The Samaritan's secret

Chapter 11

A servant in a collarless blue tunic with gold buttons and a brocaded hem showed them into a spacious salon and tiptoed out as though he were getting away with some-thing. His dainty steps made a subdued patter on the pink marble.

Inlaid mother-of-pearl shone coral and white from the Syrian chairs, like teeth snarling through bared lips of teak. The wrought-iron coffee tables were patterned with Armenian ceramic tiles, figured with fruit and fish in yellow and brown. In the corner, a gaudy palm tree had been painted onto a thick board and cut out, so that it stood up like a six-foot exercise from a children’s book. The artist had signed the tree across the roots.

Omar Yussef gestured toward the painting of the palm tree. “Surely there’s room in here for a real one.”

“A real one wouldn’t cost a hundred grand.” Khamis Zeydan lit a cigarette. His good hand shook and he glanced at Omar Yussef to see if he had noticed.

To save his friend embarrassment, Omar Yussef turned to the door, his eyes tracing its arabesque relief. The little servant in the blue tunic opened the door and stood aside to allow a short woman in a pink suit to enter.

Liana reached out to stroke the polished surface of an art nouveau table as she came toward her guests. That gesture is like a gambler’s tell. She’s as nervous as my friend Abu Adel, Omar Yussef thought. She held Khamis Zeydan by the upper arms and brought him down for three kisses on the cheek, advanced a step toward Omar Yussef and offered him her hand.

Her eyes were deep, black and cool, like the eyes in an ancient Pharaoh’s portrait, and they were painted with the dramatic shades of green and blue the Egyptians used for the hieroglyphs of their tombs. That great beauty Cleopatra might have looked like Liana, Omar Yussef thought, had she lived longer, but no more wisely. Her hair was dyed black and rolled back in high lacquered waves, so that it resembled the shell of a snail. She kept her chin high. Omar Yussef wondered if that was out of a sense of superiority or to give the parallel wrinkles across her neck room to breathe.

Liana invited them to the ornate Syrian sofas before the picture window. Khamis Zeydan seemed so loath to sit that Omar Yussef pushed his jumpy friend gently into a chair. Another servant in an identical blue tunic brought coffee on a silver tray. He held out his hand and, with an encouraging smile, caught an inch of ash from Khamis Zeydan’s cigarette. He lifted a gold ashtray from one of the Armenian tables and set it next to the policeman’s coffee cup.

“I’m happy that you brought your friend to see my home, Abu Adel,” Liana said.

Khamis Zeydan grunted.

“You’re most welcome here, ustaz,” she said to Omar Yussef. “Consider it as your home and as if you were among your family.”

Omar Yussef was about to give the formal reply, when Khamis Zeydan spoke, louder than was necessary, as though he had to force the words out. “Are you glad I brought myself?”

“Abu Adel, I always want to see you. I wish you’d come often.”

“Really?” Khamis Zeydan sounded bitter.

Liana sucked in her cheeks, patiently. “Agreeable company is always a pleasure on this lonely hilltop.”

Khamis Zeydan stubbed out his cigarette and looked up at her. His blue eyes were sad and lost.

“My life here is like a dream,” Liana said. She fixed her eyes on Khamis Zeydan. “People always describe a pleasant experience as being like a dream. But how many of your good dreams do you remember? I seem to recall my night-mares much more clearly.”

Liana and the policeman stared at each other in silence.

Omar Yussef cleared his throat. “Perhaps people mean only that it’s a feeling they know is destined to pass quickly,” he said. “Like our memories of dreams, which are so vivid while we sleep, only to seem vague once we awake.”

“Are you a friend of Abu Adel’s from here in Nablus, ustaz?” Liana asked.

“From Bethlehem,” Omar Yussef said. “I’ve known Abu Adel since we were students together in Damascus. We renewed our friendship when he returned to Palestine to become police chief in Bethlehem after the peace agreement with Israel. We had lost touch during his period in Beirut.”

Khamis Zeydan and Liana locked eyes once more at the mention of the Lebanese capital. Omar Yussef bit the end of his tongue at his indelicacy.

“Abu Adel and I are in Nablus for the wedding of our young friend Sami Jaffari. He’s a policeman, but he’s also involved with the Fatah Party, so you may have heard of him.”

“I also will be attending that wedding,” Liana said. “I attend all the Fatah functions.”

“Your husband is an important figure in Fatah,” Khamis Zeydan said.

The woman looked at him with pity. “Have I become such a minor character that I wouldn’t receive any invitations if it weren’t for my husband?” She waited, but Khamis Zeydan kept his eyes on his ashtray. Liana turned to Omar Yussef. “We used to live closer to the town, but we built this house ten years ago. The views are wonderful, although it’s a little isolated. Few people come up here to the peak of Mount Jerizim.”

“I was up here only this morning,” Omar Yussef said.

Liana inclined her head to the side. One of her large silver earrings rattled into her leathery neck and she stroked the lapis scarab embedded in it with her index finger.

“I was with a Samaritan priest when he heard there had been a murder in his community,” Omar Yussef said. “We found the body of a dead Samaritan man at the site of their ancient temple just along the ridge from here.”

“Allah will be merciful upon the deceased one,” Liana murmured.

“May Allah preserve you,” Omar Yussef said.

Ishaq had worked for Liana’s husband. Omar Yussef wondered if Liana would betray anything that might be useful to Sami’s investigation. “The dead man was an associate of your husband, I believe.”

Liana sat up and flattened her pink skirt against her thighs. A trace of fear crept across her eyes. She blinked, and the eyes came back as dead and dull as the surface of the water in a neglected well. “Who?” Her voice was cautious and throaty, as though she feared Omar Yussef might reach out to catch the word and slap her face with it.

“Ishaq, the son of Jibril the priest.”

Liana turned her face away from Omar Yussef and examined the diamond rings on her hands.

“Did you know him?” Omar Yussef said.

“Ishaq?” She spat the word down toward her rings and her jaw shivered. “I was acquainted with him.”

“Your husband’s acquaintance with Ishaq was quite a close one, I believe.”

“My husband makes friends easily. Most multimillionaires do.” Liana threw back her head and her face contorted as though she wanted to prevent a tear from escaping her eye. She sighed and thrust an arm out straight to Khamis Zeydan. “Give me a cigarette, Abu Adel.”

Khamis Zeydan pulled a cigarette from his pack. She took it and leaned forward for him to light it. Her hand shook and the cigarette missed the flame. Khamis Zeydan gently steadied her wrist with his prosthesis, while he lit the tip.

Liana sucked on the Rothmans and blew out a stream of gray smoke. Khamis Zeydan glanced with confusion at the leather glove covering his prosthetic hand.

Omar Yussef watched Liana take another long drag and shiver as she exhaled. Is it merely the mention of her husband and his money that made her suddenly so edgy? he thought. “Your husband attracts friends only because he’s rich?” he said.

She swallowed hard and looked at Omar Yussef. “My husband is charming and charismatic. But there’s no way to make hundreds of millions of dollars and remain a nice guy, ustaz. The more money a man makes, the greater his egomania and childish brutality, and the more so-called friends he requires to allow him to indulge such traits.”

“Doesn’t that depend on whether the money is made legally, or through crime?”

“I was a student radical in the late 1960s and a campaigning journalist in the 1970s, ustaz. I believed then that for one man even to possess a million dollars would be a crime. No matter how much the Prophet Muhammad is said to have praised the life of the merchant, I always believed there would have to have been some sort of crime involved in the acquisition of such a sum. That opinion hasn’t changed.” She looked at Khamis Zeydan. “Being with my husband hasn’t changed many of my opinions since those days.”

Ishaq’s name seems to make her furious and nervy, Omar Yussef thought. He wondered if Amin Kanaan and Ishaq, the homosexual, had shared more than just a business partnership. “Was your husband especially close to Ishaq?”

Liana looked sharply at Omar Yussef. Her eyes were wide and fierce. “It was undoubtedly one of my husband’s closest relationships,” she said, her bright lips quivering. “Brother Abu. .?”

“Abu Ramiz,” Omar Yussef said.

“Brother Abu Ramiz, I would like to discuss something privately for a few moments with my old friend Abu Adel,” Liana said. “If Allah wills it, we shall meet again soon, at your friend’s wedding perhaps.”

“If Allah wills it,” Omar Yussef said.

Dismissed, he raised himself from the couch. Khamis Zeydan lifted his hand hesitantly, as though he might pull Omar Yussef back onto the sofa for protection. Protection from himself, Omar Yussef thought. He gave a peremptory grin to his nervous friend and made for the door.

Omar Yussef crossed the hall to a pair of high glass-paneled doors at the back of the house. He touched a smooth pillar of green Indian marble and looked down at the scattered lights of Nablus in the valley. Dull and orange, they nestled between the mountains like the final glowing coals of a dying campfire. In five days, even those few lights will be turned off, if the World Bank flips the switch, he thought. Face it, Omar, there’s nothing you can do about it. It isn’t that you don’t care, but you’re just a schoolteacher. If you try to keep the lights on, it could easily be you who’s snuffed out.

Something moved in the darkness outside the window, flickering in front of the distant city lights. Omar Yussef put his face close to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes to block out the lights of the hall. Among the cypresses bordering the lawn, a group of men was gathered. Omar Yussef watched for a minute, but could make out very little in the dim radiance cast from the mansion. Within a minute, most of the men moved away from the house into the dark and went over the buttresses at the edge of the garden. As they jumped, one of them lifted his arm for balance and Omar Yussef saw that he was holding an assault rifle.

The last man turned and strode across the grass to the house. He was tall and his thick white hair fluttered back from a wide forehead, swept by the wind that came over the hilltop. He padded quickly up the steps. Omar Yussef hid behind the pillar, but the man turned along the terrace toward the mansion’s northern wing without looking around. Omar Yussef had seen him clearly enough to recognize a face familiar from the newspaper’s business page.

It was Amin Kanaan.

The door opened behind Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan came into the hall. Omar Yussef folded his arms and leaned against the pillar, as though he had been waiting casually for his friend to emerge.

Khamis Zeydan waved his arm impatiently and headed for the door.

“What was the secret chat about?” Omar Yussef asked.

“She wanted to sing me a few lines from our favorite old love song. She’s sentimental like that,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”

They drove in silence along the avenue of cypresses to the gate. Khamis Zeydan unscrewed the cap of his Johnnie Walker but he didn’t drink until they were on the road. Does he wish to present a dignified front while still on Kanaan’s property? Omar Yussef wondered. Khamis Zeydan turned downhill, sped up and slugged hard from the bottle, his gulping throat working rhythmically, like a part of the engine.

He wiped his hand across his mustache. “What do you think you’re doing, grilling Liana about some dead Samaritan?”

“He wasn’t just any Samaritan. You seemed to know exactly who he was when I told you about him earlier.” Omar Yussef grabbed for the whisky, wrested it with both hands from Khamis Zeydan’s grip and tossed it in the glove compartment. “You must have met Ishaq on your visits to the Old Man’s office in Ramallah.”

“I’m not finished with that bottle,” the policeman said.

“You can drink after you’ve negotiated this dangerous road.” Omar Yussef swept his hand toward the boulders at the roadside, menacing in the stark beams of the headlights. “I asked her about the Samaritan, because I wanted to help Sami with his investigation.”

Khamis Zeydan sighed, impatiently. “Help Sami? If you want to help Sami, keep your mouth shut.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sami’s not investigating. He’s in danger.”

“He’s a policeman. Even Palestinian policemen are supposed to trace criminals.”

“Not if it means ending up dead.”

“If those men wanted to kill him, they could have done it in the alley.”

“You think it’s a small step to kill? Even for thugs like that? If you exhumed all the murdered police investigators in the world, I bet you’d find that none of them had a broken arm. No one’s stupid enough to push on after that kind of warning.”

Omar Yussef tapped Khamis Zeydan on the shoulder. “That’s what Liana wanted to talk to you about alone, isn’t it?” he said. “She’s big in Fatah, so she wants the Party to have the money, not the World Bank. Her husband was close to the dead Samaritan. Was he involved in the murder? She told you to make sure Sami hushes up the murder, didn’t she? Well, he won’t.”

“What money?” Khamis Zeydan looked thirstily at the glove compartment and bit his lip.

Omar Yussef hesitated.

“Shall I beat it out of you?” Khamis Zeydan said. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

“The American woman at the hotel works for the World Bank. She reckons Ishaq hid three hundred million dollars in secret accounts around the world for the Old Man, and she’s trying to track these funds. Ishaq was about to talk to her, when he was killed.”

“Obviously she’s not the only one who was looking for that money.”

“Then we have to find it first. If the World Bank can’t trace the money by Friday, all Palestinian aid money is going to be cut off.”

“What? Now I’m going to beat you just for being a stupid bastard.” Khamis Zeydan punched his fist against the steering wheel. “Whoever is trying to get hold of that three hundred million dollars isn’t going to share it with you. They’re going to kill anyone who attempts to beat them to it.”

“But the aid-”

“It’s the World Bank’s job to find the money, not yours. It’s better for the aid to be terminated than your life. Didn’t you think of that?”

Omar Yussef considered lying that he hadn’t, but instead he turned away.

Khamis Zeydan whistled. “My dear brother, I despair of you sometimes.”

Omar Yussef stared at the road dropping toward Nablus. Lurking among the dim lights on the valley floor, there were men who would kill him for three hundred dollars, let alone three hundred million. He’s right. I have to leave this to the American woman, he thought.

“I took the business card of the World Bank lady,” he said. “You’re right that I shouldn’t be involved in this. I’ll give her card to Sami. He doesn’t know about the money. But maybe he’ll have an idea of how to trace it.”

“Sami’s already dropped the case,” Khamis Zeydan said. “When I saw him in the sick bay at police headquarters, he told me the broken arm wasn’t the only threat he’d received.”

“I know. The sheikh warned him off.”

“Which sheikh? The Hamas guy? Sheikh Bader?” Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “This was something else. He got a phone call. A threat to kidnap Meisoun.”

“So put her under the protection of the police.”

“What good would that do? The kidnappers might also be policemen. This is Palestine. The men with the guns don’t carry them out of civic duty.” The police chief reached out, gave a gentle slap to Omar Yussef’s face, and rested his hand on the back of his friend’s neck. “You remember the old story about the Arab conquest of Egypt? The caliph decided to name one of his generals as military governor and planned to put someone else in charge of the treasury.”

Omar Yussef knew where this was going.

“The general refused, saying that it would be as though he held the horns of a cow, while the other guy milked it. That’s how it is here. The men who beat Sami were holding the horns of the cow, but they were sent by the guy who’s milking it.”

The jeep jolted through a pothole. Omar Yussef spread his hands against the dashboard to brace himself.

“I can’t let this case be dropped,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan looked at him with fierce eyes. Omar Yussef knew the police chief had heard the desperate strain in his voice. He had to explain himself, though the more he talked, the shriller and more wretched he sounded. “The stakes are very high. All our people’s aid money, cut off, and you don’t seem to care.”

“Are you surprised that the Palestinians should get screwed again?”

“If Sami won’t do it, you must.”

“Not me.” Khamis Zeydan waved his prosthesis. “I’ve only got one hand. If they break my other arm, I’m out to pasture.”

“Well, I can’t do it. I can’t.” Omar Yussef’s cheek throbbed where the masked man had slapped him. His stomach convulsed with shame and fear. A trickle of sweat ran from his palm down the dirty black dashboard.

“You’re right about that, my brother,” Khamis Zeydan said. Quickly, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out the bottle before Omar Yussef could react. He grinned. “Even someone as stubborn as you can’t save the Palestinians. Everyone has to figure out a way to save them-selves. This is my way.” He brandished the whisky.

“You talk as though you and I weren’t Palestinian.”

“Palestine? It’s up there on that ridge, inside all those mansions. It’s nothing but a corrupt business deal. Sometimes the P.R. is good and the world shovels in the cash. Sometimes it’s bad and the peasants suffer. But people like Liana still visit conferences in Europe on the rights of refugees and stay in the most expensive hotels. Save Palestine? Let it go to hell.” He swigged from the bottle.

Down the slope in Nablus, a meager fluorescence glim-mered from the narrow, arched windows of the old quarter. Omar Yussef shuddered. Khamis Zeydan might find the reality of his people’s struggle in the mansions above them, but Omar Yussef knew that it was below him, in the hidden alleys of the casbah.