‘I’ll call you if and when I hear anything,’ he said, ‘but don’t be holding your breath. The Egyptians are a bloody nightmare.’
Ben-Roi stressed the urgency, thanked him, rang off.
He switched on the TV, watched two minutes of a documentary about, of all things, a group of men trapped in a mine in Chile, switched it off again. He checked his e-mail. He called Khalifa. Then, with nothing else he could do, he took Sarah’s advice and went out for a walk.
Anything, frankly, was better than sitting alone in his apartment contemplating the fact that not only had he killed a relationship, but very possibly a friend as well.
T
HE
L
ABYRINTH
The crucial thing, the one nano-thread upon which any hope of survival dangled, was for Khalifa never, ever to lose track of his position relative to the mine’s main gallery. So long as he could keep a fix on that, knew which direction he was facing, then even with only his touch to guide him there was still the slimmest of chances that he might find his way out.
Within twenty minutes of leaving the cavernous chamber the thread had snapped and the chance was gone.
He was lost. Hopelessly, absolutely, irretrievably lost.
He tried to retrace his steps, fumble his way back to the chamber, but the route map of his memory had become hopelessly tangled. Left or right here? Up or down? Second or third passage? It would have been hard enough if the entire Labyrinth was floodlit. In pitch blackness it was impossible.
He stumbled on – blind, helpless, desperate. Several times he came to places that he thought felt familiar: a steep run of steps; a particularly narrow passage; a floor covered in broken pottery, a line of dirt-filled baskets. The context of the familiarity was lost to him: when he’d been there, what had come before, where he’d gone afterwards. Or if indeed he
had
been there and wasn’t just confusing them with some other similar part of the mine. Everything seemed to merge into everything else, all points of reference to dissolve in the darkness like paper in acid, leaving nothing but a featureless black sludge.
He crossed some sort of wooden bridge over some sort of deep pit – from below he heard hissing, and the slap and swirl of slithering bodies. A little later – or perhaps a lot later, or possibly before; time had long ago ceased to have any meaning down here – he found himself pushing through what he at first, in his confusion, took to be heavy bead curtains. Only when he examined them more closely did he realize they were skeletons strung from a beam across the ceiling.
Before or after that he caught the sound of running water. He tried to locate its source, but it was lost in the void.
Or maybe all of it was just in his head. He had no way of telling, no way of distinguishing between what was real and what was imagined. Like the worst nightmare he’d ever had, even the strangest scenarios seemed plausible. The difference being that you woke up from nightmares.
He thought about his family – Zenab, Batah, Yusuf. How would they cope with losing him? With never knowing how or why they’d lost him? (
Please God, don’t let them think I ran away and abandoned them!
) Samuel Pinsker too, and Ben-Roi, and Iman el-Badri, and Digby Girling, and the Attias, and all the rest of the cast of characters in the narrative that was set to culminate in his death down here.
Mostly he thought about his son Ali. His beloved boy. Alone and helpless, flailing in the black depths of the Nile.
Just as he himself was now flailing. Funny the way things repeated themselves.
On and on he shuffled, exhausted, thirsty, screaming for help, pleading with God, someone, anyone to save him. Until eventually his voice gave out and all there was was silence.
J
ERUSALEM
‘I’m turning in.’
‘OK.’
‘You coming?’’
‘I’ll be a little while yet.’
Heaving himself off the sofa, Joel Regev crossed the room and leant over Dov Zisky’s shoulder. Papers and photographs littered the desk in front of him; on the computer screen was a page with the star, sword and olive branch logo of the IDF. The page was headed:
Conscription Records 1972
.
‘Looks exciting.’
Zisky grunted.
‘Still the cathedral case?’
‘Always the cathedral case.’
‘Getting anywhere?’
‘Maybe.’
Regev hovered a moment. Then, squeezing Zisky’s shoulder, he turned and padded out of the room.
‘Don’t overdo it, eh,’ he called from the hallway.
Zisky didn’t respond. He was leaning forward, staring at the computer screen. There were names and dates of birth, listed in four columns across the page. Lifting his hand, he ran a finger down each of the columns in turn. Midway down the fourth one he stopped. He frowned, fingered through the papers on the desk, pulled out a photo
– a group of women in IDF army fatigues and bush hats. He turned it over, read the dedication on the reverse. Out loud. ‘To darling Rivka – Happy Days! Lx’
He looked back at the screen, back at the photo, double checking. Then he broke into a smile.
Somewhere outside there was the screech of tyres and a loud hooting.
The screech and the hoot came from Ben-Roi’s Toyota Corolla, which had been forced to swerve when a motorcycle shot out from a side-street without signalling. Instinctively he reached for the siren jack, intending to pull the guy over and give him a stern talking to. He didn’t plug it in. Instead he just bellowed ‘
Kus emek!
’, gave another hoot and continued on his way.
It was past midnight. He’d walked for almost two hours, wandering aimlessly through Rehaviya, across Rehaviya Park, up past the Israel Museum and the Knesset, through the Sacher Garden. He’d heard nothing from either Khalifa or his friend Danny Perlmann. Eventually he’d headed back to the apartment, accepting that there was nothing more he could do that night and he was just going to have to sweat it out till the morning.
He’d stripped to his boxers and climbed into bed. For twenty minutes he’d lain there in the dark, gazing up at the ceiling, his cell phone still clutched in his hand. Then, suddenly, the thought had struck him that there
was
one more thing he could do. A long shot, but from the outset he’d known she was going to be the key that would unlock every other aspect of the case. He’d pulled his clothes back on, hurried downstairs to the car, sped off towards the Old City.
Fifteen minutes after his near-collision with the motorcycle, having left the Toyota in the Kishle car park, Ben-Roi was standing outside the heavy wooden gates of the Armenian compound. Where the whole damn thing had started.
He reached up and hammered.
There was a pause, then a door within the gate swung open. A large man in a flat-cap and cardigan was standing there, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. One of the caretakers Ben-Roi had seen when he’d come here to view Kleinberg’s body.
‘Compound’s closed,’ he grumbled.
Ben-Roi showed his badge. ‘I need to speak with Archbishop Petrossian.’
‘His Eminence has retired for the night. You’ll have to come back.’
The man started to close the door. Ben-Roi reached out a hand to prevent it shutting.
‘I need to speak to Archbishop Petrossian,’ he repeated. Then, aware of the animosity the archbishop’s arrest must have caused within the community, he added: ‘Please. I need his help. It’s urgent. Very urgent.’
The man eyed him, lips clamping and unclamping round the cigarette end, tendrils of smoke drifting from his nostrils. Then, holding up a finger to indicate Ben-Roi should wait, he closed the door and disappeared. A couple of minutes went by, the Old City completely silent, like a ghost town. Then the door opened again and the caretaker ushered him inside.
‘His Eminence will see you.’
He closed and locked the door, led Ben-Roi along the vaulted entrance passage and out into the small cobbled courtyard fronting the St James Cathedral. He motioned towards a doorway on the right.
‘There. He’s at the top.’
Ben-Roi thanked him and crossed to the door. Inside a steep set of stone stairs flanked by the rails of a stairlift took him up to a long, tiled vestibule on the first floor. A glass chandelier hung from the ceiling; large oil paintings hung on the walls. Archbishop Petrossian was standing in a doorway about halfway down, dressed in a plain black cassock. Ben-Roi walked up to him, his trainers squeaking on the polished tiles.
‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’
Petrossian lifted a hand, dismissing the apology.
‘I am an old man. I do not sleep much. Please.’
He stood back, ushering Ben-Roi through the door into a small office. Unlike what he’d seen of the rest of the compound, the room was plain and spartan – no ornate decoration, no fancy furnishings. There was a desk, a phone, a computer terminal, a couple of leather chairs, shelves with box files and framed photographs. One of them, he noticed, was of Petrossian shaking hands with Pope Benedict. The archbishop motioned him to sit, and took up position behind the desk.
‘Mardig told me it was urgent,’ he said, folding his hands on the desktop, his amethyst ring of office glinting in the lamplight. ‘Tell me, how can I be of assistance?’
His tone was level, soft. If he felt any anger about the way he’d been treated in custody, he didn’t show it. Ben-Roi gripped the arms of the chair. Straight in. No pussyfooting.
‘I need to find the girl Vosgi.’
Petrossian gave an apologetic smile.
‘As I told you yesterday morning, I’m afraid I don’t know her.’
‘And as
I
told
you
yesterday morning, I think you’re lying.’
The old man tilted his head, opened out his hands as if to say ‘What can I say?’. Ben-Roi sat forward. He wasn’t interrogating now. He was pleading.
‘I need to speak to her,’ he said, fighting to keep his own tone level. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got going on, I don’t know why you’re lying. Frankly I don’t care. What I
do
know is that you know where she is. Like you know about everything that happens in this community. And I need you to tell me. A man’s life depends on it. A good man’s life.’
Petrossian was still smiling, although something about the expression suddenly looked forced, as if he was having to work to hold it.
‘The girl told Rivka Kleinberg something,’ Ben-Roi pushed. ‘They met, she told her something. About a gold mine, a company called Barren Corporation. Because of that information, Rivka Kleinberg was murdered. And now the same’s about to happen to an innocent man. A friend of mine. Might already have happened, God forbid. I have to find out what’s going on. It’s the only hope I’ve got of saving him. Please, tell me where Vosgi is. Help me.’
Still Petrossian said nothing, betrayed nothing. Despite that, Ben-Roi could see that he was troubled, was wrestling with himself. It was there in the flickering of his eyelids, the way his thumb and index finger had clamped tight around the ring’s purple amethyst. Ben-Roi leaned right forward, resting his hands on the desk, crowding the old man.
‘This isn’t about a dead woman any more,’ he pressed. ‘A murder that’s already happened, something that can’t be changed. This is about
preventing
a murder. Saving a life. A Muslim Egyptian life, in case you’re worried about saving an Israeli.’
For the first time this drew a visible reaction. Petrossian tutted, shook his head.
‘A life is a life, Detective. They are all equally precious. Religion and nationality have nothing to do with it.’
He was wavering, Ben-Roi could sense it. Whatever he was hiding, and why ever he was hiding it, the cracks were starting to appear.
Where interrogation had failed, a direct plea to his humanity seemed to be working. Ben-Roi gave it a final push.
‘Please, help me to help my friend. Tell me where Vosgi is. Let me speak to her. I give you my word there’ll be no comeback to you.’
Petrossian contemplated this, joining his fingertips and gazing at Ben-Roi over the tops of them. There was a silence, then:
‘And if I have done her harm? Still no comeback?’
The question was unexpected. Ben-Roi hesitated, hands gripping the edge of the desk.
‘Have you done her harm?’
The archbishop’s eyes twinkled. Now it was him who could read doubt in Ben-Roi’s expression.
‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘As I told you when we spoke yesterday, conscience is a tricky master. Here you are, asking me to betray
my
conscience, and yet when I present you with a similar dilemma – whether to trade justice for information – then you are not quite so assured. So I ask you again: do I have your guarantee that should the girl have been harmed, no action will be taken against either myself or any of my colleagues?’
Ben-Roi shifted, sat back. A moment ago he’d thought he was on top of the situation. Now, suddenly, he’d been wrong-footed.
‘I can’t give you that guarantee,’ he said
Petrossian eyed him, his gaze really boring into Ben-Roi. Somewhere outside a bell started tolling. There was another pause. Then the old man nodded.
‘I am pleased to hear it. As you will be aware, my experiences with the Israel Police have not been entirely positive, but you, I sense, are a man of decency and honour. Before tonight is out, those qualities will be put to the test. And just to reassure you, no harm of any sort has come to the child.’
‘You’ll take me to her?’
‘In case you have forgotten, I am under house arrest. I am not permitted to leave the compound.’
‘I’ll vouch for you.’
Petrossian mulled this. Then, with a nod, he picked up the phone and dialled. He spoke rapidly, in a language that Ben-Roi presumed was Armenian. Replacing the phone, he stood and motioned the detective to follow him.
‘Come. And please, bear in mind what has just been said about decency and honour.’
They left the office and headed downstairs.
She’d turned up at the compound five weeks ago. Out of the blue. Terrified. Traumatized. The Israeli government were about to deport her. Send her back to Armenia and straight into the hands of the people who’d trafficked her in the first place. She was desperate, had pleaded for sanctuary.