The Samaritan's secret oy-3

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “How dare you.”

  “You had some trouble with the Jordanian authorities when you were a student radical, too, didn’t you? Murder, wasn’t it? You’re probably going to tell me that the charges were dropped. But in an Arab country, with our corrupt justice systems, that doesn’t exactly clear your name. I also gather you had some dubious connections in Damascus, when you were a student there.”

  “You’re just rehashing old nonsense.”

  “Then why are your cheeks burning?” Kanaan stroked his gray sideburns. “Really, as you point out, I don’t need this money for my personal use. I’ve made many millions in construction and banking. But the Palestinians are poor.”

  “Because of men like you.”

  Kanaan waved his hand as though wafting away a bad smell. “I wanted to collect all the money hidden around the world by the old president and use it to build hospitals and schools for our people. If you insist on seeing me as entirely selfish, then look at it this way: if I could help cleanse Palestine of corruption and build good infrastructure, international investors would put money into the economy and my holdings here would appreciate in value.”

  Omar Yussef dropped his gaze to his knuckles. Have I been blinded to this man’s better intentions by the animosity Khamis Zeydan feels for him? Perhaps he’s telling me the truth now.

  “If I tried to put you out of the way, it was because I didn’t know your objectives,” Kanaan said. “You can’t blame me for assuming that if you’d found the money you would have kept it for yourself, or for some faction allied to your friend Abu Adel. I already paid off everyone else who might have considered going after the money, because I wanted to make sure that I’d be the one to trace it. Then I planned to deposit it in the Palestinian treasury.”

  “If someone refused to be paid off, then you employed Mareh and his own special methods?”

  “I used extreme measures, because the fate of our nation rests on the recovery of this money.”

  “How about Suleiman al-Teef? Did you buy him?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “If this is true, why didn’t you coordinate your search with Jamie King. The World Bank could’ve helped you.”

  “Foreigners like her just get in the way.”

  Omar Yussef flexed his fingers. “Ishaq took the dirt files. Then he failed to hand over the account documents?”

  “Correct.”

  “So you killed him?”

  Kanaan’s eyelid fluttered and something beneath his suave calm quivered. “I could never have done such a thing. I loved him.”

  “You can’t kill someone you love? Love’s usually the most popular reason for murder.”

  Kanaan glanced out of the window toward the gazebo where Khamis Zeydan sat, hunched and sullen. “Don’t you think that if I was that kind of man I’d have killed other people who were close to me? Ishaq wasn’t the first person I loved who betrayed me.”

  His wife, with the dashing young field officer who’s now sulking in his garden, Omar Yussef thought. “Liana?”

  “In Beirut, I had an understanding with her. We were promised to each other, though not formally engaged. Then I discovered that she had loved another man, too.”

  Kanaan took Liana as his wife even after that betrayal, Omar Yussef thought. His attraction to her wasn’t only a matter of sex. He loves her as if she were his own flesh. Omar Yussef raised his head. His own flesh. “Ishaq was your son.”

  Kanaan’s chin dipped like a man on the verge of sleep. “He was my son,” he said. He pyramided his fingertips at the end of his clumsy, wide nose and closed his eyes. “Liana and I had relations before our marriage. You should have seen her, ustaz. She was brave and intelligent, the most beautiful woman in Beirut. Were you ever there?”

  “Not since I was a student.”

  Kanaan smiled dreamily. “The spirit of Beirut back then swept me and Liana into each other’s hearts. She rejected the conservative morality of our culture and even convinced me that I could join this rejection. She had spent time in Europe and seen how young couples lived there.”

  “You don’t look like a hippie to me.”

  “We were radicals, not hippies. In those days, revolution was something creative and idealistic. Artists and theater people used to visit our headquarters. I met the great English actress Vanessa Redgrave more than once.”

  Omar Yussef rolled his eyes, but Kanaan appeared not to notice.

  “No one knew who would be alive the next day. You could be killed by the Syrians, the Israelis, the Christian militias, the Shiite gangs, by one of the other Palestinian factions, or even by the Old Man himself.” Kanaan gazed into the sun, glinting off the tall windows of his salon. “If you found someone who would love you, you loved her back with all the life you had, all the life that might be snuffed out the next day, the next hour.”

  Omar Yussef sneered. “Liana became pregnant.”

  “Shortly after we became engaged, I sent her to Nablus to have our baby,” Kanaan said. “I had to get her out of Beirut, where all the other PLO people were, to avoid a scandal. She couldn’t go to her family in Ramallah, because everyone knew her there. Nablus is my home. When she gave birth here, I paid the Samaritan priest to adopt the boy. I chose to hide my son with people so much on the fringe of the town that no one who knew me would ever discover the truth, but he would still be close enough that we could watch him grow up.”

  “Why didn’t you go to live in Europe with him?”

  “That’s what Liana wanted. But I realized that it was only she who could live outside our people’s morality and traditions. Only she could leave Palestinian society. I was too weak.” The sickly yellow around Kanaan’s irises glowed with desolation in the fading light. “After our marriage, it was too late to get the boy back without admitting what had happened. It would have been a dreadful slur on my wife’s reputation, to have acknowledged that we had physical relations before our wedding.”

  Omar Yussef understood the dilemma. Many women had been killed for staining the honor of their families with even the suspicion of sex outside marriage, let alone an illegitimate birth. Liana’s family might have been a little more modern about it than that, but they could easily have disowned her, he thought. Certainly Kanaan’s business career would have been destroyed by the scandal.

  “But I funded Ishaq’s schooling and I promoted him in the party,” Kanaan said. “How else do you think an obscure Samaritan kid became the financial adviser to our president? I propelled Ishaq as I would have my legitimate son.”

  Kanaan stared at the shining marble floor. For a moment, Omar Yussef wondered if he was still breathing, then the man covered his face with both hands and groaned. Omar Yussef knew that now, when Kanaan was weak, he had to push him. “Ishaq died as his biblical namesake Isaac was intended to die,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isaac was bound, ready for sacrifice, on the peak of the mountain where the temple would later be built. His father, the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, as the Jews call him, was to carry out the killing.”

  “You think I’m Ibrahim? Ibrahim didn’t kill Isaac in the end, and anyway that’s just an old story.” A wave of Kanaan’s cologne floated across the coffee table to Omar Yussef. “Ishaq threatened to blackmail me if I made a fuss about him failing to give me the account documents.”

  “He put the bite on you?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Omar Yussef thought of Nadia and her American detective story and he hid his smile behind his hand. “He threatened to reveal who his real parents were?”

  Kanaan ran his fingers through his hair. “It would have destroyed my wife.”

  “And you?”

  “By now I’ve made too much money for any dirt to stick. Too many bastards need me on their side. They stifle their moral outrage easily enough. But my wife is more vulnerable than I am. She couldn’t have taken the scandal.”

  “How did you respond to Ish
aq’s blackmail?”

  “I gave in. I agreed that he could keep the secret bank documents. I told him it would be dangerous for him to hold on to that information, that deadly people would discover the truth and force him to hand over the account details. I had paid people to leave the secret funds to me, but if I didn’t get hold of the accounts quickly enough, those same people would consider the field open once more.” Kanaan spread his hands wide and let them slap down onto his tastefully cut linen pants. “And of course they-whoever they are-found him and killed him.”

  “Who has the secret account details now?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever killed Ishaq, I suppose.”

  “And the files of dirt on the Fatah people?”

  Kanaan smiled bitterly. “I reclaimed them.”

  “You saw no reason to be bound by your agreement with Ishaq once he was dead.”

  “I didn’t receive what I was supposed to get out of the deal. I sent my people to Awwadi’s place and took the files back.”

  “Why did you have Awwadi killed, too?”

  “I only wanted the files. Mareh had some private reason for murdering Awwadi, so he killed him.”

  The quarrel over Awwadi’s bride, Omar Yussef thought. He rubbed his chin. “Why didn’t Ishaq stay in Paris?”

  “He came back because he thought he was a Samaritan. He was lonely and he wanted to be with them. Even though he didn’t have to hide his sexual proclivity in Europe, he didn’t feel at home. A few weeks ago he discovered the truth about his birth and came here in a rage. He didn’t look like himself at all.” Kanaan winced. “There always used to be something in his eyes at times of action that suggested he enjoyed danger. But not then. His eyes were exploding. It terrified me.”

  Omar Yussef frowned and stroked his chin. “I know what you mean,” he said. “How did Ishaq find out?”

  “I assume the priest gave us away, because no one else knew. I told Ishaq I had kept his birth a secret for Liana’s sake, but that only made him furious with her, too. The person we loved most in the world turned against us.”

  “That leaves you with only one person to love.”

  Kanaan flushed beneath his even tan. “I’ll give you anything to keep this quiet.”

  “You’re still worried about scandal? The boy is dead.”

  “I have to think about my wife. Ishaq’s death has made her-” he looked for the right word “-fragile. I’ll give you anything in my power.”

  Omar Yussef stood and stepped toward the French doors. Why does everyone want to conspire with me? he wondered. Do I seem dishonest? Or am I their confessor, like the priests to whom Roman Catholics go for remission of their small, venial sins. A priest can’t forgive mortal sins, though. He tapped his knuckle softly on the glass. Can I?

  Khamis Zeydan paced across the lawn with his back to the house. A hoopoe dipped its long, thin beak into the grass and came up with a worm. It skipped a few paces and dropped the worm, picked it up again, extended its wings to show its black and white stripes, and flew into the branches of a sycamore.

  Omar Yussef put his hand over his mouth and stroked his chin. He smiled at the stricken face of Amin Kanaan. “There is something I can think of that you can get for me,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  Omar Yussef cut the engine and waited for something in the silence to ambush him. When Khamis Zeydan wheezed, he realized that they had both been holding their breath, anticipating the momentous discovery they hoped to make up the hill and fearful that they would find someone else, someone murderous, searching there too. Stepping out onto the dried pine needles around the jeep, he skirted the woods until he found the path to the Byzantine fort winding around a patch of rocks. Khamis Zeydan’s pistol glinted in the moonlight.

  “Put that gun away,” Omar Yussef said. “We might walk into someone perfectly innocent and you’ll have shot them before we get a chance to see who they are.”

  “I’ll aim to wound,” Khamis Zeydan whispered. “If there’s anyone up there now, after the gates have been locked, I doubt that they’re innocent.”

  “We’ll probably be searching for hours for the place where Ishaq buried those secret documents. If you shoot at some shadow, the whole village will come and catch us. We won’t be able to do this by day without being noticed, and tomorrow the World Bank cuts off its aid. We have to do this tonight. Don’t blow it.”

  Khamis Zeydan puffed out his cheeks. He kept his gun hand raised, the barrel pointing at the branches above, and paced carefully ahead of Omar Yussef, as though he expected the ground beneath each advancing step to blow up.

  They passed through the break in the fence and the pines started to thin. Stones, long tumbled from the old walls of the fortress, spread irregularly over the hillside like a shoreline wavering in the shifting moonlight.

  “Can you make it up here with your foot in that condition?” Omar Yussef asked. “It looks like a rough climb over these fallen blocks.”

  “You’d prefer me to wait at the bottom for your corpse to come rolling down?” Khamis Zeydan shook his foot and slapped his thigh to get the blood moving.

  “Since you put it that way, my brother,” said Omar Yussef, “stick close.”

  He stepped onto one of the stones and saw that his leg shook with fear. His apprehension made him feel foolish. He was a schoolteacher, not a man of action like the policeman who walked behind him, pistol at the ready. Yet here he was, ascending a pile of ancient stones in the night, unsure of what awaited him at the end of his climb.

  His ankle turned and his shoe slipped off. He winced, bending to pull it back on, and leaned against a stone to right himself. It was rough with lichen and the weathering of ages. “Now we both have a bad foot,” he said.

  “At least I had some fun boozing and eating badly to get mine into the condition it’s in,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  “Aren’t we having fun now?”

  Khamis Zeydan bent low, the pistol still raised. “I’m loving every minute.” He smiled grimly. “I’m starting to hope there’s actually someone up there.”

  “There isn’t.” Omar Yussef flexed his ankle. “The documents Ishaq hid are up there, somewhere near the flat stone where the ancient temple stood. That’s all.”

  “It never pays to be surprised. Get yourself ready for a welcoming committee.”

  They climbed side by side over the stones. Omar Yussef bowed to use both hands where the slope was most acute. Khamis Zeydan kept his gun in his hand and balanced with his prosthetic limb. They moved quietly, though Omar Yussef thought their labored breathing might as well have been a shout in the hush around them. His pulse thundered in his neck like a Ramadan firecracker.

  The spray of rocks on the hillside brought them to a rise at the foot of the fortress’s walls. Beyond a soft dip in the ridge, the stone that had been at the center of the ancient Samaritan temple angled down the slope from the peak of the mountain, a silvery charcoal. At its center, a darker spot marked it. Omar Yussef squinted. The spot on the rock seemed to roll to one side. Is that a shadow cast by the clouds passing across the moon? he wondered. Something stretched out of the darkness at the center of the flat stone. It jerked upward, then it bent. It was an arm.

  “Someone’s there,” Omar Yussef said.

  They hurried over the grass toward the temple stone.

  Omar Yussef stepped onto the holy rock and felt electricity rise through his feet and into his legs. The charge quickened his breath, squeezing his heart between two pounding fists of adrenaline.

  The body moved again. An arm flapped, then collapsed with a crack of knuckles against the rock. The forearm, which fell out of a blue gown, was lightly covered in black hair. Omar Yussef went onto his knees and held the outstretched limb, rubbing its cold fingers between his hands.

  “Roween, can you hear me?” he said.

  The Samaritan woman opened one eye, as far as the contusion surrounding it would allow. A bloodied slash flayed her skin from the bone of her cheek and
concealed the other eye. She sucked air desperately over smashed teeth. Her gown rode above her knees, showing her stocky legs, bruised and scratched. She exhaled and Omar Yussef thought it was the death rattle.

  Khamis Zeydan turned a full circle. “There’s no one around, as far as I can see,” he said, holstering his pistol.

  “Who did this to you, Roween?” Omar Yussef asked, squeezing her fingers.

  Roween choked and dribbled blood from the corner of her mouth. “Abisha,” she spluttered.

  “The scroll? Did a man named Abisha do this?”

  “Abisha.” She gagged again and the force of her coughing almost brought her upright. She grabbed at a pain in her belly and rolled onto her side.

  Omar Yussef felt moisture chill his face. He wiped the back of his hand across his cheek and it came away dark. Roween had coughed a spray of blood over him.

  “Where are the account details?” Khamis Zeydan knelt beside the battered woman. His voice was harsh and clear. “Where are they?”

  They’re in the Abisha Scroll, Omar Yussef thought. She knows we came here to find the secret bank documents. She’s telling us Ishaq hid them inside the scroll’s box. That’s what he meant by ‘behind the temple.’ It has nothing to do with the location of the ancient temple. He meant the silver image of the temple decorating the Abisha’s box. He lifted a hand to restrain Khamis Zeydan. “Let her rest,” he whispered. “She’s nearly gone.”

  Khamis Zeydan shook his head and leaned closer to Roween’s face. “Where?” he said.

  “Synagogue.” Roween’s voice was barely more than a breath. Her glassy eye fought to focus on Omar Yussef’s face. He came closer, took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from her cheek and mouth. “He knew,” she said. “Kanaan.”

  “What? Kanaan knew what? That Ishaq was his son?” Omar Yussef whispered gently.

  “He knew about Kanaan,” she said.

  “Ishaq knew he was the son of Kanaan?”

  “Ask her about that other guy.” Khamis Zeydan nudged Omar Yussef. “What’s his name?”