Rare Earth (17 page)

B
ut things did not move forward according to Marc's plan.

Several times over the course of the afternoon and evening, members of the community noted his impatience and told him the same thing. Nothing ever happens swiftly at a kibbutz. Levi and Sandrine Korban were meeting with the collective, he was told. When he tried to press for details, he was met with shrugs and the repeated words, “It is what it is.” The kibbutz operates on its own timepiece.

At Levi's request, and probably to keep Marc occupied, two staffers showed him around, one from the farm and another from the labs. He listened to their explanations and heard the quiet pride. He felt the eyes on him still, but they no longer excluded or isolated. And yet another sound was overlaid on everything he saw and heard. The minutes of Serge's life kept ticking down . . . if the clock had not already stopped.

When at sunset the community gathered once more at the chapel, Marc reluctantly forced his impatience aside. The prayer service resonated with all that remained unspoken. They assembled and prayed as Jews. The cross shone with a soft luster. The dais again held the unrolled scrolls. The prayer shawls and the swaying forms and the chanted words and the women clustered behind the beige screen all formed part of the greater mystery. Marc found an English book of Psalms at the back of the chapel. He opened and he read and he prayed his own petition.

After the evening meal, Levi ushered him into a room behind the chapel. The building also housed the administrative and accounting offices, he informed Marc. They entered a conference room as simple and unadorned as the rest of the kibbutz. Sandrine sat midway down the left-hand side. When Marc was seated, Levi went over and joined her. A gray-bearded elder at the head of the table asked Marc about his time in Nairobi. The woman who had refused him entry to the clean rooms that morning demanded to know what good it would do to have Levi accompany him back to Kenya. She did not give him a chance to finish, cutting him off in mid-sentence and declaring it was all a mistake. The enemy had already taken Serge. Why give them the kibbutz's leader as well, the man they could least afford to lose? Marc did not respond. He let the discussion sweep over and around him. He was asked a few more questions and then the elder thanked him. He felt the woman's hostility follow him from the room.

He was crossing the star-lit courtyard when his sat phone buzzed. Charles said, “I hope I am not disturbing.”

“It's good to hear from you.”

“I have some information.” The pastor sounded very tired. “What good it can do you, I cannot say.”

“Tell me.”

“I have been working through friends in the faith community. I have had to go slowly, because there are people who do not want these questions asked, much less to reveal the answers. I am protecting more lives than my own. So one person has asked this part of the question, and another ally has asked a second part.”

“It sounds a lot like what I've been doing,” Marc said. “Breaking down the questions into manageable fragments, then trying to fit the puzzle together.”

“Yes, it is so. I do not bring answers, I'm afraid. Only more fragments. The places in the south where the villages were first taken, they are now officially registered with the Land Office as experimental farms.”

Marc started to tell him about the minerals, then decided that could wait. “It's a cover.”

“Of course it is a cover. What is important is that someone considers this important enough to
make
a cover.”

“Someone high up the political food chain,” Marc said, nodding again with his entire body. Seeing another shard fall into place. “So intent on masking their trail that they use fake IDs when they go into the different villages. So if the elders complain, the bureaucrats can say that person doesn't exist.”

“And if the elders who protest have their enemy's name wrong, the bureaucrats can assume the elders have much else incorrect as well,” Charles agreed.

“Including the villages' claims of having been deeded this land to begin with,” Marc said.

“Our opponents are taking the long view. And I fear they are winning.” Charles sounded one step from sheer exhaustion. “Three or four years from now, everyone will have forgotten about the displaced villages.”

“Except the villagers themselves,” Marc added. An idea came to him then. A tiny flicker of hope, a candle's flame threatened by the winds that swirled around him. So small a light, it was impossible to believe it could actually defy the dark. But an idea just the same, so clear and precise he had an instant's knowledge that it came from somewhere beyond himself. And felt the shivers rock his frame.

Charles went on, “Before long, the village elders will become just more voices crying from the slums. Their claims will be empty, their complaints go unheard. Everyone will forget how that patch of earth once supported a clan and a heritage that stretched back to the borders of mankind's time on earth. The new owners will shut down the farm. They will claim it failed. Africa is full of many such failed dreams.”

“We're not there yet,” Marc said, thinking about the sorrow etched in the faces of those exiled from their homes. “I have an idea.”

Marc hurried back to the administrative building. He entered the conference room just as the meeting was breaking up. “I need a minute.”

The woman from the labs demanded, “Who are you to enter this chamber without our permission?”

“Rivka, shah. Manners, please.”

“I ask an improper question? This man, he is one of us?” She made a shooing motion at Marc. “Go. Leave. We are tired, and this meeting is done.”

“Five minutes,” Marc said. “Three.”

The gray-bearded gentleman settled back in his seat. “Young man, we will give you two.”

A few of the others resumed their seats. Most remained standing. Watching. The woman snorted, crossed her arms, and stood glowering at him.

Marc laid out his idea. Feeling it take shape as he spoke. Grow from a candle into something more. A bit brighter. More real. The shivers returned, making it hard to shape a few of the more important words.

When he finished he was met with silence and thoughtful gazes. Even the woman scientist's hostility had slid from her like a forgotten shroud.

Finally the elder said, “Your name, young man, what is it again?”

From her place by the side wall, Kitra's mother said, “Royce. Marc Royce.”

“You are CIA, Mr. Royce?”

“I was formerly an agent with State Department Intelligence. We focus on security of all nonmilitary establishments outside the nation's borders.”

“And now?”

“Officially, I'm nothing. A bookkeeper. Unofficially I'm working for an advisor to the White House.”

“And these people, they will support you in this idea?”

“Crazy, is what this idea is,” the woman scientist said. But her words lacked antagonism. As though she spoke in order to deny herself the threat of hope. “Insane.”

“I will ask them,” Marc said. “Tonight.”

The elder looked around the room and clearly found what he was after in their silence. “
Nu.
Go and ask your superiors, Mr. Royce. And tomorrow we will meet again, yes? Tomorrow we will hear what your allies have to say. And if this answer is yes, then how can we say anything else?”

T
he next morning after the dawn service, Sandrine approached as Marc was finishing breakfast. She greeted the people at tables to either side and seated herself beside him. Sandrine kept her voice low enough that it would not carry. “Levi should be able to travel this evening.”

Marc stifled his impatience as best he could. “No earlier?”

“He could leave immediately, but only if he resigned from his position as head of the collective. Which he wanted to do. I urged him not to.”

Marc could not help but glance at his watch. That morning he had awakened filled with a burning concern for Kitra's safety. Almost as though he had been infected with the worry her parents must be carrying. She was still exposed, still visible to the unseen enemy, still seeking the answers their foes wanted to keep hidden. Marc hated being so far away. No matter how vital the reason. “Maybe he should just go ahead—”

“No, he shouldn't.”

“You sound just like Kitra. Totally definite. No chance of changing your mind with argument.”

“Because it is correct, what I say. And you know I'm right.”

“Kitra again.”

She studied him a long moment. Then, “I like the way you speak my daughter's name.”

Marc was still trying to find a possible response when Sandrine asked, “You have been to Israel before?”

“Never.”

She rose from her place at the table. “Come, Marc Royce. There is something I want you to see.”

They took the same dusty pickup that had brought Marc from the airport. Marc drove because Sandrine had asked him to. They pulled down the long graveled road to the main highway, where she directed him north, back toward Tel Aviv. Marc caught glimpses of the Mediterranean Sea to his left, brief tantalizing hints of its cool waters beyond the dry ocher hills. They passed exits with names from his Bible study, before taking the main highway headed inland. As they climbed into the central highlands, Sandrine said, “Tell me about my daughter.”

His answer came unbidden. “Kitra has brought back to life a spark of hope I thought was gone for good.”

Sandrine wore clothing that suited the surrounding landscape, loose fitting cotton pants and a linen top striped in hues of beige and tan and copper. As though the designers had extracted a sample of desert shades and printed them onto the fabric. “Tell me why you think this.”

“Her love for family, for Serge, for you, is a fire as fierce as anything I have ever known. Even when she's smothered in grief for her brother, she lives and breathes a determination to help you out. To secure her father's dream for another generation. This defines her. And now, when I'm three thousand miles away from her, I feel like I can more fully understand her.”

“Can you give me a specific, please?”

“She has never lied to me. Even when I knew she wasn't telling me everything I needed to know, I trusted her.” Marc struggled to fit his tumbling thoughts into words. “Even when I ordered her to tell me everything, I could sense in my gut that she had reasons for holding back. Good ones. Even when I forced her to talk, I wanted to wait. For her. I'm sorry. I'm not saying this at all well.”

“No, you are saying it perfectly.” Sandrine pulled a clump of napkins from her pocket. She unrolled one and dabbed at her eyes. “Please continue.”

Only then did Marc realize why the woman had asked him to drive. He described the first time he saw Kitra, watching him with blank hostility through the medical unit's screen walls. The volcano's eruption, his deposit in the thick of a camp in severe crisis, the pastor. By the time he began describing their journey to the Swiss camp, and her pointing out where Serge had been abducted, Marc had become more focused on what was going on behind his eyes than the vista beyond the windscreen.

He knew where he was, of course. He had seen enough photos of Israel to recognize the deep cut holding the highway, the series of linked crevasses that formed a natural incline up into the Judean highlands. He knew King David had fought his way up this same slope, as had the freedom fighters in the wars leading to Israel's independence. He spotted the burned-out hulks of tanks left as solemn testimony to the Jewish lives sacrificed to restore their nation. He caught a glimpse of why Kitra was so bound to this place and her father's dream, and wished she was here with them, sharing this first unfolding of an ancient city to him. Jerusalem.

Marc followed Sandrine's directions to a parking area in the shadow of modern high-rises. The old city's walls stood in rose-colored splendor upon those early hills, a crown of stone and saga. Marc and Sandrine joined the crowds and entered the gates and walked down lanes old as time, old as the need for a Savior. Sandrine bought him a falafel and a glass of fresh pomegranate juice. They walked on in silence, down lanes that rose and fell and twisted and turned in confusing sequences.

Finally she stopped before a narrow gate and said, “This is my daughter's favorite spot in all Israel. I came with her the morning before her flight left for Kenya.”

They entered a forested garden area to the sound of singing. A Filipino choir stood among the trees, singing hymns with upraised arms. The garden was rimmed on two sides by a curving cliff wall. They walked past a trio of nuns kneeling in the dusty path and halted before a hole in the cliff. Just another narrow cave.

A massive stone carved as a rough wheel shape fit into a groove that ran alongside the cave opening. When rolled into place, the wheel was just large enough to cover the cave mouth. Sandrine said, “No one can say for certain whether this is the burial site where Nicodemus laid our Savior's broken body down. For Kitra, it does not matter. She loves the symbolic power of this place. A point where hope is born from death. A promise to all of us who accept the Messiah's presence in our hearts, and make room for his Spirit to dwell among us.”

Marc followed her to a stone bench. The garden was shaded by ancient desert pines, whose growth was measured in inches over arid decades. The choir stopped for prayer, then sang again. A siren rose from beyond the park's safe confines, then faded into insignificance. Marc wondered if he was the only person in the park who had heard the siren at all.

He asked, “Why did you not go to her?”

“Because she begged me not to come. Kitra told me that she could not afford to be weak. Not and have any shred of hope in her quest to find Serge. You have seen for yourself how difficult the kibbutz board can be. So when they refused to allow Levi to travel, I said I was coming no matter how Kitra might object. But she begged me to remain here, on the life of my son.” Sandrine's sigh went on for a very long time. “I stayed. I regret staying every day. But I had no choice.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Then last week she called me. Not Levi. Me. She wanted to tell me about this American who had suddenly appeared at the camp. How you had taken hold of a terrible crisis and forged peace. How you had brought hope to everyone. How the elders called you a hero.” Sandrine reached over and took hold of Marc's hand. “You do not know. You cannot imagine, what it has meant to hear her speak your name.”

A sudden longing clenched his heart. “She says there is no place for me in her life.”

The hold on his hand only grew stronger. “Listen very carefully to what I am about to say, Marc. Our Kitra is committed to a cause. You know this, yes?”

“I know,” he replied, and felt his entire being resonate to those two words.
Our Kitra
.

“She is destined to take her father's place. She claimed this as her destiny when she was eleven years old. The community of believers is her life's work. All she imagines, plans, does is aimed at building a future for everyone who has come to call it home.” She paused a long moment, then asked, “Do you understand what this means?”

Marc took his time responding. When he spoke, each word reverberated through him like the impact of thunder. “If I am to be with her, I must make this my cause as well.”

Her only response was to lift his hand and thump it down on his thigh. Once. Twice. Three times.

Levi phoned them as they departed Jerusalem, confirming that he had the council's permission to travel. Marc phoned Walton, who promised a jet would be ready to roll upon their arrival at Ben Gurion Airport.

Marc said, “I need some way to reenter Kenya without raising red flags.”

“I'll take care of that.” Walton then told him, “Boyd Crowder is off the grid.”

“Meaning?”

“My sources are unable to confirm anything other than the fact that he showed up at Lodestone's Washington HQ, got his next assignment, requested seventy-two hours' leave, and vanished. He and his aide both. I have his name somewhere . . .”

“Karl Rigby.”

“There's been no word, no sighting, nothing. Their passports do not come up on any border-crossing register.” Walton hesitated, then added, “My sources fear the worst.”

Marc shook his head. “For one of them to vanish would be a cause for concern. To have them both be taken out is unlikely in the extreme. These men are pros.”

“I hope you're right. All I can tell you is, nobody over there at HQ seems to be overly concerned. Which suggests they are either party to the disappearance, or consider it in line with their own plans.” Walton pressed on. “Assuming the worst, what next?”

“I need boots on the ground,” Marc replied. “Now. Immediately.”

“Lodestone controls all mercs in Kenya. Bringing in outsiders would require an official remit from the Kenyan authorities. Which they will not give. Not to mention how it would alert your opponents to your intentions.”

“Sergeant Kamal is with the UN forces,” Marc said. “He was formerly charged with security at the camp where I was placed. They were ordered away. He and his men would make for solid allies.”

“I'll get on it. Walton out.”

The world was russet and gold as they approached the Tel Aviv airport. The sun lowering itself to the horizon burnished the road ahead. At the curb outside the departures area, Sandrine hugged her husband for a very long while. She whispered to him, drew back long enough to stare deeply into his eyes, then held him tightly and whispered again. Finally Levi released his tension with a sigh and a nod. Only then did she kiss him, smile sadly, and let him go.

She had to rise up on tiptoes to hug Marc. Her body held a tensile strength. Sandrine drew back and declared, “I am glad to have met you, Marc Royce. Yes. Very glad. And gladder still that my daughter has you with her.”

He wanted to say, if only that were true. But the moment of farewell was no time to give in to such frustrations. Even so, she must have seen something of his yearning in his gaze, for she gripped his arms with the same force she had applied to his hand in the garden of death and hope. “When I heard my daughter speak your name, I knew. Even before that. Is this not so, my husband?”

Levi stared at the two of them. His dark gaze was turned copper by sunset hues and the airport lights. He might have nodded. Marc could not be sure.

“How could I know before she told me of this new man in her life? Well you might ask. I knew, young man, because of another word she had not spoken, a word I had not heard her use since our Serge was taken. That word, young man, was
tomorrow
.”

She patted his arm and painted her words with a mother's desperate hope. “Now you and my husband go off and do what must be done. May the Lord our God guide your steps and bless your actions. And bring my children
home
.”