The Black Madonna (13 page)

H
ARRY BENNETT RODE TO THE
Jordanian border in the rear of a fifties-era ambulance. Hassan had supplied the ambulance and now served as driver. Where Hassan had obtained the vehicle and his stained police uniform, Harry did not ask. The ceiling above Harry's canvas bunk was rusted through in several places. His side window was cracked. Harry was dressed in a filthy djellaba that Miriam had supplied. The bandages were wound back around much of his face. Over the bandages he wore a checked Palestinian head-kerchief. A wheelchair was jammed into the space between his bunk and Fareed's. The ambulance's air-conditioning did not work. Six jouncing hours with all the windows open to the dust and the heat had so stained his garments that their original colors were lost. Every time Harry drank from the metal bottle jangling against his bunk, all he tasted was the road.

Somewhere to the north was the new four-lane highway. Since the last intifada, however, the Israelis did not let Palestinians use the highways unless they held special passes. Highway traffic was mostly restricted to settlers and the army and tourists seeking a relatively safe glimpse of the West Bank. The Palestinians used roads that could only be described as abysmal.

The Allenby Bridge was the West Bank's only border crossing into Jordan. It stood adjacent to a military compound, where open-sided metal structures offered shade for several hundred vehicles, including an array of battle tanks. Dozens of ochre buildings baked in the heat. Prison-style watchtowers marched into the distance.

For seventy-five dollars, a professional escort shepherded individuals and their belongings from both the Israeli and the Jordanian sides. For these privileged few, the crossing took a matter of minutes. For everyone else, the ordeal lasted hours, sometimes days. Luggage and purses and even wallets were stripped away and piled onto handcarts that vanished through a separate entrance. The individual was searched and passed on to the Jordanians. Perhaps the travelers found their luggage waiting for them on the other side. Nobody who could afford the seventy-five dollars endured the free option more than once.

By the time their ambulance joined the line of trucks and overburdened cars, Fareed's last dose of pain medicine was wearing off. Harry's own aches magnified in the heat and the dust. But he was free, he was alive, and he was headed for Jordan in the company of friends. Harry did not complain.

Up ahead, a dozen or so flagpoles rose from the russet clouds that hugged the road. The flags hung limp and defeated. The border station itself was lost to the glowering day. The line of waiting vehicles was not moving. All of the engines were shut off.

The ambulance slid in behind a truck filled with bleating goats. Hassan cut the engine, slipped from the car, and stretched so hard his bones popped. Miriam swiveled in her seat and spoke to the boy lying in the bunk across from Harry. Fareed responded with a sharp intake of breath. Harry knew the sound all too well. The boy was intent on keeping the pain clenched inside. Miriam had been given syringes containing two injections by their doctor. But it was a long journey to the
hospital in Amman. If Miriam knocked him out now, the border patrol would only wake him up again.

Miriam stroked Fareed's sweaty forehead, then stepped out of the ambulance. She and Hassan crossed the road and joined a group clustered about a kebab stand. They talked for what to Harry seemed like hours. The ambulance felt like an oven set on broil. Every now and then, Fareed took a tight, whimpering breath. Harry could hear the drone of voices and the hiss of grilling meat. The goats crammed in the truck ahead of them complained. Nothing moved.

Footsteps trod back across the empty road. Miriam opened the rear doors. “I have food.”

Harry would have thought he was too hot to eat, but his stomach declared otherwise. The chunks of lamb were doused in a sauce of yogurt, dill, onions, and coriander, and wrapped in unleavened bread. Harry finished it in three seconds flat and chased it down with a Pepsi that had obviously sat in the hot sun for days. It tasted divine.

“You would like more?”

Harry handed her the empty can. “I've eaten a five-course meal in a three-star Paris restaurant. That lamb puts it to shame.”

Miriam's face was made more beautiful by her smile. “I would like to see Paris so very much.”

“Then I should try to help make that happen.”

She glanced at her son. “Inshallah.”

When Miriam returned, Hassan came with her. He handed Harry a second meal and reported, “The border is sealed. Your fault.”

Miriam said, “They are calling the Hebron bombing a terrorist attack. They are letting through a few vehicles. This way, they are not accused of shutting the border. The truck ahead of us has been here for an afternoon and a night and all of today.”

“That's not good. Can't an ambulance just drive on ahead?”

“Here, the only law is force. If we break the line, we die.” She slipped into the ambulance, fitted a straw into an open can of hot Pepsi, and held it for her son to drink. “I have plan. Please, can you pretend to have much pain?”

“No problem.” Not that it would require a whole lot of playacting.

She spoke to her son, who grimaced what Harry thought might have been a smile. Miriam patted the side of Fareed's face, then slipped again from the ambulance. Hassan grinned at Harry and said, “If no luck, I whistle.” The two walked toward the checkpoint.

Fareed tossed his sheet aside and drew up his shirt so as to reveal the bloodstained bandage. “My mother, she much smart woman.”

Harry agreed. “And brave. And you are one amazing kid.”

“You watch.” The movements and the words left him panting. “She show you amaze.”

When Miriam and Hassan returned, they were accompanied by so many men the rear doors became completely blocked. Miriam spoke to her son, who released a cry so plaintive the men at the back moaned in response. Harry stared at the rust-stained roof and panted like the goats.

Hassan shouted something in Arabic. Harry heard more footsteps scurry down either side of the vehicle. In theory, he disliked the idea of becoming that afternoon's entertainment. Especially when two men crawled inside the ambulance, spoke words that reeked of onion and garlic right into Harry's face, then lifted the edge of his bandage. The man grunted at the sight of Harry's pockmarked face. His mate patted Harry's shoulder and clambered out.

There followed what Harry could only call a loud confab. Every time the noise died away, Fareed would let go with another of his patented keens. Miriam added a fine accompaniment of her own, turning her words into wails that pierced the hubbub.

Then one of the men shouted something that was instantly
taken up by a dozen or more other voices, and two men clambered upon the ambulance's rear fender. Miriam and Hassan scurried to their seats. Hassan fired up the engine. Two more men slammed the rear doors, while others stepped onto the ambulance's running boards. Another man climbed onto the hood, unfurled his head-kerchief, and used it as a striped flag to clear the road ahead.

The ancient ambulance was not meant to carry such a load. The engine groaned. The slightest dip caused metal to scrape dangerously against metal. No one complained. Certainly not Harry.

Through the dirt-stained side window Harry saw one driver after another clamber down from their immobile vehicles and start to complain as the ambulance drove forward. Many waved pistols overhead. Perhaps the IDF considered handguns to be acceptable self-protection, especially when one was headed out of the West Bank. Harry spotted a museum-quality Colt, several Nazi-era Rugers, a Nambu, countless Berettas, and what looked like a genuine flintlock chased in silver. The men atop their ambulance shouted back. The guy on the front fender unholstered a massive .357 and waved it overhead. The ambulance crawled forward.

All in all, it made for an interesting trip.

The IDF soldiers were out in force by the time they arrived at the border. As they approached the first of the concrete barriers, their guards slipped down, patted the ambulance's side and hood, slammed the rear doors, called back to Miriam's thanks, and vanished in the dust.

The snake-like approach to the checkpoint drew them through three tight curves, each of which brought them face-to-face with the gaping maw of a machine gun. At the final approach, Miriam turned to Harry, real fear showing on her face. “What do I say?”

It did no harm to repeat the instructions Emma had left on the lady's phone. “Dial the number my friend left for you. Tell
whoever answers that we've arrived. Give the phone to the guard.”

Miriam held her phone in a two-fisted clench. “You trust this friend so much?”

“With my life.”

She did not move. “With the life of my son also?”

“Dial the number.”

T
HE COCKPIT OF RAPHAEL DANTON'S
jet was decked out like an elegant yacht, with cream leather seats and burled-walnut decking. The dials were high-tech electronic readouts framed in sterling silver. The plane did not take off so much as launch. One moment they were on the ground and Danton was talking a pro's talk into the mike, and the next they were leveling out at thirty thousand feet.

Danton flew from the left-hand seat. Storm sat in the copilot's seat and ogled the Spanish coastline and the sunlit sea. The jet was minuscule. Storm had crouched to make it down the central aisle. The cockpit was a bulbous dome with oversized windows. Raphael handed her a pair of aviator glasses against the glare. The view was spectacular. For once, Storm was comfortable with the man's silent reserve. It meant she could give herself fully to enjoying the view.

When they leveled off, she slipped from her seat and opened the accordion curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin's eight seats. Emma was stretched out across two seats, defeated by exhaustion and relief. When Storm returned to the cockpit, Danton's jaw muscles were working overtime.

Storm settled back into her seat and told him everything. As
she talked, Raphael Danton switched on the autopilot. An electronic button eased his seat back from the controls, and he swiveled around so he almost faced her. The engines formed a rumbling backdrop to Storm's unfolding drama. Danton's sunglasses kept his expression hidden. But at least the tension in his jawline gradually eased.

When she was done, he rose from his seat, stepped to the mini-galley tucked between the cockpit and the cabin, and asked, “Will you take coffee?”

“Please.”

“I believe that is the first time you have ever used that word in my company.”

“Don't get used to it.”

The mug he placed in the sterling holder was chased in gold. “You astonish me.”

“Yeah, well, if it's any consolation, I shock myself almost every day.”

Raphael slipped back into the pilot's seat. “Are you not the least bit concerned about my power to crush your career and your firm?”

“Don't talk silliness, Raphael.”

The aviator sunglasses might as well have rested on a statue. “What did you say?”

“Of course I'm scared. We're riding into the unknown to rescue a friend I thought dead. My company's survival rests on a knife's edge. My fate is in the hands of some mystery buyer with more money than sense. You're paying me a small fortune to hunt down a clock that can't possibly exist. I'm terrified.”

Raphael said quietly, “No one has called me silly since my wife died.”

At that moment, Storm was too hot to express any form of polite sympathy. So she made do with, “I didn't know you were married.”

“I assume that means your slumbering friend prepared a dossier on me.”

Storm had no answer except to sip from her mug. “This is good coffee.”

“What dirty little secrets did that woman manage to dig up?”

“Her name is Emma Webb.” For some reason, the sharp edge to Storm's voice caused Raphael to smile. She asked, “What's so funny?”

When he replied, the customary coldness was gone from his voice. “What did Agent Webb tell you?”

“Your father won the Nobel Prize. You were in the Swiss army, then you became a big-game hunter in Africa. And then you went over to the dark side.”

“He is my stepfather.” Raphael toyed with the rim of his mug. “Other than that, everything she told you is correct.”

So much rode on the whim of this man, it was hard to set aside her fear and see him clearly. But he held such an air of sorrow about him, she managed to say, “I'm sorry about the loss of your wife, Raphael.”

“She was French. We met in Zaire. She was with the United Nations. I lost her in the rebellion.” He continued to address his words to the mug in his hands. “She was four months pregnant with our son.”

Suddenly the man's cold facade made perfect sense. “And then you retreated into your cave of dark deeds.”