Scorpion's Advance (19 page)

I
wonder what the connection is.'

'Ask the CIA.'

Anderson considered the suggestion. ‘I might just do that. I'll have to call them anyway. If they tell me, well and good. If they don't? I'll know it's worth following up.'

'Are you collaborating or competing with the CIA?' asked
Mirit.

'If the Klein gene still exists I'd like to get there first, destroy it before the button-down collars get to it. Does that make sense?'

'Yes,' said Mirit, kissing him on the cheek. 'I'll help you all I can.' Anderson smiled but didn't say anything. He was wondering why Mirit had just avoided his eyes again.

'Dexter, shipping agents,' said the female voice. It could have been worse. Anderson couldn't have kept a straight face if he'd had to use code words or enquire about the brand of cigarettes used by his second cousin twice removed.

'Mr Dexter, please.'

'Who's calling?'

'Dr Anderson.' A pause.

'Yes, Doctor, any luck?' said Dexter's voice.

'This could be the lab. They're definitely involved in DNA manipulation.'

'Excellent. I'm obliged.'

'But not obliged enough to tell me which lab?'

'No.'

'Can you tell me why the lab makes a regular payment to the Jan Kouros Hospice?' asked Anderson.

The hospice is a refuge for incurables. The money is apparently a charitable donation.'

'Thanks.'

'You're welcome. We'll be in touch.'

Anderson returned to the roof, deep in thought.

'Something wrong?' asked
Mirit.

'I'm not sure. They said the payments were a donation.'

'So, it's a donation. What's the problem?'

'Look at the sum. It's an uneven amount. People make donations to charity in nice round figures, not—' Anderson referred back to the papers— 'not numbers like three
thousand, two hundred and forty-nine. I just don't buy the donation story. I think they're paying for something specific.'

'You think that the CIA were lying?'

'I don't know. Maybe they believe it. Either way it's worth investigating. Can you find out more about the hospice?'

‘I’ll
try.'

Mirit
didn't return until early evening. When she came in, Anderson suggested that they drive down to Jaffa for dinner and discuss their progress afterwards, a suggestion readily agreed to by Mirit who said that she knew just the place. She did. The restaurant was high above the old harbour and cut into the rock, affording them views along the shore to the lights of Tel Aviv as they sat in the heavily scented air of a roof garden.

'Find out anything?' asked Anderson.

'Something. The hospice is in the desert about forty kilometres from Hadera. It's totally isolated, for obvious reasons, and is run by some obscure sect of the Coptic Church,' Mirit said. 'Have you had any more thoughts?'

Anderson ran his finger slowly round the edge of the glass. He said, 'The more I think about this "donation" business, the less I like it. Research labs don't make donations. They receive them.'

'But what could they possibly buy from such a place?'

'No idea, but I'm convinced it has something to do with the Klein affair.'

'So, what now?'

'I want to see this place. I'm not sure why, but I do.'

'We can go tomorrow, but what about your "guardian angel"?'

'What about him?'

'He'll follow us.'

'I hadn't considered that. Do you think he will?'

'Of course. He is here tonight.'

'What?' exclaimed Anderson in surprise. 'God, I'm such a novice in this game.'

'Behind you and to your left, dark-blue suit and sunglasses.'

Anderson didn't bother to sneak a look at the man he knew must be Hiram. 'We'll have to shake him then,' he said, feeling suddenly self-conscious at having used an 'in' term. He saw
Mirit smile. 'Is that what you say?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said, 'we'll have to shake him.'

Shaking Anderson's watchdog proved not to be a problem when, next day, they left the apartment. They simply walked along the flat roof of the French Building and descended, using the stairs of the Italian Building at the end of the block. They left the compound by a side entrance and picked up the car which Mirit had parked in a suitably discreet place. After all, Anderson's minder had no reason to suspect that they would be trying to avoid him.

It took them a long time to find the hospice for there was no good reason for it to advertise its presence with road signs. Eventually, knowing the distance that they had travelled from
Hadera, Mirit decided on a desert track which was barely differentiated from the sand itself. Doubts about her choice were just beginning to arise after five kilometres of barren scrub when they came to a sign and an arrow. It said 'Jan Kouros Hospice 1 Km.' although the writing was barely legible and written on a wooden board that had been bleached by the sun and scratched by wind-driven sand.

They stopped the car and took swigs in turn from an army-issue water canteen that
Mirit had insisted they would need. She’d been right. Anderson's throat was as parched as the land around them. 'Do we drive straight up?' Mirit asked.

'No,' said Anderson. They can't get too many passers-by out here. We'd stick out like sore thumbs.'

'Then what?'

Anderson thought for a moment before saying, 'It's too hot to walk far. What do you say we climb that ridge and have a look from there?'

'Sound military strategy,' said Mirit.

The climb was agony in the heat. Their feet kept slipping on the sand and made the ridge twice the height it actually was. Just before the summit they lay down to regain their breath and take another drink from the canteen.
Mirit took binoculars from the leather case that hung round her neck and handed them to Anderson. 'You'll need these.' They wriggled up to the top of the ridge on their elbows and looked down on the Jan Kouros Hospice.

Anderson found the sight to be movingly pathetic. The hospice consisted of a number of wooden huts huddled together in a compound that even here in the wilderness was fenced off. Skull
and cross-bone motifs were dotted around the perimeter on notices that warned travellers to stay away. Inside the compound, Anderson could see through the glasses a number of shuffling figures moving about. Each was dressed in a long brown robe fitted with a voluminous hood. There was a depressing aura of suffering and hopelessness about the hospice which Anderson found disturbing. For a moment he wished that he had never seen the place, for now that he had, the image would always be with him. Even on lazy summer days when eating strawberries on English lawns he would know that such a place existed. When pushing his car from winter snow in Dumfries he would know it was here.

One of the inmates stumbled and fell in the compound. As he got up, the hood fell back from his head causing Anderson to gasp. 'Good God Almighty!' he said in
horror. 'He hasn't got a face!' He handed the glasses to Mirit who gave a little swallow. 'Yes,' she said quietly, 'he's a leper.'

Anderson turned his back on the awful tableau of human suffering and lay in the sand while
Mirit looked at the compound. 'What a place,' she said, with the same mix of distaste and guilt that Anderson felt within him.

'But what a place to carry out secret experiments,' murmured Anderson.

Mirit dropped down below the top of the ridge and joined him in the sand. 'Do you really think so?' she asked.

‘I
think that the money given to this place is some kind of rent,' said Anderson, 'payment for secure facilities in the middle of nowhere, a place that no one ever comes to through choice.'

'But how can you prove it?'

'We'll have to get in there.'

'You can't be serious,' said a shocked
Mirit.

Anderson's silence said that he was.

'How?'

'I was rather hoping that you might tell me that,' said Anderson.

Mirit raised the glasses again and scanned the perimeter of the compound. 'Well, it's not exactly a military installation. But then, it has no need to be. No one in their right mind would want to get in there. You can't go in over the gate, they've cleared all the scrub away from that area; you'll be seen. There's a clear view down the drive from the buildings.'

'At night?'

'The drive is lit at night. See. Two floodlights each side.'

Mirit
handed Anderson the glasses. He saw the tall, wooden posts with the lamp housings on top. He returned the glasses. Mirit said, 'We can go in through the fence at the bottom left-hand corner. There's a dense patch of scrub between the wire and the buildings; it would give us cover.'

'Doesn't look like the kind of fence you "go through" easily,' said Anderson.

'We'd have to cut it,' agreed Mirit.

'But they would know,' said Anderson.

'Depends how often they inspect the fence. By the look of it, not that often.' Mirit adjusted the focus on the glasses. 'I think we can get away with just cutting the bottom strand. We can scoop away the sand below it and go in underneath.'

'Couldn't we scoop away even more sand and go under without cutting the wire at all?' asked Anderson.

Mirit shook her head. 'Too difficult. It's all right going down on one side but it's extremely difficult to come up the other. You have to move much more earth than you think.'

Anderson took her word for it. 'What about guards?'

There's no sign they have any,' said Mirit. 'No guardhouse, no towers, no men patrolling. I suppose they don't need any.'

'Not normally,' agreed Anderson. 'But if something else
is
going on there, outside interests might have put a few around the place.'

'No sign,' repeated
Mirit.

Anderson accepted it. 'Maybe they just rely on the isolation and very nature of the place,' he said.

'Good enough for me,' said Mirit. 'Are you sure you want to do this?'

'I have to know.'

'All right. We'll do it.'

'What do you need?'

'Wire cutters, bridging cable, crocodile clips, that's about it.'

'How long will it take to get them?'

Mirit checked her watch and said, 'It's too late to try tonight. I suggest we get what we need tomorrow morning, drive up late afternoon and try to get in tomorrow night.'

'Agreed.'

'And we'll need some dark clothing,' said Mirit, looking at Anderson's white shirt.

'It might be an idea to get one of those robes that the inmates wear,
and then even if someone spots me they might not suspect an intruder.'

'We can buy them at the Arab market tomorrow.'

'Just one,' said Anderson, 'there's no sense in both of us going inside. I know what I'm looking for. You don't. If you can get me into the place I'll do the rest.'

'Makes sense,' agreed
Mirit quietly.

'You mentioned bridging cable and clips. What are they for?'

'In case the fence is electrified,' said Mirit.

'Is that likely?'

'You were the one who brought up outside interests.'

'Let's go.'

They returned to Jerusalem.

On the following morning they travelled from
Mirit's home in Jerusalem to the Arab market in Jaffa where they bought a robe of the type they had seen the inmates of the hospice wear, and stuffed it in the back of the car along with the hardware that Mirit had already decided they would need. They left their departure for Hadera as late as possible. In the late afternoon they drove slowly along the shore road to Tel Aviv and sat by the marina drinking cold Maccabee beer and listening to the tinkling sounds of the yachts at anchor. The noise was hypnotic. It acted as white sound to quell unspoken anxieties about the night to come. They left Tel Aviv at seven and spoke little on the journey north.

As they passed through
Hadera and drove out on the desert road, Mirit, who was driving, slowed down so that they would not miss the turn-off. 'How are you feeling?' she asked.

'Awful,' said Anderson. They lapsed into silence again till they both saw the turn-off at the same time.

'Got it,' said Mirit. They were now slowed to walking pace, seeing boulders and potholes only as they came into range of their dipped headlights. 'We can't risk main beams,' said Mirit, 'they light up the sky a long way off.'

'Maybe we should leave the car a good bit from the hospice. Walk the rest?'

'I think so,' said Mirit. 'We can drive till we get to the one-kilometre signpost then hide the car somewhere around there.'

Anderson peered out of the windows at the sky. 'Moon's coming over the ridge,' he said.

They hid the car in a gully between two sand dunes where it could not be seen from the track and collected their gear from the back. The moon had now cleared the ridge and lit up the desert with a pale, shadowy light that allowed them to see their way. Anderson thought that their surroundings looked like the surface of the moon itself, but did not say so. His stomach was in no mood for small talk.