Gordon Kent - The Spoils of War

She lit a new cigarette and leaned back, smoking, her eyes on the street, and then she said without looking at him, “I don’t believe this crap about your guy, what’s his name—Qatib—being taken to the West Bank for burial. The family is in the US, you said? So the burial story is bullshit. I think maybe so is the story about people calling him in missing; we’ll check this. Right now.” She got a cell phone from the overstuffed handbag. Alan figured there was a gun in there somewhere, too; could she ever find it if she needed it? She punched in numbers, said to him, “I think we need to work together.” Then she was barking Hebrew into the cell, touching new numbers, making another call.

When she was done, she threw the phone into the handbag’s open maw and stubbed out the cigarette and lit another. “The file on my two-year-old case is checked out from storage. Okay? Also, there’s nothing in the missing persons log for any calls last night about Qatib, Salem.” She put a hand on one pile of paper. “All bullshit.”

“Okay. Why?”

“You tell me, darling.” She blew out smoke. “What a bloody mess! I’m going to have to open a file, new case, plus file a complaint against your Berudh, plus I got no body—” She sat back and puffed, then looked at the papers she had said were from her old case and said, “Maybe we go find a body.” Smiled.

“Qatib?”

Her open hand, turned upward, floated over the table. “Why do they pick my case to do their faking? Chance? No. Something against me? No. Then why? Very fast work, darling, doing all this between about midnight and this morning. So they pick my case because a lot of the work is done for them already, nu ?” The hand closed into a fist. She laughed. “Two things: somebody knew my old case, remembered it, and maybe there was a connection. Like the same people found the body? Or turned it into a body? Mmm?” She ground the cigarette into her saucer. “Let’s take a ride to Jaffa.”

The coffee was terrible, and Alan didn’t mind leaving the café, but he didn’t get it. “What’s in Jaffa?”

She waved the waiter toward her and scrambled in her bag for money; Alan was late in reaching for his own. “Two years ago, a body was found in an old military barracks there. He was young, Palestinian. I got the case. Mossad waved me off when I seemed to be getting somewhere. Now that case file is being used for the body of another young Palestinian. And here is Mossad again.” She stood. “Maybe Qatib, Salem, ended up in Jaffa.”

He looked at his watch. He had only an hour until he was supposed to meet Rose. Dukas had told him not to behave like an intelligence officer. He’d done enough. “I think I’d have to have more to go on than that.”

She gave him a look that might have been disgust and then sat again and got the cell phone out. She did the numbers, held up a finger, eyebrows arched, as if saying Watch what I’ll pull out of my ass now! She waited, sighed, jerked upright and began to bellow Hebrew into the phone. Then she listened, said something that sounded awfully like the Hebrew for bullshit and closed the phone with a distinct, though small, bang. “He’s pissing his drawers, he’s so scared!”

“Who?”

“The guy, darling, the guy who runs the place in Jaffa where they found the body two years ago! He knows something, and I scared the piss out of him! Are you coming or not?”

He felt as if hands were dragging at him to pull him down into his chair, but he stood and said, “Let’s go,” which was not what he wanted to do at all.

Both the colonel and the woman had left the room. Alone, Rashid cried a little, silently, straight-backed. He had feared this very thing, that Salem was dead, when he saw Saida’s apartment. And now it was proven true.

The woman brought him tea, and he drank it. The colonel came back with Rashid’s backpack and placed it on the table with a plastic zip-lock bag that held the contents of Rashid’s pockets when he was taken.

When they started again, their tone was different, as if he had passed a test and now they were all on the same side. They asked him questions, hundreds of them, and he answered as best he could; about Salem, about Hamas and their interest in the dig, about the dig itself at Tel-Sharm-Heir’at.

They gave him food. They didn’t ask anything about the man he had hit with the hammer.

After several hours, Hamal appeared satisfied. It was Zahirah who was still interested in the dig and everything about it, so it was Zahirah who asked the question that changed everything.

She asked, “Where were you for the last twenty hours? Why were you coming back to Gaza?”

And Rashid told her. He was past concealment, except where he tried to cover his act of violence at the dig. He told them about hiding in the old ruins under his home town of Acco. And he told them about going to Saida’s apartment. And eventually, he told them about the flash card he had found in Salem’s coat.

They brought in his belongings. He showed them the card.

Hamal lit another cigarette. “Who else had been in her apartment, Rashid?”

Rashid shrugged. “It was all pulled apart,” he said slowly. “Everything ruined.”

And Hamal raised his eyebrows at Zahirah and said, “Hamas.”

Zahirah nodded, and then turned back to Rashid. Her voice was especially gentle, almost tender. “Who is this Saida?” she asked.

After a moment Rashid said her surname. “Frayj. Saida Frayj. She—Salem.” He stopped in a conflict of desire to incriminate and desire to protect. While he struggled to find words, his interrogators exchanged glances.

Hamal left. Zahirah stayed, asking questions about the dig, about the stone structure, about how long Salem had been interested in it. Rashid tried to be careful. They could be lying; Salem could be in a cell just under Rashid’s feet. He tried to cover Salem; he told Zahirah that Salem had only just found the stone structure.

“Do you know what it is, Rashid? That stone structure?” she asked.

“A tomb?” He knew what Salem had said about it. He didn’t want to betray too much.

“A very particular type of tomb, Rashid. A tholos tomb. A stone chamber made by Greeks and no one else.”

“Oh,” he said, trying to sound surprised.

Then Hamal returned with a laptop computer. He turned it on, inserted the card, and in a minute he had the card opened. He and Zahirah crouched over the screen, which was hidden from Rashid by the angle.

“There we go,” Hamal said.

Then he laughed. Zahirah turned her face away.

Hamal began to stare intently. He swore. “Zahirah, look at what she’s holding. Look at it!”

The woman did as she was told. She breathed in sharply, leaned forward, reached forward to touch the screen. The vivid colors on the screen lit her face, so that she looked younger and more mysterious to Rashid. She played with the keyboard, spun the screen so that Rashid could see the image.

On the screen was a naked woman, her breasts prominent and glossy in the harsh light of the camera’s flash. She was handsome, her features strong, her nose long and fine, her eyebrows heavy and black, and her eyes were filled with reflected light. They glowed red at the centers. She was smiling.

Saida, the slut.

In her hands was a two-handled cup. It was gold.

“Do you know this woman?” Hamal asked him.

Rashid spat, “Saida.”

“This came from her apartment?” Zahirah asked.

“Taken inside the tomb,” Hamal said. “Look, here and here. Those big stones—you can see where the flash just shows them.”

They both looked at the image, and then the next, and then more, often turning the screen for Rashid to answer questions; Saida in jewelry, Saida holding a dagger, Saida with the cup again, Saida with a bottle of champagne.