Carrion Comfort

  “Nat!” his voice came over the rasp of static and the babble of airport noise. “I thought you were in school until May.”

  “I am, Ben,” said Natalie, “but I’m going to be in Philadelphia for the next few days and I wondered if you wanted pictures on that gang slaying story.”

  “Sure,” said Yates hesitantly. “What gang slaying?”

  Natalie told him. “Hell,” said Yates, “that thing’s not going to yield any pictures. And if it does, they’ll come over the wire.”

  “But if I do get something interesting, do you want them, Ben?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said the photo editor. “What’s going on, Nat? Are you and Joe all right?”

  Natalie felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Somehow Ben had not yet heard about the death of her father. She waited until she could breathe and said, “I’ll tell you all about it later, Ben. For now, if the Philadelphia police or someone calls, can you confirm that I’m free-lancing for the Sun-Times?”

  The silence lasted only a few seconds. “Yeah, sure, Nat. I can do that. But let me know what’s going on, will you?”

  “Sure, Ben. First chance I get. Honest.”

  Before leaving, Natalie called the university’s computer center and left word for Frederick that she would be calling soon. Then she called Gentry’s number in Charleston, listened to his voice on the answering machine’s tape, and said after the beep, “Rob, this is Natalie.” She told him about her change of plans and the reasons. She hesitated. “Be careful, Rob.”

  The direct flight to Philadelphia was crowded. The man next to her was black, extremely well dressed, and handsome in a thick-necked, lantern-jawed way. He was busy reading his Wall Street Journal and Natalie looked out the window awhile and then napped. When she awoke forty-five minutes later she felt groggy, vaguely displaced, sorry that she had set out on what was almost certainly a wild-goose chase. She pulled the Charleston paper out of her camera bag and read the article for the tenth time. It seemed like days to her since she had been in Charleston . . . with Rob Gentry.

  “I see you’re reading about the trouble in my backyard there.”

  Natalie turned. The well-dressed man next to her had put down his Wall Street Journal. He smiled at her over a glass of Scotch. “You were asleep when the stewardess took orders,” he said. “Would you like me to call her back?”

  “No, thanks,” said Natalie. She was vaguely put off by something in the man’s manner, although everything about him— his grin, soft voice, easy posture— suggested open amiability. “What do you mean ‘trouble in your backyard’?” she asked.

  He moved his Scotch glass toward her paper. “The gang stuff,” he said. “I live in Germantown. That garbage goes on all the time.”

  “Can you tell me about it?” asked Natalie. “About the gangs . . . about the murders?”

  “The gangs, yes,” he said in a voice that reminded Natalie of the actor James Earl Jones’s bass rumble, “the murders, no. I’ve been out of town the last few days.” He grinned more widely at her. “Besides, miss, I come from a slightly more upwardly mobile section of town than those poor chaps. Are you going to be visiting Germantown when you’re in Philadelphia?”

  “I don’t know,” said Natalie. “Why?”

  The big man’s smile became even broader, although his brown eyes were hard to read. “Just hoping you would,” he said easily. “German-town’s an historic, interesting place to visit. It has beauty and wealth as well as its slums and gangs. I’d like you to know about both sides if you’re just visiting Philadelphia. Or maybe you live there. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  Natalie forced herself to relax. She could not spend all of her time in a state of paranoid anxiety. “No, I’m just visiting,” she said. “And I’d like to hear all about Germantown . . . the good and the bad.”

  “Fair enough,” said her fellow traveler. “I’m going to order another drink.” He waved the stewardess over. “Sure you wouldn’t like something?”

  “I think I would like a Coke,” said Natalie.

  He ordered the two drinks and turned back to her with a grin. “All right,” he said, “If I’m going to be your official Philadelphia tour guide, I suppose we should at least exchange introductions . . .”

  “I’m Natalie Preston,” said Natalie. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Preston,” said her seatmate with a courtly nod. “My name is Jensen Luhar. At your ser vice.”

  The Boeing 727 continued eastward, effortlessly sliding toward the fast-approaching winter night.

  SEVENTEEN

  Alexandria, Virginia

  Thursday, Dec. 25, 1980

  They came for Aaron Eshkol and his family just after two A.M. on Christmas morning.

  Aaron had been sleeping fitfully. Sometime after midnight he had risen and gone downstairs to eat a couple of the holiday cookies their neighbors the Wentworths had given them. The evening had been pleasant; the third year in a row that they had joined the Wentworths and Don and Tina Seagram for Christmas Eve dinner. Aaron’s wife Deborah was a Jew, but neither of them took their religion seriously; Deborah was uncomfortable with the way Aaron still considered himself a Zionist. She fit in well in America, Aaron often thought to himself. She sees every side of every issue. She sees sides that aren’t even there. Aaron was always uncomfortable at embassy parties when Deborah would defend the PLO’s point of view. No, not the PLO, Aaron corrected himself as he finished his third and final cookie— the Palestinians’. Just for argument’s sake, she would say, but she was good at argument . . . better than Aaron, who sometimes thought that he was good at little except codes and ciphers. Uncle Saul always enjoyed debating with Deborah.

  Uncle Saul. For four days he had debated whether to bring up his uncle’s apparent disappearance with Jack Cohen, his supervisor and the Mossad station head at the Washington embassy. Jack was a short, quiet man who gave off a sense of slightly awkward amiability. He had also been a captain in the paratroops when he had taken part in the Entebbe raid four years earlier and he was reputed to have been the mastermind behind the capture of an entire Egyptian SAM missile during the Yom Kippur War. Jack would know if Saul’s disappearance was serious or not. But Levi urged caution. Aaron’s friend in ciphers, Levi Cole, had taken the photographs and helped Aaron with the identification. Levi was enthusiastic— he was sure that Aaron’s uncle had stumbled upon something big— but he did not want to approach Jack Cohen or Mr. Bergman, the ambassador’s attaché, without more detailed information. It was Levi who had quietly helped Aaron check the local hotels the previous Sunday in a fruitless search for Saul Laski.

  At one-ten A.M. Aaron switched off the kitchen lights, checked the security panel in the downstairs hall, and went up to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.

  The twins were very disappointed; Aaron had told Beck and Reah that Uncle Saul would be there Saturday evening. Saul did not come down from New York more than three or four times a year, but Aaron’s twin four-year-old girls loved it when he did. Aaron could understand it; he remembered looking forward to Saul’s visits when he was a boy in Tel Aviv. Every family should have an uncle who did not cater to the children but who paid attention when they said something important, who always brought the right present— not large, necessarily, but reflecting the child’s true and deep interests— and who told jokes and stories in that dry, quiet tone that was so much more enjoyable than the forced gaiety of so many adults. It was not like Saul to miss an opportunity like that.

  Levi suggested that Saul had been involved in the bombing of Senator Kellog’s office that same Saturday. The connection with Nieman Trask was too obvious to discount, but Aaron knew that his uncle would never be party to a bombing— Saul had had his chance in the 1940s when everyone from Aaron’s father to Menachim Begin was involved in the kind of Haganah activities that those same ex-guerrillas now condemned as terrorism. Aaron knew that Saul had gone to the front in three wars, but always as a medic, not a combatant. He remembered fall
ing asleep in the apartment in Tel Aviv and on summer nights at the farm to the voices of his father and Uncle Saul arguing the morality of bombing— Saul pointing out loudly that reprisal raids with A-4 Skyhawks killed babies just as dead as did PLO guerrillas with Kalashnikovs.

  Four days of investigation into the Senate Office Building explosion had brought Levi and Aaron no nearer to the truth. Levi’s usual sources in the U.S. Justice Department and FBI either knew nothing or would not talk in this case. Aaron’s calls to New York had not turned up any sign of Saul.

  He’s all right, thought Aaron, and added in Uncle Saul’s voice, Don’t play James Bond, Moddy.

  Aaron was just dozing off, weaving a dream that held the images of the twins playing near the Wentworths’ Christmas tree, when he heard a noise in the hall.

  Aaron came fully awake in an instant. He threw off the covers, retrieved his glasses from the top of the nightstand, and lifted the loaded .22 Beretta from the drawer.

  “Wha . . .” asked Deborah sleepily. “Shut up,” he hissed.

  There should have been no way someone could have entered the house without warning. In years past, the embassy had used the Alexandria house as a safe house. It was on a quiet cul-de-sac, set back from the road. The yard was floodlit, the gates and walls laced with electronic sensors that would set off alarms on the security panels in the master bedroom and downstairs hall. The house itself was protected by steel-reinforced doors and a lock system that would turn away the most professional burglar; sensors in doors and windows were also tied into the security system.

  Deborah had been irritated by the numerous false alarms set off by the perimeter alarms and actually had disconnected part of the system shortly after they moved in. It was one of the few times in their marriage that Aaron had screamed at her. Now Deborah accepted the security arrangements as a price to pay for living so far out in the suburbs. Aaron hated living so far from his job, so far from the other embassy employees, but accepted the situation because the twins liked the country and the situation made Deborah happy. He did not think it possible for an intruder to penetrate both levels of the security system without triggering an alarm.

  There was another sound in the hallway, from the direction of the back stairway and the twins’ room. Aaron thought he could hear a low whisper.

  Aaron waved for Deborah to get on the floor on the far side of the bed. She did so, pulling the princess telephone out of sight with her. Aaron took three steps to the open bedroom door. He breathed deeply, pushed his glasses up with his left hand, lifted the Beretta high with his right hand, chambered the first round into the breech, and stepped out into the hall.

  There were three men, perhaps more, no more than five meters away down the dark hallway. They wore heavy fatigue jackets, gloves, and ski masks. The two in front held long-barreled handguns against the heads of Rebecca and Reah; the twins’ eyes were wide above the muffling hands over their mouths, their pajamaed legs were pale as they dangled in front of the dark jackets.

  Without thinking, Aaron went into the wide-legged, two-handed firing stance he had been drilled in. He could hear Eliahu’s voice, and perfectly remember the old instructor’s slow but stern words: “If they are not ready, fire. If they are ready, fire. If they have hostages, fire. If there is more than one target, fire. Two shots each, two. Do not think—fire.”

  But these were not hostages; these were his daughters— Rebeccah and Reah. Aaron could see the Mickey Mouse print on their pajamas. He aimed the small Beretta at the first ski mask. On the firing range, even in bad light, he would have wagered any amount that he could have put two shots into any target the size of the man’s head, swiveled, arms still straight, entire body turning, and drilled two more into the second face. At fifteen feet Aaron had been able to put his entire clip of ten .22 rounds into a circle the size of his fist.

  But these were his daughters. “Drop the gun.” The man’s flat voice was muffled by the ski mask. His pistol— a long-barreled Luger with a black tube of silencer— was not even aimed exactly at Becky’s head. Aaron was sure that he could shoot both men before they could fire. He felt the soles of his bare feet against the wood floor. Two seconds had elapsed since he had stepped into the hall. Never surrender your weapon, Eliahu had drilled them that hot summer in Tel Aviv. Never. Always shoot to kill. Better you or the hostage should be wounded or die and the enemy be killed than to surrender your weapon.

  “Drop it.”

  Still crouching, Aaron laid the Beretta on the floor and stretched his hands wide. “Please. Please don’t hurt my girls.”

  There were eight of them. They secured Aaron’s hands behind him with surgical tape from a roll, pulled Deborah from behind the bed, and brought all four downstairs to the living room. Two of the masked men went into the kitchen.

  “Moddy, the line was dead,” gasped Deborah before the man tugging her along put tape across her mouth.

  Aaron nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.

  The leader had Aaron sit on the piano stool. Deborah and the girls were on the floor, backs to the white wall. They had not taped the children’s wrists or mouths and both girls were sobbing and hugging their mother. A man in fatigue jacket, jeans, and ski mask crouched on either side of the two. At a nod from their leader, all six pulled off their masks.

  Oh, God, they’re going to kill us, thought Aaron. He would, at that second, have given anything he had ever owned or hoped to own just to back up time three minutes. He would have fired twice, swiveled, fired twice, swiveled . . .

  All six of the men visible were white, tanned, well groomed. They did not look like Palestinian agents or Bader-Meinhof commandos. They looked like men Aaron passed on the street every day in Washington. The one standing in front of him leaned over so their faces were inches apart. The man’s eyes were blue, his teeth perfect. He had a light Midwestern American accent. “We want to talk to you, Aaron.”

  Aaron nodded. His hands were taped so tightly behind him that the circulation was being cut off. If he fell backward on the stool he might get one good kick in at the handsome man leaning over him. The other five were armed and too far away to reach under any circumstances. Aaron tasted bile and willed his heart to stop racing.

  “Where are the photographs?” asked the handsome man next to him. “What photographs?” Aaron could not believe that his voice had worked, much less come out so firm and emotionless.

  “Aw, Moddy, don’t play games with us,” said the man and nodded at a thin man near the wall. Without changing expression, the man slapped four-year-old Becky across the face.

  The child wailed. Deborah struggled against her bonds, cried out behind the tape. Aaron rose off the stool. “You son of a bitch!” he cried in Hebrew. The handsome man kicked Aaron’s legs out from under him. Aaron landed hard on his right shoulder, banging his nose and cheekbone against the polished floor. Both children were screaming now. Aaron heard tape being torn off a roll and the screams were cut off. The thin man stepped over and pulled Aaron to his feet, slammed him back onto the piano stool.

  “Are they in the house?” the handsome man asked softly.

  “No,” said Aaron. Blood ran from his nose onto his upper lip. He tilted his head back and could feel the bruise already starting on his cheek. His right arm was numb. “They’re in the safe at the embassy,” he said and licked away some of the trickle of blood.

  The handsome man nodded and smiled slightly. “Who else has seen them besides your Uncle Saul?”

  “Levi Cole,” said Aaron. “Head of communications,” the man said softly, encouragingly. “Acting head,” said Aaron. Perhaps there was a chance after all. His heart began racing again. “Uri Davidi is on leave.”

  “Who else has seen them?”

  “No one,” managed Aaron.

  The handsome man shook his head as if disappointed in Aaron. He nodded at a third man. Deborah screamed as the heavy boot thudded into her side.

  “No one!” screamed Aaron. “I swear it! Levi did
n’t want to talk to Jack Cohen until we had more information. I swear it. I can get you the photographs. Levi has the negatives in the safe. You can have all of the . . .”

  “Hush, hush,” said the handsome man. He turned as the two came in from the kitchen. They nodded. The man next to Aaron said, “Upstairs.” Four departed.

  Aaron suddenly smelled gas. They’ve turned the oven gas on, he thought. Opened the valves. Oh God, why?

  The remaining three taped the children’s arms and legs, Deborah’s legs. Aaron tried desperately to think of anything he had to bargain with. “I’ll take you there now,” he said. “The place is almost empty. Someone could come in with me. I’ll get the photographs . . . what ever documents you want. Tell me what you want and I’ll ride in with you and I swear . . .”

  “Shhh,” said the man. “Has Hany Adam seen them?”

  “No,” gasped Aaron. They were laying Deb and the twins on the floor, carefully, making sure their heads did not bump against the wood. Deborah looked very white, eyes rolled up. Aaron wondered if she had fainted.

  “Barbara Green?”

  “No.”

  “Moshe Herzog?”

  “No.”

  “Paul Ben-Brindsi?”

  “No.”

  “Chaim Tsolkov?”

  “No?”

  “Zvi Hofi?”

  “No.”

  The litany continued through every level of the embassy to the ambassador’s staff. It was, Aaron realized from the start, a game . . . a harmless way to kill time while the search went on upstairs and in the den. Aaron would play any game, reveal any secret, if it meant another few minutes free of pain for Deborah and the twins. One of the girls moaned and tried to roll over. The thin man patted her small shoulder.

  The four returned. The tallest shook his head.

  The handsome man sighed and said, “All right, let’s do it.”