Dark Waters (19 page)

I
t took Jordan close to five minutes to reach the bus station. She had called Daugherty en route and brought him up to speed. He informed her that until a new foreign police liaison was assigned, he was ordering all DSS operations and investigations to be stopped. He assured her that the Marines would provide protection for the judge and Lucy until arrangements could be made for a new safe house location. She was to report to his office immediately upon her return.

She asked what would happen to Weizman’s body. Daugherty didn’t know.

By the time Jordan reached the car, only Ganani remained, seated in the driver’s seat.

“Lotner showed up a few minutes ago,” Ganani said as Jordan climbed into the passenger seat. “He had been trapped on the other side of the square after the shooting. He has taken Taylor and Petrenko and headed for the three hundred checkpoint.”

Jordan hoped they would beat the BOLO for “persons of interest” that was likely already issued. “How was he doing?”

“Lotner?” Ganani looked over. “He was angry, but he was capable of doing his job.”

Jordan hit the com transmitter one more time. “Let us know when Lotner crosses the border.”

The silence stretched as they waited for confirmation. The heat inside the car pressed down. Even Ganani looked wilted. Jordan rolled down the window and instantly regretted doing so. The smell of bus exhaust and the noise from the busy terminal assaulted her senses.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“I go after the kidnappers.” Ganani turned the key and fired up the vehicle.

“I meant in regards to Noah Weizman’s body and what happened in the square.” Jordan still entertained the theory that the detective was a possible target. She watched Ganani’s reactions closely. The Shin Bet agent hadn’t divulged her location during the rescue. For all Jordan knew, Ganani had been at the other end of the gun.

“Brodsky has arranged for an IDF patrol to collect the body, and he’s done his best to shut down all communication avenues.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning the officials won’t be giving out any details. We can’t stop the underground chatter, but we can slow down the dissemination of information.” Ganani reached over and flipped on the air conditioning.

When the cool air hit her face, Jordan rolled up her window. The changes at the embassy would be more direct.

The com crackled and Lotner’s voice signaled an end to the mission. “We’ve cleared the checkpoint. I will drop my passengers off at the Dizengoff Apartments in approximately forty minutes.”

The com went dead and Jordan pulled the receiver from her ear. “What’s next here?”

“You take the bus and go back,” Ganani said.

“No. I’m staying with you.”

“Somehow I knew you would say that.” Ganani shoved her smartphone into Jordan’s hands. “Then be useful. Navigate. The green dot on the screen is where the kidnappers are.”

Jordan blew up the map on the screen to find the best route connecting them to the road the two men had taken—the white route to Sheikh Sa’ad.

“It’s not much of a road.”

Ganani pointed to a yellow roadway marked on the map. “We will take the road toward Ubeidiya. The road to Sheikh Sa’ad branches off here. We will go past and make a quick stop in Bayt Sahur before doubling back.”

Jordan’s thoughts were still back at the square. “Who do you think was shooting?”

“Are you wondering if it was me?”

“The thought crossed my mind, but I couldn’t figure out a motive.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” Ganani said, pulling the car into traffic. “I went to get in front of those involved in the hostage exchange, just in case they didn’t release Dr. Petrenko and tried to escape. Maybe one of the other men came with them, and killing her was part of the plan.”

Jordan didn’t buy the idea. The kidnappers wouldn’t have. “Turn here.”

She concentrated on navigating until they hit the outskirts of Bethlehem. There the road opened up, making conversation more possible.

“What I can’t figure out is who would want both Alena and Weizman dead,” Jordan said. “Who gains from both deaths?”

“Why are you so sure that it wasn’t a coincidence?”

Jordan detailed the cluster of shots aimed at Alena and the single shot that had dropped the detective. If she knew secrets about Ilya Brodsky, secrets like the ones she knew about Jordan’s father, Brodsky might have wanted her dead. But what did he gain by facilitating Weizman’s execution?

“Are you paying attention?” Ganani asked, slowing as she approached a curvy set of highways. “We are near where the road to Sheikh Sa’ad turns off.”

Jordan watched for the road, marked by a faint, dashed, white line on the map. It was the only one between where they were and where they were headed. When they passed, it looked like a sheep trail at best. “We’re going to need a different car.”

“That’s why we’re stopping in the next town. I have already made arrangements.”

Ganani must have made them before leaving Tel Aviv, thought Jordan, knowing all along that this was how it would end.

A few meters later, at the edge of Bayt Sahur, Ganani swung left into a small, middle-class neighborhood. She swerved around a group of young boys playing soccer in the street. Jordan braced against the door, holding herself in her seat.

One of the boys cursed, driving the ball into the passenger-side door. Ganani glared into the rearview mirror and cursed back.

Jordan grinned. “It might be the Israeli license plate or the fact you’re a woman driving. Or maybe it’s because you’re a scary driver.”

Ganani refused the bait. “Do you still have your
hijab
?”

Jordan pointed to the cloth knotted around her waist.

“Put it on, and take off the sticky T-shirt.”

Jordan looked down at her tourist-shop acquisition. “I think you’re looking for the word ‘tacky.’”

“Whatever.” Ganani slowed as she reached a town center where the traffic grew heavy. Skirting the main square, she turned off to the east and wound slowly through one of the neighborhoods. “Where we’re going, it would be wise for us to appear Palestinian.”

“We might need different license plates.”

Ganani glared. Jordan wasn’t going to argue. She gestured at her shirt. “I left your T-shirt in the market. This is all I have.”

“You owe me a shirt.” Ganani reached into the back seat, grabbed another black top off of the seat and pitched it at Jordan. She wriggled out of the tourist tee, and pulled on the new top.

“Explain something to me, will you, Ganani?” Jordan said. “Why are two women, traveling alone, taking the risk of driving cross-country through the desert? Why not just go through the checkpoints? We could have been in Sheikh Sa’ad by now, waiting to intercept them when they arrive.”

“What makes you think they would show themselves if we’d done that? The Palestinians are crafty people. They will have someone watching the gate. It’s my hope they don’t have someone watching the road.”

“What happens after we find them?” No matter how well trained, the two of them would have difficulty staging an attack in the middle of a known terrorist hotspot.

“We’ll follow them back to whoever they’re working for.”

“Abdul Aleem Zuabi,” Jordan said.

“That’s what I believe.”

“And what if they don’t lead us to where you want to go?”

“We may be forced to neutralize them.”

Ganani’s matter-of-factness and her euphemism for murder soured Jordan’s already tepid enthusiasm for this venture. Wadding up the tourist tee, she tossed it onto the floor in the back and covered her hair with the
hijab
. “Have you ever had the feeling that something was off, Ganani? Because that’s the feeling I have right now. We’re missing something.”

“Like what?”

“We think we know what the Palestinians plan to do with the information Cline provided, but are we sure? And what about what Najm Tibi had for Cline?”

“Brodsky has that on my to-do list.”

Jordan figured that if the two of them were going to work together, it was time to come clean. She could only guess how the Shin Bet agent might react. Ganani was being manipulated by someone who wasn’t who he presented himself to be. Like Jordan, she followed orders. Unlike Jordan, she didn’t do things by the book. She flitted along the edges of right and wrong. Maybe she already knew.

“You need to know something about Ilya Brodsky.”

Ganani looked over.

“He’s altered his history.”

Ganani expression registered confusion. “What are you saying?”

Jordan chose her words carefully. “I met him years ago, when I was a child. I’m certain he worked for the Russian government.”

She wondered when her suspicions had become fact in her mind. Perhaps with Alena’s revelations? She had no real proof. Ganani jerked the wheel and the car swerved. Jordan planted one hand on the dashboard.

“It’s the truth. If Brodsky thought Alena Petrenko could identify him, he would have had no choice but to eliminate her.”

Ganani appeared unfazed. “If what you say is true, then why are you still alive? Wouldn’t he want you dead, too?”

“I don’t think he recognized me. Twenty years makes a difference. I was six then. I’ve changed. He looks the same, just older.”

Ganani came up on a curve too fast. She hit the brakes. The car skidded around the corner. Jordan stomped on the passenger floorboards and grabbed for the chicken bar.

“Maybe you should slow down.”

“I’ve got this,” Ganani said, but she accelerated less through the flat.

“Assume that I’m right. If Brodsky wanted the doctor dead, could his reach have extended to Bethlehem?”

Ganani spoke after a moment. “Yes.”

“I can tell you doubt my theory.”

“Sometimes the things we come to believe distort our memory.”

Jordan tipped her head. “And sometimes they dictate our actions.”

Ganani changed gears and floored the accelerator. Her body language said she’d sustained a direct hit. Her words pushed them back to the operation at hand.

“For now, we must focus our attention on the mission.”

“And just hope we’re not being played.” Jordan pulled down the visor and used the mirror to finish tucking her hair up into the
hijab
before turning her attention to the roads. In most American cities, the streets operated on a grid system. In Israel, the streets created ribbons of cracked asphalt that wound snake-like through crowded neighborhoods and barren desert. Where the roads intersected, they often changed names going from east to west or north to south. It took concentration to navigate.

After several blocks, Ganani turned down a road with four- and five-story apartment buildings, their roofs dotted with satellite dishes. Three blocks later, the scene changed. A makeshift camp spread across a barren plot of land the size of a football field covered with lean-tos constructed of plywood walls, white tarps, and corrugated metal roofs. It was there that Ganani pulled over and parked, leaving Jordan sitting alone in the car—an expensive Volvo—smack-dab in the heart of enemy territory.

G
anani was hurrying up the walk toward the contact’s residence when her phone vibrated. She glanced at the caller ID. Brodsky’s number flashed on the screen. She ignored the call. The idea that he might be playing her didn’t sit well, but she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Over the past four years, how many people had she killed on his command? Ten? Twenty?

Stripping off her sunglasses, Ganani pinched the bridge of her nose. Three days ago she had attempted to facilitate Steven Cline’s trade of U.S. classified information on Brodsky’s orders. He believed Cline to be working with a group of Palestinian terrorists, a cell Shabak needed to dismantle to protect the State of Israel. Now, with an Israeli police detective dead, Ganani wondered whether or not anything Brodsky told her was true.

Her phone vibrated again. She had to answer. She wanted to pick up and demand the truth. Was Jordan’s information accurate? If so, why was Brodsky in Israel, and whose interests did he have at heart? But challenging him would not bring answers. It would only put her job, and possibly her life, in jeopardy.

Ganani answered her phone.
“Shalom.”

“At last. Update your status. Tell me, where are you now?”

She sensed he already knew, but how much information had he been given? If what Jordan told her was true, Brodsky had just
ordered the attempted assassination of Alena Petrenko and possibly the murder of Noah Weizman. If so, his mole would have reported by now.

“Judge Taylor is on his way back to Tel Aviv with Alena Petrenko and the Israeli detective, Gidon Lotner.”

“Are you in pursuit of the terrorists?”

“Yes.”

“Are you traveling alone?”

She wanted to avoid speaking of Jordan. If the colonel was who the DSS agent thought, it was only a matter of time before he identified her, and there was no telling what he would do with that information. “No.”

“Is it the woman from the U.S. embassy?” The colonel had put two and two together, or he’d been informed.

“Yes.”

“You must not be swayed by the American, Batya. Your mission is to dispose of the terrorist threat. It’s imperative you make that happen.” He paused, and Ganani felt the weight of his words. “Americans tend to be soft. You cannot let this woman stop you from fulfilling your duty. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

She understood. If Jordan got in the way, he wanted her eliminated.

“Do you hear me, Batya?”

“It may not be that easy.”

“You’ll find a way,
krolik
.”

She felt the bile worming its way up her throat. “Yes, Colonel Brodsky. I understand.”

J
ordan leaned on the car. When Ganani materialized around the side of the building, she pushed to her feet. “That was quick.”

“I told you to wait in the car.”

“The heat drove me onto the sidewalk. That and the spectators.” A group of young teenage boys had gathered on the corner.

Ganani pointed to the car. “Lock it.”

Jordan punched the button on the key fob and tossed her the keys. “Where’s the new ride?”

“This way.” Ganani headed along a cracked sidewalk sprouting weeds. Jordan felt dozens of eyes on them, but other than the soccer boys, no one appeared to be watching. Rows of windows shone black in the sun.

“What are we looking for?”

“That.” Ganani pointed at the scarred shell of a Toyota 4Runner. “He made me promise to take good care of it. It’s his only transportation.”

Jordan eyed the rust on the bumper and the dents in the fenders and stifled a laugh. Ganani opened the driver’s side door and then reached across to unlock the passenger side.

“He’ll be lucky if you never trade back,” Jordan said, climbing up into the passenger seat and reading the odometer: 350K-plus
kilometers. There was no backseat, just rusted floorboards, and a jagged crack marred the windshield.

Ganani slotted the key into the ignition and ground the Toyota into gear. She adjusted the rearview mirror, pulled away from the curb, and backtracked through the neighborhood.

“How conspicuous are we going to be, driving this vehicle on the road to Sheikh Sa’ad?”

“We will be noticed, but it’s not unusual for a Muslim woman to drive in the West Bank. Thankfully, we are not going to Gaza.”

Ganani turned the car west on the main road. A few minutes later, Jordan spotted the turn. A half a kilometer ahead, a road fashioned out of two gravel ruts cut away from the main highway and slithered into the Judean wilderness.

The western part of the region was known as the Khirbat az Zu’rurah. In the distance, small hills rose like miniature sand dunes. Plumes of dust spiraled upward along the horizon, marking the travel of people or vehicles kicking up dirt as they moved along. Jordan looked to see if they had enough gas. The only establishment between where they were and Sheikh Sa’ad was Mar Saba, a monastery that dated to 483 AD. After that, they would hit the Nahal Darga, the largest wadi in the northern Judean Desert, though it was well past the season when water flowed through it.

“It’s twenty kilometers to Sheikh Sa’ad,” Ganani said.

“How long do you figure it will take us to drive? Four hours?”

Ganani grinned. “I’ll get us there in half the time.” The car jounced, yanking the wheel from her hands. “Maybe a little bit more.”

Jordan glanced up at the sky. No clouds. That meant no rain to muddy the track and no respite from the sun. The grass and earth showed variation in colors of brown, darker shades reaching into the shadows of higher ground. She checked for service on her cell phone. No bars. It was an ideal spot for someone
to disappear. She checked the transmitter beacon on Ganani’s phone. No green dot.

“We’ve lost them.” Jordan held up the screen.

“We know where they’re headed.”

They stuck to the main road, ignoring several faint four-wheel-drive tracks that headed off into the desert. The blue dome of Mar Saba rose in the distance. Up ahead, a small group of Bedouins crowded the side of the road. Several women trudged along on the edge of the road, the hems of their dark blue
thobes
dragging in the dirt. One carried a child. The men rode camels and led the entourage. They glared at the car as it passed, and Jordan dropped her gaze to the floorboards. No point in antagonizing the locals.

A few kilometers ahead, they reached the edge of the Nahal Darga. The road disappeared off the edge of a steep incline, and Ganani stopped.

“It looks steep.” Jordan opened the passenger’s side door and got out. The ground was cracked from heat, and the earth crumbled and broke away at the edge of the embankment. The road angled sharply across the steep incline, straightening out at the bottom of the dry riverbed before climbing out the other side.

“It looks drivable,” Ganani said.

Jordan shielded her eyes and squinted toward the horizon. In the distance, a car headed away and kicked up dust.

“That car made it,” Ganani said.

Side-slipping the car into the wadi, both Ganani and Jordan leaned in toward the bank, as if the redistribution of weight would anchor their car to the hillside. Reaching the bottom, they bounced through the dry bed and spun their way up the other side, picking up speed once they were back on flat ground. They passed a few more travelers winding along the road, but most were lost in their own journeys and showed little interest in them.

They reached the outskirts of Sheikh Sa’ad as the sun dipped toward the horizon. Built on a hillside, the town was a morass of concrete homes and apartment buildings set along winding dirt roads and home to approximately fifteen hundred men, women, and children—half of them Israeli Arab citizens holding blue cards, half of them Palestinians, and nearly all of them descended from one of five Bedouin families. Narrow streets with SUVs parked on either side made navigation difficult.

Turning the 4Runner up the first street she came to, Ganani ground the stick into low gear and crawled the vehicle toward the top of the hill.

“We need to be watchful,” she said. “The men we hunt are not our only enemies here.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Ganani braked for a group of grade school children crossing the street. “This area is known for its terrorist factions. That is the reason for the placement of the fence.”

As the Toyota inched forward, Jordan studied the streets and alleyways. The town reminded her of most communities in the late afternoon. Children played outside in the streets while women prepared dinner behind half-opened windows. From the west, the sun cast a warm, inviting light onto concrete sidewalks and packed earth.

“It looks so peaceful.”

Ganani looked at Jordan as if she were a child in need of edification. “There are things that go on here the guidebooks don’t tell you.”

*

Several false starts and four streets later, Jordan pinpointed the signal inside a three-story concrete building that appeared to be broken into several apartments. It was decided that Ganani would
stay with the car while Jordan cased the building. Ganani would circle around and park on the next block with a view of the front.

Jordan got out and walked steadily toward the structure. She could hear voices through the open windows. A child squealed. A woman laughed. Climbing the stoop, she opened the front door and conducted a quick recon of the foyer, turning up twelve mailboxes.

“
Amkin ana asa’idk?
” May I help you?

Jordan turned around to find a woman standing in the doorway. She wore a Western suit and a brightly colored
hijab
and carried a briefcase. In her arms, she cradled a stack of papers with childlike writing. A teacher?

“I am looking for my cousin,” Jordan said. “We call him Al-Ta’boul.” The stocky one. “For all I know, he may be skinny by now. I haven’t seen him in years.” She described the leader of the kidnappers to the woman, hoping it would be enough and that she wouldn’t ask for his real name.

The woman smiled and bobbed her head. “Yes, I know him. Basim. He lives on the main floor, in the back. Apartment four.”

“
Shukran
.” Thank you. Jordan dipped her head.

“
Afwan
.”

Jordan moved down the hallway in the direction the woman had pointed. The corridor was narrow and dim. Two lights hanging from the ceiling cast deep shadows into the corners. Four doors lined either side of the hallway. On the back wall, a fifth door was armed with an emergency alarm. Jordan assumed it led outside, but the alarm meant that opening the door was out of the question. She and Ganani would be forced to enter from the front or through a window.

Jordan listened until the woman in the entryway moved, her footsteps receding as she climbed the stairs, and then Jordan turned back, noticing a camera in the corner of the hallway. There
was another in the entryway beside the front door. Instinctively, Jordan reached up and felt the edges of the
hijab
, glad she had taken care to tuck in every stray curl. Whoever watched the tapes would only see a woman dressed in black.

By the time she exited the building, the sun had dropped low on the horizon. Cars lined both sides of the hard-packed dirt road. Most were covered in thick layers of dust, signaling they hadn’t been driven in quite some time. The street had emptied, the children called inside. Timing was of the essence, and the time was now. For all they knew, the men could already have transmitted the information from the USB drive to Zuabi. Their chances of finding out what Cline had been after were dwindling. That was the whole reason she was here. The whole reason she had put her career on the line to come on this mission.

Jordan stayed in the shadows and performed a quick recon of the perimeter. Windows cut into the structure on all three levels—large in the main living areas, smaller in the bedrooms and bathrooms. Moving cautiously past the windows, Jordan worked her way around to the back of the building. When she reached the quadrant for apartment four, she stopped. The back window was dark, but she pressed close, listening for voices.

Draped with dark curtains, the window was cracked one inch. Someone lay on a bed shoved against the far wall. She thought she heard arguing from the front room. Three voices. There had been four men involved in the attack at Petrenko’s office. Two of them had been in Manger Square.

Hoping for a better vantage point, she moved around the corner and surprised a young boy poking a stick in a hole in the narrow, unplanted flowerbed that ran the length of the building. Time to abort the recon.

She brushed past the child, sensing him watching as she crossed the street and headed toward the 4Runner. Rather than
draw attention to the car, she walked past, turned at the next corner, and looked back. The boy was gone.

Ganani picked her up in the next block.

“Did you see the boy?” Jordan asked, climbing into the vehicle. “He looked about nine or ten.”

“I saw him. He went inside the apartment building.”

“Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He saw me come from behind the building.”

Ganani drove around the block and parked where they had a view of the building and both of the cross streets. She stared through the windshield, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, with a determined, hard line to her mouth. Finally, Ganani reached for the door handle.

“Let’s go,” she said. “If he tells someone and we don’t move quickly, the mission is over.”

Jordan’s hand shot out and she grabbed Ganani’s sleeve. “Wait! What’s the plan?”

“To stop the boy from giving us away.”

“Let’s stay in the car and watch for a moment. If he told someone, we’ll know soon enough. They’ll come looking. Meanwhile, how do you propose we get into the apartment?”

Ganani jerked her arm away but stayed in the car. “What did you learn inside?”

Jordan recounted her conversation with the woman in the entryway, explained the layout, and told her about the cameras and about the arguing she had heard while circling the building.

“The only way in besides the front door is through a window in the back,” Jordan said. “It’s open a crack. We might be able to force it open enough to climb in through there. If necessary, we can use the emergency exit as an escape.”

“Good. Here’s what we’ll do. You go through the front and knock on the door to apartment four. Say you are looking for your
cousin. I will climb through the back window and we will have them trapped in between.”

“What happens if they resist?”

“Then we will shoot them.”

“That’s apt to draw some unwanted attention.”

“That would be unfortunate.” Ganani reached for the door handle again.

Jordan glanced at her watch. “Let’s give it ten more minutes.”

“By then, the sun will have set and we will be without light.”

“Exactly. It’s our best window of opportunity. At the call to evening prayers, many of the residents will go to the mosque. There will be less chance of interference, less chance of discovery. If our targets go, it gives us an opportunity to get inside and be waiting when they return. If they don’t, it gives us an emptier building to operate in.”

Ganani slumped back in her seat. “I should have thought of it myself.”

Time dragged for the next ten minutes. Then, exactly on schedule, the
muezzin
’s voice echoed across Sheikh Sa’ad. “Hasten to prayer. Hasten to prayer.”

Immediately, the front doors of the buildings opened and people poured into the streets. Four families exited the apartment building where the terrorists were holed up, including the boy who spotted her.

“That’s the boy,” Jordan said. “The woman beside him is the one I spoke with in the hall.”

Sliding down in their seats, Jordan and Ganani waited for the streets to empty. Two minutes after the start of
Maghrib
prayers, Jordan opened the passenger’s side door. Ganani joined her on the sidewalk.

“I’ll tap three times on the emergency exit door,” Ganani said. “After that, I will climb through the window. That will be your signal to knock.”

Jordan nodded, and Ganani moved away up the sidewalk. Jordan watched her make for the back of the building and then counted to ten and crossed the street. Drawing near to the front of the building, she could hear voices raised in prayer through open windows. Not everyone had gone to the mosque. She hadn’t seen either man from the square come out. She wasn’t sure she would have recognized the other two. She hadn’t gotten a good look at any of them. That meant they had to assume there were still four men inside apartment four.

Climbing the steps to the apartment building, Jordan took stock of the street. There was no sign of anyone watching. The light had faded, leaving the city drenched in shades of gray. The low rumble of praying voices stirred the air.