The Samaritan's secret

Chapter 17

In the alley outside the baths, Khamis Zeydan blew loudly through pursed lips, rubbed his bloodless gray forehead and swallowed hard. “I don’t know if I’m up for this,” he rasped. “If I go into the steam room, I might pass out.”

“What about all the sweating you need to do?” Omar Yussef followed his friend up the steps.

“If I sweat those things out, they’ll leave traces of my dirty history all over the tiles in the baths for people to read.”

Someone has already unearthed those secrets, my friend, Omar Yussef thought. He wondered if he ought to tell Khamis Zeydan that they were about to meet Awwadi in the bathhouse. By introducing them, he hoped to persuade Awwadi that Khamis Zeydan was a good man and to prevent him using his dossier of dirt against the police chief. With his friend irritable and hungover, though, he wasn’t sure Awwadi would take to him.

“Never mind,” Khamis Zeydan said. “The sooner I get some hot water on my head, the quicker we’ll know if this is the hangover that’s finally going to kill me.” He labored toward the doorway.

The main hall of the Hammam al-Sumara centered on an old fountain of scalloped limestone. Water spouted softly from a stone column in the middle of the fountain into a pool tiled turquoise. The window at the peak of the high domed ceiling was sectioned into blue, green and orange triangles. Long vines grew around the glass and emerald mold streaked the white plaster. The room was light, but the dampness gave it the scent of an old cellar.

Nouri Awwadi lay on a divan by the entrance. When he noticed Khamis Zeydan, he raised his eyebrows and pushed his chin forward at Omar Yussef, as though complimenting a host on a finely prepared dish. He played his thumb across the keypad of his cellular phone and pointed it at a bulky man beside him, who directed his own phone at Awwadi. They laughed as the handsets sounded the refrain of a cloying Lebanese love song. Omar Yussef recognized the tune from the music video channel to which Nadia some-times danced about the living room.

Awwadi gave his companion’s heavy shoulder a slap. He turned to Omar Yussef. “We’re swapping ringtones.”

Omar Yussef frowned. He resented their loud laughter and the intrusion of the idiotic jingle into this traditional place. “When they built these baths five hundred years ago, cell phones were one annoyance they didn’t have to suffer,” he said.

Awwadi’s friend smiled. His thick black hair was slicked back from a low forehead and his beard shone with oil. “This was always a place for meetings, ustaz. If you return later in the day, this hall will be filled with men smoking the nargila and playing backgammon.”

“In that case, I’m glad we came early.”

“Do you think in Paradise there are no people?” The dark-haired man lifted his arms wide. Under his black-and- white checked shirt, his chest expanded and he rolled his neck. “People are part of Paradise.”

“If everyone made it to Paradise, you’d be correct.” Omar Yussef wagged his finger and smiled. “But I hope that Allah, the King of the Day of Judgment, will weed out anybody who tries to take their cell phone into Paradise.”

“If Allah wills it.” The heavy man laughed, reaching out to give him a big, slapping handshake. “I apologize for some mess you may find here and there around the baths. An Israeli special forces unit came last night.”

“Why?”

“Looking for something.”

“For what?”

“I failed to qualify for the Israeli special forces, so I’m not privy to such information. My name is Abdel Rahim Dadoush. I’m the manager of the baths.”

“And the best masseur in Nablus, too.” Nouri Awwadi stood up and greeted Omar Yussef with three kisses. He took Khamis Zeydan’s hand.

“Good, I need a massage,” Khamis Zeydan said. “My body’s as stiff as a donkey’s cock in midpiss.”

Awwadi clapped his hands and laughed.

“Only the pain of a rough massage can free you from this stiffness,” Abdel Rahim said. “I will kill you with my massage and make you feel alive again. But first, the baths.”

In the narrow changing room, Omar Yussef pulled a thin white towel around his slack waist. Khamis Zeydan took an extra towel and draped it casually over his arm to disguise his prosthetic hand.

Awwadi smiled as they entered a wide room filled with steam. “Once a man has been in the baths with another man, they have no need for secrets,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan glanced at the towel over his lost limb, but Omar Yussef knew that Awwadi wasn’t referring to the prosthesis. He’s telling me that Khamis Zeydan’s file won’t be used against him, Omar Yussef thought.

The three men lay on the floor of the steam room. Colored light radiated out of the vaulted ceiling, passing through small circular shafts each with a pane of stained glass at the top. Omar Yussef felt the mulberry scent of the steam opening his lungs.

“When you experience the warmth of this air, it’s like a drug,” Awwadi said. “You feel that nothing can harm you.”

“Steam can’t protect you from a bullet,” Khamis Zeydan murmured.

“What can make a man bulletproof?”

“Money.”

“Perhaps I will soon have enough of that to deflect every bullet in the arsenals of all the Palestinian factions, and the Israelis, too.” Awwadi winked at Omar Yussef.

He’s close to finding the secret account documents, Omar Yussef thought. Or perhaps he already has them. How am I going to persuade him not to use the money for Hamas operations? He has to turn it over to Jamie King.

Awwadi rose and slapped his palms on his smooth pectoral muscles. “Excuse me for a while, please. I like to have my massage when I’m sweating like this,” he said.

“Nouri, there’s something you ought to know,” Omar Yussef said. “On Friday, the World Bank-”

“In a few minutes, Abu Ramiz. I’ll rejoin you later for the hot water.”

The steam closed behind him.

Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan went to the next chamber. The walls were divided into cubicles as wide as a man is tall. In each cubicle, a cinder block lay on the floor on either side of a low stone basin. Khamis Zeydan sat on an upturned block and ran the hot water.

Omar Yussef stared at the black mold surrounding the basin and creeping along the grouting between the cream-colored tiles. Higher up the wall, the plaster was streaked with a lime green mold so bright that at first it looked like paint. “Why don’t they clean this off? It’s disgusting.”

“Don’t be a pansy,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Sit down and pour.” He lifted a red plastic beaker, scooped hot water from the basin and tipped it over his head. He shuddered and bellowed.

Omar Yussef lowered himself onto the other block. Khamis Zeydan handed him a beaker and he doused himself. The long strands of white hair he combed over his baldness washed down across his brow and his glasses fogged. The warmth sank deep into him and he scooped the hot water again and again, until he wondered if he would ever be able to stop.

Khamis Zeydan splashed his beaker back and forth in the basin to cover his words. “What did that Hamas bastard mean about secrets?” he whispered.

“Can’t you relax for a while?” Omar Yussef closed his eyes and poured another beaker of water over his scalp and onto his sloping shoulders.

“He looked at you as though you’d know just what he meant.”

The dirty faucet splattered water into the basin. Omar Yussef listened, but they were alone in this part of the baths. “Awwadi procured some files for Hamas,” he whispered. “Files that were compiled by the Old Man. With scan-dalous information.”

“Dirt?”

“Dirt. I don’t know who’s included in the files, but it’s clear from what Awwadi says that it concerns a lot of top Fatah people.”

Khamis Zeydan opened his mouth. Omar Yussef held the palm of his hand in front of his friend’s face. “There’s a file on you,” he said. “But don’t worry. I’m sure that’s what Awwadi meant just now. He won’t use that file against you after we’ve shared a bath together.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Khamis Zeydan slopped the water around in the basin noisily. “He was letting me know that he has something on me. He might use it any time.”

“You’re being too suspicious.”

“Put yourself in my position. You’d be highly suspicious.”

Omar Yussef tapped his beaker on the stone edge of the basin and felt the urge to be nasty creeping toward his lips. “I’m tired of your constant negativity,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not in your position. I haven’t lived a dirty life. I don’t have to fear that I’ll be blackmailed for all the wicked secrets hidden in my past.”

“You don’t have skeletons in your closet?” Khamis Zeydan looked scornful. “You were fired from the Freres School, weren’t you? You always told me it was over nothing. But maybe there was something to it. Don’t forget Damascus, either, when we were students and you were a political hack at the university. You were into all kinds of shady things back then, don’t deny it. And what about that son of yours in New York? The Israelis had him in jail a couple of years ago. What has he been up to?”

“Ala was never charged.”

“You sound like his lawyer, not his father,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Go into anyone’s past and you’ll find that we’re all dirty liars who manipulate the truth.”

“Lies are one thing. Running all over Europe and the Middle East committing murder is quite different.”

Khamis Zeydan sneered, as though Omar Yussef had thought to knock him down with no more than a slap from a wet towel. “It’s no secret that I did those things, which means it’s no scandal. But for all I know, you could be a murderer.”

“How dare you,” Omar Yussef said. He thought of the time he had spent in jail in Bethlehem before he went to university, on a false murder charge. “And if you heard that I was a murderer, you’d believe it?”

“I never believe anything I hear,” Khamis Zeydan said. “But you seem content to assume the worst about me.”

They poured hot water on their shoulders, but the relax-ation was gone.

“We all try to keep our past quiet,” Khamis Zeydan said. “All silence is guilty. I’ve done so much dirty stuff that I ought to be put away forever. But instead I’m a law enforce-ment officer. Welcome to Palestine.”

Omar Yussef put his hand on Khamis Zeydan’s pale, bony knee. “We can try to get your file from Awwadi.”

“Those files aren’t for his personal use, by Allah. Even if Awwadi and I have bonded in our towels, Sheikh Bader hasn’t hung out naked with me. I don’t imagine Awwadi has the sheikh’s dispensation to give up that file, even if he were prepared to do so. The sheikh will use it against me, if I ever try to arrest someone from Hamas. In Palestine, you can never allow another man to have power over you.”

“‘Call a man your master, and he’ll sell you in the slave market,’” Omar Yussef said.

Khamis Zeydan snapped his fingers. “This is where the sheikh got the idea that the Old Man died of that disease, isn’t it? From the files.”

“Could be.”

“But how? They were the Old Man’s files. He wouldn’t have the details of his own death in there.”

Omar Yussef took a breath. He was about to tell Khamis Zeydan how Ishaq had been with the president at the end and had also given the files to Hamas, but there was a cry from further back in the bathhouse.

Khamis Zeydan’s towel spattered water behind him on the tiles as he disappeared into the shower room. The cry could have come from someone suffering as his knotted muscles were massaged too strongly, but Khamis Zeydan must have recognized something harsher in the voice. He’s heard men in pain and he’s heard men in despair, Omar Yussef thought. He didn’t hang around to listen for a second scream.

Another voice howled from the same direction. This time it was no cry of pain. It was a shriek of horror.

Omar Yussef slopped across the wet floor. His heel slipped in a pool of water, and he grabbed a shower curtain to break his fall. The plastic rings along the shower rail popped one by one and dropped him awkwardly to the cold, damp tiles. He cursed and rubbed his tailbone where it had hit the floor. His slip had quickened his pulse even more than the scream.

He found Khamis Zeydan kneeling before a massage bench. The baths’ manager leaned against the wall with the expression of a man who had just been punched hard. On the bench, someone lay on his belly, his feet hanging off the end.

Omar Yussef carefully crossed the puddled floor. The massage chamber seemed cold, after the steam bath and the hot water.

The bench was made of thick, clumsy chunks of olive wood, blackened with the sweat of many men despite the gray, smeared towel wrapped across it. As Omar Yussef approached, he saw that the body on the bench was muscular and hairless. When he smelled sandalwood, he gasped. He knelt by Khamis Zeydan, as his friend lifted Nouri Awwadi’s hand from where it dangled to the floor and laid it beside his heavy torso.

“His neck is broken,” the police chief said.

Awwadi’s head lay at a sharp angle to his bulky shoulders. The young man gazed blankly. Omar Yussef remembered the startling recognition he’d felt before Ishaq’s dead, blue eyes. Faced with Awwadi’s stare, he thought that it seemed no more to have been alive than the black, shiny eyeball of a fish staring back from a plate.

Omar Yussef lifted his hand to touch the dead man, but withdrew it. He was certain that Awwadi, who had either possessed the secret bank details or been confident of obtaining them soon, had been murdered because of them. If I hadn’t told him about the money, he’d be alive, Omar Yussef thought. That man who chased me through the casbah wasn’t just trying to scare me. He’ll really kill to be the first to find those millions. He shivered and let out a quiet whimper of fear. “Close his eyes,” he said.

The body was perfectly muscled and oiled, but now it would commence upon the process of decay that Omar Yussef had considered while he waited for dinner the previous night. He wondered how many more bodies he would have to gaze upon, if he continued his search for Ishaq’s killer and the account details. He looked at Abdel Rahim. “May Allah have mercy upon him.”

“May you yourself live long,” the bathhouse manager muttered. “I was getting ready to do his massage when I heard the cry. I ran back here, but I found only Nouri’s body.”

“You were in the entrance hall?” Omar Yussef rose, stiff and groaning.

“No, I was mopping out the steam room after you used it. I went back to the changing room and from there I came this way.”

“Was it you I heard shriek in terror?”

Abdel Rahim sucked his bottom lip under his teeth and closed his eyes.

“Could anyone have sneaked past you, after they killed Nouri?”

The masseur shook his head. He grimaced at Nouri Awwadi’s back and turned away.

“Is there another way out of here?” Omar Yussef said.

The manager stared at the water dripping from the shower in the nearest stall.

Omar Yussef moved closer to him. “Abdel Rahim?”

“The Israelis were here last night to find our tunnels,” Abdel Rahim said. “That’s why they came.”

Omar Yussef cocked his head. “Tunnels?”

“There’re tunnels all over the casbah. Tunnels and passages between houses. No one knows them except those who live here.”

Abdel Rahim led them to the back of the massage room and opened a door onto absolute darkness. “Down these steps, we have our heating room, the generator, the steam mechanism. There’s also an entrance to a long passage. Eventually it leads to the back of a halva factory. The killer could have gone out that way.”

“Did the Israelis find it?”

“I don’t think so. I checked this morning and the entrance hadn’t been disturbed.”

Omar Yussef flipped a light switch and looked down at a spiral staircase, its worn stone steps shining in the yellow light. He put his foot on the first step to descend, but the cold draught reminded him that he was wet and wearing only a towel.

“Abu Adel,” he said. “Get dressed. We must follow this passage. You’ll have to do without your massage.”

Khamis Zeydan looked down at Nouri Awwadi’s corpse and rolled his head on his shoulders. “I prefer a stiff neck to a broken one,” he said.