Matt Rees - The Samaritan's secret

Liana looked sharply at Omar Yussef. Her eyes were wide and fierce. “It was undoubtedly one of my husband’s closest relationships,” she said, her bright lips quivering. “Brother Abu. .?”

“Abu Ramiz,” Omar Yussef said.

“Brother Abu Ramiz, I would like to discuss something privately for a few moments with my old friend Abu Adel,” Liana said. “If Allah wills it, we shall meet again soon, at your friend’s wedding perhaps.”

“If Allah wills it,” Omar Yussef said.

Dismissed, he raised himself from the couch. Khamis Zeydan lifted his hand hesitantly, as though he might pull Omar Yussef back onto the sofa for protection. Protection from himself, Omar Yussef thought. He gave a peremptory grin to his nervous friend and made for the door.

Omar Yussef crossed the hall to a pair of high glass-paneled doors at the back of the house. He touched a smooth pillar of green Indian marble and looked down at the scattered lights of Nablus in the valley. Dull and orange, they nestled between the mountains like the final glowing coals of a dying campfire. In five days, even those few lights will be turned off, if the World Bank flips the switch, he thought. Face it, Omar, there’s nothing you can do about it. It isn’t that you don’t care, but you’re just a schoolteacher. If you try to keep the lights on, it could easily be you who’s snuffed out.

Something moved in the darkness outside the window, flickering in front of the distant city lights. Omar Yussef put his face close to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes to block out the lights of the hall. Among the cypresses bordering the lawn, a group of men was gathered. Omar Yussef watched for a minute, but could make out very little in the dim radiance cast from the mansion. Within a minute, most of the men moved away from the house into the dark and went over the buttresses at the edge of the garden. As they jumped, one of them lifted his arm for balance and Omar Yussef saw that he was holding an assault rifle.

The last man turned and strode across the grass to the house. He was tall and his thick white hair fluttered back from a wide forehead, swept by the wind that came over the hilltop. He padded quickly up the steps. Omar Yussef hid behind the pillar, but the man turned along the terrace toward the mansion’s northern wing without looking around. Omar Yussef had seen him clearly enough to recognize a face familiar from the newspaper’s business page.

It was Amin Kanaan.

The door opened behind Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan came into the hall. Omar Yussef folded his arms and leaned against the pillar, as though he had been waiting casually for his friend to emerge.

Khamis Zeydan waved his arm impatiently and headed for the door.

“What was the secret chat about?” Omar Yussef asked.

“She wanted to sing me a few lines from our favorite old love song. She’s sentimental like that,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”

They drove in silence along the avenue of cypresses to the gate. Khamis Zeydan unscrewed the cap of his Johnnie Walker but he didn’t drink until they were on the road. Does he wish to present a dignified front while still on Kanaan’s property? Omar Yussef wondered. Khamis Zeydan turned downhill, sped up and slugged hard from the bottle, his gulping throat working rhythmically, like a part of the engine.

He wiped his hand across his mustache. “What do you think you’re doing, grilling Liana about some dead Samaritan?”

“He wasn’t just any Samaritan. You seemed to know exactly who he was when I told you about him earlier.” Omar Yussef grabbed for the whisky, wrested it with both hands from Khamis Zeydan’s grip and tossed it in the glove compartment. “You must have met Ishaq on your visits to the Old Man’s office in Ramallah.”

“I’m not finished with that bottle,” the policeman said.

“You can drink after you’ve negotiated this dangerous road.” Omar Yussef swept his hand toward the boulders at the roadside, menacing in the stark beams of the headlights. “I asked her about the Samaritan, because I wanted to help Sami with his investigation.”

Khamis Zeydan sighed, impatiently. “Help Sami? If you want to help Sami, keep your mouth shut.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sami’s not investigating. He’s in danger.”

“He’s a policeman. Even Palestinian policemen are supposed to trace criminals.”

“Not if it means ending up dead.”

“If those men wanted to kill him, they could have done it in the alley.”

“You think it’s a small step to kill? Even for thugs like that? If you exhumed all the murdered police investigators in the world, I bet you’d find that none of them had a broken arm. No one’s stupid enough to push on after that kind of warning.”

Omar Yussef tapped Khamis Zeydan on the shoulder. “That’s what Liana wanted to talk to you about alone, isn’t it?” he said. “She’s big in Fatah, so she wants the Party to have the money, not the World Bank. Her husband was close to the dead Samaritan. Was he involved in the murder? She told you to make sure Sami hushes up the murder, didn’t she? Well, he won’t.”

“What money?” Khamis Zeydan looked thirstily at the glove compartment and bit his lip.

Omar Yussef hesitated.

“Shall I beat it out of you?” Khamis Zeydan said. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

“The American woman at the hotel works for the World Bank. She reckons Ishaq hid three hundred million dollars in secret accounts around the world for the Old Man, and she’s trying to track these funds. Ishaq was about to talk to her, when he was killed.”

“Obviously she’s not the only one who was looking for that money.”

“Then we have to find it first. If the World Bank can’t trace the money by Friday, all Palestinian aid money is going to be cut off.”

“What? Now I’m going to beat you just for being a stupid bastard.” Khamis Zeydan punched his fist against the steering wheel. “Whoever is trying to get hold of that three hundred million dollars isn’t going to share it with you. They’re going to kill anyone who attempts to beat them to it.”

“But the aid-”

“It’s the World Bank’s job to find the money, not yours. It’s better for the aid to be terminated than your life. Didn’t you think of that?”

Omar Yussef considered lying that he hadn’t, but instead he turned away.

Khamis Zeydan whistled. “My dear brother, I despair of you sometimes.”

Omar Yussef stared at the road dropping toward Nablus. Lurking among the dim lights on the valley floor, there were men who would kill him for three hundred dollars, let alone three hundred million. He’s right. I have to leave this to the American woman, he thought.

“I took the business card of the World Bank lady,” he said. “You’re right that I shouldn’t be involved in this. I’ll give her card to Sami. He doesn’t know about the money. But maybe he’ll have an idea of how to trace it.”

“Sami’s already dropped the case,” Khamis Zeydan said. “When I saw him in the sick bay at police headquarters, he told me the broken arm wasn’t the only threat he’d received.”

“I know. The sheikh warned him off.”

“Which sheikh? The Hamas guy? Sheikh Bader?” Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “This was something else. He got a phone call. A threat to kidnap Meisoun.”

“So put her under the protection of the police.”

“What good would that do? The kidnappers might also be policemen. This is Palestine. The men with the guns don’t carry them out of civic duty.” The police chief reached out, gave a gentle slap to Omar Yussef’s face, and rested his hand on the back of his friend’s neck. “You remember the old story about the Arab conquest of Egypt? The caliph decided to name one of his generals as military governor and planned to put someone else in charge of the treasury.”