The Illumination (8 page)

She kicked off her shoes, resisting the urge to throw herself down on the overstuffed chintz sofa and simply close her eyes until morning. Instead, she padded across the wood floor to the galley kitchen, and removed the open bottle of Riesling from her fridge.

Wineglass in hand, she made her way to the bathroom to toss bath salts into the claw-foot tub. As she turned the water on full blast and took her first sip of the Riesling, she thought she heard her phone ringing above the rush of water.

With a sigh she hurried back to the kitchen and checked the number on the incoming call. She didn't recognize it.

“Hello?” She took another grateful sip of the wine.

“Dr. Landau? This is Brandon Wedermeyer from MSNBC. I'm calling about your sister.”

Natalie's heart froze. “Yes?”
Oh, God.
“Is Dana alright?”

Please, let her be all right.

“I'm very sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I have some terrible news. I'm afraid your sister has died.”

“Died . . .” Her voice trailed off. An icy chill stabbed through her stomach, and she suddenly felt weightless. “That's . . . impossible.”

“I'm very sorry, Dr. Landau. Dana has been killed. Her body was discovered less than twenty minutes ago. I don't have all the details yet, but I wanted you to know before it leaked to the media.”

Killed?
Natalie's mind balked, refusing to absorb the words. She felt like she was going to throw up, and she pressed her midriff against the granite countertop.

“She can't be dead. I saw her on TV yesterday.” She was babbling. But she couldn't stop. Just as she couldn't stop her knees from shaking. “There must be a mistake, tell me there's been a mistake.”

“Dr. Landau, is there anyone there with you? Are you all right?”

“My sister can't be dead.” Her voice broke then. “She's all I have left. Was it a car bomb? I didn't hear anything about a car bomb—”

“No, it wasn't a car bomb. It . . . she . . . I'm sorry, there's no easy way to say this, but it appears she was murdered. In her room at the villa. It happened sometime between her return last night from Kirkuk and early this morning. Her crew became concerned when she didn't meet up with them. The military is investigating—”

The wineglass slipped from her fingers and cracked into a thousand pieces on the floor.

 

 

 

A fierce March wind whipped through Salem Fields Cemetery as Natalie lifted the shovel and heaved the first mound of dirt onto her sister's casket. Hearing that dull thud, seeing the dirt scatter across the simple wooden casket, she fought back the sob that burned in her throat. The last time she'd done this, it had been a mellow autumn morning. She and Dana had been teenagers standing shoulder to shoulder, ceremoniously scooping the earth onto their parents' caskets.

The rabbi had told them back then that the
mitzvah
of helping to bury a loved one was the most unselfish good deed of all, because it was an act of kindness that could never be repaid.

But this was wrong. It was wrong that she should be burying Dana. Her sister should be on the air tonight, her hair tousled by the dry desert breeze, her voice crisp with authority. Instead, she was here in the ground beside their parents, and Natalie was watching in numb disbelief as friends and relatives stepped up, one at a time, to grasp the shovel and toss dirt into Dana's open grave.

Afterward, she stumbled toward the limousine, barely registering the murmurs of sympathy echoing around her. She was chilled and empty and had never felt so alone in her life. First
her parents had died too young, and now Dana's life had been cut short, too.

Aunt Leonora took her arm as the crowd of mourners began to disperse. “Rosalie has everything set up at your apartment, dear. Your neighbors, that nice Peter and Juan, brought over some extra folding chairs.”

Rosalie was Natalie's older cousin, Aunt Leonora's daughter. As kids, Rosalie, Natalie, and Dana had been inseparable. Of all her cousins, Rosalie was the most family-oriented, the one who knew how to make matzoh balls and brisket and noodle kugel, who hosted all the Passover seders and remembered everyone's anniversaries and birthdays.

“So many people,” Natalie muttered. “I hope they'll all fit in my apartment—”

Her voice trailed off as she felt a tap on her arm and turned. She didn't recognize the tall lean man of about forty who stood beside her.

“Sorry to meet you under these circumstances, Natalie. I'm Jim D'Amato—I was a colleague of your sister's at MSNBC. I wanted to offer my condolences.”

D'Amato.
Natalie knew the name well. She'd never heard Dana, or anyone else from the network, call their bureau chief by his first name, and had always pictured him as graying and avuncular. Yet the hard-driving superior Dana had been desperate to impress was anything but. Standing beside her, the wind tousling his dark black hair, he looked vigorous and athletic, with the tough good looks and lean build of an Italian race-car driver.

“Dana had great respect for you. Thank you for coming.”

“No thanks necessary.”

But as his gaze locked with hers, she caught something in his intelligent pewter eyes—something beyond polite sympathy. Worry. Hesitation. She sensed he wanted to say something more.

Before she could wonder what that might be, she felt Aunt Leonora leaning in close. “We really should go to the car,” the older woman whispered. “People will be waiting for us.”

Natalie's stomach churned all the way back to the apartment. And while friends and family swirled around her, trying to get her to eat egg salad and fruit and coffee cake, to sit and rest, her mind was tumbling with a single question.

Why would anyone want to kill Dana?

 

Baghdad

 

Aslam Hameed stumbled up from his bed and down his wide marble staircase in a slowly lifting fog of sleep. His alarm at the insistent ringing of his doorbell grew as he made his way to the peephole.
Who could be rousing him at the ghastly hour of 4:00
A.M
.?
Who would dare . . . ?

Terror swallowed him as he saw the glittering pair of eyes staring back at him.
Blue eyes. The eyes of Hasan Sabouri.

Aslam's hand froze momentarily on the door handle. The towering Iranian was the last person he'd expected to see at his door tonight. He didn't want to open it, but he had to.

Hasan cut off the welcoming words Aslam was trying to muster and pushed past him into the foyer. Aslam Hameed shuddered as he caught the glint of the curved scimitar in the Iranian's right hand.

“You have failed me. You have cost me the Eye of Dawn.”

Aslam Hameed's swarthy face paled at the depth of Sabouri's rage. “This man . . . Yusef . . . ,” he stuttered. “He's one of my best. How was I to know . . . ?”

Hasan Sabouri's arm swung up, flicking the long blade against Hameed's throat.

Struggling not to cower in his own grand foyer, Hameed couldn't decide if he was more terrified of the scimitar painfully nicking his flesh or of Hasan's cursed blue eyes boring into his.

“Please. I will get it back. There is still time. . . .”

“You are mistaken. Your time is over.” The blade burned deeper, and Hameed could feel the warmth of his own blood as it leaked down his neck. Still, he couldn't look away from the eyes.

“Please, I beg you. . . .”

The knife angled deeper.

Upstairs, his wife and children slept. As death began to suck the strength from his knees, he prayed silently to Allah that they wouldn't stir, wouldn't put themselves in the path of the blade. Or be doomed by the gaze of the man who possessed the evil eye.

He had no hope for himself.

 

One hour later, in a garbage-strewn alley on the outskirts of Baghdad, Yusef faced the same man. The same blade. The same eyes.

He proved not as stoic as his employer, Aslam Hameed. Yusef quaked as the Iranian glowered, impaling him with those strange accursed eyes.

Frantically, Yusef dug through his pockets and yanked out the dead woman's necklace. He thrust it toward Sabouri with trembling hands.

“This was the only thing the American reporter had. Believe me, in the name of Allah, may he be praised, I questioned her. I searched her room—truly, she had nothing, knew nothing. . . .”

“So you give me this?” Hasan Sabouri sneered, holding up the delicate amulet on its broken silver chain. With his other hand, he tapped Yusef's chest with the blood-caked scimitar. “The Hand of Fatima in place of the Eye of Dawn?”

“I will find it. I promise you.” Yusef couldn't keep his eyes from flicking down toward the blade. “I will do whatever you ask—anything!” he begged. “Tell me what you want.”

“What I want? I want you dead,” Hasan whispered slowly in the stench of the alley.

Yusef's heart raced in his great chest. “Please. I am worth more to you alive than dead. I can help you find the Eye of Dawn. I will not sleep, I will not rest, until—”

The blade slashed downward into his right hand, nearly severing it with the first blow. Yusef's screams circled through the dank air of the alley. But only for a moment. As he bent to clasp his dangling hand, the Iranian plunged the scimitar into the back of Yusef's neck.

It took but three furious strokes to drown the screams, reducing them to gurgles.

 

 

 

Natalie had no idea how she made it through the first night of shivah, the initial period of mourning. The day had seemed interminable. And by the time the
ma'ariv,
the evening prayer service, concluded, and people began to ebb away like shadows of which she was only vaguely aware, her head was throbbing. There had been so many people, so many stories about Dana. Dana as a cautious tow-headed child, as her high school's klutziest cheerleader, as a surprisingly mature journalist gutsy enough to shout her reports above the thunder of bombs exploding around her.

But no one else knew Dana the way Natalie did. As the kid sister who'd giggled uncontrollably when their
zayde
had hidden the
afikomen
in the toilet tank one year at the Passover seder. The sister who'd covered for Natalie when she got drunk at a friend's high school party. The sister who'd clung to her in numb shock after the sudden death of their parents.

And the sister who'd known for months that Natalie's fiancé had cheated on her, but had kept it from her until Natalie had been struck in the face with the truth herself, when she'd rushed home early from an anthropology conference. She'd sailed in, ready to jump Adam's bones, only to find him in their tiny aqua-tiled shower stall slowly lathering the ditzy single mom who lived downstairs.

Dana had known. She'd seen them together having dinner, snuggling. But Adam had sworn to her it didn't mean anything—it would never happen again. And Dana had kept his secret—leaving me in the dark.

Natalie remembered too well the rage and humiliation that had consumed her when Dana confessed to keeping silent. Natalie had felt more betrayed by Dana than by Adam. Now, twisting a cocktail napkin ever tighter in her grip, she wished she could erase the harsh words she'd hurled at her sister and swallow back the unchecked anger that had led to their estrangement.
God, if only I could take back those months that stretched without a word between us and fill them with everything we'll never get the chance to say.

“Natalie—Natalie?”

She jerked herself from her reverie. Jim D'Amato had taken the seat beside her on the sofa. His expression was apologetic. In the kitchen a few feet away, she could hear Aunt Leonora washing the platters that had held sliced tomatoes, onion, tuna salad, and bagels. She was surprised to discover everyone else had gone.

“Sorry, I missed what you said. I was just thinking about Dana . . .” She shook her head and attempted a smile. “Of course I was, what else would I be thinking about?”

“Dana was one of the good ones.” He offered a half smile. “And I don't mean just professionally, but personally, too. She had the open heart of a child and the courage of a Marine. Everyone who ever knew her will miss her.”

“Thank you.” Natalie met his gaze, expecting him to say good night, but he remained seated. Once again she sensed that there was something else he wanted to say.

“You know something about her killer, don't you?” she guessed suddenly. “Have they caught him?”

“Not that I know of, Natalie—not yet.” Tension lined his forehead. Though he was dressed comfortably, in a black sweater and a sport coat, the tautness along his square jawline told her he was on edge.

“I'm not here representing the network,” he told her. “I've been on sick leave for a couple of months now.” He placed his
hands on his knees. “Did you know that Dana went to Baghdad in my place?”

Natalie stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“That Iraq assignment was mine originally . . . until I screwed up.”

“I don't understand.”

“I've been dealing with a personal problem.” He shook his head. “Residual effects of the metal bits I still carry around thanks to a suicide bomber during my tenure as Jerusalem bureau chief. It's left me battling an addiction to painkillers.”

Natalie shook her head. “I'd heard that Dana was vying with several other reporters for the chance to go to Iraq, but I didn't know you were the network's first choice. So . . .” She swallowed. “You're saying Dana wouldn't have been in Iraq if . . .”

“If I hadn't gotten my hands on more Vicodin—and relapsed. I had seniority.” He looked away briefly. When he turned back, his expression was neutral, though he was fiddling with the plain gold wedding band on his finger. “At any rate, that's not the reason I stayed behind to talk to you.”