6 - The Eye of the Virgin: Ike Schwartz Mystery 6 (20 page)

Chapter Forty-one

Ike stopped at a Walmart on the highway outside of town and purchased a disposable cell phone. He pulled over to the end of the parking lot next to a mammoth RV and called Shmuel Gold.

“
?”

“Yes, hello, I need to speak to Shmuel, please.”

“Is asleep. Sorry, call back later,”

“Tell him it’s Isaac Schwartz from the United States. Tell him it’s urgent. Tell him it’s about the icon and the things we discussed earlier. Tell him it’s important.”

“Wait a minute.” Ike could hear raised voices in the background. Shmuel came on the phone.

“So, you weren’t fooled. I told them you wouldn’t be. So, what is so urgent I need to hear from you in the middle of the night?” Ike heard the distinctive sound of a match being struck and then Shmuel sucking on his pipe stem. He remembered the Turkish blend Shmuel favored and reflexively cleared his throat.

“A man going by the name of Avi Kolb was gunned down in Washington a few days ago. You remember? We had a chat about him with your friend from the Mossad, or was it SHABAK. It doesn’t matter. I need to know if one of your people did it.”

“Isaac, Isaac, you are on the phone to Shmuel. How can I answer such a question?”

“It’s an untraceable phone operating on a bandwidth not assigned to me or the police. If someone is monitoring my calls it will take them several minutes to find me, assuming they were looking. Talk to me.”

Shmuel cleared his throat. “My friend, if I don’t know what happened, I can’t tell you anything. As far as I know, this Avi Kolb was not terminated by any of our people.”

“Would you know if he was?”

“I would know in the way you know these things when certain people talk, you understand. No one says this or that, but you know. So, not one of ours.”

“My old colleagues over in Langley, Virginia, will come after your people if they did, and that would not be good for our countries, now would it? That’s why I asked. Heads up either way.”

“Isaac, I can only say this. This man who called himself Avi Kolb was not one of ours, but he pretended to be to some contractors we engaged, you see, but that is all.”

“Contractors hired to intercept an icon with damaging information about the
USS Liberty
on a microchip, before the intended recipients could get their hands on it. I figured that part out. I don’t know why yet, but that will come. What I can’t figure is why did you think you had to go covert over here? Why not tip the FBI or the CIA and let them pick up the chip? It’s in no one’s interest for those documents to surface.”

“They were fakes.”

“So, you say. I don’t know, and at the remove of nearly fifty years, I don’t care. But now one of our agents is dead, two of your guys, hired muscle or not, are being sought for a murder, and there will be hell to pay if we can’t defuse this thing. Shmuel, talk to me. I’m running out of safe minutes on this phone.”

“Okay, but we never talked, yes? Our boys did not shoot the Kolb person. The word is that it was done by Jihadists—Shiites, Iranians, Jihadists anyway, but I am not convinced of that, yes? What would be the point? They are in your country in deep cover. The last thing they need is for someone looking for them, at least not for the killing of one person, CIA man or not. A thousand CIA men, maybe, they would do, but not one, I don’t think. They are crazy but not that crazy, not on US territory. You look for someone else.”

“If not your people and not Jihadists, that only leaves one choice and I don’t like it.”

“It is an unfortunate business we play at, Isaac. We both know that. If you need some Arab names to check with, it will take longer than we have right now, and I’m not sure I could get them anyway.”

“I don’t need names; the CIA does. They will get them if they want them. I only want to find those contractors of yours and put them out of business. Do your people understand what this little intervention has produced?”

“It looked like a risk we should take. In retrospect…? I think you should be more interested in where the documents are going, don’t you? Why are they still after it? There are copies, I think, and there is always tomorrow. Patient men would wait, wouldn’t they?”

“Or they’ve been turned.”

“An interesting thought, Isaac. It had not occurred to me.”

“You might pass it along to the folks back in Jerusalem. And now you will go after them and the originals?”

“Of course.”

“Even if they are, as you say, fakes?”

“Isaac…”

“Very well, I’m for the men who killed the messenger. You won’t try to protect them?”

“We contracted this business out for a reason.”

The line clicked off. Ike pried open the back of the phone and removed its memory chip. Then he stepped out of his car, positioned the phone under the back wheel and, to the wonderment of the owner of the RV who’d that instant stepped out for air, drove over it three times. He retrieved the wreckage and carried it to a nearby trash receptacle and dropped it in. The chip he would toss into some newly-laid wet cement on a sidewalk repair job a block from his office.

***

“We thought we picked up some phone chatter from near the area you wanted us to monitor, Mr. Garland.”

Charlie banged his fist on the desk top in frustration. “What did you hear?”

“Not much. One man, we assume it is your person of interest said, ‘I’m for the men who killed the messenger. You won’t try to protect them?’ And the other voice, we think it was an overseas call, said, ‘We contracted this business out for a reason.’”

“That’s it? Where overseas?”

“Best guess, Israel.”

“Crap. That tears it. We’re going to have to move in. My friend, the sheriff, is playing loose cannon again.”

***

Twilight. Frank Sutherlin and Amos Pettigrew eased their unmarked car, headlights out, down the street toward Dakis’ house. They watched and carefully noted the time he left to go to the movie in Roanoke. They’d been told that was his plan. So, he was out of the way. Once he’d cleared out, they repositioned the car to give them a clearer view of both the rear and front of the house. The thieves could come from any direction. Best guess would be through the back door, although they knew Dakis had left the phony icon in the front of the house in plain sight and an easy access for a grab and run. Further down the block a second cruiser lurked in the shadows, ready to move in as soon as they had contact. Nothing to do now but wait.

“What’s that?” Amos pointed down the street.

Frank had been checking the settings on his radio, looked up. “Where?”

“I could swear I saw a vehicle with its headlights off, turn the corner and park. There…over there.”

Frank could barely make out the outlines of a large SUV parked fifty yards further down the street. “That must be them.” He called the second cruiser. “We have company. Get ready.”

At that moment a third car turned the corner, and with its lights on drove slowly down the street toward them. As it passed the parked SUV, Frank noted that there didn’t seem to be anyone in the front seat.

“Down,” he rasped to Amos and the two men scrunched low in the seats. When the car passed they straightened. “Where is it?”

“Turned the corner. Must be a neighbor.”

“Or a new wrinkle. Keep your eye on that SUV. I need to talk to Ike.”

Chapter Forty-two

Through her rear view mirror Lorraine saw Louis exit his car, glance up and down the street, and approach her car along the sidewalk. She lit a cigarette and coughed. She hadn’t smoked in three years, but she’d found a pack of Franco’s Melachrinos in the glove box and lit one up. The acrid smoke forced her to lower her window. Louis opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat.

“When did you start smoking again?” He rolled down the other window to let the smoke out. “What is that? It smells like you’re smoking rope.”

“Just now. I found these in the car. They were…left in here and I thought one might calm me.” She stubbed out the cigarette and turned to face him. “What are we doing, Louis? This is lunacy. We should call the police.” She reached for her cell phone.

“There’s no need. By now they will have staked out the house. If I’m right, they will wait for the people who tried to steal the icon to try again. That is, they will wait until they come out of the house with it.”

A car turned the corner in front of them, pulled to the curb, and turned off its headlights.

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know, Lorraine, I barely know my neighbors next door, much less the ones on this block.”

“I don’t like this. We could be in real trouble. Suppose they have guns?”

Louis pulled the .25 caliber pistol from his jacket pocket. “Suppose they do. So do we, and we will have the drop on them.”

“You said the police have staked out the house. How will we get in without being seen? Won’t they, like, think we’re the ones breaking in?”

“That’s the good part. There’s a stairwell to the basement on the north side that is almost completely hidden. You have to know it’s there. The hedge down the side of the house comes within a few feet of it. We will stay on the other side of the hedge out of sight up to the point where the stairs are, push through real fast, drop into the stairwell, and go in through the basement. I worked the door free this afternoon and oiled the hinges. The police will be watching the back and front. They’ll never see us. Then we wait for the bastards to arrive.”

It was a longish speech but Louis spoke so rapidly and with such passion that Lorraine could only nod her agreement.

“You’re sure this will work? I’m scared, Louis. No, this is crazy.”

“If we want to get the people who killed your…friend, then we have to.”

“My friend? You mean Franco, or whoever he was. My God, I didn’t even know him well enough to know his name. I didn’t know him at all. What was I thinking?” She stared straight ahead, unblinking. “But what’s in it for you, Louis?”

A good question. Why was he doing this? He must have an answer. Was he angry and frustrated? Did he think forcing her to face these men would make it right again? But still, he must have his doubts. She was right. It was crazy. He didn’t care.

“Because I want to do something about the people who ruined my life. That icon and its secret are at the heart of this charade and I want my…my pound of flesh.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that as long as you remember that Shylock never got it.”

“What? Shylock never got what?”

“His pound of flesh. It’s from the
Merchant of Venice,
don’t you remember? Shylock loans the money to the guy and if he doesn’t pay, Shylock gets a pound of flesh. Then Portia…
the quality of mercy…
never mind. I’m going to hate myself in the morning, but if we’re going to do this thing we need to do it now.”

***

“There were cars parked on the street when we drove by. They could be cops.”

“Of course there are cops. So what? You didn’t think they were going to let this go, did you? So, you have your gun with the noise suppressor. I have mine. We have a shotgun. What kind of hick police department will stand up to that?”

“They’ll be watching the back and front.”

“Yes, they will but there is another way in. Yesterday I went through the neighborhood in a water-meter reader’s uniform. There’s a stairwell on the side of the house very close to that hedge. All we have to do is slide along that hedge, you know, keep in the shadows, and go into the basement and up the stairs. We grab the icon and leave the same way. The cops will still be there in the morning wondering what happened.”

“Did someone get out of the car down the block?”

“I didn’t see. No problem. We wait five minutes and then we go.”

***

“Frank, I swear someone got out of the SUV down the street a moment before that car drove by with its headlights on. I wish we had those night vision goggles. I feel like I’m blind.”

“Stay calm, Amos. Where’d he go?”

“Not sure. When we ducked down, the headlights knocked out my night vision. Down the block? Maybe across the street.”

“Okay, no panic…Ike?” Frank had raised his boss on the phone. “We have a problem.” Frank paused. “Okay, there’s an SUV down the street that looks too big to be our anonymous burglars. Amos thinks someone got out and crossed the street to the house.”

“I didn’t say that. I said they might have done.”

Frank waved Amos off with his hand “Okay, we’ll hold until you get here. The other car with two more deputies is standing by.”

***

The man in question had, indeed, slipped across the street behind the car when he thought he could do so unseen. Now he was positioned in the shadows of a Japanese cherry tree, which he guessed was close to blooming, not that he cared, on the southern edge of the back yard.

“In position, sir,” he said and lowered his night vision goggles over his eyes. He’d only used them once before, in training down on the farm as a new CIA recruit. It wasn’t that long ago, but tonight here in the dark and on a mission that didn’t quite make sense, it seemed years. They were heavier than he remembered. “Nothing to report.”

“Hang on, they will come, they have to. Remember, we extricate them before the locals can react.”

“Roger that.”

***

“Lorraine, not so much noise. You sound like a cow in a cornfield.”

“Oh, that’s nice. And you jabbering, what’s that, crows in the cornfield?”

“I’m whispering. I didn’t mean you look like a…oh, never mind, shhhh…”

The two figures pushed through the hedge and dropped quickly into the stairwell. As Louis had promised, the door opened noiselessly on oiled hinges. Once inside he twisted on a small maglite and shined it up the stairs.

“This way.” He stepped gingerly on the first step which creaked. He didn’t remember the creaking when he’d come down earlier.

Lorraine hesitated at the foot of the stairs. “Shouldn’t we lock the door behind us?”

“Better not. We will have to use this as our escape route.”

“You think? I’m not sure. Suppose they sneak up on us?”

“Nobody else knows about this stairwell.”

“You can’t be sure.” Lorraine retreated back down the steps. “I’m locking the door.” She slid the bolt into the receiver, gave the door a tug, and climbed back up the stairs.

Louis cracked the landing door. “See, we’re off the little corridor that leads from the living room area to the kitchen. There’s the icon. I put it out where anybody could see it easily and left a night light on to make it even easier to see.”

“Not much light.”

“It’s enough. All we do now is wait. The second they come through the door to take it, we nail them.”

“Nail? Louis, you’re sounding like an action hero in a bad movie. How do you expect to nail them?”

“Shhh…”