If he wasn't from this kibbutz, maybe he could help if he knew she was being held prisoner here. Should she scream? Try to climb through the window and make a run for it?
Something moved behind her, and the old woman entered the room, scowling. In a step she was at the window, reaching out to close the wooden shutters.
Alicia had to try very hard not to start weeping again.
"I swear, that was her," Lang said.
Jacob was too busy keeping the truck on the narrow sand road. "It's eyes like a bleedin' hawk you'd have to have to recognize her at this distance."
Lang sank back against the tattered upholstery. "If it wasn't her, why would they be so quick to close the shutters?"
Jacob took a hand from the wheel and started to explore his shirt pocket. The truck lurched to the side before he grabbed the wheel with both hands again. "Damn me if I know. These kibbutz Jews are peculiar sometimes. Maybe this lot doesn't believe in women showing their faces to outsiders."
Lang leaned forward to adjust the holster in the small of his back. "So far, no surprises. The layout is just like the satellite picture, jammed up against the Gaza wall. Except it didn't show the wire fence, and I had no idea those hills, sand dunes, whatever, were so high."
Jacob found a place to turn around and did so. "I hope they appreciate our oiling down their road for them."
"They should. It cost us enough. Paying those road workers to 'lose' their truck for a couple of hours wasn't cheap."
Jacob was straightening out the wheel before resuming the same slow pace. "Right you are, but at least we know where the irrigation pipe comes in."
"Incredible," Lang said, "bringing water in all the way from the Jordan River! That's, what, fifty miles or so? Looks like a desalination plant would be more efficient."
"I'm sure they have one of those, too. Problem is, a desal plant big enough to water the crops and supply those blokes' needs would have to be as large as the kibbutz itself."
Lang shook his head. "Still, bringing water all that distance ..."
"Making the desert bloom, lad, that's what this country's all about. Besides, the Roman aqueducts carried water farther than that." He stopped and pointed. "There's some sort of pumping mechanism that lifts the water up into that water tower so that gravity creates enough pressure to irrigate the crops and support these people."
Lang looked at the tower. It could have come from any small town in America except for the Hebrew characters painted on the side. "What does the Hebrew say?"
"Zion, the name of the kibbutz."
"Zion?"
"Historically, a citadel that was the nucleus of Jerusalem. Also, the ideal nation or society envisioned by Judaism."
"Good choice by nationalist extremists."
This time Jacob succeeded in finding his pipe. He was clenching it between his teeth.
"I wouldn't recommend stopping to fill that thing," Lang said.
"Why not?"
"Because there's a truck right behind us. I'd guess Zwelk wants to know why we're spraying his private road."
Jacob leaned forward, the better to see the rearview mirror. "And he's blinking his lights. Think he wants us to stop."
Lang withdrew the SIG Sauer from its holster and slipped it beneath the seat. "You aren't going to outrun 'em. May as well stop and see what they want."
Looking in the passenger-side mirror, Lang saw two bearded men, one on each side, approach the truck. From the way they held the Uzi machine guns, he would have guessed they knew how to use them. This close to Palestinian territory, it would be unusual if they had not been armed. The one on the right stopped a few feet short and wide of the passenger door, a position where Lang would have to fully turn in his seat to make a hostile move. It was a maneuver taught in every police academy in the world.
The other man was speaking with Jacob in what Lang assumed was Hebrew. The tone was even, perhaps friendly. Finally Jacob shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes heavenward, the universal Jewish gesture that could mean anything from sudden enlightenment to total frustration. The man on the other side of the driver's door laughed, shook his head, and started back to his own truck.
"What the hell did you say to him?" Lang wanted to know.
"He wanted to know what we were doing here. I told him we had been assigned to oil down the dirt access roads along Road Four Seventy-seven all the way to the Gaza Strip."
"But we came here on Four Seventy-seven. We turned off a mile or so back."
"That, basically, was what the chap said. He thanked us for slicking down the kibbutz's road." He turned to Lang. "Think I convinced him I'd made a mistake?"
Lang watched the two men in the truck behind. Through the streaked windshield he could see one was talking into a cell phone. "I sure as hell hope so."
Near Kibbutz Zion
Seventeen Minutes Later
"You're sure, then, that's her?" Jacob asked from his seat in the sand on the shady side of a hill.
Lang took the binoculars from his eyes. The morning sun was heating the metal quickly enough to make them uncomfortable to hold to his eyes. "Pretty damn sure."
He could hear Jacob tapping the pipe against the heel of his shoe. "'Pretty sure'? Bravo! That's bloody swell! We go charging into this kibbutz, fight our way through the rotters to where you saw this woman, and presto! We find out you made a sodding mistake. Almost worth trying just to hear your apology."
Lang had the glasses to his eyes again. "You're the one who suggested we come out here after seeing a satellite photo of a redhead. Besides, that's why I'm roasting in the sun—trying to make sure we don't screw up."
He heard the sound of a striking match. And then, "You never explained what made you think that lot trying to kill you were Jews. Almost any country might be interested in the powers described in that old manuscript."
The superconductive abilities aren't what they're after."
Lang took the binoculars down again long enough to use a sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face. "As I think I mentioned, I'd bet something very much like that was the basis for the Star Wars defense program President Reagan suggested twenty-five years ago."
"If not the weapons capability, then what?"
"For what the Book of Jereb says."
Jacob briefly pondered that. Then, "What does it have to say that's worth killing people for, other than the secret of the Ark, which you're telling me is no sodding secret after all?"
"It's..."
"It's what?"
Lang had put the glasses to his eyes again. "That's her! She's walking between two men, carrying what looks like... looks like... a towel. Yeah, that's it. She's got a towel and what could be a change of clothes." He reached backward, motioning. "Here, come see for yourself."
"To what end?" Jacob growled. "I've never seen the bird, wouldn't recognize her if she was standing on the balcony at Buckingham Palace."
In his excitement Lang had forgotten. "Of course you wouldn't. Take my word for it, though; that's her."
Jacob's breath whistled through closed lips as he checked his watch. "I make it nearly nine hours before sunset, a long time in the heat."
Lang was still staring through the binoculars. "We can't very well drive back in daylight. Someone'd get suspicious if they saw us there again."
Jacob got to his feet, dusting himself off. "There's a little town, Sderot, about two kilometers the other way, a place we can at least get something cool to drink while we wait. And I've got a bit of tinkering yet to do."
Lang didn't ask; he was well aware of what Jacob's tinkering usually involved.
Central Police Station
Ibn Gabrel andAriozroy Streets
Tel Aviv
An Hour Later
Captain Kel Zaltov paced around the long table rather than sitting at it. His shirt was showing sweat stains at the armpits despite the frosty chill of overefficient air-conditioning. "I still don't understand why we have to cooperate with some neo-Nazi cop from Austria," he complained. "We owe those krauts nothing; and, far as I can tell, this goy Reilly has done nothing. Besides, he has the blessing of King Solomon Street," he added as an afterthought.
The other man in the room looked as though he might have just stepped from the pages of
GQ
or
Esquire.
His dark suit was tailored, his white shirt unwrinkled, and his toe caps shined to a military luster. "I'm not here on behalf on our friends on King Solomon Street," he replied calmly. He intertwined his fingers, resting his hands on the table. "My authority is higher than that."
Zaltov scowled. "I'm a policeman, not a diplomat or politician."
He spit the last word as though it had a bad taste.
That, thought the man in the suit, was one thing they both could agree upon.
The policeman was notorious for his distrust, if not downright hatred, of anything Germanic or Russian. During the decade between 1935 and 1945, each of those two World War II combatants had exterminated the larger part of his family: first the Stalinist purges, then the Nazi pogrom. It was amazing that a man could be so angry over the murders of relatives he had never known. But then, these Jews of Eastern European descent tended to hold grudges for centuries rather than generations. Zaltov was still probably pissed off at the Romans for destroying the temple in Jerusalem in, what,
a.d
. 70?
"Although unnecessary, I have explained the government's position," the man in the suit said. His voice was becoming frayed along the edges, the sound of a man letting his frustrations show. "Need I do so again?"
Zaltov sat down and stood up again. "Why do I give a shit what a bunch of ass-kissers from the State Department think?"
"That depends on whether you want your pension when you retire next year. You serve, after all, at the pleasure of the Israeli government, ass-kissers included."
The policeman sat again, this time staying put. "Okay, explain again. Maybe I'll listen this time."
The man in the suit nodded slowly, acknowledging the wisdom of the other's decision. "Very well. This Inspector Rauch wants to take into custody a man named Langford Reilly, an American. It seems Mr. Reilly may know something about one or more shootings in Vienna...."
"Like that is our business," Zaltov sneered.
The man in the suit silenced him with a lifted eyebrow. "As our friends from King Solomon Street tell us, Mr. Reilly is accompanied by one of their former employees, a Jacob Annueliwitz, hence the cooperation so far. Both Monsieurs Reilly and Annueliwitz have shown more than a passing interest in a man named Zwelk."
The policeman stood, resuming his pacing. "A patriot, from his file."
"A patriot perhaps. The leader of what amounts to a private army, an armed military force literally next to the Gaza border wall."
"Sounds like a good place for an army to me."
"The government is less than sanguine about troops it does not control, particularly in such a sensitive area."
The policeman snorted. "You mean someone not afraid to stand up to a bunch of fanatical murderers of women and children, someone who doesn't piss their pants for fear the United Nations might speak ill of them? If he's such a threat, why is he allowed to continue?"
"You are aware of the political situation, the narrow coalition by which the prime minister governs. Any action against a right-wing group would precipitate every Arab-hating Jew in the country screaming for the prime minister's head. Or worse, joining this man Zwelk's cause."
"And this is a bad thing because...?"
The man in the suit paused a second, perhaps the indecision of whether the conversation was worth continuing. "The man is an extreme Zionist, a frequent embarrassment to Israel's stance of moderation on the Palestinian question. He was bitterly opposed to the surrender of the occupied territories and the Lebanese cease-fire...."
"Last time I looked, this country allowed freedom of expression."
The other man continued as though he had not heard. "He's suspected in a number of preemptive raids against Palestinian communities, raids that provoked rocket attacks against our citizens."
"Since when did those people need provoking?"
The man in the suit sighed. "Not every rocket launched into an Israeli town, not every suicide bombing is without cause. You've been a policeman long enough to know the news doesn't always tell the whole story."
"And you've been with the government long enough to know it's very careful what it tells the news."
The man in the suit didn't disagree with the observation but continued. "From what I understand, Annueliwitz and Reilly are reconnoitering Zwelk's kibbutz right now."
Zaltov crossed his arms over his chest, body language that didn't exactly signal acceptance. "So, you want me to arrest Reilly the minute he enters the kibbutz and have a look around while I'm there, use the arrest as an excuse to snoop."