Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

Omar Yussef followed his friend reluctantly, looking back every few paces to search for the man who had been watching him. His pulse ran fast. Though he had seen it only for a moment, he had recognized the stern, bearded face.

It was Ismail. The fourth Assassin.

The snow drifted down over First Avenue. In the long UN Conference Hall building, Omar Yussef wiped its traces from his brow with a handkerchief. Delicate flakes attached to the tall, picture window and slipped down the pane as the heat from the hallway seeped through the glass. A new snowflake settled, and he touched his finger to the spot, wondering if the pattern of the ice crystal outside was as unique as the fingerprint he left on his side of the window.

The brief glimpse the snowflakes gave of themselves before they melted away reminded him of the flicker of light that had illuminated Ismail’s face. The sudden appearance of the fourth member of The Assassins disturbed him. Was Ismail’s presence in New York connected to the murder in the apartment where his three former friends lived?

A short Latino woman rolled her cleaning cart by him, favoring her left hip as she hefted her heavy buttocks. She halted outside the General Assembly Hall and polished the window where a group of schoolchildren had been pressed against it. Feeling guilty, Omar Yussef rubbed away his fingerprint with his handkerchief.

He followed the cleaner’s progress down the hallway. Its simple modernist design wasn’t to his taste. He preferred the traditional vaulted ceilings and colorful tiles of the Middle East. But it was a good place from which to watch the snow come down, and he felt its delicate beauty touching his face still.

He checked his watch. It was almost 10 A.M. He would show himself at the conference this morning-just to keep his boss happy, since he had missed yesterday’s opening session- then he would take the subway to Bay Ridge to talk to Marwan. He turned back to the window, but the magic of the snowflakes was sullied by his memory of the blood he had seen in Little Palestine.

A slim Russian blonde led a party of tourists toward the mural of Norman Rockwell’s Golden Rule . “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Omar Yussef whispered. Behind the tour group, he stared at Rockwell’s mosaic faces filling the wall. They were supposed to represent all the nations of the world. They looked back at him like the melange of ethnici-ties that stared through the window of any crowded New York subway car. None of them, he thought, looked like him.

The Russian guide led the tourists past Omar Yussef. They broke around him as though he were a rock in a stream. When they were gone, only one man remained beneath the mural, leering at him.

“Morning of joy, Deputy Director-General Abdel Hadi,” Omar Yussef said.

“Morning of light, Abu Ramiz.” The schools inspector approached Omar Yussef and reached out to touch his quilted coat. “This isn’t up to your usual fashionable standards.”

“Perhaps I could borrow one of your polyester suits, instead.”

“Or your son could lend you some prison fatigues.”

Omar Yussef’s head went back as though he had been jabbed on the nose.

“Your friend Khamis Zeydan was trying to get the president to intervene with the New York police last night. On behalf of your son. I just happened to be in the president’s suite at the time.” Smug at his proximity to power, Abdel Hadi’s breath shivered sensuously, like a cat’s purr. “Sadly, the president decided there was nothing he could do.”

“There’s no need for interventions. My son will soon be released.”

“Perhaps your UN pals would do something for the boy. I’m sure it would interest them to learn that their keynote speaker is the father of a murder suspect.”

Even if we were part of the same delegation, this man might undermine me. That’s the way of Palestinian politics, Omar Yussef thought. With me attending as a UN delegate, I’m truly fair game. “My son isn’t a suspect.”

“How do they put it-he’s helping the police with their inquiries? Is that it?”

Omar Yussef clicked his tongue.

“As he once helped the Israelis?” Abdel Hadi said.

“He did nothing of the sort. The Israelis arrested him along with hundreds of other youths from Bethlehem. It was a big intifada sweep. Almost every male below the age of thirty was taken in. There was nothing to it. You know that.”

Abdel Hadi flattened a lick of black hair over his dark, bald scalp. He brushed the dandruff that adhered to his fingers onto the tail of his jacket and licked his lips with the tip of his yellowish tongue. “Your son is accused of murder-”

“Not accused of anything-”

“-yet you maintain that circumstances will soon enough reveal him to be harmless.”

“Of course he is.”

“Perhaps he’s even been framed. Does that sound familiar?”

Omar Yussef clenched his fists in the deep pockets of his coat.

“My government work has led me to examine the archives of the old Jordanian administration. Mainly documents concerning education,” Abdel Hadi said. “But I also came across a police report from 1965 regarding the arrest on a murder charge of a young Ba’ath Party activist from Bethlehem. He was expected to go on to great things, to be a leader of his generation, but he lost his nerve and ended up teaching in a backwater UN school.”

Son of a whore, Omar Yussef thought. I didn’t think anyone knew about that old case. “Maybe his generation was polluted by back-stabbers like you, so he turned his focus to the next generation-the one that’ll shape a better future.”

Abdel Hadi sneered at Omar Yussef with triumphal calm. “Your son may escape justice this time, just as you did forty years ago. But one day I shall use this information to protect our schoolchildren from your wicked ideas. Perhaps this week. Perhaps even today.”

Omar Yussef tasted a splash of bile at the back of his tongue. “You should be in a profession more appropriate to your talents than education,” he said. “Try the secret police.”

Abdel Hadi dropped his hand as though waving away a compliment. “In a spirit of solidarity between Palestinian brothers, I hope for the best for your son.” He gave a smile of compassion, as if he had felt some dull pain. Then he peeled away the expression like a price tag stamped over an earlier, outdated one, revealing a cheaper smirk beneath it.

The schools inspector pushed through the hazelwood doors of the Economic and Social Council. Omar Yussef held out his palm as the door swung back at him. It jarred his elbow, and he winced. Leaning a shoulder against the door, he entered the conference room.

An observers’ gallery ten rows deep sloped down to the delegates’ area. The chairman’s table faced the hall, beneath a wall decorated with white concentric ovals on a dark wooden background, like a magnified section from an inlaid Syrian table. It rose to a ceiling that had been left incomplete to represent the UN’s unfinished work in poor countries. Below the chairman, the recorders and clerks huddled, absorbed in their preparations with the businesslike energy of an orchestra in its pit. The delegates sat at long tables, and behind them were five rows of staff seats. From one of these rows, Magnus Wallander waved to Omar Yussef and gestured him toward a seat of ragged lime-green corduroy.

“What did I miss yesterday?” Omar Yussef asked when he reached his seat.

“The first day of the conference was what you Palestinians call heki fadi , empty talk,” Wallander said. “It’s only during the breaks that one can have interesting conversations and make some progress.”