Dark Waters (6 page)

W
ithin fifteen minutes, a tap on the front door signaled the arrival of the Marines. Lotner left as four men and one woman dressed in military fatigues filed in.

“Master Gunnery Sergeant Prentice reporting for duty, ma’am.”

Jordan smiled. The Marine who addressed her probably had ten years on her. Right now, she was glad for his experience.

“Master Guns, I need three of your men positioned outside securing the courtyard and door and two inside. One to secure the apartment, the other to act as a floater.” Finding a piece of paper and pen, she drew a quick sketch of the garden. “I’m thinking we need guards here and here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He sent three Marines outside, and then he and his man rechecked the apartment. She noted with approval that upon finishing their sweep, they’d taken up posts—one just inside the front door and the Master Guns to the right of Lucy’s bedroom door, with a straight view down the hallway to Judge Taylor’s room.

The door to Lucy’s room opened.

“I think she’s finally asleep.” Judge Taylor said, quietly shutting the door to his daughter’s bedroom. “What happens now?”

The judge looked taller than Jordan remembered. His sandy hair was disheveled. Yet despite the fatigue etched into his face, he seemed alert.

“We need to talk,” she said. “I want to know why you’re refusing to cooperate with the embassy. You do know the smart thing for you to do is go home?”

“I told you earlier,” he said, “Lucy has two more weeks of treatment.” He walked over and tried to make some order of the slashed cushions on the couch. “We’ll need to get replacements for these.”

Jordan wanted to know more about the “treatment,” but right now she needed to put him at ease if she was going to get anywhere with him. “I’ll arrange for a new couch. For right now, do you have any coffee makings in the apartment?”

“Sure.” Taylor brushed past her, and she caught a whiff of cologne that she couldn’t place but had to admit that she liked.

Sitting down in a kitchen chair, she watched him fill the coffee pot. He was handsome, sort of rugged looking—an Indiana Jones type. She put him in his early forties. Young for a federal judge. He was toned and fit and looked like a man accustomed to being in control of his life. The intent he put toward fixing the coffee showed he was less than comfortable with having them invade his home.

“Look, I’m asking questions because it’s my job to protect you,” Jordan said. “In order to do that, I need to identify the threat.”

He set the package of coffee on the counter and half-turned toward her. “I didn’t ask for your protection.”

“No, but your ex-wife did. She’s worried about her daughter.”

“
Now
she’s worried?” Taylor filled the bean grinder with beans. “Fuck her,” he said, hitting the switch on the grinder.

Jordan glanced at the Marine by the front door. He kept his eyes forward.

Waiting until Taylor finished grinding and was knocking the grounds into the filter, she tried again. “Help me understand why you have to be here, Taylor. There are lots of doctors in the U.S.”

He pulled two mugs from the cupboard and spoons from the drawer and set them on the table. “Not one like Alena.”

“What makes her so special?”

“She’s specially trained, and she’s worked for us before.” Taylor grabbed a carton of creamer and the sugar bowl.

“Do you mind telling me what’s wrong with Lucy?”

When Jordan had asked earlier, after the shooting, he had deliberately changed the subject. This time, he turned away, poured two cups of coffee, and carried them back to the table. He set one in front of Jordan and then sat down and started doctoring his.

The seconds stretched.

Finally, he put down his spoon. “They diagnosed her with leukopenia.”

Jordan wasn’t familiar with the disease. “Is that like leukemia?”

“Just the opposite. It’s when your white blood cell count is so low you have no resistance to anything.” Taylor sat back.

Picking up on the cue, Jordan relaxed into her chair. If he wanted to tell her a story, she would be patient. The more information she had, the better.

“We were on Martha’s Vineyard and Lucy complained about this wicked rash. The doctor thought maybe it was shingles. She’d had the chicken pox shot, but she was so young that he ordered more tests.” Taylor sipped his coffee before cradling his mug. “Turned out, Lucy has very little resistance to any type of virus. The doctors told us if things got worse, they would have to put her in the hospital, in isolation, to protect her from infection. It wasn’t the first time we’d been through this. We knew the doctors planned to play a game of wait and see. Wait and see if her blood counts continued to drop. Wait and see.” He swirled his coffee. “I knew from experience that we had to act fast.”

“She’s been sick before?”

“No. My son. Ethan.” His face clouded over. “He was diagnosed with the same damn thing, at about the same age. That’s when we found Alena.”

Jordan didn’t know he had a son. Taylor continued before she could ask about him.

“Alena’s an alternative therapist.” Taylor set his coffee on the table and pulled his chair closer. “An expert in blood disorders.”

“Alternative?” The word left a bad taste in Jordan’s mouth. “Is she a homeopath?”

“No. She’s an energy healer.”

Jordan wasn’t sure she heard him right. It must have registered on her face.

“I know, it sounds nuts, but Alena heals by manipulating the body’s natural energy flow. She takes a negative flow, the energy making someone sick, and then changes it into a positive flow, making sure it circulates in the body correctly.”

“You say she was specifically trained to do this?”

He nodded. “She holds a doctor of sciences degree from the Kyiv Medical Institute of the Ukrainian Association of Folk Medicine. It’s an accredited university.”

Jordan worked on her poker face. “So she’s Russian. That explains a few things.”

“You’ve heard of this type of treatment?”

“I was born in Russia. My father was born in Ukraine, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. My grandparents were big believers in this type of healing. I don’t know much about it.” She paused. “How did you end up connecting with her?”

“My ex-wife was the one who discovered her. A friend of Sarah’s recommended her. I was against it. Totally convinced Alena was a quack.”

“But you went.”

“Fear trumped skepticism,” he said. “My son was really sick.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have believed the scene. Alena was staying in this multilevel tract home on the outskirts of Denver.
We knocked on the door, and this man answered. He had a thick Russian accent and asked us to follow him into the basement.”

“She didn’t work out of an office?”

“She was visiting. The house was right out of the seventies. The basement walls were dingy, orange shag carpeting covered the floor. There was a small twin bed in the corner, and the man told Ethan to lie down.”

“And you let him?”

“I admit, I wondered what the hell Sarah had gotten us into. I was ready to bail. Until Alena entered the room. That’s when everything changed. She has this ethereal quality about her.”

“She was attractive,” Jordan said, trying to understand how an ex–Navy SEAL and federal court judge could be so easily bewitched.

Even the Marines were paying attention now.

“It’s not what you think,” Taylor said.

Jordan looked away and took a sip of her coffee. “What happened next?”

“Alena stood over Ethan, her hands open, her palms down. Then she skimmed her hands through the air about four inches above his body. When she finished, she turned, told us he had a blood disorder that needed immediate treatment.”

“But she already knew that.”

Taylor’s jawline stiffened. He didn’t like her pointing out the flaws in his reasoning.

“We hadn’t told her, or anyone connected to her, anything about his condition,” he said. “She told us that for five thousand dollars she could cure him. That it would take about five weeks.”

“And you agreed?”

“Sarah wanted to try, so I went along. Ethan was really sick.”

Jordan worked on keeping an open mind. “Did she pinpoint the cause of his condition?”

“No more than the doctors at Children’s Hospital. She explained that Ethan’s immune system was suppressed. While he could build antibodies to fight off disease, his body treated the antibodies like a virus. Instead of stoking his white blood cell count, his antibodies turned on themselves, killing each other and destroying any resistance he had to illness.”

“So you went with Alena,” said Jordan.

Taylor nodded. “He had three weeks of treatment, and he was better by the time we got in to see the specialist. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with him. He acknowledged the previous blood work and admitted, based on the reports, that he had given Ethan low odds for survival. He labeled it a ‘spontaneous recovery’ and gave no credence to Alena.”

“How is your son doing now?”

Taylor seemed to steel himself. “He’s dead.”

Jordan didn’t know what to say. “But you said he was cured.”

“Alena wanted to keep treating Ethan,” Taylor said, his voice heavy with anger. “She said he wasn’t out of the woods yet and needed more treatment. Sarah refused. She was under pressure from some of the members on her senate committee to denounce the alternative therapy. They felt it was sending the wrong message. She became convinced the specialist was right—that Ethan got better of his own accord and that we had been duped. Two years later, the condition returned. Before we had time to react, Ethan was gone.”

The pain made the lines in his face deepen. Jordan wished she could do something to smooth them out. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded and stood. Picking up the coffee mugs, he carried them to the sink. “My marriage ended soon after that. If it weren’t for Sarah stopping the treatments, my son would still be alive.”

He couldn’t know that for sure, Jordan thought, but she was beginning to understand. “And now Lucy has the same condition.”

“Possibly worse,” he said, turning on the faucet. “The doctors at Children’s were talking about bone marrow transplants.”

Jordan understood science, but bioenergy treatments? That was a little too out there for her. She picked up the creamer and sugar bowl and carried them to the counter.

“Instead, you brought her here?”

Taylor looked over. “My ex-wife wanted Lucy in a hospital in the States, but I put my foot down. This time we’re doing it my way.”

It required permission from both parents for minors to travel outside the United States. “How did you get your ex-wife to agree?”

“It was Lucy. She convinced her to sign the papers. It’s one of the main reasons we have to stay.”

“What’s that?”

“Faith. It’s a powerful tool. Lucy told Sarah that she believed.”

“And you have faith, too? Enough to stay, even though your lives may be in danger?”

Taylor set a clean mug upside down in the dish drainer and turned to face Jordan.

“I know one thing, Agent Jordan.” His hands gripped the edge of the counter, his eyes asking for understanding. “I’m not going to lose another child.”

H
addid fled through the streets of al-Ajami. Sweat beaded on his brow and soaked his shirt while slow-motion frames of what had happened clicked through his mind.

Mansoor advancing toward the intruder.

Najm diving over the back of the couch.

The woman, draped in her black pashmina, pulling a gun and firing.

He had snatched Najm’s ID pass and the USB drive off the table. Then he turned and ran, leaving his friends to die.

Haddid assured himself that he had done what he had to do. He was no match for the woman. He had a family to think of, a son to raise.

From the street, he had glanced back at the balcony window. The woman was framed in the light. She had to be some type of professional, either government or private contractor. What other woman could have so easily dispatched Mansoor and Najm? If he had stayed to fight, he would also be dead.

His legs ached from the run, but he forced himself to hurry along. Every noise in the street caused his stomach to lurch. A footfall brought his head around. A chuckle made it snap the other way. He wove in and out of the alleyways in the direction of Yaffa, his own footsteps crunching the gravel causing him alarm. The
woman would track him. His only hope lay in getting the USB drive in his pocket to Palestine.

Catching the ninety-two bus north, he sat in the back, his head down, his body trembling. He had escaped the woman, but now he sat alone, surrounded by Jews.

Fuck them
. Anger burned beneath his skin and he snapped his head up, staring down a Hasid in his black felt hat. His gaze panned the seats in front of him. He sensed the fear and curiosity from the Jews, and he wanted to yell at them. He wanted nothing different from what they wanted—a house, safety for his family, food for his table, an education for his children. Now his best friend lay dead in a pool of blood, and instead of avenging his death, Haddid ran.

At the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, he turned his back on the Jews and switched to the 872 express bus to Netanya. From there, it was a short way to T
ū
lkarm and the border crossing, where just hours earlier Mansoor had spoken with so much conviction. Haddid had not agreed with him on everything, but he had loved Mansoor like a brother. To bring word of his death and news of their failure to Zuabi left Haddid full of sadness and fear.

The crowds on the bus diminished until Haddid was the last one off. Shrouded in darkness and chilled by the night air caressing his damp shirt, he walked along the ditch toward the checkpoint. With Mansoor, Muatab, and Najm in paradise, he alone was left to face Zuabi. The thought caused his skin to tighten. Zuabi waited in Balata for Mansoor and Haddid to bring him the means for exacting revenge against the infidels who murdered his niece. As the leader of the Palestine Liberation Committee, he could have sent anyone. He had chosen them, and they had failed. Zuabi was not a man known for his patience and understanding.

Haddid stared at the coils of barbed wire that stretched forever beside the ditch. Two hundred meters ahead, he spotted four
guards gathered in conversation around a fire pit at the checkpoint. To his left, an olive tree marked the entrance to the workers’ crossing. The moonless night afforded ample cover as he trod the earth toward Palestine. Haddid found his stride. Then suddenly one of the guards straightened and peered in his direction.

“
Hacah!
” Silence!

Haddid stopped midstride and held his breath. Had they seen him?

“What do you hear?” demanded a second guard.

The first soldier turned and shouldered his rifle.

Haddid dropped to a crouch. His chest ached from lack of air. The dogs in the guards’ compound barked and lunged at their chains.

“Turn them loose,” said the second guard.

“
Lo
,” yelled another. “What if it’s a pack of wolves? They would just kill the hounds.”

“What do you suggest?”

The first soldier clipped a leash on the largest canine. “Let’s take a walk.”

The soldiers, rifles shouldered, each took a dog. They shined their flashlights along the road.

Haddid’s lungs screamed for air. He was ten meters off the road and in plain sight. Exhaling softly, he drew a deep breath. He could see where the path ended in Taibeh, the dirt ending at a sidewalk. Another fifty meters and it rounded the corner of the building in front of where his car was parked. It may as well have been two hundred.

Haddid listened to the guards’ footsteps crunch on the gravel road. Staying low, he matched their steps, masking his stride, sliding into the thorny bushes beside the beaten path. The brambles tore at this skin and clothes. More than once, he was forced to stop and pray.

A beam of light flickered near where he had stood on the path.

“There’s nothing here,” said one of the soldiers.

Haddid heard the clang of a dog lunging against a leash. A sharp bark. His heart hammered near this throat and he folded himself into a ball on the ground.

“Maybe it is an animal,” said another soldier.

A flashlight beam skated across the branches above Haddid’s head. He pressed himself harder against the ground and watched the light play on the soldiers’ boots.

“There’s nothing,” said a soldier. “Do you have a smoke?”

A lighter flashed and the men turned away, yanking on the dogs. Haddid lay still. Sweat dripped from his forehead to the ground, creating a small rivulet in the sand. As the soldiers retreated to their post, Haddid rose and ran along the path. The sidewalk offered no cover, and he listened for the soldiers to set their dogs on him.

There came no command.

Once around the corner of the building and safely home in Palestine, Haddid slowed to catch his breath.

His car was parked where he had left it, and he drove the back roads into Nablus. The city, once known as the soap capital of Palestine, was now best known as the focal point of the second
intifada
, a battleground between the Israel Defense Forces, or the IDF, and the Palestinians. Haddid doused his headlights and kept his eyes open for IDF patrols. The last thing he wanted was another encounter.

Turning down the road toward the Balata Refugee Camp, he slowed. People simmered under the flat-top roofs of the buildings, constructed mostly of concrete. To be classified as a refugee, one had only to be descended from refugees. Haddid didn’t believe Zuabi belonged here, but the camp provided a base for the resistance. The number living in the occupied areas had grown to more
than four million. People who once defied permanent relocation had lost all hope of returning home, and anger over their displacement bred an environment ripe for rebellion.

For someone like Zuabi, there existed a surplus of jihadists in Balata. A man like Haddid, one who believed peace might be the answer, stood in the minority. In Balata, such a man brought danger to his family and friends.

Haddid wanted to turn toward home, but going there only postponed the inevitable. Instead, he turned toward Zuabi’s camp. To exact his revenge, the PLC leader needed the information from Cline’s contact—something Haddid could not deliver. But he could give Zuabi the USB drive Najm had planned to trade and, if necessary, tell him where he could find the American. Haddid prayed to Allah that it would be enough to buy goodwill for himself and his family.

Zuabi’s camp was a two-story, cinder-block apartment next to a small grocery store in the center of Balata. Two windows barred with decorative iron flanked a front door covered in barbed-wire graffiti. Haddid parked a block away, with two tires on the makeshift sidewalk to leave room for cars to pass on the packed dirt road.

He checked the street before climbing out of his car and walked slowly to Zuabi’s door. He tapped once, twice, and then again more loudly. Voices shouted from the back of the house. He heard footsteps in the entry. An eye appeared at the peephole, and then the door swung inward. A young woman gestured for Haddid to enter and pointed him toward the back.

Zuabi sat at a table surrounded by a group of his senior officers. They were men to be feared and respected.

“You’re back,” Zuabi said, standing to offer a cursory greeting. “Where’s Mansoor?”

“We need to talk, Abdul.”

“Then talk.” Zuabi did not keep secrets.

The men all waited to hear what he had to say. Haddid stared at his shoes. “Mansoor is dead.”

“What?” The shouts of the men echoed around the room.

Haddid looked up to see Zuabi gesturing for quiet. “That can’t be.”

“They are all dead. Muatab and Najm, too,” said Haddid. “There was an ambush.”

Zuabi sank into his chair. Mansoor had been his right hand. He had been like a son. Haddid could see Zuabi was taking the news hard.

“I am sorry, Abdul.” Haddid related the details of the day, citing Najm’s mistakes and describing the woman to the best of his ability. He glossed over the information about the girl and her father.

“You’re telling me you don’t have the information?” Zuabi’s voice rose with each syllable, until he was shouting. “The information is lost?”

“We thought we had recovered it,” Haddid dug in his pocket and produced the USB drive from Najm’s house. “I have this,
Za’im
,” leader, he said, hopeful that addressing him as such might lessen Zuabi’s anger. “It’s the information that Najm had. At least they didn’t get this.”

Zuabi turned the small drive in his hand. “‘Like you’ve gone, like you’ve come back,’” he said, quoting an old Arab proverb that spoke of going on a mission and returning empty-handed. The faces around Haddid bobbed in agreement.

“Except three of our brothers are dead,” someone said.

Haddid felt perspiration gather on his upper lip.

“Tell me about this American and his daughter,” Zuabi asked.

Haddid looked down at his feet. He hated it when fear betrayed him. Haddid understood the consequences of crossing Zuabi, and
he knew what Zuabi was capable of if he told him he might have seen a USB drive in the trash in the girl’s room and had not recovered it.

“We searched their apartment and found nothing,” said Haddid.

The Palestinian leader brightened. “Then it is possible one of them still has it on their person.”

Fixed under Zuabi’s cold stare, Haddid wiped away the sweat beading on his lip. “I suppose it is possible.”

“Praise Allah! He has blessed us with opportunity.” He turned in a tight circle and then stopped and pressed a hand firmly on Haddid’s shoulder. “Go back to Tel Aviv,
Ib’ni
. Whatever happens this time, don’t come back empty-handed.”

Haddid’s heart pounded. Zuabi had called him
my son
and entrusted him with the mission. It was the last thing he wanted. “Me? You want me to go?”

“Who better? You know where they live and what they look like. You are the one who has three deaths to avenge. I only have one.” He curled his lip into a sneer and tilted his head as if to see Haddid better. “They will be watching for something to happen, so you must be very careful this time. Choose three others to go along. Any three you like.” Zuabi gestured around the room. “Bargain, trade, or steal, but don’t return with nothing again.”