Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries) (19 page)

“Mr. Lipkowitz and I are members of the security staff. It is our job to return the scroll to its rightful owner.”

Over the course of many years as an investigator, I had become something of an armchair psychologist–maybe more like a fortune teller, seeking to read people by the way they spoke and acted. Here I saw a man who preferred action to talk, and his body language showed I was pushing him close to the edge.

I leaned forward on my elbows and stared at him across the table. “I don’t believe your story, Mr. Zalman.”

“Preposterous. Why would I not tell you the truth?”

“Let me put it to you this way. If the scroll had been in possession of the
Temple
Alliance
, you would have translated it quickly, as I had someone do. Then you would have run the codes program on it and learned where the menorahs were buried.”

The Israeli’s eyes flashed in anger and I could feel Ted tensing himself for an onslaught.

“As I suspected,” Zalman said. “The greedy American colonel intends to dig for the gold himself.”

“Not so.”

“You never had any intention of delivering the document. You have done nothing but delay us from the start. Well, I have something I think will change your mind, Gregory McKenzie.”

Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out something shiny and tossed it on the table in front of me. I stared, my heart nearly stopping. It was a ring with a large ruby set among small diamonds. The ring Jill had worn when I last saw her yesterday morning.

Zalman glanced at his watch. “At this very moment, a corporate jet belonging to a major
Temple
Alliance
supporter is taking off from the airport. Had you cooperated and turned over the document as promised, I would have called the pilot and instructed him to abort the mission.”

“What mission?” Ted asked.

“Mrs. Jill McKenzie is aboard the aircraft, bound for
Israel
. But for your greed, she would have been released.”

I stared at him, feeling the anger boil up like molten lead. Then I was going for him. I struck out with my right hand, which connected with a stiffened wrist. But my left was just behind it and caught him solidly under the nose, breaking cartilage. I heard it pop.

Israeli armed forces teach a particularly lethal unarmed combat synthesized from several schools of martial arts. I had my moment based on surprise. When the backfist cracked the side of my skull, I went down and out.

Book Two

The Unholy Land

Chapter
24

In the two weeks since Khaled Assah had returned to the
Bethany
dig site, he had agonized over the disastrous journey prompted by his finding of the ancient scroll. He was moody and nervous and prone to bouts of depression.

After holding him overnight, during which they continued to bombard him with questions, the Shin Bet agents had become convinced he was telling the truth. He had given the old sheet of parchment to his cousin and had no knowledge of who Abdullah Kafi planned to contact about it.

Lacking any physical evidence of a crime, the agents decided on a charade that would intimidate their suspect into silence. While Khaled sat in the room within hearing distance, the Shin Bet operatives began to discuss what to do about him.

“Let’s just do away with him,” said the bald man with the knife-scarred cheek. “One less Palestinian who might come back to haunt us later.”

The dark-skinned agent with black hair folded his arms. “I agree. But the status of relations with the Palestinian Authority is in a damned delicate state at the moment. If they should somehow get wind of what we did, it might cause us some real problems.”

By the time the investigators had finished, Khaled was thoroughly demoralized. The Israelis then told him they had no charge against him since the scroll had disappeared. They would release him, but he was warned to say nothing. They knew how to find him.

“We can reach across the
Jordan
and the
Dead Sea
,” Scarface said. “We will come after you.”

They had freed him at the
Allenby
Bridge
, where Khaled caught a bus back to
Bethany
. He was promptly berated by his archeological team leader for being late in returning, and he was saddled with extra assignments to make up for it.

He accepted the work stoically, but what he had suffered at the hands of the Shin Bet was another matter. The experience had taken its toll, and everyone, faculty and students alike, noticed the change that had come over him. It was a girl–a black-haired, dark-eyed junior from
Amman
named Yolla–who finally pressed him about his moodiness. The daughter of a government official, she came from a family where young women were allowed to pursue careers of their own.

Yolla broached the subject as they worked on their knees in a new area being excavated. Twine strung around wooden stakes marked the site, which contained remnants of pottery and cooking implements from many centuries past. Khaled was dusting around an odd-shaped piece of baked clay when Yolla leaned toward him.

“What is worrying you so, Khaled? I have never seen you so moody and distracted.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, continuing to dust.

“Come on,” she said, “it must be something. Is it your parents? Didn’t you go home because of your mother’s illness a couple of weeks ago?”

“She’s all right.” He looked up at those bright eyes, so clear and dazzling. “It’s my cousin, Abdullah. He was killed about the time I left to return here. That has really bothered me.”

“Was he killed by the Israelis?”

“No. A car hit him. It was an accident.”

“How terrible. I know it must have really hurt you. I remember how I cried when it was only a pet run over by a car. Were you and your cousin close?”

“We had played together as boys.” He looked away shyly. “Abdullah was always the more adventuresome. He said I was the smart one.”

Yolla smiled. “You must have been adventuresome the night before you left for Ramallah. Yosuf told me you came in with dust all over your pants, like you had been out on the
qattar
.”

“I was curious about how it would look at sundown,” he said. “It was eerie.”

“Would you show me this evening?” she asked, her face glowing.

Having had no experience with girls, Khaled succumbed to the flattering attention, ignoring the trouble caused by his last visit to the chalky hills. He met Yolla outside the compound late that afternoon, and they walked toward the marl formation. She kept up a steady beat of questions and found Khaled always ready with an answer.

When she asked what had most fascinated him, she got an answer he had not meant to reveal: “I found a cave hidden out here.”

She stopped short, eyes open wide. “A cave? Where?”

He frowned, remembering Scarface. “We probably shouldn’t go there.”

She slipped her arm around his and pressed close to him. “Show me, Khaled. I must see it.”

A few minutes later, they were sliding down the hillside to the concealed opening. She squeezed through behind him and clutched his arm in the darkness, her eyes following the beam of his flashlight as he swept it around the chamber.

“How fascinating,” she said. Then, as he darted the light past a reddish object, she stopped him. “What was that?”

Reluctantly, he shined the flashlight on the small jar. “An old clay pot.”

She worked her way over to it and turned it around in her slender hands. Then she looked back with a mischievous grin. “You know what this is. Even I would know that. Let’s take it outside.”

Khaled’s heart was thumping. He hesitated, then handed her the flashlight and carried the jar outside.

She examined the container closely and turned to him with a curious frown. “It looks like there has been something inside. What happened?”

Khaled sat down on the dusty hillside and buried his face in his hands. He began to tremble. “I can’t tell you. It was too horrible.”

Yolla sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. She spoke in a soft, urgent voice. “This is what has been troubling you, isn’t it? Please tell me, Khaled. I want to help you.”

Chapter
2
5

Sometimes, when the world starts falling apart, it just crumbles. That was my world to a T. I left Golan Heights Jewelers in a daze. Ted Kennerly told me what happened after the lights went out. He turned the table over, sending both Zalman and Lipkowitz off balance. Then he held his gun on them, ordered them to revive me and warned they had best clear out in a hurry unless they wanted to become residents of an American jail. I told him he was lucky to be alive.

“Can you see okay, Boss?”

“A bit blurry, double focus, but it’s clearing.”

We had just climbed into Ted’s car when a silver
Toyota
4Runner swerved around from the rear of the building. Zalman was behind the wheel. I blinked at it.

“Damn,” Ted muttered. “That’s the SUV that got between me and the panel truck on I-65. He pulled off behind Nazari when I got flagged down.”

“That tells us how they got Jill and who torched the Palestinians.”

After my vision cleared I thought back on Zalman’s parting advice
,
t
aking
satisfaction in his busted nose.

“You should bring the scroll to
Jerusalem
where it belongs,” he
’d
said, “if you want your wife back. Contact the
Temple
Alliance
and ask for Moriah.”

As we drove away from Golan Heights Jewelers, Ted did his best to prop up my spirits. He started talking about getting the Air Force to scramble a couple of fighters and intercept the corporate jet–it would be simple to get the identity and tail number of a recent flight out of Nashville. There were no fighters based near here, but they could make an intercept before it reached the coast.

“What would they do?” I asked. “Threaten to shoot the plane down?”

I had enough sense left to know getting approval of a mission like that would take clout, requiring the help of the FBI director, who would have to call the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense. It was more clout than we possessed.

Ted’s beeper went off. He checked the number and looked at me, his eyes widening.

“It’s Colonel Erikson’s private line. Not a good sign.”

Ted got on his cell phone, which operated on a secure circuit, and called his commander. All I heard was:

“Yes, sir . . . yes, sir . . . I’m sorry, sir . . . I’m on my way, sir.”

He looked at me and winced.

“There’s been a terrorist threat at
Arnold
. He wants me back there an hour ago.”

“I understand.” I looked down at my hands. I missed holding hands with Jill. Then I got back on track. Ted had taken chances on my behalf. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Ted. You have no idea how much I value the help you’ve given me. Just take me back to my car.”

He banged his fist against the steering wheel. “As soon as I get back to base, I’ll call Detective Adamson and corroborate your account of what happened.”

“I’m afraid it’ll take more than a phone call. At this stage of the game, I’m sure he would want to talk to you face-to-face, check you out thoroughly and ask a lot of questions. No doubt I’ll need you to back me up later, but right now I have to figure out how to get to
Israel
in a hurry.”

“You’re going to try to take that scroll–”

“I don’t have any choice, Ted. I’ve got to get Jill released.”

His look said he didn’t like the idea but his silence said he had nothing better to suggest.

As I eased the Jeep out of the machine shop parking area, I knew the wick on my candle was burning low. I rubbed the tender side of my jaw. I had few options and even less time. In about an hour, an already irritated Detective Adamson would be ready to declare me Public Enemy No. 1 when he failed to hear from me and I wasn’t in front of his desk at Metro Police Headquarters. It would take him no more than a couple of twists on his swivel chair to label me a fugitive and send law enforcement officers all over Middle Tennessee chasing after me. State Troopers would be put on alert to watch for my auto tag number. And if Adamson decided I was probably guilty of abduction or murder–the most likely scenario–the FBI would be asked to track me down as a suspect unlawfully fleeing to avoid prosecution. That could bring a check of airline reservations, particularly international flights.

Police agencies did not always act as rapidly as television screenwriters portrayed them. But since Adamson knew all about my background, I figured he might make a special effort in this case. I couldn’t take any chances. Jill’s life still lay in my hands. And judging by what the two former Mossad agents had perpetrated on Nazari and his cohorts…I cleared that fear from my mind.