by Paul Sussman
He lowered his arm again, breathing heavily. There was a loud splash as a pair of geese came down in the middle of the river, legs splayed in front of them, wings spread. Khalifa found that his hands were trembling.
'But why?' he asked, voice hoarse, bewildered. 'If you thought Jansen was guilty, why convict Gemal?'
Mahfouz was staring at the geese.
'Because I was told to.' After a brief pause, he added, 'By al-Hakim.'
Again Khalifa had that feeling of being hit by a heavy wave, rolled over and over, everything around him out of control, all his points of reference swept away. Until his death the previous year Farouk al-Hakim had been the head of the Jihaz Amn al Daoula, Egypt's state security service.
'I always knew it would catch up with me,' wheezed Mahfouz. 'These things invariably do. In a sense it's a relief. It's been with me too long. Better to get it out in the open. Face up to it.'
There was a loud horn blast away to their right, around a bend in the river, and a giant Nile barge hove slowly into view, laden down with a cargo of quarried sandstone, its prow scoring a deep furrow through the flat surface of the water, like a chisel being hammered across a length of smooth, dark wood. It had reached and passed them before Mahfouz spoke again.
'I knew from the start it was going to be a difficult case,' he sighed, his voice barely louder than a whisper. 'They always are when politics gets involved. Schlegel was killed less than a month after the Ismailiya massacre. You remember that? Nine Israeli tourists butchered on a bus. And now another dead Israeli. Didn't look good. Especially with the Americans. They were about to sign off on some big loan programme. Millions of dollars at stake. You know what they're like about Israel. The Schlegel thing could have fucked it all up. Believe me, there were a lot of worried people up in Cairo. Al-Hakim took charge personally. There was massive pressure for a quick conviction.'
He paused, trying to catch his breath. Khalifa was drumming his fingers on his knees, trying to get a grip on what he was hearing. From the outset he had assumed he was simply dealing with an accidental miscarriage of justice. Now it appeared he was involved in something far more complex and insidious.
'But if you knew it was Jansen, why did al-Hakim tell you to convict someone else?'
Mahfouz waved a hand helplessly.
'No idea. Didn't know then, don't know now. I told al-Hakim about Jansen, but he said he was off limits. Said dragging him into it would only make matters worse. Piss the Jews off even more. Those were his words. If we investigated Jansen it would just piss the Jews off even more. He told me to find someone else to take the rap. So we fingered Gemal instead.'
His wheezing was becoming progressively worse and, raising the oxygen mask, he took another series of gulps, his frail chest jerking up and down like a set of punctured bellows, his hands trembling uncontrollably. With a faint shiver of disgust, Khalifa noticed the bag beneath his djellaba slowly swelling as urine flowed into it through the valve in his abdomen. There was another horn blast as the Nile barge disappeared northwards round another bend in the river.
'Set me up for life, that case,' choked Mahfouz, lowering the mask again. 'Got a promotion, my name in the papers, a telegram from Mubarak. It meant fuck all compared to the guilt, though. Not about Gemal. The man was a piece of shit. Deserved everything he got. But his wife and kids . . .'
He broke off, raising a stick-like arm and running it over his eyes. The strange meeting with Gemal's wife flashed into Khalifa's mind. It comes in the post. No note, no name, nothing. Just three thousand Egyptian pounds, in hundred notes.
'It's you that's been sending them money,' he said quietly.
Mahfouz looked up, surprised, then dropped his head again.
'It was the least I could do. Help them survive. Get the kids through school. A pretty empty gesture, considering.'
Khalifa shook his head, stood up and walked to the edge of the jetty, gazing down at a shoal of Nile perch drifting in the shallows beaneath.
'Did Hassani know?'
Mahfouz shook his head. 'Not at the time. I told him later, after Gemal hanged himself. He was just trying to protect me. Don't judge him too harshly.'
'And the case file? It's missing from the records room.'
'Hassani burnt it. We thought it would be best. Just forget the whole thing. Consign it to the past.' He chuckled bitterly. 'But then that's the problem with the past, isn't it? It's never really past. It's always there. Clinging on. Like a leech. Sucking out the blood. Whatever you do, whatever you say, you can never really get away from it. I've tried. Believe me. Like a fucking leech. Draining you.'
He motioned weakly towards his tea, indicating that his throat was dry, that he needed liquid. Khalifa stepped forward and passed him the glass. He couldn't keep it steady on his own, and in the end Khalifa had to hold it for him as he leant forward and slurped. When he had finished he slumped backwards again, as floppy and helpless as a rag doll.
'I was a good policeman,' he whispered. 'Whatever you might think. Forty years I gave to the service. Lost count of the number of cases I solved. The Aswan Express Robbery. The Gezira Murders. Girgis Wahdi. You remember him? Girgis al-Gazzar, the Butcher of Butneya. So many cases. But it's this one that lives with me. I let a murderer get away with it.'
He was tiring rapidly now, his breathing coming in short, sharp gasps, his limbs trembling. He grasped the oxygen mask and took several breaths, grimacing as though in pain.
'Reopen the case,' he murmured, laying the mask aside. 'That's what you want, isn't it? I'll speak to Hassani and whoever else needs to be spoken to. It won't have any practical effect. Al-Hakim's dead. Jansen's dead. Gemal's dead. But at least you can find out the truth. It's about time.'
There was a sound of footsteps as the housekeeper approached across the lawn, carrying a small surgical tray.
'You?' asked Khalifa.
Mahfouz coughed.
'What about me? I'll be dead in a few weeks. At least I'll go knowing I did the right thing in the end.'
He raised the oxygen mask, took another gulp, then, with what strength he had left, fumbled out a hand and grasped Khalifa's arm.
'Find out the truth,' he whispered. 'For me, for Gemal's wife, for Allah if you want. But be careful. He was a dangerous man, Jansen. Had friends in high places. Nasty secrets. I'll try to protect you. But be careful.'
A cloudy eye swivelled wearily towards Khalifa, then slumped shut. The detective gazed down at him for a moment, then, slipping his arm free, he set off past the housekeeper and back across the lawn. Half an hour ago he'd been praying for Mahfouz to allow the case to be reopened. After what he'd just heard, he now rather wished he hadn't.
JERUSALEM
Layla couldn't remember when she had first become a member of the American Colony Breakfast Club, but its Friday-morning meetings had for several years been a regular fixture in her weekly diary. It wasn't a proper club as such, more an informal gathering at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem where, over coffee and croissants, a group of journalists, aid workers and minor diplomats – whoever happened to be in town at the time – would discuss the major issues of the moment. Breakfast would generally segue into lunch, lunch into tea and, a few times a year, tea into an alcohol-fuelled dinner, where arguments would rage. On one memorable occasion the Washington Post bureau chief had broken a bottle of wine over the head of the Danish cultural attaché.
Layla arrived a little after ten, and after slowing to drop a letter into the hotel's post box, continued through the cool, stone-floored foyer and out into the sunny central courtyard behind, with its bubbling fountain, pots of flowering plants and metal tables shaded beneath cream-coloured parasols. Several 'club' regulars were already there – her friend Nuha, Onz Schenker of the Jerusalem Post, Sam Rogerson from Reuters, Tom Roberts, the guy from the British Consulate who was forever trying to chat her up – as well as a couple of new faces she didn't recognize, all sitting beneath a gnarled orange tree. They were already deep in di
scussion.
Pulling up a chair, she poured herself a cup of black coffee from a pot on the table beside them. Roberts glanced across at her, smiled nervously, then looked away again.
'The whole thing's a joke,' Rogerson was saying, running a hand over his balding head. 'It's a road map to fucking nowhere. Until Israel gets to grips with the central issue, which is that they've shat on the Palestinians and need to make significant concessions to redress that, the blood's just going to flow and flow.'
'I'll tell you what the central fucking issue is,' growled Schenker, puffing on a Noblesse and scowling. 'It's that in the final analysis the Arabs aren't interested in talking peace. There's fuck all point in offering concessions when all they really want to do is to wipe Israel off the map.'
'That's bullshit,' said Nuha.
'Really? You're telling me al-Mulatham suddenly wants to negotiate? That Hamas are about to acknowledge Israel's right to exist?'
'Come on, Onz, they're not representative of the Palestinian people,' said a small, heavily made-up woman named Deborah Zelon, a stringer for Associated Press.
'So who is representative? Abbas? Qurei? Guys most of the population don't even bloody trust? Arafat, the man who tortured his own people, embezzled their aid money, was offered peace on a plate at Camp David—'
'Not that again!' cried Nuha.
'Barak offered him ninety-seven per cent of the West Bank!' shouted Schenker, jabbing his cigarette at her. 'His own bloody state. And he turned it down!'
'What he was offered, as you well know,' said Nuha, glaring, 'were a collection of cantons surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements and with no international borders. That and a shitty bit of desert that you lot have used as a toxic dumping ground for the last twenty years. There was no way he could have accepted it. He would have been lynched.'
Schenker snorted, grinding his cigarette out in an ashtray. A waiter came out with more coffee and a large plate of croissants, followed a moment later by an elderly man in a tweed jacket and half-moon spectacles, who pulled up a chair and joined the group. Nuha introduced him as Professor Faisal Bekal of Al-Quds University. He raised an arthritic hand in greeting.
'Loath as I am to say it,' said Rogerson, picking up the conversation where it had left off, 'but I agree with Schenker on that last point. Arafat screwed up. Abbas and Qurei mean well, but they just don't command enough respect to cut a realistic deal and bring all their people with them. The Palestinians need a new figurehead.'
'The Israelis don't?' snorted Nuha.
'Of course they do,' said Rogerson, taking an apple from a bowl in the centre of the table and starting to peel it with his penknife. 'Sharon's a fucking disaster. But that doesn't change the fact that the guys you've got at the moment aren't going to sort this thing out. Not permanently.'
'So who is?' put in Deborah Zelon. 'Dahlan and Rajoub haven't got the power base. Erekat's a non-starter. Barghouti's in prison. There's no-one else.'
Professor Bekal reached slowly for a croissant, breaking it in two and laying one half on the edge of the table while nibbling on the other.
'There's Sa'eb Marsoudi,' he said quietly, wiping crumbs from his lips, his voice thin and slightly tremulous.
'You think?' asked Rogerson.
The old man tilted his head to one side.
'Why not? He's young, he's intelligent, the people love him. And he's got the credentials. Son of an activist, grandson of an activist, leader of the First Intifada, yet enough of a pragmatist to know there's never going to be a free Palestine without negotiation and compromise.'
'He's also got Jewish blood on his hands,' snarled Schenker.
'In this part of the world everyone's got someone's blood on their hands, Mr Schenker,' sighed Bekal. 'The point is what they do now, not what they have done in the past. Yes, Marsoudi smuggled arms into Gaza. And yes, those same arms were no doubt used to kill Israelis. Perhaps the same Israelis who evicted his family from their land, imprisoned his father, blew up his brother. He served his time. Now he's one of the few Palestinians with the courage to openly reject violent resistance. I think he could do some good things.'
'If he lives long enough,' grunted Nuha. 'Hamas want to cut his throat.'
'There you go, Onz,' said Rogerson, who had managed to remove his apple peel in a single, unbroken spiral. 'On that basis he should be your best mate.'
Schenker gulped at his coffee and lit another Noblesse.
'They're all as bad as each other,' he grunted. 'You can't trust any of the bastards.'
'Hark the voice of reason and hope!' laughed Deborah Zelon.
The discussion moved on to other topics, opinions flying back and forth like ping-pong balls, the babble of voices rising and falling, its rhythm broken every now and then by a sudden burst of laughter or explosion of shouting, the latter usually from Onz Schenker, whose conversational spectrum appeared to contain only two postures – angry, and very angry. Other people drifted into the courtyard and joined the gathering, the numbers gradually swelling until there were more than twenty of them and what had been a single debate gradually fragmented into a series of subsidiary discussions between smaller groups.
Tom Roberts came over and sat down beside Layla.
'Hello, Layla,' he said, his tongue lingering slightly on the first 'L' of her name – a hangover from his childhood, he had once explained, when he had had a bad stutter. 'How are you doing?'
'Good,' she said. 'I'm sorry I didn't return your call. I've been a bit . . .'
He waved his hand to show it didn't matter. He was older than her, mid-forties, tall and thin, bookish, with round glasses and a shy, self-deprecating manner. Not unattractive, but not particularly attractive either. Bland. For some reason he reminded her of a giraffe.
'You're very quiet today,' he went on, his mouth again catching slightly, this time on the V of very. 'Normally you give Schenker a good run for his money.'
She smiled. 'Thought I'd give him a day off.'
'Things on your mind?'
'You could say that.'
It had been a busy week for her. The day after the meal with Nuha she had written two and a half articles, good-going even by her standards, including a two-thousand-word profile of Baruch Har-Zion for the New York Review (it was out that very day). After that she'd gone down to Gaza to do a colour piece on domestic violence – an increasing and rarely acknowledged problem in Palestinian society – barely having time to write that up before the Guardian had sent her over to Limassol to cover a conference on Palestinian aid programmes. She had arrived back late the previous evening and had spent half the night transcribing tapes, only finally falling into bed at four a.m. for a few hours' restless sleep.
It was not tiredness that was troubling her now, however, but that damned letter. She couldn't seem to get the thing off her mind. All week it had been there, lurking at the back of her thoughts, intriguing her, goading her. I am in possession of information that could prove invaluable to this man in his struggle against the Zionist oppressor . . . In return I can offer what would, I believe, be the biggest scoop of your already illustrious career . . . The information of which I speak is intimately connected with the enclosed document. The more she had thought about it the more convinced she had become that her initial assessment had been wrong; that the letter was neither a prank nor an attempt to entrap her, but rather the genuine article. She had no concrete evidence for this, just a gut feeling, an instinct, the same instinct that told her a story lead was worth following, an interviewee trustworthy.
In what little time had been left to her between writing articles and travelling she had made some tentative enquiries as to the identity of the boy who had delivered the letter, but had drawn a blank. The curious construction of the introductory 'would like to put to you a proposition' suggested to her that the letter's author was not a native English speaker, but beyond that there were no clues as to his identity (somehow she felt sure it was a man). Whoever it was had said they would be in c
ontact again in the near future, but so far she had heard nothing.
Which left the curious photocopied document. She had run it past a contact at the Hebrew University, who had suggested it might be some sort of code, although he had had no idea how to decipher it. A search for GR on the internet had, as expected, thrown up an enormous number of matches – more than a million of them, for God's sake – and after scrolling through the first thirty or so she had given it up as a waste of time. She had hit a dead end.
'Anything I can help with?'
Tom Roberts was looking at her expectantly.