“A sale of such remains would be almost impossible to coordinate without being detected by enforcement agencies, and a ransom would come with demands that we haven’t had.”
Ethan leaned back against the wall. “Bill Griffiths is a fossil hunter and he holds the only key to exposing this abduction for what it really is: a theft. He walked away from me when I offered him five million dollars.”
“What then, if not money?” Rachel asked Hassim, her fists clenched by her side.
Hassim stood, pacing as he spoke.
“Your daughter was one of several people to have vanished from that area of the Negev Desert. No remains have ever been found. All of those disappearances have occurred since MACE began working out here in Israel under the AEA’s control.”
“You think that the church is really behind it all?” Ethan asked.
“Their leader, a powerful pastor named Kelvin Patterson, has been a vocal proponent of using science to prove the existence of God, using his television and radio stations to promote his views. He believes that faith has proven itself impotent without knowledge, and is known to have conducted various experiments in the past with volunteers from his church in an attempt to discover the nature of the divine.”
“Experiments?” Rachel asked nervously. “What kind of experiments?”
Hassim’s voice was low, as though he regretted having to speak at all.
“The kind that require live volunteers. But if there are other experiments he wishes to conduct that are illegal, and he requires live bodies, then there are ways to acquire them.”
Rachel seemed to Ethan to be having difficulty breathing as she spoke.
“What might they do to Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But after what has happened to you both they’ll be keen to get the remains out of Israel before you can inform the authorities. Even a fossil hunter as well connected as Bill Griffiths will have difficulty in achieving that without some kind of specialist help.”
Ethan nodded. “He’ll need a company trusted by the Israeli government, just like MACE. I need to make a phone call.”
Hassim looked at Mahmoud as he emerged from one of the tunnels. The Palestinian shook his head.
“You can’t make a call from down here; we’re too deep for a signal and we can’t risk moving at night. We can get you to the Erez crossing at dawn.”
“What time is it?” Ethan asked.
“Two-thirty in the morning,” Hassim said, glancing at his watch.
“That makes it the middle of the afternoon in Chicago. If I can make a call, I can smooth the way for us.”
A look of displeasure creased Mahmoud’s features. “We should wait until Yossaf returns from checking the building.”
“As long as Yossaf is between us and the other exit, we have nothing to fear.”
Mahmoud glanced at Hassim, then sighed and nodded.
“We can use the opposite end of the tunnel and make the call from there. It leads to a building on the far side of the street.”
Rafael, crouched in the darkness, listened intently.
He did not need to see the faces of the people talking a few meters away, hidden from sight by the curving tunnel walls and the shadows. Arabic and American voices left him in no doubt that he was in the right place. The name of a man, Bill Griffiths, drifted to within earshot of his position, and he thought of the fossil hunter employed by Byron Stone and Spencer Malik.
Perhaps aid workers were secretly assisting insurgents? Or maybe journalists had gained access to the tunnels, an event not unknown near Rafah on the Egyptian border. Either way, Rafael would have to work swiftly and without endangering innocent lives.
Slowly, he edged back into the deeper darkness behind him, still with his knife clasped in one hand in case the possessor of the more threatening voice he had heard should choose to wander in his direction.
He turned, moving swiftly past the corpse of the man whose name he now knew had been Yossaf, and moved as swift as a leopard through the darkness toward the distant light ahead. He reached the ladder, pausing only for a few moments to listen for pursuers or for anyone lingering above him at the tunnel entrance before scaling the ladder and emerging into the building above.
He squatted down and reached into his pocket for a small device, the blue glow from the screen lighting his features with a peculiar radiance. The GPS device showed an image of the Gazan streets at the point where he had entered the tunnel. Rafael oriented the device