Matt Rees - The Samaritan's secret

“What?” Omar Yussef stepped back toward the couch. “Jamie, will you be staying in Nablus?”

“Until the end of the week. Unless I get any leads some-place else on-” she glanced at Khamis Zeydan and lowered her voice “-you know.”

“We’ll talk some more, I hope.”

King took a business card from her handbag. “My cell phone number is on there,” she said.

Omar Yussef slipped the card into his pocket. Its very touch felt incriminating and dangerous, as though the men who had beaten Sami would find it on him and punish him for intruding where a schoolteacher had no business. I should pass the American’s details on to Sami and be done with it, he thought. “Zuheir, I’ll see you at dinner, my son.” He waved and followed Khamis Zeydan to the lobby.

The police chief took his elbow and moved toward the door. “I arrived in Nablus an hour ago, but before I checked in here I went to police headquarters to see Sami.”

“So you saw, some thugs broke his arm.”

“Lucky for those bastards they didn’t try to break his head. They’d have wasted a lot of energy, because it’s hard as hell. He wouldn’t tell me what it was all about, but now I see.”

“You do?”

“You just told me.”

Omar Yussef first felt callow and unsophisticated, but then he was sad for his friend. Khamis Zeydan was so accustomed to the corruption of the Palestinian militias that he had immediately made the connection between Sami’s beating, his murder investigation, and Ishaq’s job managing the president’s money.

“After I left Sami,” Khamis Zeydan said, “I ran into Kanaan.”

“How do you know him?”

“From Beirut. Years ago, during the Lebanese Civil War.”

“He was a fighter like you?” Omar Yussef glanced at the prosthesis, encased in a black leather glove. It was a substitute for the hand Khamis Zeydan had lost to a grenade in Lebanon.

“That bastard never fought for anything but dirty contracts.” Khamis Zeydan looked about him as though he wanted a place to spit. “Unfortunately he saw me at the police headquarters.”

“So what?”

“He’ll tell his wife. She’ll know that I’m in town. I can’t come to Nablus and not visit her. She’d be offended.”

“Is she such a good friend?” Even as he said it, Omar Yussef knew how naive he sounded.

“Back in Beirut, she and I-” Khamis Zeydan coughed.

“But not any more?”

“It was before she married Kanaan. We were rivals for her.”

“Does he know?”

“Certainly he does, and he’s just the kind of bastard to tell her he saw me. I can hear him now: ‘Your loverboy is in Nablus and he hasn’t even come to visit you. Maybe he never cared about you at all.’ That’d be just what he’d say.”

“Do you want to go up there to prevent her from feeling hurt, or to prove your rival wrong?”

“It doesn’t make a difference. The point is I can’t go up there alone.”

“From the standpoint of morality, you mean? A man and woman alone, particularly with such a romantic history? But surely she has servants who could be present, for propriety’s sake.”

Khamis Zeydan rocked his head from side to side indecisively. “I don’t trust myself,” he said, faintly. “She’s still very beautiful.”

Omar Yussef took a backward step and his mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t look at me like that, you moralizing bastard,” Khamis Zeydan said.

“You have a wife and children in Jordan.”

“I have nothing to hide. My marriage is crappy. My wife preferred to stay in Amman, when I accepted this job in Bethlehem. And my children always take their mother’s side.”

“Your son was good enough to come from Jordan to visit you last month.”

“My blood’s still boiling from all the arguments I had with him.”

Omar Yussef glanced back into the lounge where Zuheir talked animatedly to the American woman. If my son is as religious as I think he is, why is he sitting alone with a woman? Maybe he can’t stop himself from setting her straight, even though he would consider it more appropriate to ignore her presence.

He put his arm on Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder. “Your son takes after you,” he said. “Argumentative.”

“No, he’s just like his damned mother. He’s stupid and self-righteous and he never says what he really means.” Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef’s hand. “Please, let’s go.”

Omar Yussef felt like a sordid accomplice to adultery. But Ishaq’s wife had said that the dead man was working with Kanaan. This visit might be a good pretext to enter Kanaan’s home and see what he could uncover there to help Sami’s investigation.

The electronic bell of the elevator sounded and Nadia stepped into the lobby. “Uncle Khamis,” she called, running to the policeman. Khamis Zeydan gave her a hug. “I’m writing a detective story about Nablus and there’s a character based on you, Uncle Khamis.”

“Is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Khamis Zeydan grinned.

“That depends on whether you take me to the casbah to taste the qanafi, ” she said.

“That’s my job.” Omar Yussef reached for his grand-daughter’s hand. “Nadia, Abu Adel is a diabetic. If he eats sweet desserts like qanafi, his feet will go numb and he won’t be able to walk. Besides, he’s probably too busy to take you to the casbah.”

“How can he be busy? He’s a Palestinian policeman.” Nadia giggled and Khamis Zeydan raised his arms in mock outrage. “Grandma wants to eat dinner in an hour.”

“Tell her I’ll be back in two hours and apologize on my behalf,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m going on a mission of the heart.”

The last scattered houses on the outskirts of Nablus receded, pale in the first glimmering of the moon. Khamis Zeydan sped up the twisting road across the steep flank of the mountain. His fingers tight on the gearshift, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and swerved to avoid an old rockslide. He swore under his breath.

“The Hill of Cursing is on the other side of the valley,” Omar Yussef said. “The Jewish Torah gives that name to Mount Ebal over there. Jerizim was called the Hill of Blessing.”

“Then it’s lucky I’m not a Jew, because I curse every stone on this mountain.”

Omar Yussef put his hand on Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder. “I’ve seen you face terrible dangers without flinching,” he said. “But here you are, sweating with fear over a woman.”

Khamis Zeydan leaned across to the glove compartment and took out a half-pint of Johnnie Walker. “In battle, I know how to handle myself,” he said, wedging the bottle between his legs while he unscrewed the cap.

“In love, you’re all at sea?”

The policeman tossed back a hard swig and put the bottle between his legs again. He sucked at the ends of his white mustache. “They say, ‘A man with a plan carries it out. A man with two plans gets confused.’ I know how to fight. I never learned anything else.”

“Am I supposed to stand at the door, like a bodyguard, and drag you away if things get out of control?” Omar Yussef said. He averted his eyes from his friend’s bottle. The smell of the forbidden alcohol made him resentful and irritable. “Or do you want me to recite love poetry to her on your behalf, if the man of action gets tongue-tied?”

“Do you want to walk all the way back down to the hotel?”

“You demanded that I come with you, remember? Why can’t you be a bit more likeable?”

Khamis Zeydan took another drink, rattled some phlegm in his throat, and spat out of the window. “I try to be likeable, but it’s just not me,” he said. “The more likeable I am, the more I hate myself. I feel dishonest. Smiling makes my face hurt.”