Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries) Read Free

he was meeting somebody from the Guardians of Palestine. Somebody who would know somebody . . . ”
    Khaled knew it was not what they wanted to hear.
    Scarface turned to his partner. “Guardians of Palestine . That bunch of young punks Nathaniel reported on.”
    The other agent nodded. “An offshoot of Hamas, as I recall. Ties to Hezbollah in Lebanon . It might help to check out this Kafi boy.”
    As Khaled slumped in the seat, Scarface pulled out a cellular phone and punched in a number.
    “Run this through the computer,” he instructed the voice at Shin Bet headquarters. “Subject named Abdullah Kafi, nineteen years old, Palestinian from Ramallah. See if we have anything on him.”
    He stared at Khaled as he listened to the wearying silence.
    After an interminable wait, the voice on the security service phone came back apologetically. “Sorry it took so long, but something just came in. I had to check it out. Seems you’re a little late on this one.”
    “Oh?”
    “Young Kafi’s body was found about half an hour ago near the Damascus Gate. Apparently he’d been rammed by a car. Not a pretty sight, they say.”
     
     
     
    Book One
     
    The Hostage Takers
     
     
     
    Chapter 1
     
    The Mediterranean shimmered in the morning sun as I swung the camcorder in a slow pan of the Jaffa waterfront. Gulls circled above the world’s oldest working port. A steady breeze bore the smell of salt and dry seaweed.
    “Come on, Greg,” Jill called. “Keep playing with that little black box and you’ll miss the bus.”
    I smiled at her. “Just so I don’t miss the bus for dinner. Besides, you’re the one who made sure I brought plenty of tapes.”
    I popped a stick of Mr. Wrigley’s famous Spearmint into my mouth. I’d quit smoking a few months earlier and was suffering the inevitable withdrawals.
    “Maybe so. But I didn’t intend for you to use the tapes as if they were going out of style.”
    I let it go. For a man who had survived sixty-five years on his wits, that was a concession.
    “Are you going to put together a film for the next class party?” Folds of dark hair above an arched brow belied her sixty-plus years.
    “I’ll limit it to epic proportions,” I said.
    All kidding aside, I had counted on this trip to separate me by time and distance from the agonizing predicament making my life unbearable back home. My situation seemed as insolvable as the standoff between the Palestinians and Israelis. Here it was played out with rocks, bullets and bombs. In my case, I felt the entire Metro Nashville Police Department was lined up like some Civil War regiment, glaring down their barrels at me. For the moment, though, my problems seemed remote.
    Grasping Jill’s hand, I strolled beside her out to where our group stood on a large open plaza. Clustered around us were entertainment places, restaurants, an art gallery and one of Israel ’s countless churches named for Simon Peter, the Galilean fisherman Jesus chose to lead the early Christians. We were mostly seniors, on a tour organized by our Sunday School class from Gethsemane United Methodist Church in Nashville . I would give long odds that we had not missed a single St. Peter’s since our arrival on a hot November morning two weeks ago. Some had questioned our sanity in traveling to this battleground of the Jews and Palestinians. But we had landed during a lull in the unpleasantness.
    By now the weather had cooled, making my yellow cardigan feel good when we started out from Netanya after breakfast. But the sun was nudging the mercury toward a high in the seventies. I was pulling off the sweater when I heard a cheery voice from nearby.
    “Hey, Greg!”
    Sam Gannon strolled over, pointing across the plaza. “You won’t believe what I saw in that gallery over there.”
    “What?”
    Gannon stands half a head taller than my five-foot ten, and he’s depressingly slim while I bulge in all the wrong places.
    “I just peeked in the doorway,” he said, “and