The Devil's Shepherd by Steven Hartov

Author:Steven Hartov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Argo-Navis

10

Bahir Dar

May 5

THE STEEL OF Eckstein’s pistol was cold as an icicle against the small of his back, but nestled there where he had tucked it into his jeans it gave some comfort as he stood alone in a black wadi southeast of Lake Tana. Like a cowboy of the American Old West, as an Israeli he had been raised to handle a gun, respect it, and use it cautiously, yet without hesitation if necessary. And hailing as he did from a “rough neighborhood,” he did not regard a weapon as a symbol of virility, nor an option to be disputed by vote-seeking lawmakers. It was simply an extension of his person, and without it, he felt rather like a fashionable woman without her purse.

He stared up into the night sky and shivered, despite the olive wool pullover and his New York Yankees baseball cap turned bill-backward and jammed onto his head. It was well past midnight and the African earth had long surrendered its warmth, but the tremble he felt was more empathic, for the man who would soon fall to him from 16,000 feet was about to experience a bone-chilling shock of altitude freeze much harsher than Eckstein’s mild discomfort.

He rubbed his arms briskly, then squinted at the luminescent dial of his black Breitling. It was five minutes to midnight, nearly forty-eight hours since he and Baum had first set foot in Krumlov’s orphanage, and he had spent most of that time on the wild roads of the Rift.

On the first morning he had nearly come to blows with Debay over possession of the Land Rover, but Baum had impressed upon Krumlov that Eckstein’s operational priorities were key, and by nature of the profession, private. So, as Debay grumbled and his trigger finger twitched, Eckstein had left them all behind and traveled to Bahir Dar.

His prearranged “mailbox” was a small roadside café on the outskirts of the lake, the young proprietor having served the photographer Anthony Hearthstone in his previous travels. In this instance, another stranger had first arrived from Addis some days ago and paid the boy well to keep safe a shallow wooden cigar box. The lid was glued shut, and when Eckstein arrived to recover it he was pleased to find it untampered with, its considerable weight assuring him that his Browning Hi-Power had indeed made safe passage from Jerusalem. He rewarded the smiling teenager behind the rickety counter with a further quintet of American presidents, then sat down at a dusty old table and slowly sipped a warm Pepsi until the boy left the café to service a battered Volkswagen at the gas pumps.

Eckstein produced a folding knife, pried the cigar box open, and slipped his pistol and spare magazine into his camera bag. He then placed Krumlov’s dubious mole photo into the box, carefully warmed the dried glue with a cigarette lighter until he was able to reseal the lid, and set the box back on the café counter. The same resident AMAN agent who had delivered the box would shortly return from Addis Ababa to recover it.

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