Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

The one bit of useful information from the Englishman-Fitzwilliam was his name-was that Reilly had entered Great Britain under the name of Couch. A few minutes at the computer confirmed that no such person had passed through customs and immigration anywhere in Europe in the last week or so.

Undaunted, Rauch called up the Web site for Reilly's charitable organization, the Janice and Jeff Holt Foundation. A few minutes later he learned the corporation had a private jet. Another site and a few more minutes revealed that the aircraft was a Gulfstream and its most recent trip had been Paris-Marseilles-Tel Aviv-Atlanta.

Now he was getting somewhere. The Israelis kept careful records of those entering their country.

He stared at the screen, unable to believe what it told him. The jet's international flight plan had been duly recorded and promptly closed on arrival at the noted time. But the space for names of the persons on board was blank. Either the plane had made the trip with no passengers or… or somebody with something to do with Israeli national security had been on board.

What could Reilly have to do with…?

Rauch slid his chair back from his desk and glared at the computer's screen as though it were the one withholding the information.

With almost any European country he could simply call some official, explain his interest in the passengers on that flight, and, more likely than not, get the information.

Not necessarily with the Jews.

First, the Israelis had a bit of a prickly personality to begin with, trusting no one.

Second was the Kurt Waldheim matter.

Kurt Waldheim had been secretary general of the U.N. and was elected president of Austria in 1986. He had become friendly with a number of world celebrities, including a young Austrian who was a minor American movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with his American wife, a member of the politically connected Shriver family. Waldheim had been in office a short time when someone came up with papers that demonstrated he had not served in the Wehrmacht, regular army, during the war, been wounded, and come home to go to law school, as he claimed. Instead he had served a full five years in the SS. Worse still, in an Einsatzgruppe that had specialized in rooting out and deporting "undesirables."

It had been a diplomatic disaster.

After forty years of Austria's painting itself as the land of pastries, Mozart, and The Sound of Music, the old and hopefully forgotten connection with Nazis had been resurrected. The world started to recall that, although the von Trapp family were Austrian, so was Hitler.

The Jews worldwide screamed bloody murder. The United States listed the president of the sovereign state of Austria as a person to whom entry would be denied.

The Austrians took the view that they and only they elected their national officials. One woman was shown on international television, saying something to the effect that the Jews wanted to run everything but they wouldn't run Austria.

Some wag noted that that was because there were so few left.

World opinion was less than sympathetic.

Austria's relationship with the state of Israel did not benefit. Forty-plus years hadn't done a lot to dim the memory, and relations with Israel were diplomatically correct but far from cordial.

Even so, surely the Jews wouldn't deny a request for extradition of someone involved in a murder investigation, particularly someone who was hardly in a position to claim political persecution or some such. If he were to act as though he knew Reilly was on that flight, surely even the Israelis would be obligated to honor his request.

He picked up the phone.

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.