by Paul Sussman
'What sort of observations?'
'Oh, just general medical stuff. He had pretty advanced prostate cancer, for one thing. Would probably only have survived a few more months anyway. And there was a lot of old scar tissue around his left knee, which probably accounts for the walking cane. He also lied about his age. Or at least he did on his ID card.'
Khalifa looked up questioningly.
'Admittedly I'm not an expert in these things,' said Anwar, 'but according to the card he was born in 1925, which would have made him about eighty years old. If the state of his teeth and gums was anything to go by, however, I'd have put money on him being at least ten years older than that. Doesn't really change anything, but I thought I'd point it out anyway.'
Khalifa considered this for a moment, then, with a nod, slipped the report into his jacket pocket and started towards the door.
'Good work, Anwar,' he said over his shoulder. 'I hate to say it, but I'm impressed.'
He reached the door, and was about to walk into the hallway when Anwar called after him.
'One funny thing.'
Khalifa turned.
'I didn't bother to mention it in the notes, didn't seem relevant to anything, but our man suffered from syndactylism of the feet.'
The detective came back a step, his face registering confusion.
'What does that mean?'
'Basically, it's a congenital fusing of the phalanges, the toes. Very rare. In layman's terms, the man had webbed feet. He was like—'
'A frog.'
The colour had drained from Khalifa's face.
'Are you all right?' asked Anwar. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.'
'I have,' whispered the detective. 'Her name's Hannah Schlegel, and I've done something terrible. Truly terrible.'
JERUSALEM
It was mid-afternoon before Layla finally made it back to Jerusalem. Kamel dropped her at the bottom end of the Nablus Road and, with a desultory nod of his head, drove off again, disappearing round the corner into Sultan Suleiman Street. It had started to drizzle, a cool, soft spray that drifted down from above like a billowing veil, dampening her hair and jacket, settling soundlessly onto the rooftops and pavements. Patches of blue sky were visible above Mount Scopus away to the east, but overhead the sky was grey and heavy, pressing down on the city like a vast steel dustbin lid.
She bought herself half a dozen freshly baked pitta breads from a roadside stall and started up the hill, past the entrance to the Garden Tomb, the Jerusalem Hotel and a line of weary-looking Palestinians queuing to renew their residency permits outside the grey metal turnstile of the Israeli Interior Ministry office, eventually turning into a narrow doorway slashed between a bakery and a grocer's shop, opposite the high-walled enclosure of the Ecole Biblique. An old man in a shabby grey suit and keffiyeh was sitting just inside, leaning on his walking stick, staring out at the rain.
'Salaam alekum, Fathi,' she said.
The old man looked up, squinting, then raised an arthritic hand in greeting.
'We've been worried about you.' He coughed. 'We thought maybe you had been arrested.'
Layla laughed. 'The Israelis wouldn't dare. How's Ataf?'
The old man shrugged, his wrinkled fingers tapping the handle of the stick.
'So-so. Her back is bad today so she stays in bed. You want some tea?'
Layla shook her head.
'I need a shower, and then I've got work to do. Maybe later. Tell Ataf to let me know if she needs any shopping.'
She stepped past the man and, crossing the entrance hall, climbed two flights of stone stairs up to her flat, which occupied the upper floor of the house. It was a simple space, high-ceilinged and cool, with two bedrooms, one of which doubled as her study, a large living room and, at the back, a kitchenette and bathroom, a narrow concrete stairway leading up from the latter to the flat roof above, with views down to the Damascus Gate and the jumbled checkerboard of the Old City. She had lived there for almost five years, renting it from a local businessman whose parents, Fathi and Ataf, lived on the ground floor and acted as the building's caretakers. With the amount she earned from freelancing she could easily have afforded something more upmarket – in the Sheikh Jarrah district for example, with its plush apartment blocks and high-walled houses. She had taken a conscious decision to remain down here in the heart of East Jerusalem, however, among the bustle and noise and rubbish. It sent out a message: I am not one of those journalists who gets what they want from you and then retires to the security of the Hilton or American Colony. I am one of you. A Palestinian. It was a small gesture, but a necessary one. Always she had to keep proving herself, maintain the façade.
She dumped her things on the sofa – which with a small dining table, a television and a couple of shabby armchairs made up all the furniture in the living room, and, grabbing a bottle of Evian from the fridge, went through into the study. The message light was flashing on her answerphone and, taking a gulp of water, she crossed the room and sat down at her desk, glancing up, as she always did, at the large framed photograph of her father on the wall above, in his white doctor's coat and stethoscope. It was her favourite picture of him, the only one she had kept after his death, and she felt a momentary tightening in her throat before looking down again and jabbing the play button.
There were eleven messages. One was from the Guardian chasing up her piece on Palestinian collaborators; one from Tom Roberts, a guy at the British Consulate who had been trying, and failing, to chat her up for the last six months; one from her friend Nuha asking if she wanted to meet later for a drink at the Jerusalem Hotel; and one from Sam Rogerson, a Reuters contact, alerting her to the Warriors of David occupation in the Old City, which she had already heard about in Ramallah. The rest were either insults or death threats. 'You disgust me, you filthy, lying, cock-sucking whore.' 'Enjoy today, Layla, because it's going to be your last.' 'We're watching you, and one day we're going to come up and put a bullet through your head. After we've raped you, of course.' 'We're going to stick a knife up your stinking Arab-loving cunt and slice you open, you dirty, lying bitch!' 'Death to Arabs! Israel! Israel!'
Judging by the accents, most of the calls were, as usual, from either Israelis or Americans. She changed her phone number regularly, but they always seemed to find out the new one within a day or so of it being assigned, and the calls continued unabated. Years ago, when she was first starting out, they had upset her. She was by now so used to them that they no longer had any effect; she got more stressed by editors hassling for copy. Only at night, silent, alone, did the cracks appear, did the horror of what she was involved in filter through, like poison into her bloodstream. The nights could be terrible. Truly terrible.
She sat through the messages, then wiped the tape clean, plugged her mobile into its recharge unit and made a couple of quick calls, one to Nuha to arrange a drink for later that evening, another to get details of the Jewish house occupation in the Old City. She'd written several pieces over the last few years on Chayalei David, and had recently been commissioned by the New York Review to produce an in-depth profile of the group's leader, the militant, Soviet-born settler Baruch Har-Zion. The current occupation would provide a good hook for it, and she wondered if she shouldn't go down to the Old City immediately. She decided a couple of hours wouldn't make any difference, and, finishing the water, went through into the bedroom and stripped off her clothes.
She took a long, hot shower, vigorously soaping her slim body, leaning her head back and allowing the water to dash against her face and scalp, groaning with pleasure as the warm jets scoured the dirt and sweat from her skin. For the last thirty seconds she turned the dial to cold, then, slipping into a towelling robe, went back into the study where she sat at her desk and switched on her Apple laptop.
She worked for the next two hours, finishing a piece she had already begun on malnutrition among Palestinian children, and making a start on the Guardian collaborators article, occasionally referring to her scribbled s
horthand notes but mostly composing from memory, her fingers dancing across the keypad, the images and sounds in her head translating effortlessly into words on the screen.
Curiously, given how easily it came to her, journalism had not been her first or even second choice of career. As a teenager, before her father's murder, she had envisaged herself becoming a doctor like him, working in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank. Then later, at Beir Zeit University, where she had read contemporary Arab history, she had toyed with the idea of going into politics. In the end, however, she had decided it was journalism that would give her the best opportunity to carry out what she had come to see as her life's mission.
After graduating she had got herself a job on the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam, where the then editor, a hunch-backed chain-smoker named Nizar Suleiman, had taken her under his wing, drawing a lot of flak in the process, for her family history was well known. Her first feature, a piece on Palestinian indoctrination camps where kids as young as six were taught anti-Israeli songs and the art of Molotov cocktail making (plenty of Vaseline round the rim, that was the key, so the flaming petrol would adhere to the target), had gone through sixteen rewrites before Suleiman grudgingly consented to publish it. She had been so despondent she had thought of giving up her career there and then. He had refused to let her – 'If you give up now I'll damn well sack you!' – and her second feature, on Israel's displacement of native Bedouin tribes in the Negev, had only gone through five rewrites. Her third feature, on Palestinians who, out of economic necessity, were forced to take jobs helping to build Israeli settlements, had been syndicated to three different newspapers and won her her first journalism award.
Thereafter her fame had steadily grown. Her hybrid background – English mother, Palestinian father – and intimate knowledge of the Palestinian world, not to mention fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, English and French, gave her a head-start on many other correspondents, and she received offers of staff posts on both the Guardian and the New York Times (she turned them down). She worked with al-Ayyam for four years then went freelance, writing on everything from the use of torture by the Israeli security services to spinach-growing projects in Lower Galilee, gaining a reputation – depending on which way you looked at it – for either passionate campaigning journalism or blinkered anti-Israeli bias.
The bias charge was one her critics – and there were plenty of them – were constantly levelling at her: that she only ever told one side of the story; gave voice to Palestinian suffering but ignored that of Israeli civilians; reported the horror of the refugee camps but never that of the innocent people reduced to mincemeat by car bombs and suicide bombers. It wasn't entirely fair. She had, over the years, done plenty of articles on Israeli civilian casualties, not to mention the rife corruption and human rights abuses within the Palestinian Authority. The reality, however, was that this was not a conflict you could report objectively. However hard you strived for balance, in the end you couldn't help but be partisan. And anyway, given her background, she couldn't afford to be seen pandering to Israeli sensibilities.
She banged out about a thousand words on the collaborator piece, then emailed the malnutrition article to the al-Ahram offices in Cairo and shut down her laptop. She hadn't got much sleep over the last few days and her eyelids felt heavy. Years of reporting, with its unpredictable hours and tight deadlines, had inured her to tiredness, however, and anyway, she wanted to get down to the Old City to check out the occupation. Throwing some clothes on, therefore, and swiftly munching an apple, she grabbed her notebook and camera, crossed the flat and opened the front door.
Fathi the caretaker was just coming to the top of the stairs, wheezing heavily, one hand clutching his walking stick, the other holding an envelope.
'This came for you this morning,' he said. 'I forgot to tell you earlier. Sorry.'
He handed over the envelope. It bore no postmark or address, just her name written in blood-red ink, the lettering forceful and regimented, like a row of soldiers standing to attention.
'Who delivered it?' she asked.
'Some kid,' replied the old man, turning and starting back down the stairs again. 'Never seen him before. He just came up, asked if you lived here, handed it to me and ran away again.'
'Palestinian?'
'Of course Palestinian. Since when did Jewish kids come round this part of town?'
He waved his hand as if to say 'what a ridiculous question' and disappeared round the corner.
Layla turned the envelope over in her hand, examining it, feeling for wires or other potentially threatening contents. Satisfied it was safe, she took it back into the flat and, laying it on her desk, carefully opened it, pulling out two pieces of paper stapled together, the top one a covering letter in the same curling gothic script as that in which the envelope had been addressed, the other an A4 photocopy of what looked like an old document of some kind. She glanced briefly at the latter, then turned her attention to the accompanying note, which was written in English.
Miss al-Madani, I have long been an admirer of your journalism, and would like to put to you a proposition. Some while ago you interviewed the leader known as al-Mulatham. I am in possession of information that could prove invaluable to this man in his struggle against the Zionist oppressor, and should very much like to contact him. I believe you can help me do so. In return I can offer what would, I believe, be the biggest scoop of your already illustrious career.
Given the delicacy of the situation, you will appreciate my desire to proceed with caution in this matter. I shall reveal no more at this stage. Please consider the proposition and, if possible, convey it to our mutual friend. I shall be in contact in the near future. PS. A small clue, just to whet your appetite. The information of which I speak is intimately connected with the enclosed document. If you are half the journalist I believe you to be, it should not take you too long to discover the significance of my offer.
There was no signature.
She read and re-read the note, then looked again at the photocopied sheet. It seemed to be of a letter, old to judge by the style of the script, very old. It used the Roman alphabet, but beyond that she could make neither head nor tail of it, for rather than individual words and sentences it seemed to consist of a single unbroken sequence of letters which, however hard she looked, failed to resolve itself into any language she could recognize.
At the bottom, set slightly apart and in larger writing, were the initials GR, which meant no more to her than the confused sequence above them.
She gazed at it for a while, eyes narrowed, confused, then she returned to the covering letter. The interview it referred to was one she had published over a year ago. It had attracted considerable interest at the time for it was the only occasion on which its subject, the Palestinian terrorist al-Mulatham, had parted the obsessive veil of secrecy in which he shrouded himself and consented to speak publicly. The Israeli security services had shown particular interest, impounding her notepad and laptop and bringing her in for extensive questioning. She had been able to reveal little of any use – as she had explained in the article, the interview had taken place in a secret location and she had been blindfolded throughout – and her suspicion now was that the curious letter and photocopy were a not very good Shin Bet ruse to find out whether she knew more about the terrorist leader's whereabouts than she had been letting on. It certainly wouldn't be the first time they had tried to trap or discredit her. A few years back she had been approached by a man purporting to be a Palestinian activist and asked if she could use her press status to help run guns through the Erez checkpoint into Gaza – a case of agent-provocateuring so transparent she had burst out laughing and replied in Hebrew that she would be delighted provided Ami Ayalon took her out for dinner afterwards.
Yes, she thought, the letter was definitely some security service stunt. That or an elaborate prank. Either way it wasn't worth wasting any time over. Taking one last look at the photocopied document, she consigned it and the accom
panying letter to her wastepaper basket and left the flat.
LUXOR
'You're a dreamer, Khalifa! Always have been, always will be! A bloody dreamer!'
Chief Inspector Abdul ibn-Hassani slammed a meaty fist onto his desk, stood and clumped over to his office window, staring angrily out at the first pylon of Luxor Temple, where a crowd of tourists were gathered around the obelisk of Ramesses II, listening to their guide.
A broad-shouldered, overweight man with heavy eyebrows and a flattened boxer's nose, he was renowned both for his bad temper and his vanity, the former manifesting itself, as it was doing now, in a raised voice, red face and a small pulsating vein beneath his right eye; the latter in all manner of little indulgences, the latest being an exquisitely coiffured wig that sat atop his balding head like a clump of tangled Nile weed. The desk-banging had dislodged it slightly, and, pretending to scratch his forehead, he nudged it carefully back into place, leaning slightly to his left to check his reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall.
'Bloody ridiculous!' he growled. 'I mean, for God's sake, man, it was twenty years ago.'