head, eyes wide with shock. “They’re involved?”

  “I killed four of the Brigade’s soldiers in a bakery in Dearborn. They’re the ones Latif delivered stores of the smallpox virus to.”

  “Hollis Buchert?”

  “Undoubtedly. You heard him talk, Danielle. He’d like nothing better than to bring this country down. Now he’s got the means to do just that.”

  She turned and brushed some more hair from her face. The thin light shining down from the hole above framed her face in shadows that made her features seem unusually vibrant and vital. “Unless we stop him.”

  Albert Paulson sat on the small bed in the room occupied until ninety minutes earlier by Ben Kamal, bouncing slightly as Van Dam looked on.

  “What’d you feed him?” Paulsen asked suddenly.

  “I really couldn’t—”

  “Wasn’t Girl Scout cookies, was it? Because that would be enough reason to explain why he escaped.”

  “We’ve put the word out. We’ll have him back soon.”

  “No, you won’t,” Paulsen said, and looked around the room again. “I’ll want to listen to the tapes of your interviews with him.”

  “There’s nothing on them that can possibly help you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 60

  A

  great pleasure to have you here, Ms. Rahani.” The plant manager, Hazeltine, clasped Layla Aziz Rahani’s right hand between his own almost reverently.

  Rahani slid it from his grasp uneasily. “I trust my coming here has been kept strictly between us.”

  “Of course, as per your instructions. We British are quite adept at exercising discretion, unlike our American brethren, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  Rahani forced herself to share a smile with the man. “I quite agree. Rahani Industries’ continued interest in Immutech remains contingent on the preservation of secrecy. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Quite,” Hazeltine nodded, even though it was clear he didn’t, couldn’t, understand.

  “Very well, then,” Layla said. “I trust things are going well.”

  “Splendidly, madam, splendidly! As my daily memos have indicated, we are operating twenty-four hours a day to meet the timetable of our American friends. Since the line was already set up to meet the vaccine’s specifications, expanding the process proved to be of only minor inconvenience. Just a matter of jobbing out other production contracts to additional facilities. I anticipate we won’t miss a single delivery.”

  “That is excellent,” Rahani complimented him. “I noticed a few Americans on my way through the complex a few minutes ago.”

  “Very perceptive of you, madam. Just observers sent by the U.S. government to oversee the process.”

  “But not supervise.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And none of them have raised any questions about the Rahani family interest in Immutech.”

  “That is business, madam,” Hazeltine reminded her. “And, as such, is none of their concern. Your interests, in this regard, are what concern me.”

  “It occurs to me, Mr. Hazeltine, that your vested shares will be worth nearly seventy million dollars once this deal is complete. They’re your interests too.”

  The contract for the vaccine had been awarded to Immutech only after the company built an ultramodern, state-of-the-art facility on the outskirts of a business park developed by British financier John Madjeski. Located just beyond a turnoff for the primary M-4 freeway and only twenty minutes from Heathrow Airport, Immutech occupied the development’s largest tract of land within clear view of a similarly new soccer stadium Madjeski had built for Reading’s professional team. The plant had set a new standard for the pharmaceutical industry and helped Immutech achieve domination in a fairly specialized niche. The company produced bulk quantities of antimalaria drugs, tetanus boosters, dysentery pills, and hepatitis vaccines—the assortment of drugs the American government required travelers to take as a condition for obtaining a visa to any number of countries.

  Including, ironically, Saudi Arabia.

  Months before, as part of his grand plan, Abdullah Aziz Rahani had financed the massive construction effort meant to place production, research, design, and storage all in the same facility. Normally vaccines were produced in bulk, only to be finished or refined at a second facility in the U.S. Immutech’s new automated assembly line had rendered that procedure obsolete, meaning distribution could be achieved much faster. The stroke had disabled Abdullah Aziz before the new facility was completed, but Layla had shown him the pictures of its finished form as he lay in his hospital bed on the fourth floor of their palace.

  “We’re on schedule, I trust,” Layla Aziz Rahani said to Hazeltine.

  “Ahead of it, actually.” The plant manager beamed. “We are scheduled to begin shipments in just three days’ time. You’ll return for that, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Hazeltine rose from behind his desk. “Then let’s begin our tour, shall we?”

  “You’re where?” Stephanie Bayliss asked Albert Paulsen.

  “Ethiopia. Just landed in the jet you were kind enough to lend me. Hot as hell over here and they’ve got very big bugs.”

  “I thought you were going to—”

  “That’s because I lied. No, say I changed my mind. That will look better on the report. The bugs bite, by the way. You swat them for a while, then give up. Some insect repellent would be nice. I had plenty at my cabin but I
didn’t think it would chase away the kind of pests that breed in Washington, so I didn’t bother bringing it with me.”

  “What are you looking for in Africa, Professor?”

  “Ethiopia,” Paulsen corrected. “You’ve read the transcripts of the State Department’s interviews with this Ben Kamal?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Recall his mention of a man named Mohammed Latif?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is I had the State Department run the man’s passport. Seems the late Mr. Latif made three visits to Ethiopia. His visa listed his destination as a town called Kokobi. That’s where I’m headed.”

  “For what possible reason, Professor?”

  “Let you know when I get there, General.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 61

  B

  en squeezed his armrests tightly as the 767 broke through the clouds, revealing the city of Detroit below. His grief had come in long, dark patches over the past twenty-four hours, usually activated by a sight or smell, and the view of the Detroit skyline made the strongest impression of all.

  It brought him back to the first time he had seen the city, flying in after a plane change at New York’s Kennedy Airport on a day much like this in early 1967. He’d been seated next to his mother then instead of Danielle Barnea. His father had been sitting across the aisle next to his brother, Sayeed.

  Ben made sure his seat belt was fastened, then turned from the window toward Danielle. But for a moment he saw his mother instead, as she had been in 1967, her hair black instead of gray, her eyes bursting with life, expectation, and trepidation too. She had taken his hand and forced herself to smile. He knew in that moment, even at the age of six, that she was as frightened as he was about the drastic change in their lives. Her stories of the wonderful world they were coming to did little to relax or placate him. They were leaving the only world they had ever known, and the necessity of that move did not make it any easier for them to bear.

  Ben could never remember a moment when he had felt closer to his mother, when their bond had been stronger.

  “I’m scared too,” she had whispered to him, so his father wouldn’t hear across the aisle. No reason to burden him with any more worries than he had already.

  Ben looked down at the armrest and saw his mother holding his hand, then realized it was Danielle who had taken it, suddenly. She gazed straight ahead, leaving him alone with his thoughts, just letting him know she was there, the gesture as important as the memories that left his insides tight and his throat heavy.

  Upon exiting the tunnels beneath Washington the day before, they had gone straight to Union Station, where Danielle had bought a pair of tickets on an Acela Express train to Philadelphia. Her thinking was that all three area airports, Baltimore included, would be watched in search of Ben once his escape was detected. But Union Station was far more difficult to make secure and a far less likely avenue for him to use.

  The problem remained that he had no identification with him of any kind, meaning it would be impossible for him to board a plane. But he recalled that it had always been easy to obtain false identification, especially driver’s licenses, in Detroit at various shady downtown establishments. He assumed the same would be the case in Philadelphia, and it took only a single cab ride and a cooperative driver to find him what he was looking for.

  The tattoo parlor did not advertise that service among the others it offered in the window. But a simple query from Ben inside led to a trip down a dark staircase into a basement humming with high-tech computers and printers. Various screens had been set up in the back of the single open room to simulate colored backgrounds consistent with the driver’s license design of every state in the country.

  Ben chose Michigan, giving the address at which he had lived with his wife and children in the Detroit neighborhood of Copper Canyon. The entire process took barely half an hour. Danielle paid the clerk two hundred dollars in cash and they were on their way.

  They reached the airport only to find the last flight of the evening for Detroit had already left, leaving Ben still more hours to mix the grief he felt over his mother’s death with worry over the fate of his brother. He had tried his brother’s cell phone number repeatedly to no avail and no surprise; the cabin had been built just before new zoning regulations on the waters of Saginaw Bay outlawed all construction. So it was doubtful any cell phone provider would have found it necessary to have a tower anywhere near the area.

  Throughout the trip, Danielle had said little. But her mere presence soothed him, reminding him how much he had missed her. They had barely spoken at all until last night in the airport hotel, Ben seated in a chair by the window, unable to sleep.

  “Do you remember the first time we stayed in the same room?” Danielle had asked from the bed.

  “That house in the West Bank,” Ben had answered, glad she had spoken. “We were hiding from someone.”

  “We were always hiding from someone. ... I miss hoping it could work.”

  “Between us?”

  Danielle had sighed. “Our peoples. We were so close, so damn close. ...”

  “You knew all along,” Ben had reminded her. “You told me as much.”

  “Because I realized there were too many on both sides who could never accept what peace meant.”

  “I guess I was more of an optimist.”

  “You weren’t dealing with the people I’m talking about.” Danielle had sat up in bed. “Do you miss being there?”

  “The last few days it felt like I never left.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I miss you, that’s all.”

  “I had to go back; you know that as well as I.”

  Ben had moved from the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Would you have gone back if Pine Valley had never happened?”

  “It did happen.”

  “The offer to take over National Police was on the table before then.”

  Danielle had looked away, toward the window he had just been gazing out of. “That doesn’t mean I would have taken it.”

  “Yes, you would. A job like that had always been your dream.”

  Danielle had almost laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Ben had asked her.

  “Nothing, really. Just the fact that the only reason I was offered the job was because a deputy minister thought he could get more out of me than status reports. And when I spurned his advances, he fed me to the wolves who’ve been waiting to destroy me for years.”

  “You know how these men are.”

  “That’s the problem: I do know, and I still let it happen. I played right into their hands.”

  “Maybe you should have just slept with this deputy minister,” Ben had suggested, trying for humor.

  Danielle had looked at him closely. “He’s not my type.” She leaned back and took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have left you, even after Pine Valley.”

  “You didn’t do it for yourself, Danielle. You did it for your father, his legacy, your family name. Your brothers are gone. You wanted to leave something behind.”

  “Instead of children, you mean.”

  “No, I don’t. This is different. It’s about living up to something. Having children doesn’t do that. Becoming the first woman to ever head National Police does.”

  She had tried not to look annoyed. “And you know this . . .”

  “You forget that I went back once too: to live up to the legacy left by my father. I always knew that, but I never realized how empty failing left me until I learned my mother was gone too. For the first time I realized how you felt, why that damn job was so important to accept.”

  Ben had drawn back the covers and slipped into the bed beside her. “You think you failed?” she’d asked him.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Based on what you were up against, no. You succeeded in spite of that.”

  “And accomplished nothing, left noth
ing.”

  “Do I have to review our case files?” Danielle had asked him.

  “That’s the problem,” Ben had told her. “They’re our case files. Everything I accomplished over there was with you, because of you.”