“That’s understandable.”
FORTY
BECAUSE THERE WERE NO direct flights from Chicago O’Hare to Ben Gurion International, the trip to Tel Aviv would take fifteen hours. Liam tried to sleep, but the cramped coach seats were increasingly uncomfortable. In contrast, Kayla sat tall and composed, reading, shuffling department papers, making notes.
“How do you do that? It seems like we’ve been in these seats for days.”
She shrugged and smiled.
“Kayla Cummings, that’s a pretty name. Are you married?”
“I was. My husband died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have any children?”
She shook her head and went back to her reading.
“Where did you grow up?” Liam said after a minute.
She smiled and put down her papers. “You’re just full of personal questions, aren’t you?”
“Occupational hazard, I suppose. I’m a PI. And I’d like to know more about the person I’m working with.”
Kayla shifted in her seat. “What about you? Are you married, engaged?”
Liam smiled. “No, but I’m working on it.”
“The attorney, Ms. Lockhart?”
“Good guess.”
“Not really a guess. It’s pretty obvious. So, what does ‘working on it’ mean? That’s an odd way of phrasing it. What’s standing in your way?”
“Oh? Now look who’s asking the personal questions.”
Kayla smiled. “Ah, you’re avoiding my question. How come the two of you haven’t taken the next step?”
Liam shrugged. “I can’t give you a reason. Maybe it just hasn’t been the right time. Do you have a boyfriend?”
Kayla laughed. “You’re right. This is getting too personal. We should keep it on a professional basis. We’re headed to Israel to find out what we can about al-Zahani and his group. Is there a deal in play? If not, can we put one in play? Hopefully, you’ll be able sniff out some information, maybe even make contact with Arif. I know the land, the people, the culture. And I know about the evil doctor. I’ll help you in any way I can. It’s probably best for us to leave the personal doors closed.”
Kayla went back to her reading, and Liam wrestled with the stiff, little El Al pillow, trying to give sleep another chance. He folded it, he stuffed it between his shoulder and his neck, he placed it against the window, and he even laid it on the tray table. Kayla watched in amusement.
“Why aren’t you tired? How can you just sit there looking comfortable?”
Kayla smiled. “It helps to be half your size.”
“Tell me something. Why are you so certain that al-Zahani is a terrorist?”
Kayla paused for a moment. “Earlier this year, there was a wedding in Hebron. At Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Tomb of the Patriarchs. A car full of terrorists opened fire on the wedding party and then drove away. Four innocent people were killed and others were injured. A week later, they caught one of the shooters. I interviewed him briefly at the hospital. He was dying, almost too weak to talk. But he told me that Fa’iz Talib and Nizar Mohammed had sent them on the attack. I’ve since discovered that al-Zahani is associated with those men.”
“That’s it? He’s associated?”
“There’s more. We’ll save it for a later time.”
“And now he’s got Sophie.”
“Right. And he seeks to trade her for millions of dollars. It makes perfect sense. Millions of dollars to fund another terrorist plot. We can’t let it happen.”
The plane started its descent, and Liam stared out the window at Tel Aviv, its beaches, green parks, and span of high-rise hotels. “Beautiful.”
Kayla nodded. “When Mark Twain visited here in 1867, he called the land desolate and unlovely. There’s a famous quote from him: ‘Even the olive and cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.’ He was right, you know. And it stayed that way for close to a hundred years, until it became the state of Israel. What you’re seeing is Israeli development.”
* * *
BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL WAS humming when they arrived. “Follow me,” Kayla said, bypassing security, opening a side door, and shepherding Liam through immigration control and into a waiting car. As they settled into the backseat, Kayla said to the driver, “Twenty-three David HaMelech.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the driver replied, “the YMCA.”
“What? The YMCA?” Liam said. “Are you serious? They’re putting me up at a YMCA? All the time I spent in Northern Ireland, the CIA never put me at a YMCA. Is this how the Agency operates now?”
The driver threw his arms into the air and started singing the familiar song.
“Really?” Liam said. “The YMCA?”
The driver snorted through his bursts of laughter.
“The YMCA is across the street from the King David Hotel, where we’ll be staying in Jerusalem,” Kayla said between giggles.
“Oh, Jesus.” Liam shook his head. “Are you guys having a real good time picking on the poor Irish chump?”
“Well, now that you mention it,” she said, smiling. She pointed at the horizon. “The airport is southeast of Tel Aviv. Our route to Jerusalem parallels the 1949 Armistice Agreement line—the Green Line—east, then south, and finally around to the east again, from one side of Israel to the other on a winding highway. If one traveled straight across the country, the distance from Tel Aviv to the West Bank, from the Mediterranean to Samaria, is as short as eleven miles.”
“Not very far for a rocket to travel,” Liam observed.
“You’re not the first to come to that conclusion.”
Once into the countryside, Kayla pointed at the hills, lush with foliage, pine trees, vegetable farms, flowers, and greenhouses. “Israel in the spring. Verdant and plentiful.”
“The land of milk and honey?”
“That’s an interesting biblical phrase. The referenced honey doesn’t come from bees. It comes from crushed dates. They grow on date palms in the valleys of the desert.”
The car dropped them at the King David just before noon. Liam’s room was on a top floor with a balcony overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. It was a ten-minute walk to the Jaffa Gate and from there to the Via Dolorosa, the crowded market passageway where Liam planned to make the acquaintance of Jamal Abu Hammad. After a ninety-minute nap, Liam met Kayla for a snack in the King’s Garden Restaurant.
“What can you tell me about Abu Hammad?” Liam said.
“Well, he’s an Arab and he currently lives in East Jerusalem. Before that, he lived in Hebron. His family and the al-Zahanis go back a long time. To Haifa. He knows Arif and he has his ear to the ground in Hebron. He owns a shop in the Muslim quarter of the Old City. He used to be a resource for us, but there was an incident several years ago and he will no longer knowingly be an asset. That’s why you’re so valuable in this matter.”
“Why would he cooperate with me? I’m an American and we’re underwriting the occupation of his homeland. Aren’t we the great Satan?”
“Although we’re mincing words here, Liam, Palestine was never considered the Arab homeland. Arabia is their homeland, over a million square miles of the Arabian Peninsula. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan. Those are Arab homelands. The West Bank was never considered the Arab homeland.”
“Does Abu Hammad live in a Zone A city?”
“No, Abu Hammad lives in East Jerusalem. Sixty-six years ago, he lived in Haifa. When the 1948 war began, Abu Hammad’s family followed the Arab commands, left Haifa, and fled to Jordan. After the 1948 war, they moved to Hebron. Later, Jamal moved to East Jerusalem when it was still under Jordanian occupation.
“The Old City, where you’ll be going today, was captured by Jordan in 1948 and was off-limits to Israelis until 1967. All the holy sites—the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shrines for all three Abrahamic religions�
�were blocked off by barbed wire. The square that now sits in front of the Western Wall was a slum. Today, under Israeli law, everyone is allowed access. The Old City has four quarters: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian. Abu Hammad’s shop is in the Muslim Quarter, accessible easily through the Jaffa Gate.”
Liam stood, put his folded napkin on the table. “Then I’m off to the Old City to pay Mr. Abu Hammad a visit.”
FORTY-ONE
THE SKY WAS DODGER blue as Liam left the hotel lobby. A breeze rolled down from the hills and rustled the trees in the parks, carrying the scent of spring wildflowers. Liam stopped for a brief moment in a park. With his hands in his pockets, he breathed deeply of the sweet air and took in the scene. A group of young boys were kicking a soccer ball. Two mothers were taking an afternoon walk, pushing their babies in strollers. It could have been Central Park. Or even Lincoln Park. But the ancient towers and domes rising above the trees gave a singular majesty to the landscape. He was in Jerusalem.
It was a short walk to the Jaffa Gate and thence to the Muslim Quarter and the Via Dolorosa. The narrow stone passageways of the Old City, with their tiny market stalls, diverse sounds and fragrances, were jammed with tourists. He stopped often to check for an address, and when he did, a smiling shopkeeper, offering “surely the most exquisite purchase in all of Israel,” would quickly approach him and tug at his sleeve.
Finally, Liam spotted Abu Hammad’s shop, shoehorned between a jewelry store and rug shop. No name or number was over the door or stenciled on the milky window, nothing that would identify the business that was conducted inside, except for a small cardboard sign, sitting on the inside window ledge, that said ANTIQUITIES. The door was unlocked and Liam pushed it open.
“Hello?” he said as he slowly entered the shop. A tall brass urn sat like a center pole amid assorted pottery bowls, masks, maps, scrolls, copper bowls, hand-forged weapons, and books. Stacks of books. Shelves of books. Piles of books. The musty smell of old books permeated the store.
“This is like a medieval garage sale,” Liam muttered.
It was hard to find a path through the room. Liam stopped to admire a large, flat, egg-shaped stone. He could barely make out the chiseled carvings that the ages had weathered away.
“It is part of a rolling stone, no doubt used to seal the entrance to a burial cave,” said a deep voice in a thick Arabic accent.
Liam caught sight of the man’s reflection in a framed mirror as he materialized from the clutter and shuffled forward. Abu Hammad was tall, maybe six feet two inches, but the years had bowed his back. He wore a gray tunic that hung down to his thighs. The loose, three-quarter sleeves rustled when he moved his arms. A knitted taqiyah covered the dome of his unruly, white hair. Decades of Middle Eastern sun had darkened his skin and carved deep folds in his forehead and the borders of his eyes. A rough goatee framed his wide mouth.
By contrast, Liam, in his jeans and Ulster Rugby shirt, was merely one of a million tourists who packed the stone passageways of the Old City.
“Maybe it sealed the cave Jesus was in before he ascended, no?” Abu Hammad laughed heartily. Then he flipped his hand. “Probably a piece of a burial stone from the third century. The inscription is interesting—‘Rise with the morning dove, O learned one.’ How do I help you, sir?”
“I come for conversation.”
Abu Hammad squinted, as though that would help him more clearly see what Liam was all about. “I like the conversation where you want to buy something that I have and I want to sell it to you.”
“Perhaps a small item before I go, but I would like to talk to you about Dr. Arif al-Zahani.”
“Oh ho, now it comes to me.” Abu Hammad smiled broadly. “You are here about the girl, Sophie.”
“You know about her?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Hebron is a close community.”
“But you are in Jerusalem.”
“Business is better.”
“I have been told that you know the doctor.”
Abu Hammad pursed his lips and gave a nod. “Know him. Knew his father. Even knew his grandfather.”
“I have been hired to see what can be done to return Sophie to her home.”
Abu Hammad turned and walked to the back of his store. “Will you have a cup of tea?”
Liam followed, stopping to examine a copper plate.
“It’s junk,” Abu Hammad called out over his shoulder. “Eighteenth-century Persian.” He dragged a wooden chair into a small sitting area. A worn, overstuffed chair, covered in crackled maroon leather, sat next to an antique sideboard. He set out a pot of hot water, two cups and infusers on a table, poured a cup for himself, then sat down in his stuffed chair.
“I do not think Arif intends to return the girl. He is fond of her.”
“So is her father.” Liam measured a small amount of tea into the infuser and poured himself a cup. “I have heard that maybe the doctor seeks to make a deal.”
“I confess, sir, that you have heard more than I. From whom did you hear such things?”
Liam shrugged.
Abu Hammad shook his head. “Al-Zahani is a rigid man. Unforgiving. Bitter. He makes no compromises. It is in his bloodlines. He is just like his father and his grandfather. It is not like him to make a deal.”
Abu Hammad stood, shuffled to the back wall, and beckoned Liam with his index finger. He pointed to a black-and-white photograph in a black frame. Three men in white keffiyehs stood with rifles in their hands. Liam studied the picture.
Abu Hammad tapped the figure on the right. “That is Hamid al-Zahani.”
Liam nodded. “Arif’s father. And the others?”
Abu Hammad tapped his finger on the figure to the left, turned, and went back to his chair.
“That’s you? With the rifle?”
Abu Hammad picked up his tea. Age palsied his hand a bit. “In 1966.”
Liam returned to his seat and took a sip.
“I was born in Haifa.” Abu Hammad leaned back in his stuffed chair. “My family lived at the foot of the Carmel Mountains in the home of my ancestors. Arif’s grandfather, Ibrahim, moved two doors away after Hamid al-Zahani was born.
“Arif was born there. He grew up swimming in the sea, playing on the streets of Haifa. Ibrahim was counsel to the mufti and spent most of his time in Jerusalem. I remember him bragging to us that von Ribbentrop had invited the mufti to Berlin to sit with the Führer and that he, Ibrahim, was going along as well. During the Second World War, he and the mufti stayed in Germany, but Ibrahim would come back every now and then. He taught his son and his grandson to hate—the British, the Americans, the Jews.”
“But not you?”
Abu Hammad shook his head. “Ibrahim did not teach me. Besides, I was busy with other pursuits.” He pointed at a small, oval picture frame. The silver was tarnished a bit, but one could see it had been cared for over the years. In the frame was a black-and-white photo of a young woman.
“Very lovely. She looks kind.”
“She was that.”
“Did your family stay in Haifa?” Liam asked, though he knew the answer.
The old man raised his eyebrows. “We left Haifa in 1948, as ordered by the Arab Command. We were told that the Syrian Army would soon overrun the city and expel all the Jews. Then we could come back. It was pure fantasy. But my family was nonviolent and we listened to others in the community. We left when they did.”
“But there is a picture of you with a rifle.”
“Well, yes, when I was young. The PLO was passing out Soviet rifles. So I took one.” Abu Hammad shrugged. “I was not much of a soldier. I gave it back.” He chuckled. “I confess that I am a man of peace. Perhaps just a coward, as Arif has called me.”
“He called you a coward?”
“Many times. In May 1967, just before the war, his father was recruiting for the Jordanian Army. Hamid was commanding a division based in Hebron. They came to my house, Arif and Ibrahim, with enlistment papers. There would
be great glory, they said. We would drive the Jews to the sea and rid Palestine of Jews forever. I declined. I stayed home with my Saja. I did not fight in ’67. Arif tried to shame me into joining, but I refused.”
“And Arif, did he join his father?”
Abu Hammad chuckled and shook his head. “He did not. He went to medical school. But Hamid, like his father, was a born fighter. It was as if he started battling the moment he came out of the womb. He was always in the middle of some skirmish. With guns and grenades. He met his maker in the Kidron Valley during the siege of Jerusalem in 1967. Arif blames many for his father’s death: the weak Jordanians, the aggressive Israelis, and me.”
“You?”
“People like me. I refused to fight. I did not stand on the hill and fire weapons alongside Hamid. To Arif, I will always be a coward.”
“And his father’s death, that would account for Arif’s vendetta?”
The old man scratched the side of his cheek. “It doesn’t take much to impassion a displaced Arab, one who thinks his land has been taken from him. Double so for Arif, who lost his father and his grandfather to Israeli gunfire. He has a vendetta, to use your word, against many. The British. The State of Israel, the UN, the US. Peaceful Arabs. And me.”
“Because you didn’t fight.”
“Partly. Also because I’m a shopkeeper. I get my money in Israel. I am like a, uh, a collaborator. A traitor to the cause. Maybe I should live in a refugee camp in Jordan? Pretend that Israel does not exist? Take the meager welfare handouts from the UN? Wait for the great uprising? According to Arif, that would be honorable. Doing business with the Israelis is dishonorable. We have been on opposite sides of the philosophical fence for many, many years.”
“But Arif does not live in a camp.”
Abu Hammad chuckled. “The gentleman doctor? He lives in his father’s fortified castle.” He stood and stretched. “I am tired. I have talked too long.”
Liam stood as well. “I thank you very much for sharing that information with me. I would like to know a little more about Sophie Sommers. Whether there are arrangements.”
Saving Sophie: A Novel Page 20