The Sinai Secret

FIFTY-FOUR

Kibbutz Zion

Near Sderot on the Gaza Border

The Next Morning

Alicia's days and nights seemed to merge. Perhaps it was the narcotics that had kept her knocked out for a period of time she had yet to measure. More likely it was the sameness of each day here.

Wherever "here" was.

Oh, she knew she was in Israel; the white flag with the blue Star of David told her that. And she surmised she was on some sort of kibbutz of about a hundred and fifty very devout Jews.

When the glassless window in her room was unshuttered, she could see the gullies of eroded hills as barren as those on the moon and, beyond, a very tall wall, behind which she guessed was the sea. The wall seemed to stretch into infinity, as though defining a border. Somewhere between the sandy hills and where she was, the land went green, like an oasis in the desert, which she guessed this was, artificial or natural. She could also see neat rows of towering date palms, arranged in ranks like so many soldiers. Sort of like a pecan grove in Georgia, but the trees here were taller and had leaves only at the top.

So, she guessed this kibbutz was a date farm.

She tried to remember what little she knew about kibbutzes, or, rather, kibbutzim. They were collective farms, communism in practice, where each person, kibbutznik, owned a share of the whole and got a share of the profits. Many, like this one, were populated by a specific sect of Jews. The men here wore hats or those little beanies, had long curls that hung by the sides of their faces like sideburns, and were unshaven. The women rarely appeared outside without scarves covering their heads. Whether this was for religious reasons or only a defense against the constant hot, gritty breeze, she didn't know.

She did know that the long, tin-roofed building was the communal kitchen and dining hall, and that all the other buildings she could see were white stucco with flat roofs. She knew many of the inhabitants spoke English, but none would answer her questions about why she had been brought here.

"Here" wasn't exactly the greatest place she'd ever been, either.

They'd given her clothes, ill-fitting khaki desert shorts, a T-shirt, and underwear, all of which were clearly hand-me-downs.

Like everybody else's.

Not exactly Club Med.

There was no air-conditioning to combat the heat of midday, temperatures so high that even the hardest workers retired to whatever shade they could find or sought a spot under a rotating fan.

No Caribbean cruise, either.

At least the evening brought coolness if not a downright chill.

There was no running water, only a well or cistern filled by some sort of irrigation system, as best she could tell. Every morning she was shaken awake by an old woman. She got up from the cot in her otherwise bare, cell-like room and trudged to the edge of the little settlement to take her turn waiting for a place in the communal women's shower and privy.

Wet herself, turn off the water, soap up, turn the water on to rinse, and shut off the water again.

Like Girl Scout camp.

Two men followed her from her sleeping quarters to the shower house and back again. If the showers had had a window, she might have thought of escape.

But there was no window and no place she knew to escape to.

So, once she dried off and dressed, she was escorted back to her quarters, where the old woman served what Alicia guessed was goat's milk, bland yogurt with chips of fresh fruit in it, and some bitter, black stuff that was supposed to be coffee.

She could leave her room only to go back to the women's privy to go to the bathroom. From the proximity of the desert she guessed water was too valuable to waste on a sewer system, even if the smell was enough to make her dizzy if she had to use the facility in the day's heat.

Her captors did provide her with week-old copies of the International Herald Tribune, USA Today, and some British newspaper. She read every word of each, knowing that once she finished, there would be little else to fill the hours other than looking out of the one window.

For the first few days she had wept continuously, whether as an aftereffect of the drugs, pure despair, or both, she never knew. Then she resolved to quit acting like a ninny, as her mother used to say. She wasn't going to give these people the satisfaction of seeing her weep. Instead she adopted a haughty manner that expressed contempt for her captors-as much contempt as her situation allowed, anyway.

The change in her manner produced no ascertainable change in their treatment of her: courteous but aloof. The women still gave her brief smiles, and the men nodded or averted their eyes. Still, no one would tell her where she was, nor why she was here. She supposed that if they meant her any harm, she would have already been subjected to it.

She guessed it was her fifth or sixth day of captivity today. For lack of anything better to do, she was looking out of her window, waiting for the stack of newspapers. She could see the only road to this place, a sandy two-lane that looked as though it had had oil or tar spilled on it regularly to keep down the dust.

In fact, it looked like that was what was happening now. Two men, their clean-shaven faces announcing that they weren't from the kibbutz, were in an old tanker truck, driving slowly along the fence that separated kibbutz property from the road.

Odd.

She had assumed the dirt track was all part of the collective, since she had seen men from the kibbutz working on it. But the men in the truck were definitely spraying something on the sandy surface.

The one in the passenger seat turned, looking in her direction. Too far away to make out the details of his face, yet… There was something familiar about him, something she couldn't quite place.

If he wasn't from this kibbutz, maybe he could help if he knew she was being held prisoner here. Should she scream? Try to climb through the window and make a run for it?

Something moved behind her, and the old woman entered the room, scowling. In a step she was at the window, reaching out to close the wooden shutters.

Alicia had to try very hard not to start weeping again.

"I swear, that was her," Lang said.

Jacob was too busy keeping the truck on the narrow sand road. "It's eyes like a bleedin' hawk you'd have to have to recognize her at this distance."

Lang sank back against the tattered upholstery. "If it wasn't her, why would they be so quick to close the shutters?"

Jacob took a hand from the wheel and started to explore his shirt pocket. The truck lurched to the side before he grabbed the wheel with both hands again. "Damn me if I know. These kibbutz Jews are peculiar sometimes. Maybe this lot doesn't believe in women showing their faces to outsiders."

Lang leaned forward to adjust the holster in the small of his back. "So far, no surprises. The layout is just like the satellite picture, jammed up against the Gaza wall. Except it didn't show the wire fence, and I had no idea those hills, sand dunes, whatever, were so high."

Jacob found a place to turn around and did so. "I hope they appreciate our oiling down their road for them."

"They should. It cost us enough. Paying those road workers to 'lose' their truck for a couple of hours wasn't cheap."

Jacob was straightening out the wheel before resuming the same slow pace. "Right you are, but at least we know where the irrigation pipe comes in."

"Incredible," Lang said, "bringing water in all the way from the Jordan River! That's, what, fifty miles or so? Looks like a desalination plant would be more efficient."

"I'm sure they have one of those, too. Problem is, a desal plant big enough to water the crops and supply those blokes' needs would have to be as large as the kibbutz itself."

Lang shook his head. "Still, bringing water all that distance…"

"Making the desert bloom, lad, that's what this country's all about. Besides, the Roman aqueducts carried water farther than that." He stopped and pointed. "There's some sort of pumping mechanism that lifts the water up into that water tower so that gravity creates enough pressure to irrigate the crops and support these people."

Lang looked at the tower. It could have come from any small town in America except for the Hebrew characters painted on the side. "What does the Hebrew say?"

"Zion, the name of the kibbutz."

"Zion?"

"Historically, a citadel that was the nucleus of Jerusalem. Also, the ideal nation or society envisioned by Judaism."

"Good choice by nationalist extremists."

This time Jacob succeeded in finding his pipe. He was clenching it between his teeth.

"I wouldn't recommend stopping to fill that thing," Lang said.

"Why not?"

"Because there's a truck right behind us. I'd guess Zwelk wants to know why we're spraying his private road."

Jacob leaned forward, the better to see the rearview mirror. "And he's blinking his lights. Think he wants us to stop."

Lang withdrew the SIG Sauer from its holster and slipped it beneath the seat. "You aren't going to outrun 'em. May as well stop and see what they want."

Looking in the passenger-side mirror, Lang saw two bearded men, one on each side, approach the truck. From the way they held the Uzi machine guns, he would have guessed they knew how to use them. This close to Palestinian territory, it would be unusual if they had not been armed. The one on the right stopped a few feet short and wide of the passenger door, a position where Lang would have to fully turn in his seat to make a hostile move. It was a maneuver taught in every police academy in the world.

The other man was speaking with Jacob in what Lang assumed was Hebrew. The tone was even, perhaps friendly. Finally Jacob shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes heavenward, the universal Jewish gesture that could mean anything from sudden enlightenment to total frustration. The man on the other side of the driver's door laughed, shook his head, and started back to his own truck.

"What the hell did you say to him?" Lang wanted to know.

"He wanted to know what we were doing here. I told him we had been assigned to oil down the dirt access roads along Road Four Seventy-seven all the way to the Gaza Strip."

"But we came here on Four Seventy-seven. We turned off a mile or so back."

"That, basically, was what the chap said. He thanked us for slicking down the kibbutz's road." He turned to Lang. "Think I convinced him I'd made a mistake?"

Lang watched the two men in the truck behind. Through the streaked windshield he could see one was talking into a cell phone. "I sure as hell hope so."