Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  When her years with the Sayaret ended in distinction, she was overwhelmed by the offers for her services. The National Police provided the best prospects, at least the easiest to abandon once she met the right man. But then her second brother was killed and she was promoted to pakad, or chief inspector. Her father had suffered a stroke around that same time, as much from sadness as the aftereffects of taking a sniper’s bullet while on routine patrol in the West Bank. In a family rich in the tradition of service, she could not possibly give up her position only to raise a family now. She was afraid it would steal what little hope her father had left, having lost both his sons.

  But he got worse instead of better, her decision to stay on with the police having no bearing on his prognosis. So on the day she had arrested Ahmed Fatuk she had actually come to Jerusalem to tell her father of her decision to resign. She had no boyfriend, never mind a fiancé, but longed for a life apart from her career.

  As soon as Danielle recognized Fatuk entering that bakery, she knew her desires were going to be delayed yet again. She’d stay on at Shin Bet for six months, a year at most. But it didn’t take nearly that long for her father’s condition to worsen to the level of virtual incoherence. She could do whatever she desired now, tell him whatever she wanted and he would accept her words with a proud smile, never to be in position again to know any better.

  Not only could Danielle not lie to him, though, she also could not stray from the path she knew made him most proud. To do so seemed like the ultimate disrespect. She would wait until his inevitable, and merciful, passing came and then . . .

  Then would she find herself feeling she must be faithful to his memory? Or was this day, this shoot-out, the signal that it was time to live the life she had been trying to retreat to for years now?

  “What did you do at this point?” one of the suited men asked, breaking her trance.

  “I drew my gun.”

  “You said before you called an alert first,” another pointed out.

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry.”

  “You drew your gun before you saw any of these men draw theirs.”

  “They were wearing jackets.”

  “And you determined they were armed instead of cold, is that right?” the second resumed.

  “I was right.”

  “We are not here to determine right and wrong,” noted the first.

  “We are here to determine if the course of action you precipitated was proper in consideration of the numerous bystanders in the area,” added the second.

  Danielle heard footsteps and saw Commander Dov Levy draw up even with her. “The course of action we precipitated and I approved saved lives.”

  The leader of the suits took exception to that. “You were instructed to wait aside until we are ready for you, Commander.”

  “I need to speak with Agent Barnea.”

  “When we are finished with her, Commander.”

  “Now,” Levy insisted.

  He dragged Danielle away without waiting for the suited leader to respond.

  “Thank you,” Danielle said, relieved.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Levy said somberly. “I’ve had a call from National Headquarters. You’re wanted there.”

  In spite of herself, Danielle felt her stomach sink at what that might mean. “You think ...”

  “I don’t think anything, and you shouldn’t either. Wait until you hear what they want.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Do you think I made a mistake today?” Danielle asked Levy finally.

  “You saved Agent Tice’s life and the lives of at least a dozen civilians.”

  “Not according to them,” she said, gesturing toward the suits, who were waiting impatiently to continue with yet another reenactment.

  “You did your job. They are doing theirs.”

  Danielle wished she could feel glad, wished she could see this as an opportunity to slide quietly into a life that would allow for a family of her own at last. But not in disgrace. Not on the terms of three bureaucrats paid to find fault where none existed.

  “You’d better get going,” Levy said, extracting a set of keys from his pocket and tilting his gaze briefly on the three suited figures. “These are to one of our friends’ cars. I’m sure they’ll understand the urgency.”

  Danielle smiled. “I’ll bring it back when I’m done.”

  Levy frowned, gazed at the soldiers and sawhorses blocking off this section of the street. “You know where to find us.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 7

  B

  efore heading to Jericho’s lone refugee camp, Ben edged the Peugeot Shaath had left him along Jaffa Street, honking the horn to clear a path to the alley where Rula Middein lived. He eased the transmission into reverse and backed up over the sidewalk in a cautious series of starts and stops while pedestrians did their best to ignore him. He continued backing as far into the alley as possible, then climbed out and popped open the car’s trunk.

  It took twenty minutes to empty the alley of the greatest part of the garbage littered beneath the old woman’s window. Once out of the town center, he would dump it at the first available opportunity.

  “Perhaps you missed your true calling,” a voice called out, and Ben looked up to see a man he recognized leaning on a cane just in front of the car.

  He slammed the trunk and moved around to the driver’s door. “I thought I spotted you in the crowd, Jabral. I suppose I have you to thank for the chants of kha’in.”

  “You are many things, Inspector, but a traitor is not one of them. Besides, I like to keep a low profile.”

  “Then stay right there while I pull out; that should make you low enough to please anyone.”

  The man smiled briefly and limped over to where Ben stood, his cane clacking ahead of him. “I was hoping we could talk.”

  “You know the one thing the Palestinians have in common with the Americans, Jabral? The media is full of shit. Thanks for making me feel at home.”

  Ben climbed into the car and closed the door. Zaid Jabral moved to the open window and rested a hand over the edge for support.

  “Tell me something, Ben. Did I misstate any fact? Did I print anything other than the truth?”

  “The truth came from only one side.”

  “You wouldn’t give me your side, so I was left with what I had heard. You know what they say.”

  “What do they say?”

  “That you were only invited to return because you are the son of the great Jafir Kamal. I did a story on him once.”

  “One of the few distinctions I share with my father. And I wasn’t invited; I came on my own.”

  “Perhaps you should have waited for a war, like your father,” Jabral said cynically.

  “I did.”

  “You gave up your homeland and built a new life, only to abandon it so you could return and live in his shadow.” Jabral looked pleased with his own revelation. “Would have made for an interesting angle, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps, if you hadn’t elected to devote so much space to branding me an enemy of my own people.”

  “I have an obligation to inquire, to inform, to—”

  “Teach?” Ben interjected and watched Jabral stiffen at the word. “That would be logical since you were a teacher long before you became the top editor at Al-Quds. You were also one of the men I most admired. The great Zaid Jabral, a true architect of change. I followed your efforts, from the States, to make the West Bank curriculum more contemporary when independence was still a dream.”

  “Because true independence, my dear Ben, can come only through education.”

  “Did you tell that to the shabab, the children of the intifada?”

  “What hypocrites! There was so much complaining when the Israelis closed our schools. Then we retaliate by closing them ourselves in order to protest!”

  “For days, not years. And you continued your classes in spite of them,” Ben s
aid, and Jabral shrugged.

  It was here that the story of Zaid Jabral became a mixture of fact and legend. What was known for sure was that he was giving a test to his twelfth graders when a number of dissident students appeared to roust them out into the streets. Jabral refused to let his students go until they completed their tests, much to the displeasure of the shabab leaders, becoming the first teacher to make a stand against them.

  From this point the story grew murky; there were two totally disparate versions of the beating that had left Jabral a cripple. Popular thought had it that, upon exiting the building, he was attacked by the very shabab leaders he had disdained. His hip was shattered and surgery came too late to give him back his mobility. The second version, preferred from a propaganda standpoint, claimed that the beating occurred when Jabral stood up to the Israelis in another incident entirely, that he ended up as one of many held under the parameters of “administrative detention”: incarcerated for months without being charged, and tortured in pursuit of a confession. Jabral hadn’t confessed to anything, this version went, and had paid for his stubbornness with his hip.

  Ben had never asked him which version was correct, continuing to hold the newspaper man in high esteem until two months earlier, when Al-Quds had helped make Ben an outcast, branding him a traitor by breaking the story of his arrest of the three Palestinian police officers.

  “You know, Jabral,” he said now, “something I never asked you: why did you do it?”

  “Because that cabdriver was an anted, a collaborator.”

  “Suspected collaborator, you mean, and only by the three police officers who decided to practice their own brand of justice on a fellow Palestinian.”

  “He was a Palestinian only in name.”

  “The same name shared by his wife and five children. Why don’t you do a story on them?”

  “And the three officers, they did not have families who will miss them too? Thanks to you, they were sentenced to life in prison by a tribunal of three high-ranking officers. A closed-door military proceeding. No appeals permitted.”

  “Should I feel sorry for them?”

  Jabral shook his head. “Strange that an American should embrace such a nondemocratic process.”

  “We are not ready for a wholly democratic process here yet.”

  “Nor are we ready for you, Inspector. You should have stuck to being a detective, to showing the Authority’s trainees how it is supposed to be done.”

  “Funny, that’s what I thought I was doing.”

  “I’m talking about nuts and bolts, casework.”

  “Look the other way, then ...”

  “Or not look at all.”

  “Difficult not to see a man’s balls stuck in his mouth. The cabdriver was still alive when they cut them off, you know. I don’t think I ever read anything about that in your paper.”

  “Because I don’t want my paper to go the way of your career in Palestine. You made yourself a pariah.”

  “With a little assistance from you.”

  Jabral’s features seemed to relax. “Maybe that’s why I’m here now.”

  “To make amends? Extend an olive branch?”

  “I’d take it if I were you. Now that you’re in charge of the case, you can use all the help you can get.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “For one who knows how to listen.”

  “The mayor had his reasons. What are yours, Jabral?”

  “There’s a madman on the loose. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Only if you have a vested interest in the peace process succeeding.”

  Jabral looked down. “We’ve all had enough of the alternative.”

  Ben regarded him curiously. “You never returned to the classroom.”

  “I elected to follow other pursuits.”

  “They wouldn’t let you back in the schools, would they? You went too far, even for your own people; you scared them. Too much risk, too much liability. Much easier to cut their losses and send you on your way.” Ben watched Jabral grit his teeth, not finished yet. “The same forces that oppose peace ended your teaching career because you stood up to them, and you think I might be able to bring them down for you. That’s what your olive branch is about.”

  Jabral didn’t bother denying it. “I can’t bring them down with my newspaper—none of us who grew up here can bring them down.”

  “Because you’re afraid of being labeled a collaborator, ending up with your balls stuck in your mouth like the cabdriver?”

  “No, because I’m afraid of the Palestinian police who will shut down our offices and confiscate an entire day’s printing if I say something that disturbs Arafat or our”—he cleared his throat—”elected representatives.”

  “The Palestinian Protective Security Service has nothing to do with the police, Jabral, and you know it.”

  “Of course. Your police wait until a crime has been committed before you arrest the wrong man, while the Security Service arrests an innocent man before he has done anything wrong.” Jabral nodded, pleased with his own analysis. “You would be wise to watch out for them too, Ben.”

  “Why would they bother with someone who’s already been labeled a traitor? Then again, that’s why you suddenly want to work with me, isn’t it, Jabral? I’m the one with nothing to lose, and all of a sudden everyone has a use for me.

  “The Israelis included,” Jabral said without missing a beat.

  “Really?”

  “According to my source, they requested you.”

  That remark caught Ben off guard, and Jabral pounced on his sudden uncertainty like a hunter.

  “You didn’t suspect as much when Sumaya reinstated you? You really are naive, aren’t you, Benny?”

  “Why me?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the Israelis. In the meantime, feel free to call upon me if I can be of any assistance.”

  With that, Jabral turned and started off.

  “The Israelis are your source, aren’t they?”

  Jabral kept walking.

  “Aren’t they, Jabral?”

  “Ask them.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Jabral looked back over his shoulder at Kamal. “You’re asking for trouble.”

  He had barely finished his sentence when a plate glass window just down the street exploded. A chair flew through it, followed by a man, who hit the sidewalk with a thud.

  “And,” the newspaper editor resumed, “it appears that you’ve got it.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 8

  B

  en reachedthe manwho’d beenthrown throughthe glass just ahead of two fellow police officers running to the scene, their hands pressed against the butts of their pistols. A fresh crowd began to cluster like ants, shifting its attention from the alley where the corpse was just being hauled away by the Cleaners. Ben helped the man to his feet and dragged him aside.

  “Who are you?”

  The man wore a white apron, splattered with grease. Fresh blood dotted both his cheeks and stained his chin.

  “The chef, that’s all! I am the chef!”

  “What’s going on in there?”

  “He’s mad!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He eats here a lot. Something went wrong. It wasn’t the food.”

  A table sailed through the window, taking another hefty chunk of glass with it. The two police officers hovering nearby drew their guns and started for the door.

  Ben cut in front of them, holding them back. “Let me try first,” he said.

  His colleagues looked at each other. One snickered.

  “Give me a few minutes. If he throws me through the window, take over.” Ben turned to the chef. “Is there a back door?”

  “Locked.”

  “You have the key?”

  The chef fished through his pockets. “Here.”

  Ben took the key and darted behind the building. Passing through the door, he found himself in a storeroom nea
tly stacked with boxes and cans. He could hear the sound of more plates and glasses exploding in the front of the restaurant and quickly located the door leading that way. A short L-shaped hall lay ahead and he crept down it into the kitchen, toward the smell of food burning and the sizzling sound of something left too long on the grill.