Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

Omar Yussef laughed. “I’m surprised at you. You think like a peasant. Allah exists where he’s needed.”

“But you’re not even a believer, ustaz .”

“I believe that Allah is a mystery. Do you really think he sits on top of the Kaba in Mecca? Doesn’t he feel compassion for the people of New York, even though they’re physically far away from him?”

They came to the empty General Assembly and passed into the visitors’ area at the back. A map of the world, spreading out from the North Pole, shone in gold leaf above the dais.

As he stared down the long aisles toward the futuristic podium, Ismail seemed transformed to Omar Yussef. Gone was the delicate, wounded clerk, and in his place stood a killer, ready to put his faith in truths so simple that nothing could be easier than to die for them, because they made of death something facile too. He had ceased to be one of Omar Yussef’s little group of Assassins. He had become simply an assassin.

“If you carry out your plan, then this is where Allah dies,” Omar Yussef said. “Wherever he has lived-Mecca, New York-he dies here.”

Ismail glanced along the back row of desks in the Assembly Hall, each marked with the name of its national delegation. “My plan?”

“It’s suicidal.”

“How could it be done in such a closely guarded place?”

“I’m not an assassin. I can’t give you details. Who knows what components could’ve been sneaked in here? Perhaps you used money from Nizar’s drug sales to bribe a cleaner, who smuggled in a rifle, piece by piece. It could be hidden in this very room.”

“You’re not as purely academic as you pretend to be.” Ismail stroked his beard and smirked. “Maybe I’ll recruit you for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, ustaz .”

“I don’t like the retirement plan. I’m not interested in Paradise.”

“If you aren’t careful, someone might try to retire you very soon.” Ismail strolled behind the empty desks of the delegations.

“As you already did. You shot at me in Coney Island. Or were you trying to hit Nizar, because he backed out on your operation?”

“ Ustaz , I’m a diplomat.”

“Let’s say you did try to kill me and that I forgave you. How would you feel about that? Because I do forgive you, my boy.”

The corners of Ismail’s mouth twitched into a fragile sneer. Omar Yussef grabbed his shoulder. “I forgive you, do you hear me?” he said. Ismail blinked and looked away.

“In the days of the Assassins, ustaz , their suicidal attacks were reviled. It was seen as unnatural to die that way.” Ismail scanned the names of the small, unimportant countries arranged in rotating alphabetical order at the delegates’ desks. “Today, suicide attacks are accepted by everyone in the Muslim world. We have no other weapon against the power of the West. You’re out of step. Your thinking belongs to another time, another world.”

“Ismail, I won’t believe that my world and yours are as separate as you suggest,” Omar Yussef said.

They reached the final desk in the back row. Ismail raised his chin and pointed to the single word PALESTINE, its white letters pinned to a black plastic rectangle ten inches long.

“You see our place in your world? Right at the back and on the edge.” Ismail turned a circle with his arms wide. “Everyone is more important than us. There are one hundred and ninety-two member states with desks closer to the front than us. Who can we see from here? Oh, look, there’s Kiribati. And Kyrgyzstan. Over there, Vanuatu, and Zambia. Superpowers on the world stage, indeed. But here at the back, we find Palestine, with only observer status-not even a full member. Poor little Palestine.”

“So when we are accorded the right to speak, you think we should refuse it?” Omar Yussef said. “We should kill the president at the podium of the UN while he’s trying to remind the world that this desk at the back of the hall exists?”

“They know we exist. They just don’t know the power we’re prepared to wield.”

“The power to die?” Omar Yussef shook his head and sat in one of the visitors’ seats. “This desk at the back is the place in the world Palestine has found for itself. Perhaps it’s all we deserve. What about your world? There was a time when I knew you better than you knew yourself. As I listen to you now, I believe I still do.”

Ismail dropped his head and knitted his fingers tightly.

“O Ismail, I’m sorry to see what’s happened to you. I don’t blame you, my boy. You suffered so much in the jail during the intifada, then being away from your family and alone in Lebanon.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I found my belief in Islam, ustaz . My love for Allah.”

“You only love Allah this way because you haven’t loved anyone here on earth,” Omar Yussef said. He reached out a hand for Ismail. The boy sat beside his old schoolteacher, his eyes narrow and bitter.

“What happened in the jail made me scared and angry with everyone and everything. Except you, ustaz .” Ismail stroked the back of Omar Yussef’s thin hand.

“Angry enough to listen to some bloodthirsty imam? To be convinced that murder is a part of politics?”

“I didn’t kill Rashid.”

“That’s not what I meant. The president?”

“You’re the only one I’m not angry with, ustaz .” He gave Omar Yussef’s fingers a final squeeze and rose. “I have to go to my colleagues now.”

“I’ll see you later?”

Ismail shook his head and blinked hard to stop his tears. “Give my love to Umm Ramiz when you get back to Bethlehem. And to my friend Ala.”

“Ismail, wait.”

“May Allah grant you grace, ustaz .”

Ismail went quickly through a group of tourists who were settling into the ragged corduroy of the public seats to hear their guide describe the General Assembly Hall.

Omar Yussef squinted toward the podium where the president would speak the next morning. He tried to picture Ismail’s tired eyes and the premature gray in his beard, but all that came to mind was the happy boy who had been the least gifted and most exuberant of his Assassins.

The P in PALESTINE was slightly askew on the desk in front of him. He clicked his tongue, leaned across the pine barrier, and reached for the black plastic mounting to correct it. The guide who was lecturing the tourists called to him and warned him not to touch. He waved his hand to calm her. He couldn’t reach the plaque anyway.

Colonel Khatib slouched through the entrance of the General Assembly. He caught the eye of Khamis Zeydan, who was standing in the doorway, and grinned with a sardonic malice. From his seat a few rows away in the public gallery, Omar Yussef detected some kind of understanding between the two policemen in the grim, curt nod with which Khamis Zeydan responded. Khatib lumbered down the steps and settled into a seat directly behind the president in the back row of the Assembly. He gathered his black leather jacket over his paunch, rubbed his square, bald head, and surveyed the chamber with a surly detachment.

Khamis Zeydan followed Khatib down the steps, his pale blue eyes glaring around the Assembly. He came to the barrier between the public gallery and the delegate area in front of Omar Yussef, leaned over, and whispered: “Your boy Ismail is here, right?”

Omar Yussef’s eyes tracked along the ranks of desks, as he quietly recited the English alphabet to be sure he wouldn’t pass over the Lebanese delegation. Ismail was in his seat, sharing a joke with his boss. “I see him,” Omar Yussef said.

Khamis Zeydan followed Omar Yussef’s gaze. “The president’s due to speak in a few minutes, and that boy’s sitting there laughing like a baby playing with a rattling gourd. Maybe you’re wrong about him.”