‘And?’
‘And I think we might be on to something.’
The second time someone had used the phrase in the space of fifteen minutes. Things were looking up.
‘Go on.’
‘The man recognized Kleinberg’s picture straight away. Said she’d been on his bus a few times.’
‘What’s a few?’
‘Eight or nine in the last three years. Always a day return – he took her down, then back again on a later run.’
‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that he knew what she was doing in Mitzpe Ramon?’
‘That’s the interesting thing. She never actually went to Mitzpe. Or at least not all the way. She used to get off ten kilometres short of town. Then get picked up from the same spot for the return journey.’
He stood and waved Ben-Roi over to the wall map.
‘Here,’ he said, touching a finger to the north–south line of Route 40. It was the middle of nowhere, just desert and, beneath his fingertip, the intersection with a small secondary road running west towards the Har Ha-Negev Nature Reserve. And from there on to . . . the Egyptian border. Ben-Roi stared, cogs whirring inside his head. Then, reaching up, he started to pull the map from its Blu-Tack mounts.
‘Do me a favour, Dov. Two favours actually. See what you can dig up about a company called Prospecto Egypt – they’re a subsidiary of Barren, did some surveying out in the Egyptian desert a while back. And contact the Barren office down in Tel-Aviv. Tell them we’re conducting a murder inquiry and want to speak to someone who knows about the company’s involvement in Egypt. Someone high up –not a pen-pusher. See if you can sort something for later today or tomorrow morning. It’s about time we found out what these people have got to say for themselves.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Zisky.
‘Me?’ Ben-Roi got the map down and folded it. ‘I’m off for a nice little drive in the country.’
H
OUSTON
Two in the morning Houston time and William Barren was wide awake. Not coked awake – he was putting all that behind him. No, this was clear-headed awake. Energized awake. The sort of awake he felt most nights these days as his plans all started to come together. He gazed out across the Houston nightscape, all twinkling towers and distant slashes of traffic, like something out of
Blade Runner
, wondering if he could be bothered to head up to the rooftop pool for a swim, or maybe down to the cardio suite to burn off some of the energy on the treadmills. Instead, swinging himself off the bed, he unleashed a flurry of karate chops towards the window, then padded through into the study and sat at his desk.
Earlier, he’d taken Barbara for dinner out at the country club. Increasingly he’d been thinking Barbara was probably the one. She was dull as hell, and sexually unadventurous to the point of catatonia (the first, and only, time he’d tried to sodomize her she’d screamed like a stuck pig and burst into tears). She looked good, though, and knew how to hold herself in a social situation, and hailed from thoroughbred WASP stock – just the sort of wife you needed as head of one of the country’s leading multinationals. He’d get her checked, make sure she was fertile, could carry on the line, then propose next year, once all the company stuff had settled down. Or maybe the year after. With marriage, like all business decisions, you had to prioritize.
He eased back and propped his feet on the corner of the desk. Its surface was covered in paperwork – files, reports, spreadsheets, analysis: the Barren behemoth stripped down to its constituent parts. He picked up a sheet at random – figures for the proposed buy-into of a Canadian biofuels company – then threw it down again, not in the mood for number-crunching. On the computer screen the webcam was still playing – dingy room in Eastern Europe, girls being given a bad time – but he wasn’t in the mood for that either. He ran a hand through his hair, flexed his abs, then, with a glance at his Rolex, he lifted the phone and dialled. Five rings, and the call was answered.
‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.
Yes, but it’s not a problem, a soft voice assured him.
‘You OK to talk?’
Perfectly OK.
‘I just wanted to touch base, see if you’d thought any more about that thing we were discussing.’
Yes, came the voice, there had been more thought. A lot more thought. And a decision. William was right. It would have to be done. To secure the future. Assure continuity.
William smiled.
‘I knew you’d understand. You’re one of family, after all. We’ve got to help each other.’
Indeed.
‘I’ve been thinking we should combine it with the Egypt thing. Keep it all at arm’s length. Fewer questions that way.’
A very good idea.
‘We’re on, then?’
On.
William said he’d be in touch, told the person at the other end to keep their head down and rang off. For a moment he sat drumming his fingers on the desk. Then, heaving himself to his feet, he headed back to the bedroom for his towel and trunks. Maybe he’d have that swim after all.
I
SRAEL
Mitzpe Ramon was 160 kilometres south of Jerusalem, a three-hour drive when you factored in traffic and speed limits.
Ben-Roi did it in just over two.
For the first 80 kilometres he sounded his siren, clearing a way through the busier roads down to Be’er Sheva. Then, when he was past Be’er and out into the blank rocky nothingness of the Negev, he yanked out the siren jack and pushed his foot to the floor. By midday he had reached the intersection where the Egged bus driver used to drop off and pick up Rivka Kleinberg. He pulled over, got out, stretched his legs, gazed around.
The place had looked desolate on the office map, and looked even more so now that he was actually standing here. There was the empty two-lane ribbon of Route 40; the secondary branch road heading off to the west; and three metal signs: a distance marker showing 10 kilometres to Mitzpe, a tourist hoarding for the Har Ha-Negev Nature Reserve, a warning about stray camels. Otherwise, nothing. The sun beat down, the desert stretched out, five metres away a decomposing goat carcass gave off a vague waft of putrefaction. The erratic buzzing of flies was the only sound in the otherwise all-enveloping silence.
He scanned the landscape, not entirely sure what he was hoping to achieve by coming all the way down here, just sensing that whatever it was Kleinberg had been doing, he was more likely to find out about it by being here in person rather than trying to follow it up from his desk. Then, going round and opening the Toyota’s boot, he pulled out a pair of binoculars. Clambering on to the car’s bonnet, he scanned again, the metalwork creaking beneath his Timberlands as he slowly rotated through 360 degrees. The bins afforded him a more detailed view of what he’d already been looking at: rock, dust, hills, gullies and the odd forlorn clump of knotgrass. Not a human in sight.
He gave it a couple of turns, taking in the full desert panorama, then focused in on the curving thread of the westbound road. It was the thing that had leapt off the map at him when Zisky had first pointed out this spot back at the station; and it still struck him as the most likely reason for Kleinberg having alighted at this particular point. Had she been meeting someone who had slipped across the border from Egypt? Had she been intending to slip the other way
into
Egypt? Or had she got off here for a completely different reason and the proximity of the border was purely coincidental? Whatever the case, it was tied up with the Nemesis Agenda, no question about that. Three years ago she’d come down this way to meet a contact within the Agenda. And from what the Egged driver had said, she’d been coming down on and off ever since.
‘But why this particular spot?’ he murmured. ‘Why here? What were you doing?’
He traced the line of the road from its junction with 40 to the point where it disappeared behind a rocky ridge in the far distance, scouring it with the bins, back and forth along its length as if the tarmac itself might yield the answers for which he was searching. No answers came and after ten minutes he gave up. He hopped off the bonnet and returned the binoculars to the boot. Ducking into the car, he removed the bottle of Neviot water and bumper pack of Doritos he’d bought from a service station on his way out of Jerusalem. He took a glug of the water, opened the Doritos, started munching. He’d got through a quarter of the pack before he heard the faint growl of an approaching vehicle, the first to come that way since he’d stopped. He dropped the Doritos and water on to the passenger seat, picked up the photo he’d brought of Rivka Kleinberg and stepped out on to the road.
The vehicle was a tanker, still a long way off, heading south from Be’er Sheva, its outline wobbling and bulging in the heat haze. He watched it for almost a minute, its approach tediously slow. Then, when it had closed to within five hundred metres, he ducked back into the car, turned the ignition key and jacked in the flashing roof light. There was a distant hiss of brakes and the tanker slowed, juddering to a halt ten metres up the highway. Ben-Roi walked over and motioned the driver to lower his window.
‘I was inspected three weeks ago,’ said the man, a cigarette dipping up and down in the corner of his mouth. ‘Got the paperwork here if you want to check.’
Ben-Roi told him that wouldn’t be necessary.
‘You come this way often?’ he asked.
‘Twice a week. Ashdod to Mitzpe Ramon, then back via Yerukham and Dimona.’
‘You ever see this woman?’ Ben-Roi handed the photo up. The driver examined it, then passed it back, shaking his head.
‘She would have been standing here. Like she was waiting for someone.’
‘Never seen her before.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK, on your way.’
Ben-Roi stepped back and jerked a thumb down the highway.
‘And put that cigarette out!’ he called as the driver started to move off. ‘You’re driving a bloody oil tanker!’
The man grumbled, flicked the cigarette on to the hard shoulder and picked up speed. Ben-Roi returned to his car and dived back into the Doritos.
He flagged down a further fourteen vehicles over the next ninety minutes, including a pick-up truck full of Bedouin, a military bus from the Ramon Air Force Base and an Audi R drop-top driven by one of the fattest men he’d ever seen accompanied by two of the most attractive women – an object lesson, if ever there was one, in the seductive allure of hard cash.
A couple of people recognized Rivka Kleinberg from her photo in the papers; none of them had ever seen her in person and certainly not at this remote spot. As the Audi sped off into the distance, music pumping, the women’s hair whipping behind them in the wind, Ben-Roi accepted he was wasting his time. He’d follow the branch road west to the Egyptian border, see if anything caught his eye; cut back to Mitzpe Ramon to have a word with the local police; then head home. Some you won, some you lost. It had been worth a try.
He had a final sweep round with the binoculars, took a piss at the roadside and climbed back into the Toyota. Far away to the south another car was approaching, a distant white blob juddering in the watery heat. He hesitated, wondering if he ought to give it one last go. Then, deciding it wasn’t worth it, that he had to call it quits some time and it might as well be now, he slammed the door, clunked on his seatbelt, unplugged the roof light and started to move off. Almost immediately he had a change of heart and stopped again. He neutralled the gears, re-jacked the light and unbelted himself.
‘Sixteenth time lucky,’ he muttered, grabbing the Kleinberg photo and climbing out.
The car was moving fast and in the fifteen seconds since he’d first spotted it, had broken from the heat mirage and come into much sharper focus. SUV, by the look of it. He stepped on to the road. The vehicle was really bombing along, eating up the distance between them. At four hundred metres he held up a hand, but the vehicle showed no sign of slowing. Three hundred went by, two hundred, and he was about to step back off the road when the driver suddenly braked. Hard. There was hiss of rubber, a faint puff of smoke from beneath the rear wheels and the car – a Toyota Land Cruiser – came to a halt on the hard shoulder with five metres to spare. Same occupant dynamic as the Audi – male driver, two female passengers, although in this case the man was slim and handsome. Ben-Roi walked over to his window and flashed his badge.
‘If I’d had a speed gun you’d be out of a licence,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Not the best place to be when you’re going that fast.’
‘Sorry,’ repeated the man.
Ben-Roi placed a hand on the roof and dipped his head, looking into the car. The woman in the front was slightly built with short-cropped dark hair, the outline of her breasts clearly visible through the material of her T-shirt. The one in the back had auburn hair done up in a bun and long, toned legs canted against the back of the driver’s seat. Both, he couldn’t help notice, were attractive, although not in the same way as the Audi driver’s companions. They’d been bimbos, had sex written all over them. These two were more understated, had . . . attitude.
‘You from round here?’ he asked, addressing himself to the man.
‘Tel-Aviv. We’ve been down in Eilat for a few days.’
Lucky you
, thought Ben-Roi.
‘You come down this way often?’
‘Every couple of months, maybe.’
Ben-Roi’s eyes flicked towards the woman in the back seat, then he handed in the photo.
‘I don’t suppose any of you have ever seen her around here?’
They looked at the image, the woman in the back dropping her feet and leaning forward.
‘I have,’ she said.
Ben-Roi’s head came down further, right into the window.
‘Around here?’
‘No, in the paper. She’s that woman who got killed in Jerusalem.’
She had an accent. Slight, but definitely there. American, he guessed, or possibly British. Intense grey eyes, a scatter of freckles across her nose – seriously attractive.
‘But you’ve never seen her in this part of the world?’ he repeated.
She shook her head.
‘You?’