Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

Omar Yussef paused. Colors danced in front of his eyes. He heard the blast of Colonel Khatib’s revolver over and over. Then he realized that it was his pulse sounding in his head. He gripped the podium. When he reached for the water glass, the Egyptian chairman dropped his gavel and, with relief, declared the day’s proceedings at an end. The chairman nudged his aide, who immediately came to Omar Yussef with a congratulatory handshake and bore him away from the microphone toward the steps.

“Fabulous, Abu Ramiz.” Magnus Wallander took Omar Yussef’s hand in both of his as he descended from the stage.

“You’re the only one who seems to think so. I don’t feel so good. I’m a little dizzy.”

“I’ll get you some more water.” Magnus hurried to the back of the room.

Abdel Hadi approached with a facetious sneer. “I thought you were about to blow yourself up, ustaz ,” he said. “That was a suicide speech.”

“Today there has been no need for suicide.” Omar Yussef heard Khatib’s gun in his head again. “It has been a day for executioners.”

“You mean that animal who tried to shoot the president.”

“He wasn’t going to shoot him.”

“He was a suicide attacker. He knew he’d die, but he wanted to take the president with him.”

Anger drew Omar Yussef up straight. “He was killed in cold blood.”

“Nonsense. Khatib shot him as he was taking aim at the president. A suicidal attack by an animal, not a human being.”

“No animal would seek its own death. An animal doesn’t expect to elevate itself by dying. It’s our civilization that leads down the disgusting course to the suicidal assassin. Our search for meanings higher than mere existence, life after death. It’s the ultimate achievement of our dreadful civilization.”

Magnus returned with a glass of water.

Abdel Hadi wagged a finger at Omar Yussef. “For a schoolteacher, ustaz , you seem to find it hard to learn a lesson.”

“I’m a Palestinian. If I learned from my errors, I might run out of mistakes to make, and then I’d have to change nationality.” Omar Yussef drank some water. “What’s the lesson?”

“Suicide is the entire basis of our politics.”

“You’re forgetting murder.”

“Either way, we always seem to find new ways to destroy each other.”

“Not such new ways,” Omar Yussef said. He recalled the classes in medieval history that had inspired Nizar to decapitate his old friend.

“The assassination of the president by another Palestinian here would’ve been a first, would it not?” Abdel Hadi said. “Many Palestinians were killed by rival factions during the seventies and eighties in Europe and the Arab world, but never, I believe, in New York.”

Omar Yussef thought of Nizar’s father. “There was one. A writer named Fayez Jado.”

“Who told you about that? Was it your old friend the police chief of Bethlehem?”

Omar Yussef’s head cleared, and his eyes snapped to Abdel Hadi’s face.

“I see the former PLO hit man has been reminiscing,” Abdel Hadi said. “If only he was as good at doing his job today.”

Omar Yussef’s thoughts came in a rush. Nizar’s father was the only Palestinian official assassinated in New York during the eighties. What did Khamis Zeydan say? It was difficult to organize a hit in New York, but he managed it anyhow. It was him. When he was a PLO assassin, he killed Nizar’s father, and Nizar knows it. That’s why he agreed to come with me after I found him at Grand Central-to see the man who shot his father. Now he’ll try to murder him. What if Nizar goes back to Ala’s place as Hamza thought he would? He’ll find my friend there, and he’ll kill him.

Omar Yussef jogged to the chair where he had left his coat. Water spilled over his wrist. He drank the remainder quickly, put the glass on the chair, and picked up his coat. He hurried to the exit.

He stumbled along First Avenue, searching the steady traffic for a vacant taxi. He needed to get to Khamis Zeydan to warn him. There was no time to take the subway. A cab pulled over, and Omar Yussef dived inside. The driver, a Sikh in a black turban, leaned toward the divider for instructions. “Brooklyn, Bay Ridge,” Omar Yussef said.

The cab raced down the FDR Drive to the Manhattan Bridge. Omar Yussef blinked into the dark as the driver dodged between the brake lights from lane to lane.

They came off the bridge in Brooklyn and turned onto the Interstate that followed the shoreline. Across the bay, the Statue of Liberty bent her head under the dark clouds moving in from New Jersey. It’ll rain soon, Omar Yussef thought. That’s all right. Finally I’ve started to like this cold weather. It reminds me that my body is warm and alive.

As he reached Bay Ridge, the rain was coming down hard and thick, like blood from a sheep gutted for the ’Eid . It was six o’clock. The day, which had never been bright, was dark and gone.

Omar Yussef hurried to the shelter of the doorway that led up to his son’s apartment. Raindrops slashed onto the deserted sidewalk and drummed on the awning of the Cafe al-Quds. The skyscrapers and the avenues like canyons and the bridges of the great city of New York were reduced in his mind to this one street in Brooklyn where the Arabs lived. He scanned the darkness, looking for Nizar. It was as if the whole metropolis flooded down like the rain onto this block, a teeming, distracting chaos of noise and smells, flashing lights and video screens. He tried to close the city out of his head and imagined that he was leaving it behind him, watching it recede from the window of an airliner. He backed through the entrance, as though to ensure that neither Nizar nor New York stalked him up the stairs.

Ala opened the door at his knock and kissed him three times on the cheeks. The boy had been weeping, and his mustache was slick. Rania stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms folded and her big mouth a pouting crescent.

Omar Yussef stared at her with surprise and disapproval. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

Ala took his father’s hand. “I asked Rania to come so we could say good-bye. Abu Adel is in the bedroom.” He gestured toward the room where Omar Yussef had discovered the body.

“Since the local police don’t seem to have been too sharp, I’m looking for evidence they may have missed. Maybe something about the Islamic Jihad cell,” Khamis Zeydan shouted. He grunted, and Omar Yussef heard a sliding sound, as though the police chief had gone under the bed.

Omar Yussef blew out a long, shaky breath. He realized that he had been worried he might find Khamis Zeydan murdered. He glanced out of the window. The blue glow of a wristwatch briefly illuminated the interior of a car in front of the Community Association. Hamza, on surveillance stakeout, he thought.

A lone man walked quickly along the opposite sidewalk, his head covered by the hood of his coat, his shoulders hunched. He crossed the street and went under the awning of the cafe.

The model of the Dome of the Rock sat on the low table by the door. Omar Yussef touched his fingertip to the brown bloodstain on the yellow dome. “You aren’t packing this to take with you, Ala?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ll bother. Where I’m going, you know, we have something similar.” Ala smiled, and Omar Yussef wagged his finger at him, nodding.

The door swung open behind Omar Yussef. As he turned toward it, Nizar stepped into the room, dripping rainwater onto the floorboards. He pushed back the hood of his coat. Around his face his long black hair was wet, clinging to his skin. He shook his head and sprayed water over Omar Yussef.