Rare Earth (15 page)

T
he jet was a needle-shaped Lear that swiftly wound up its engines and launched off the runway. The rear bathroom was so tight that Marc left the door ajar so as to have enough room to swing around. He cleaned up as best as he could, then dressed in gift-shop shorts and T-shirt. He wolfed down one of the jet's ready meals, then a second. The two pilots looked at him through the open cockpit door and chuckled. Carter Dawes joined him after a while and heard as much as Marc was free to tell him about the operation to date.

Marc eventually lowered two seats facing each other into a camp bed and conked out.

He awoke when the copilot shook his shoulder and announced they were descending into Ben Gurion Airport. As the plane touched down, Marc was filled with a sudden regret for having made the trip at all. No matter that Walton had agreed the trip could be vital. All he could think of was how vulnerable Kitra was back in Kenya. How isolated. How alone.

When they finished taxiing, Marc thanked the pilots and said good-bye to Carter Dawes, descended the stairs, and joined the crush through customs. Several tourist flights had all landed at the same time, and he found himself surrounded by a multi-tongued babble.

A wall clock behind the customs officer told him the flight from Nairobi had taken three and a half hours. The main terminal was an astonishment of architectural design, so lovely it slowed every arriving passenger. The domed hall was built as a series of concentric circles, formed into a sculpture that seemed to embrace and welcome all who passed. Sunlight poured through an opening at the very crest, bathing a fountain that splashed scented water in a constant musical rush.

After passing through customs, Marc was approached by a tall man with the leathery features of a desert dweller. “Mr. Royce, I am Levi Korban.”

Marc accepted the handshake, which felt like flesh-covered stone. “How did you identify me?”

“Kitra emailed your photograph.” The man wore a skullcap, and traditional fringes emerged from his shirt to dangle over his belt. He gave Marc's disheveled appearance an unsmiling inspection. “Did you have a rough flight?”

Kitra's mother was a French rendition of the daughter, petite and lovely and very refined. She smiled over her shoulder from the driver's position as Marc bundled into the car's back seat. “Good evening, Mr. Royce. How is my daughter?”

He wanted to lie. The woman's smile was that sweet. But he could not. “Very sad, I'm afraid.”

She said, “Call me Sandrine, please,” as she put the car into gear. “She blames herself for Serge.”

“Yes.”

Levi Korban slammed his door as his wife pulled from the curb. “She should.”

“Levi. Stop. We have been through this a thousand times. It serves no purpose. Do you carry no luggage, Mr. Royce?”

“I have asked this already,” her husband replied. “He was attacked. His luggage was lost.”

“Attacked where?”

“A slum in Nairobi,” Marc said. “On the way to the airport.”

“Why were you in a slum?” When he hesitated, Kitra's mother read him correctly. “It had to do with our daughter, didn't it?”

“In a way.” Marc then asked, “Why should Kitra blame herself for Serge's disappearance?”

“Because all this was her idea.” Levi Korban pointed into the sunset. “We want this exit.”

“Am I the newcomer? Have I never driven you to this airport? Answer our guest's question. Tell him why our innocent daughter should blame herself for anything except being her father's child.”

And just like that, Marc was in. He had no idea how it happened. One moment he was just another arriving guest. The next, he was swept up in a family's ongoing drama. The Mitsubishi pickup had an extended cab with a full back seat. Marc stretched out his legs and rubbed the bruise developing on his thigh. “Kitra wanted them both to go to Africa?”

“Kitra wanted to make her father's lifelong dream come true. Isn't that correct, Levi? Tell the man how your daughter loved you so much she dreamed of nothing else.”

The man was lean and hard and silent. From Marc's position in the middle of the back seat, he could observe half of both faces. Sandrine Korban spoke with a delicious accent. Her features were an older rendition of Kitra's, not so much softened as distilled. Where her husband was lean and taut, she was gentle. But Marc could not have said which of Kitra's parents possessed the tougher core.

He asked, “Where are we going?”

“My husband, Mr. Royce, he is a dreamer. He has been a dreamer all his life long. It is what I loved first about him. It is what I love most about him now.”

“Please, call me Marc.”

“I am Sandrine, as I told you, and this is Levi. Tell our guest hello, my husband.”

“We've moved beyond hellos,” he said. But the anger was gone now. Passing headlights illuminated a man who appeared hollowed by grief. Marc wondered when the man had last smiled.

Sandrine changed gears, then reached over to settle her hand on her husband's thigh. She went on, “My husband founded a kibbutz in the plains southwest of Jerusalem, Marc. I met him in Lyon, where he was raising funds. I fell in love with his vision and his heart and his ability to dream big dreams. Kitra shares my husband's gift. Does she not, my dear?”

“Gift,” he muttered. “I lose a son because—”

“Let us wait for word about Serge,” she said quietly. Her voice cracked over the name, revealing a mother's heart. “It is not yet time to say the Kaddish.”

He sighed, but did not respond.

“Gift,” she said, forming the word on an indrawn breath, rebuilding her composure and her world. “Gift I said, gift I mean. Kitra has always searched for dreams as great as her father's. Serge is more like me. The gentle, beautiful boy who gives strength and legs and arms to my daughter's vision.”

Marc nodded slowly. The passing headlights coalesced into a deeper understanding. “Their work as medics was a cover. They went to Kenya searching for . . . what?”

“Answers, Marc. Answers that would give wings to my husband's dream.” She shook her head decisively. “And everything else can wait until tomorrow.”

“I brought samples of earth,” Marc said. He saw the two in the front seat exchange glances. He lifted his sack and handed it forward. “From where the strangers were digging. The bags got damaged in the attack, so they're all mixed together.”

Sandrine watched her husband accept the pack and stow it at his feet, then repeated, “Tomorrow.”

They pulled off the main highway onto a long dusty drive running straight into the middle of nowhere. After a few miles the road ended in a parking area that fronted a compound of low-slung buildings. The lighting was too dim for Marc to make out much beyond the first row of white prefab structures. Sandrine saw how he eased himself from the car and asked, “You are injured?”

“A little bruised is all.”

“We have reserved you a room in the bachelors' quarters. Come.”

As he followed them down the graveled walk, he said, “Excuse my question, but why aren't you there with her?”

Sandrine replied, “Levi wanted to go immediately to Kenya and help Kitra search for our son. But our community ordered him to stay here. We are unfortunately facing a crisis of our own. Kitra said it was right for him to stay. What could he possibly do, not ever having been to Africa before?”

“But she refused to return home,” Levi said. “At the time I did not have the heart to argue. Perhaps I should—”

“You were not wrong, husband.”

“But the danger hasn't simply vanished because our son has vanished.”

“You were not wrong.”

Levi sighed to the night sky overhead and went silent.

Sandrine pointed Marc toward the building ahead of them and said, “Now you will clean yourself and rest. Do you need food?”

“I ate on the plane, thanks.”

“I will leave clothes for you in the hallway tomorrow. Good night, Marc. All else can wait until the sunrise.”

Marc awoke to the sound of a metallic hammering. Not bells. Like someone was banging a length of steel. He assumed it was some form of alarm and rose from his bed. When he opened the door to his tiny room, he discovered that Sandrine had left him a set of clothes, along with a razor, shampoo, and toothbrush. He washed and dressed hurriedly, trying to ignore his stiffening bruises. The clothes were one size too large, but the pants had a drawstring and the shirt was fine. Marc wondered if they belonged to Serge.

The morning sun was as hot as Nairobi, but very different. The air was dry here, but with no sense of drought. Here, the dryness was permanent. The brown hills rising to the east were painted by centuries without rain. The earth surrounding the shiny new buildings was the color of broken clay, a hundred hues, all of them rust brown.

He joined the flow of people moving toward a central building. They made way for him, but offered no welcome. They spoke in soft voices, either Hebrew or Yiddish, and pretended not to observe him as he crossed a desert plaza and entered the dining hall.

The first woman to speak to him was behind the counter. “What you want, hey? There are eggs and there is toast. But there is no ham or, what you call, bacon. This is kosher kitchen.”

Marc thought back to the ritual fringes dangling from beneath Levi Korban's shirt. “Kosher.”

“Yeah, sure. All is kosher. Look there, you want cheese, salads? We eat good here. You take. Eat. You like.”

Neither Sandrine nor Levi was visible. He finished his breakfast and left the dining hall with the others. There was a gradual drift toward a building at the plaza's far side. Marc joined them. He entered a meeting hall. He watched men draw small books and prayer shawls from pockets and fanny packs. Women covered their heads with scarves and moved to a different section behind a cream-colored screen as translucent as a bridal veil. Marc wondered if he should leave. People glanced at him, but there was no sense of hostility to their gaze.

Then he saw the cross.

It was very small, less than two feet high. It was carved into stone behind the dais. Easy to miss. But it was there.

So too were the red velvet drapes covering the alcove just below the cross. He took a seat on the rear pew as a bearded ancient pulled back the drapes and extracted a scroll. He kissed the border of the velvet cover and set it on the table by the dais. He then read from a book open on the dais. The other men and women joined in. Some swayed. Others covered their heads with the shawls and moved rapidly back and forth.

Sandrine came in first and slipped behind the screen. Levi arrived a few minutes later. He stepped into the pew beside Marc, opened his prayer book, adjusted his shawl, and began chanting with the others.

Marc sat and listened and wondered.

Both Sandrine and Levi departed before the service ended. They gave no signal for Marc to follow them. Marc wandered around the community. There was a quiet intensity here that matched what he had seen in his hosts. As though all of them shared some secret bond, something they were reluctant to reveal to any outsider. He was neither welcomed nor shunned. The few times he actually spotted people looking his way, he thought he detected anxiety.

The kibbutz was actually three unique segments. By far the largest was the farm. Neat plastic-covered rows blanketed a flat area of perhaps thirty acres. He had heard of this practice, where the plants were trickle-fed water from underground pipes and plastic sheets were used to keep water from evaporating. Some people were harvesting at a far corner of the fields, sun-browned limbs dumping armloads of leafy greens into a truck. The heat was fierce. Marc thought he heard singing.

A second section was made up of a dozen low-slung buildings. At first Marc thought they were related to the farm, until he followed a humming noise around a corner and confronted a series of industrial-grade air-conditioners and generators and what appeared to be air compressors. He spotted a trio of white-uniformed people walking from one building to the next, and hurried over. As he approached, he realized they were not uniforms at all, but disposable body suits like might be found in surgical wards. The two women and a man all had face masks dangling from strings around their necks, and their hair was tucked into matching white caps.

Marc caught up with them as they approached the entrance to one of the central buildings. They coded in numbers to a pad placed by the door. Marc heard the doors sigh open. The men glanced back, then hurried inside. The woman stood where she blocked his passage and demanded, “You are wanting something?”

“I'm just interested to know what is going on here.”

“Yes? You are interested? Why is this interesting to you?”

“I just—”

“I am not in the answer business. And I am not knowing who it is that is interested. You understand?”

“What you do in here is confidential?”

“If it is secret, why would I be discussing it with you?” She shooed him away with her hands. “Go, and take your questions with you. Good-bye.”

Marc watched her shield the keypad with her body before coding in the numbers. She kept glancing back at him as she entered. Then she passed through a set of interior doors and vanished.

Marc stood there, thinking about what had just happened. When the doors had opened, he felt a slight puff on his face. Meaning the air inside the building was kept at a slightly higher density than the outside. Which explained the compressors. But not what the people were doing inside.

Marc returned to his room. He took his time stretching his sore limbs, then sat at the narrow desk. The most obvious answer was, they worked inside clean rooms. Here. In a desert kibbutz. They did something that required an environment free of dust and all contaminants. He said to the window, “What are they doing in Africa?”

But the sunlight on his window did not offer any answers.