Shakes from the other two.
‘Was she from round here?’ asked the man, returning the photo.
‘Just following up some leads.’
‘Well, I hope you get him,’ said the auburn head, sitting back and propping her legs up again. Ben-Roi’s eyes lingered on her, something nagging at the back of his mind. He couldn’t put his finger on it, and after hovering a moment, he thanked them for their time, straightened and stepped away from the car.
‘And watch your speed,’ he said. ‘Not every cop’s as forgiving as I am.’
The man smiled, flicked a salute and pulled away. Ben-Roi watched them go, staring at the head silhouetted in the rear window, the nag still there. Then, with a shrug, he went back to his car, got in and swung off 40 on to the smaller road heading west towards the Egyptian border. He’d covered almost a kilometre when the words suddenly came out of his mouth:
Sally, Carrie, Mary-Jane
.
For a moment he looked confused, as though it had been someone else speaking. Then, with a bellow of ‘For fuck’s sake!’, he slammed on the brakes. Dropping open the glove compartment, he pulled out his Jericho, then spun the car and roared off back the way he had come, siren blaring.
Gidi kept the speed down till the cop’s car had disappeared from the rear-view mirror, then floored the accelerator. In the back seat, Dinah craned around, staring back along the road, watching for any sign of pursuit.
‘I think we’re OK,’ said Gidi.
‘We’re not OK. The way he was looking at me . . .’
She swung back, pulled out her satellite mobile – terrestrials didn’t work out here – thumbed in a number. Three rings, then:
‘Faz, start shutting everything down. We might be on the move.’
She rang off, bent and pulled a Glock from her knapsack. In the front Tamar did the same. Gidi pushed the speedometer up past 160, taking them round a series of long sweeping bends before slowing sharply and skidding to a halt on the hard shoulder. Tamar already had the door open. Leaping out, she sprinted on to the hill overlooking the highway. Gidi screeched round the corner on to the track out to their compound; Dinah clambered into the front and thumbed her phone again, lurching back and forth as the Land Cruiser jolted over the uneven terrain. Six rings this time, then Tamar’s voice:
‘Almost there.’ The sound of feet scrambling on rock, rasping breath. ‘OK, I’m up.’
‘And?’
‘Can’t see him.’
The Land Cruiser hit a rut and slewed, slamming her against the window. She threw the Glock on to the back seat, transferred the mobile to her left hand and grasped the door’s grab handle to steady herself.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing.’
Another ferocious lurch as they slammed into a dip, then skidded round the track’s tight dog-leg. Gidi fought the wheel, got them straight, raced towards the cluster of domed buildings in the distance.
‘Still can’t see him,’ came Tamar’s voice. ‘I think he might have . . . hang on, I can hear . . .’
‘What?’
Silence.
‘What, Tamar?’
‘Siren! He’s coming.’
‘Shit!’
Dinah chopped a hand, urging Gidi to up the speed. From the hilltop Tamar kept up a running commentary.
‘He’s about two kilometres back . . . coming fast. Very fast. On the curve now . . . about a kilometre . . . really motoring. Underneath me . . . past! He missed the turn-off! He’s carrying on north.’
They reached the compound and skidded to a halt beside the open computer room. Inside, Faz was furiously unplugging cables and boxing up hard drives. Gidi ran in to help. Dinah remained by the Land Cruiser, mobile to her ear, Glock dangling in her hand. At the very edge of hearing she thought she could just catch the siren’s wail.
‘Talk to me, Tamar,’ she said.
‘He’s still going.’
‘How far?’
‘About a kilometre. He’s on the climb to the ridge.’
‘Same speed?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Now?’
‘Still climbing.’
A silence, then:
‘He’s at the top and . . . over. Can’t see him any more.’
Dinah clicked her fingers. Gidi and Faz stopped what they were doing and came outside. The three of them stood waiting, eyeing each other nervously. Thirty seconds ticked by.
‘Tamar?’
‘No sign of him.’
‘Give it another minute.’
She did.
‘Nothing. We’re OK. He’s gone.’
Dinah nodded to Gidi and Faz and they all let out a breath.
‘No, he’s not! He’s coming back!’
‘Fuck!’
The other two crowded in. She held up the phone so they could all hear what was going on.
‘He’s coming down off the ridge,’ came Tamar’s voice. ‘Fast. On the flat now . . . less than a kilometre . . . five hundred metres . . . He’s past the turn-off. Slowing. Stopped. He’s . . . hang on . . . what’s he doing? Reversing! He’s on the track. We’re busted!’
‘Watch the road,’ said Dinah. ‘Let us know if he’s got friends. Keep your head down.’
She rang off and pocketed the phone. Faz had already ducked back into the tech room. Gidi was rummaging inside the Land Cruiser. He emerged holding a mini-Uzi.
‘You ready for this?’ she asked.
He slammed in a clip. ‘Ready.’
‘OK, let’s do what we have to.’
They banged fists and melted away among the buildings as the siren wail drew closer.
Ben-Roi dropped his speed right down, following the track away from the highway and out into the desert, steering with his left hand, the Jericho held ready in his right. After 400 metres the track dipped through a narrow cleft, then veered sharp right. Ahead, two kilometres away, he could make out a huddle of buildings, white against the drab yellow-brown of the desert. He stopped, cut the siren, fetched the binoculars, took a look.
The Land Cruiser was there, parked in front of one of the buildings, its driver door wide open. A second was sitting in the shade beneath a lean-to on the side of the same building. There were four other buildings, some solar panels, a large satellite dish, what looked like a vegetable plot. No signs of life.
He scanned the surrounding desert, then zoomed back in on the compound, as if hoping to catch someone unawares. Nothing. They’d either cleared out or were hiding. Probably the latter. He clicked his tongue, running through the options. There were at least three of them, possibly more. Almost certainly armed. And from what he’d heard of the Nemesis Agenda – and he had no doubt these people
were
the Nemesis Agenda – dangerous. Very dangerous. Better to call in backup. He threw the bins in the car, pulled out his cell. No signal. Same with the car phone. Shit. So: either head back to the highway, try to flag someone down, get them to run for the cavalry. Or go in alone, which was a completely fucking crazy thing to do.
He went in alone.
He took it even slower than before, staying in second gear, idling along the track, stopping every few hundred metres to give the buildings another sweep with the bins, his Jericho at the ready. He saw nobody, nobody came at him. A hundred metres shy of the compound he stopped and got out. Total silence, not even the buzz of a fly.
‘Hello!’
Nothing.
‘Hello!’
The heat smothered his voice, dulling and thickening it, as if he was shouting into a blanket. He started forward, boots crunching on gravel, tracking the Jericho left and right in front of him.
‘I saw your photo in her flat!’ he yelled. ‘Rivka Kleinberg’s flat. You were just a girl. Took me a while to realize it was you, but I never forget a face.’
Nothing. No sound, no movement. He reached the Land Cruiser. Flattening himself against it, he glanced inside. The keys were still in the ignition. He paused. Then, dropping to his haunches, he skyed the Jericho and loosed off a single shot. No reaction. Maybe they
had
legged it. Or were hiding out in the desert somewhere, watching, waiting.
‘She came to see you!’ he bellowed. ‘Four days before she was killed. She’s been coming down here regularly. Why?’
Silence.
‘Was she helping you? Is that it? Was Rivka Kleinberg part of the Nemesis Agenda?’
Still nothing. Absolute quiet, absolute still, like the entire world had been freeze-famed inside a vacuum jar. He blinked away a bead of sweat, stood, rolled around the car and hit the wall of the nearest building. The door was open. He checked the car beneath the lean-to, then, on the count of three, ducked through the door. There was computer stuff scattered everywhere – screens, hard drives, wires, modems, like someone was packing up in a hurry. He ran his eyes around, then stepped back out. The doors of the other four buildings were closed. He took them one by one, working his way round the central yard. The first three were unlocked – simple rooms, spartan, empty. The last door held firm. He looked around, then kicked it in, the entire frame coming away from the wall in a shower of broken plaster.
The interior was cool and dim, the blinds down against the sunlight, a vague smell of antiperspirant hanging in the air. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table and, through a door, a bathroom. He checked the bathroom, put his head back out into the yard, then crossed to the bedside table. A laptop was sitting there charging, the screen on. A moving screensaver ranged up and down the front of a tall glass-and-steel building framed against a bright blue sky. At the bottom of the building, gleaming above the entrance, a row of gold letters spelt out the name ‘Barren Corporation’. He stared at it, then sat on the bed and tried the table’s drawer. Locked. He yanked, but it wouldn’t give. Another yank, then, losing patience, he leant back, aimed and shot the lock off. He slid the drawer out and rifled its contents. There were a couple of bullet clips; an envelope stuffed with letters; two passports, one Israeli, one American, both bearing the photo of the woman in the car. Each carried a different name: Dinah Levi and Elizabeth Teal. He looked at them, then shook out the envelope. Letters and postcards spilled across the bed. And, also, a smaller envelope. Inside, photos done up with an elastic band. He held them up, staring at the top one. It was of a woman cradling a baby. A young woman, plump, curly-haired and heavy-boned, sitting in what looked like a hospital armchair. Time had taken its toll, but he recognized her instantly. Just as he had done in the shot of the uniformed women back in her apartment in Jerusalem. Rivka Kleinberg.
‘Fuck me,’ he murmured.
‘You move even one millimetre,’ came a voice from the door, ‘and trust me, that’s exactly what I’ll do.’
For a moment she thought he might try something, his eyes flicking from her Glock to Gidi’s Uzi and back again, assessing the situation. Then, accepting he was outgunned, he shook his head and lifted his arms. Gidi covering, she went over and relieved him of his pistol. And, also, the photos, which she snatched away and dropped on to the bed, not wanting his fingers on them.
They took him outside, frisked him, found car keys and a cell phone. She kept the keys and threw the phone to Faz, who disappeared with it into the tech room. Then they marched him over to his car and cuffed him – right wrist to the steering wheel, left ankle to the brake pedal.
‘You’re her daughter, aren’t you?’ he said as she leant in to check the cuffs were secure. ‘You’re Rivka Kleinberg’s daughter. She was your mother.’
‘Whatever.’
She patted round the inside of the car to make sure he didn’t have any concealed firearms, tore the car phone off its lead, then, with a last tug on the cuffs, she and Gidi headed back to the compound. Gidi aimed for one of the store sheds to get the explosives and timers; she made for the other one to get the jerrycans.
They’d rehearsed this numerous times, with variations depending on how long they’d have to get out: an immediate getaway, leaving everything; a two-minute scramble, gathering just the essentials; a more ordered departure, with sufficient leeway to gather their stuff and cover their tracks. There was no word from Tamar up on the hill, which suggested that in this instance they had time to play with. She was glad of that. Of all the many places she’d lived in her life, this was the only one that had felt anything like home. She’d always known they’d have to leave at some point, but at least they’d be able to say a proper goodbye.
Opening the shed, she lugged five cans out into the centre of the yard, then went to her room to gather her stuff. There wasn’t much of it: some clothes, the letters from her mother, the photos.
The past was a different life, one she deliberately kept buried. The letters and the photos were the only reminders, the only shafts down into the dark. Those and the dreams, of course. In the dreams, the past was always rising to haunt her.
She threw everything into a holdall, along with a couple of paper-filled files and the Barren laptop. The passports went in last. Dinah Levi, Elizabeth Teal – just two of the many names she’d adopted over the years. Dinah, Elizabeth, Sally, Carrie, Mary-Jane – there’d been so many of them. Alter-egos to hide behind, disguises with which to cover herself. With Dinah perhaps the most appropriate of them all, what with its connotations not only of justice and judgement, but, in the Biblical story of Dinah and Shechem, of rape and revenge.
So many different names. So many different masks. So many different hers.
But only Rachel’s really true.
She zipped the bag, took a last look around and went outside into the yard. Gidi was moving from building to building laying the charges; a mobile call out to Tamar on the hill confirmed that the highway was clear, there was no one else coming. She told her to get back to the compound, threw her holdall into the Land Cruiser, then went to check on the cop. As soon as he saw her he started in again with all the mother stuff. She didn’t bother explaining.
‘She was working with you, wasn’t she?’ he pushed, tugging vainly at the cuffs, the metal biting into his wrist and ankle. ‘Rivka Kleinberg was part of the Nemesis Agenda. That’s why she kept coming down here.’
Despite herself she smiled. Not just because his shots were so wide of the mark, but because he was shooting at all. Shackled to a car in a hundred-degree heat with no idea whether they were going to live out the next hour, most people would have been whimpering for mercy. But here this guy was, still trying to work the angles. Credit to him for that, even if he had got it completely wrong.