The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “Do the windows in your room open?” Khamis Zeydan shoved past Omar Yussef.

  The schoolteacher blinked at his old friend, the Bethlehem police chief. He felt dull and slow. “What’re you doing here?”

  Khamis Zeydan reached behind the curtains, feeling for a catch on the window frame. “I told you half a dozen times I was coming. There’s no point explaining anything to you,” he said. “You only pay attention to Ottoman history and medieval Andalusian poetry. Our president’s visit? You remember? His speech at the UN and consultations with the Americans? I’m advising him on security issues.”

  Omar Yussef shut the door and took a swig from the half-empty bottle of water on the bed. “I’m a little sleepy.”

  “What’re you talking about? You’re already dressed.” The window slid back, and a strong gust of chilly air cut through the heavy warmth of the room. The cunning lines around Khamis Zeydan’s blue eyes deepened, and the ends of his nicotine-stained white mustache rose. “May Allah be praised. My windows won’t unlock. I’ve already set off the smoke alarm in my room twice this morning.” He took out a Rothmans and lit up with relish.

  Omar Yussef looked around for an ashtray to give to his friend.

  Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “They don’t allow it here, Abu Ramiz. In America, you have the right to carry a gun wherever you want, but you’re banned from flourishing something as lethal as a cigarette.”

  Omar Yussef shivered. “Does the window have to be open quite so wide? It’s February, and this city is almost arctic. When did you arrive?”

  “We landed in the middle of the night.” Khamis Zeydan shoved the window until it was open only a few inches and brushed some ash from the lapel of his navy-blue trench coat with annoyance. “Son of a whore,” he muttered.

  “Why aren’t you with the president now?”

  “He has meetings in his suite all morning and a lunch with some Arab diplomats. I told him that if I had to listen to all the shit they’ll talk, I might whack one of them. He sent me away to be a tourist.” Khamis Zeydan rattled phlegm in his throat, opened the window wider, and expectorated out of it. He watched the wind whip his spit along the street toward the turquoise glass of the UN building. “By Allah, we’re high up here, aren’t we?”

  Omar Yussef was comforted by the arrival of his old friend. He went to the window and looked down. His head spun a little as he watched the yellow taxis threading past the double-parked black limos twenty floors down. He wondered if one of the tiny figures below was waiting for him, tracking him. He shivered. “I’m happy to see you, Abu Adel,” he said.

  The habitual boldness of Khamis Zeydan’s voice receded as he reached for Omar Yussef’s hand. “Something’s wrong, my dear Abu Ramiz.”

  The schoolteacher rested his forehead against the cold glass. “I found a dead man yesterday,” he murmured.

  “Allah is most great,” Khamis Zeydan said. He slapped his knuckles into the gloved prosthesis he had worn since a grenade took off his left hand in the Lebanese civil war. “This is a violent city. Even so, what’re the odds that you should find yourself a bystander?”

  “Not just a random body. It was Nizar Jado, one of Ala’s roommates. The police took Ala.”

  “Took him? Why? Surely he’s not a suspect?”

  “He refused to give an alibi. He may be in danger. He hinted that he knows about something that went on between Nizar and their other roommate, Rashid. I can’t believe Rashid is the killer; but if he were, he might try to get at Ala—to keep him from talking.”

  “Nizar, eh?” Khamis Zeydan flicked his cigarette out of the window, and the wind carried it away in a brief flurry of orange sparks. He shut the window and shivered. “Where are they holding Ala?”

  “At the police station, I think. I can check with the detective.” Omar Yussef took Hamza’s business card from his pocket. He sat by the phone a moment, until he remembered how to obtain an outside line, then dialed.

  Immediately, Hamza picked up: “Abayat.”

  “Greetings, Sergeant, this is Abu Ramiz speaking, the father of Ala Sirhan.”

  “Morning of joy, ustaz.”

  “Morning of light, my dear sir.”

  “Did you pass a good night?”

  “Fine, fine, may Allah be thanked.”

  “May merciful Allah bless you.”

  “Sergeant, I would like to talk to my son.”

  “If Allah wills it, ustaz.”

  “Yes, if Allah wills it. You told me it would be possible today.”

  “If Allah wills it.”

  Omar Yussef wasn’t sure if he had heard irritation or merely fatigue in the detective’s voice. “Where is he?”

  “He’s at the Brooklyn Detention Complex.”

  “He’s not at the police station?”

  “It’s easier for us to keep them at the Detention Complex and bring them to the station for questioning when we need them.”

  Them. The criminals, Omar Yussef thought. The suspects, the guilty, the people who cut off heads. But my son? “Where is this Detention Complex?”

  “Atlantic Avenue.”

  “That’s in Little Palestine?”

  “It’s not far away. You can visit your son for up to one hour, provided the lieutenant okays it.”

  Omar Yussef spoke quietly. “Hamza, my son.”

  “Yes, uncle.” The detective responded to the emotion in Omar Yussef’s voice.

  “Has my boy been charged?”

  “No. He was questioned through the night by myself and Lieutenant Raghavan.” Hamza sighed. “You understand that we need to work very intensively on a murder case. If we don’t have a suspect within forty-eight hours, it’s likely we might never have one.”

  “Have you been up all night?”

  “This is the city that never sleeps, ustaz.” The detective laughed wearily. “I can’t follow the short and unpredictable office hours of the Middle East here.”

  “If you come to a village where they worship a calf, gather grass and feed it.”

  “As they say back home.” Hamza spoke quietly in English to someone in the room with him. Omar Yussef heard the yipping voice of the female lieutenant in the background, then Hamza came back on the line. “Lieutenant Raghavan agrees that you can talk to your son, ustaz. She’ll contact the Detention Complex. They’ll be expecting you. And, ustaz, please try to talk some sense into him. He isn’t helping anybody by clamming up.”

  “Thank you, Hamza.” Omar Yussef hung up the phone.

  Khamis Zeydan had gone through another Rothmans while his friend talked. He looked at Omar Yussef. “Something else on your mind?”

  “I think I was followed. On the subway yesterday, coming back from Little Palestine.” He stared into the dark glass of the building across the street. Though it was early, he saw the outlines of office workers at their computers. “I’m nervous about returning to Brooklyn.”

  Khamis Zeydan exhaled smoke from his nostrils. “I always knew we’d end up in jail together one day. I don’t fancy the observation deck on the Empire State Building in this cold weather, anyway. Let’s go to Brooklyn.”

  As they walked along the corridor, the smoke detector whined out its electronic siren in Omar Yussef’s room.

  Chapter 9

  A pockmarked Latino with a hoarse voice and a thick accent brayed over the chatter and rumble of the D train. “When the kingdom comes, you’re going to be there,” he bellowed, his head back like a market tradesman to project through the crowded car. “He’ll tell the world, and you’re going to teach what He says. Only Jesus Christ can save all of you.”

  Khamis Zeydan fingered his pack of Rothmans. “I ought to remind him that only the believers in Allah will be saved,” he mumbled.

  “Allah is most great, Honored Sheikh.” Omar Yussef poked his friend’s chest. “Jesus is a prophet named in the Koran. Maybe this guy is a Muslim after all. Anyway, of those believers who will be saved, how many will be former PLO hit men with a fondness for Sco
tch whisky and cursing? I expect the answer is none.”

  “You may be right. Ah, then, fuck the believers.”

  “If it is the will of Allah.” Omar Yussef smiled.

  “I entrust myself to the protection of Allah.” Khamis Zeydan rubbed his palms together as though he were washing his hands. “But if Paradise is a no-smoking zone like America, I want to go to Hell.”

  “For a Palestinian, that’s the easiest of wishes to grant. One doesn’t even have to leave home to get there.”

  They approached the Grand Street station as the Latino finished his message: “All the people who will be saved will be saved by Jesus Christ. All of you are chosen to be saved. Thank you for listening, and have a beautiful day.”

  “May Allah grant you grace,” Omar Yussef whispered as the preacher left the car.

  The train rumbled at low speed onto the strangely terrifying superstructure of the Manhattan Bridge. Downriver, beyond the massive girders and the mesh of electric lines, the Brooklyn Bridge arched over the water. Its famous towers sprayed thick cables along its span. Omar Yussef felt as though he were flying out of control through the air, high above the river and the tangle of highway along the shoreline. An old Vietnamese man screamed into his cell phone over the noise of the train. The wheels rang like the slow beating of a giant steel kettledrum until the train slipped back under the earth, jumped to a different track, and picked up speed. “This is an unnatural way of traveling,” Omar Yussef whispered.

  “There’s a daily caravan between Manhattan and Brooklyn, if you prefer.” Khamis Zeydan leered. “Next time we’ll rent a camel and join them.”

  Omar Yussef shook his head and wondered if he ought to buy some nicotine gum for his irritable friend. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left your work today. I’d prefer the president had to deal with your rotten temper, rather than me.”

  “My brother, I have a bad feeling about his visit. Some danger that I can’t predict.”

  “Surely there’s plenty of security at the UN?”

  “America used to be the last place you’d expect any kind of attack.” Khamis Zeydan rubbed the knuckle of his prosthetic hand against the sharp edge of his front teeth. “Not anymore.”

  “May it be displeasing to Allah.”

  “It makes me nervous to be stuck on a subway train when someone might be planning a strike against my boss right now.”

  Omar Yussef, too, wished to be elsewhere. He wondered what lies Abdel Hadi would be telling the other delegates at the UN conference about him in his absence. He needed to sort out Ala’s problems and return to the UN before any plots could play out against him. He had given little thought to the speech he was to make, but now it seemed he had almost no time to prepare. His nervousness made him bitter. “May Allah curse this train,” he said. “I feel trapped like a bound man in a pit of scorpions.”

  They left the subway at Atlantic Avenue and emerged at a big intersection that received traffic from five directions. Omar Yussef covered his ears with his hands as the lights changed and a troop of shiny SUVs bellowed past.

  Khamis Zeydan lit a cigarette and lifted his head to the deepening gray in the sky. “Rain’s coming,” he said. He pulled a tweed cap from the pocket of his trench coat and covered his short white hair. “You’re not exactly dressed for this weather, are you?”

  Omar Yussef approached an elderly Arab who was resting on his cane by the traffic light, his red-and-white-checkered keffiya wrapped under his chin. “Peace be upon you,” he said.

  “And upon you, peace,” the man responded.

  “The Detention Complex, which way is it?”

  The old Arab looked Omar Yussef up and down. He wonders who I’m visiting at the jail, Omar Yussef thought. He’s suspicious of my criminal connections.

  “It’s a long walk,” the Arab said, pointing with his cane. “That direction. Six blocks.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But they’re long blocks. Atlantic Avenue is a long street.”

  It’s not my criminal ties that make him look at me so dubiously. It’s my frailty. “We’ll be fine, sir.”

  The old man laughed, coughed, and spat. “You don’t live in New York, do you? You thought that just because you were going to an address on Atlantic Avenue, you ought to go to the station with the same name. You don’t look like peasants to me, but sometimes you can’t tell the real hicks by sight. You should’ve taken a different subway line altogether and you’d have come up much closer to the jail. Anyway, you ought to take a bus now.”

  Omar Yussef resented the old man for pointing out his mistake. “I think we’ll walk.”

  The man gave Omar Yussef a doubtful look. “If you don’t get tired from the long walk, you’re certainly going to freeze. You ought to have a hat. This isn’t the Naqab desert, you know.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Khamis Zeydan said, patting the warm cap on his own head.

  “I’ll buy a hat then,” Omar Yussef said, impatiently. “Over there.”

  Across Fourth Avenue, they came to a stall hung with keffiyas, baseball caps, and woolen hats. The vendor stood beside it, leaning against the wall of a red-brick Gothic building that housed a mosque, his hands so deep in the pockets of his thick quilted coat that his elbows were locked.

  “Take this one,” Khamis Zeydan said, pointing at a woolen cap emblazoned with a white skull and crossbones. “That’s your style. It ought to appeal to your interest in history.”

  Omar Yussef felt his cheeks reddening with irritation, but his scalp was numb with cold. Some of the hats bore only a few colored letters, so he reached out for the first one that came to hand and gave the vendor three dollars. When he pulled the hat over his head, the lancing pain of the freezing wind on his baldness left him, and he sighed with relief.

  Khamis Zeydan read the letters on the hat. “NYPD? The design’s not quite up to your usual standard of elegance, but it might get us into the Detention Complex a little quicker.”

  Beyond the mosque, they passed a row of Arab mini-markets stocked with buckets of sumac and cardamom, the price of halal meat advertised in the windows. Outside a store selling greeting cards and bumper stickers, Khamis Zeydan stopped to read aloud: “Hatred is not a family value—Koran 49:13. The Koran says that?”

  “In that verse, Allah says he ‘made you into nations and tribes, so that you might get to know each other,’” Omar Yussef said.

  “So this is the dumb American version?”

  “What do you want from them? It’s only a bumper sticker.” Omar Yussef tried to pick up their pace. “Did you ever meet Nizar, may Allah have mercy upon him?”

  Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “Only briefly. He was out walking with Ala near the Nativity Church. They were with those other two boys who were always close to them.”

  “The other members of The Assassins.”

  The police chief grimaced. “I don’t know why you encouraged them with that name.”

  “It was just a historical interest, a little bit of fun.”

  “I don’t see that there’s so much fun to be found in a bunch of medieval drug addicts.”

  “History was never your strong subject when we were together at university, Abu Adel.”

  “Screw your sister, schoolteacher. I majored in women and whisky.”

  “With a minor in cursing. The Assassins weren’t drug addicts. Their leaders used the promise of Paradise to train fanatical killers.”

  “So not drug addicts, but insane murderers.”

  “Their leaders weren’t insane. They were ruthless and manipulative. They used the men they sent on suicidal missions to eliminate political enemies and to protect their particular strain of Islam.”

  Khamis Zeydan picked at his back teeth. “Even so, a bunch of kids named ‘The Assassins’ is the kind of thing people take seriously in the Middle East. If the Israelis had found out there was a group with that name in Bethlehem, they’d probably have assassinated them.”

  Omar Yussef took a sha
rp breath. Could that be what happened to Nizar? he wondered. People believed it was the Mossad that killed Nizar’s father, after all.

  “They were very important to me, all those boys,” he muttered.

  “I don’t know why you get so close to your pupils. Emotional involvement only causes trouble.”

  “There you see the difference between a teacher and a professional killer.”

  Khamis Zeydan clicked his tongue.

  Omar Yussef hurried across Third Avenue, stepping aside for a pair of stout Arab women, their mendils tight beneath their plump chins. “Maybe you knew Nizar’s father. He was a PLO guy back when you were running around on missions for the Old Man.”

  Khamis Zeydan cupped his hands to light another cigarette. “Yeah, I knew Fayez.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Arrogance is a weed that mostly grows on a dunghill, as they say. The PLO was a real dunghill, and that’s how all those assholes were—arrogant as cockerels, every one of them.” The police chief hunched his shoulders against the wind. “Fayez ran off to study in Baghdad and joined the PLO there. He prospered on the dunghill. He had his own little commando group within the PLO for a while and used to write heroic essays about their exploits against the Israelis.”

  “I’ve read some of his political essays. I seem to remember they were mainly critiques of the Arab nations.”

  Khamis Zeydan sneered. “When he merged his fighting unit with the main PLO forces, the Old Man rewarded him by making him a special ambassador.”

  “What did that involve?”

  They crossed another side street. “We’re being followed,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  Omar Yussef spun around in surprise, but his friend grabbed his arm and pulled him along.

  “A man in a black coat.”

  “Where?” Omar Yussef turned his head.

  “Stop it. If he knows we’ve seen him, it might force his hand.”

  “Force his—You mean, he might try to—”

  “Steal your new hat.” Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef’s arm more casually, linking their elbows so that he could watch over his shoulder.

  “Can you see him?” Omar Yussef whispered.