Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

much better, but one gets used to it.”

“Sulfur and death.”

“I hardly notice anymore.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

The accusatory tone annoyed Benyamin. “Please, explain to me your jurisdiction here. My superiors insisted that I not only wait for you, but that I also give you every liberty necessary to carry out your duties. Can you tell me why they would do such a thing, Mr. Nichols?”

“Call me Nickel, just plain ol’ Nickel.”

“Like the metal.”

“Sure. That’s one theory.”

“Nickel, I find you exasperating. Are you capable of a direct answer?”

“I’m working for a very rich individual. He sent me. Does that help?”

“Hardly,” Benyamin said.

The American stepped past and lowered a bare knee to the earth. He tapped fingers against his cheek, while green eyes flecked with gold roved the leathery corpse. The tapping came to a stop. Unblinking, he stared at the wounds that circled the Norwegian’s throat—a necklace of round, puckered sores.

“Been a long time,” he muttered.

“Yes, I would guess two or three days.”

“A long, long time,” he repeated, as though referring to something else entirely. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his Nike shirt. “Poor kid. Looks like a stinkin’ Capri Sun—you know, right after all the juice has been sucked out.”

Benyamin frowned. “Capri Sun?”

“Somebody shoulda called sooner. Why the wait?”

“I radioed it in this morning, the very moment that I—”

“Not you, Mr. Amit. I’m talking about the kid’s father. No, you’ve been a big help, keeping your eyes peeled for trouble. Thanks for doing your job.”

The Israeli shifted the M-1 on his shoulder. “It’s my . . . Well, it’s my job.”

“Exactly. And mine’s security. An intel broker, you could say.”

To Benyamin, it seemed a vague title for this puzzling individual. “And what exactly do you do, Nickel?”

“Oh, you know, nothing too glamorous. I get the call, and off I go. Gathering and processing data for different clients. Getting more, uh . . . more personally involved when the situation calls for it. Been to spots all over the globe, on all sorts of assignments. Work alone, mostly.” Nickel eased his pack onto the ground, pulled out a Polaroid camera and clothes-pins. “Still kills me every time I lose one, especially a kid like this. Man, not even nineteen.”

“You don’t look much older.”

“Good genes.” A quick snapshot. “Often works to my advantage.”

“Have you told me yet who you’re working for?”

“Right now, I’m on payroll at Marka Shipping. Omulf Marka’s the owner.”

“Based in Oslo, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You know your stuff.” Nickel circled the corpse, clicked another photo. “And take a wild guess who we’ve got here. Lars Marka, his son.”

“Have there been any ransom notes or calls?”

“Not jack-diddly. From the moment that Omulf—sounds like something outta Lord of the Rings, doesn’t it?—the moment he learned his boy might be in Israel, he started pulling foreign diplomats into the loop. With his money and influence, he was able to get round-the-clock access to your commissioner’s office. One more day, they told him, and they’d have Lars pinned down.”

“Instead he vanished.”

“Gone.” The young intel broker snapped his fingers. “Lars never showed up for work, and neither did one of his coworkers, some guy who’d been in and out of local medical clinics. Name of Thiago. Whaddya think of that? Sounds like a hobbit.”

“It’s Spanish, I believe. Maybe Portuguese.”

“He was Brazilian, yes,” Nickel said. “According to the police report. But his name hasn’t shown up on any of the flight manifests out of Tel Aviv, so I think he’s still in the country.”

“He could be an Israeli citizen, one of the Jews who’ve made aliyah —a return here to his homeland. Every day our nation grows stronger in this way.”

“Yeah. Part of some prophecy, right?”

Benyamin shrugged with disinterest. He considered the quagmire of Zionist thinking a distraction from his country’s more pragmatic concerns.

“Anyway,” Nickel said, “their boss reported all this to the Jerusalem police, said he figured Lars had gone missing due to his embarrassment over some snafu.”

“Snafu?”

“Bless you.”

“Please,” Benyamin said. “I’m not familiar with the American way of speaking.”

“Snafu . . . a mistake, a screwup. Like when you’ve royally blown it.”

“Royally?”

“History’s biggest blunders, done in the names of gods and kings.”

“On that, we agree. So what was this particular . . . snafu?”

“That’s what I gotta find out.” Nickel took two more pictures and handed over the set. “You mind clipping these to the pack’s flap? On the shaded side. Yeah, just use those little plastic thingies.”

“It’s like hanging out a dead man’s dirty laundry,” Benyamin said drily.

“Hey. That was funny. It’s not easy cracking jokes in a second language.”

“I must say, Nickel, for this sort of occupation you seem very . . . cavalier.”

“Just a big softy. Ask all my friends.”

“You said you work alone.”

“I did? Yeah, well—print me, cuff me, and lock me away.”

Final snapshots. Another hand off.

“You know,” Nickel said, “Lars ran off back in January, but I didn’t personally get a call to start tracking him down until a few days back.”

“Why the delay?”

“Long story short, Mr. Marka thought his own security guys would be able to locate Lars and keep the whole thing quiet. Save face for the ol’ man, if you know what I’m saying? Now that’s all down the tubes.”

“The tubes?” Benyamin asked.

“The crapper. The WC, as the English like to call it.”

“The water closet. Yes, yes, the British terms are ones I’ve grown up with.”

“So.” Nickel plucked the first developed photo from a clothespin. “We have a homicide victim on our hands. Seems strange, though. I mean, why dump this guy in the one sea where you know he’ll keep floating? It’s like begging for an investigation.”

“Perhaps his killer was in a hurry, forced into a mistake.”

“Still, wouldn’t ditching the body be priority number one? Hiding it. Burying it. You know, running it through a meat grinder or something.”

“Hmmph,” Benyamin said. “I see why kosher is recommended.”

“Another joke, Mr. Amit? Now who’s being cavalier?”

“You’re a bad influence, you Americans.”

“Man, don’t I know it. I get that a lot.”

Nickel dug into his