Kaplan shrugged. “Right. Very well, then. I’ll have one of my men find a parking spot for your car.”
With Carrie taking the shoulders and Dan the legs, they carried the bundled Virgin the length of the gallery to the shipping area at the rear where they placed her on a bench.
Before she could stop him, Kaplan had a knife out and was cutting the cords.
“What are you doing?” Carrie said.
“Going to take a look at this sculpture of yours.”
“Must you?”
“Of course. How else can I list it for the manifest?”
She watched anxiously as Kaplan cut the rest of the cords and unwrapped the blankets. He gave a low whistle when he saw the Virgin’s face. His diction seemed to regress.
“Well, now, that’s bloody somethin’, in’it?”
He leaned closer and touched the Virgin’s face, running the tip of his index finger over her cheek. Carrie wanted to grab his wrist and yank him away, but restrained herself.
A few more indignities, Mother Mary, then you’ll be on your way to safety.
“What is this?” Kaplan said. “Some sort of wax? I’ve never seen anything like it. The detail is incredible. Where’d you get it?”
Dan glanced at Carrie before he spoke. On the trip from the desert they’d agreed that rather than invent a series of lies, the best course was to give no answers at all.
“We’d prefer to keep our source a secret,” Dan said.
Kaplan nodded and straightened. Carrie sighed with relief as he folded the blankets back over the Virgin.
“Very well. But I see no problem shipping this out. We’ll simply list it as a wax sculpture—a piece of contemporary art.”
An idea flashed in Carrie’s mind. She turned to Dan. “Why can’t we do that ourselves? Ship it home on the plane with us?”
“You could do that,” Kaplan said. “You wouldn’t need me for that. But remember, anything going aboard an El Al flight gets a going over like no other place in the world. Direct inspection, dogs, metal scanners, x-rays—”
“Never mind,” Carrie said quickly as she imagined the Virgin’s skeleton lighting up on an inspector’s fluoroscopic scanner. “We’ll do it your way.”
“Very well. I can include it with a consignment of other crates I’ve scheduled for shipment, and have it on a freighter out of Haifa tonight.”
“Wonderful! When will it get to New York?”
“It’s not going to New York,” Kaplan said. “At least not on this freighter. The Greenbriar will take your shipment to Cork Harbor. After that, we’ll have to make other arrangements for the second leg.”
“Can’t we get a non-stop?”
Kaplan’s smile was tolerant. “No, love. We don’t want a direct route. Why draw a line straight to your door? Much safer to break up the trip. We ship your crate to a fictitious name in Cork where one of my associates picks it up, holds it awhile, then puts it on another ship to New York. Bloody near impossible to trace.”
Carrie was uncomfortable with the thought of the Virgin lying in a moldy warehouse in Ireland, but if this sort of route would safeguard her secret...
“How do we pay you?”
“Cash, preferably.”
She looked at Dan. Cash? Who had cash? All she had was the AmEx card Brad had given her.
“Do you take plastic?”
Kaplan sighed. “I suppose we can work something out.”
‡
Jerusalem
Kesev had given up sitting and waiting. Now he was pacing and waiting. He’d explored every nook and cranny of the lobby, browsed all the shops until he thought he’d explode with frustration. Where were these people, these Ferrises? They had to turn in their rental sooner or later.
Didn’t they?
An awful thought struck him. He ran to the Eldan counter. Chaya was still there. She’d just finished with a customer when Kesev arrived.
“How many offices—rental centers—do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Let’s see... a couple in Tel Aviv, a couple in Haifa, one at Ben Gurion—”
This was worse than he thought. “Can these people, the Ferrises, turn their car in at any of them?”
“It’s not a practice we encourage. In fact, there’s a drop-off fee that—”
Kesev tried to keep from shouting. “Can they or can’t they? A simple yes or no will do.”
“Yes.”
I am cursed by God, he thought. I have always been cursed.
He wanted to scream, but that would solve nothing.
“I want you to call every Eldan agency in the country.”
“But sir—”
“Every one of them! It won’t take you long. See if the Ferris car has been turned in at any of them. If not, give them this very simple message: The Ferrises rented their car here and you wish to be notified immediately if they turn in their car anywhere else. Immediately. Is that clear? Is that simple enough?”
She nodded, cowed by his ferocity.
“Good. Then get to it.”
He turned and stalked away from the counter to continue his pacing. And as he paced he was haunted with the possibility that the Ferris couple might have had nothing at all to do with the disappearance of the Mother.
‡
Haifa
Haifa had its beauties and Carrie wished she could spend some time here seeing the sights. Behind them rose Mount Carmel, high, green and beautiful; somewhere on its slopes, near the Stella Maris lighthouse, sat the Mount Carmel monastery, home of the Carmelite order; and in a grotto on the monastery grounds stood the cedar-and-porcelain statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Carrie would dearly love to climb the mountain to see it.
But she had to be all business now as she and Dan stood in the monolithic shadow of the huge Dagon grain silo and watched the inspector check off the crates on the manifest from the Kaplan Gallery. Her American Express account now carried the purchase price of a piece of “modern sculpture” from the Kaplan Gallery. Carrie had nothing tangible to show for that charge, but the Virgin had been packed up and placed on the gallery’s shipping manifest. Carrie scanned the ships anchored in the harbor but couldn’t make out their names in the hazy air. One of them was the Greenbriar which would unknowingly start the Virgin on the first leg of her long journey to a new home. Beyond the long breakwater stretched the azure expanse of the Mediterranean, bluer than she’d ever imagined a sea could be.
The creak of nails snapped her attention back to the docks. The inspector was using a pry bar to open one of the crates. She looked more closely.
Good God, it was the Virgin’s crate!
She stepped forward but Dan grabbed her arm.
“Easy, Carrie,” he whispered. “I told you we shouldn’t have come.”
True enough. Carrie should have been satisfied that the Virgin was safe after watching Kaplan’s staff seal her into that excelsior-filled shipping crate, but she couldn’t let her go. Not yet. She’d insisted on accompanying the crate to Haifa. There’d been this overpowering urge to see her off, like a child coming to the docks to wish a beloved parent bon voyage.
And now she was glad she’d come.
“That’s our crate. Why did he have to pick ours?”
“Kaplan warned us that they do spot checks. Don’t worry. She’ll pass. Just stay calm.”
Carrie held her breath as the inspector lifted the crate top and pushed the excelsior aside. He unfolded the blankets and she saw him freeze for a moment as he stared at the Virgin’s face. She watched him lean closer, staring.
Please don’t touch her. PLEASE don’t!
The inspector looked up from the crate and scanned the area. He had close-cropped gray hair, wore aviator sunglasses, and carried himself like an ex-military man. When he spotted Dan and Carrie, he tucked his clipboard under his arm and approached them.
Beside her, Carrie heard Dan mutter a soft, “Uh-oh.”
The inspector thrust his hand at Dan. “Good day. My name is Sidel. You are the owner of that sculpture, I believe?”
“Yes,” Carrie said. She noticed that he didn’t offer to shake hands with her. “We just acquired it.” She emphasized the first word.