Gordon Kent - The Spoils of War

“Question of internal politics.” Berudh made a face. “Yarkov District claims control over all cases of wrongful death. Not that we handle them all. Our homicide people are very territorial.”

“How long had he been missing?”

“Unh—” Berudh half-stood and leaned over to look at Alan’s pages. “You’ve got a page from our missing-persons log—it’s small type, very dense—” Alan held up a page; Berudh squinted at it and said, “I think the first call came in about eleven p.m.” Berudh rattled through a translation of the missing-persons page: a woman’s voice had made the first call, identified herself as a girlfriend; the victim hadn’t turned up for dinner at his cousin’s. They looked at the physician’s report. The man had been dead an estimated seven to twelve hours when the doctor had examined him.

“But no autopsy,” Alan said.

“No, no, no. Arabs are against that.”

“Can I see the body?” He hoped the answer was no.

“We released him to the family pretty much as soon as the doc was through with him. Off to the West Bank.” Berudh raised his hands. “Coffin was closed.”

Something pinged in Alan’s brain but didn’t quite connect, and he said lamely, stalling until the connection was made, “You don’t have a suspect.”

“At this point, no. Mugging? Girlfriend? Palestinian infighting?” He shrugged. “This guy was in your Navy, but a Palestinian can be into anything. Hamas, Fatah—he could have had a suicide belt stashed someplace, chickened out, got punished. They’re all fanatics.”

Alan signed a paper that said that he had in fact received all the stuff in his hand, and Berudh, smiling again, gave him a dark blue plastic folder with something in Hebrew on it and TLVPD in English in white letters. “It’ll keep them neat; they blow in the wind, you know; we always have a breeze, it’s the sea—that’s Tel Aviv, my friend, the Fort Lauderdale of the eastern Med—” He was seeing Alan to the elevator, explaining twice how to get out of the building, assuring him that if there was anything, anything he could do—and was gone.

In the vast lobby, assaulted again by the clatter of echoes, Alan crossed among the worried people heading for the elevators and looked with relish at the thin slice of the outdoors that showed through the guarded entrance. Guilt. Even when you weren’t guilty of anything, you felt it. He thought of September eleventh: Yes, it’s guilt, as if I could have stopped it. Which was nonsense.

It was at that point that his brain made the connection he’d missed earlier. According to the two-page file Dukas had faxed him—Qatib’s short personnel record and an ID sheet—he had had family in the States. But the body, Berudh had said, had been sent to the West Bank. Maybe the family had moved back? Or the parents had divorced and one had come back? Or—?

Instead of leaving the police building, ignoring Dukas’s plea not to be an intel officer, he went to the information desk and said to the same young woman, “I’d like to talk to somebody in Homicide.” Why hadn’t he asked to see Berudh again? he wondered. Because you check one source against another. He pointed at the signature on the first page in the blue folder Berudh had given him. “This person,” he said, figuring that one way in was as good as another.

Gaza City, Palestinian Authority

He wasn’t sure where he was—somewhere in the territories. The interrogation room smelled of mold. It was underground, the white paint on the walls peeled away from the concrete in long strips, exposing the rough surface beneath. It was too bright, lit by a pair of hot halogen lights, so that cockroaches threw sharp shadows on the floor where they scuttled.

Rashid had been waiting there for three hours. He had surprised himself by falling asleep. He had woken up to find that the persistent itching on his leg was an insect that had crawled up his jeans. He panicked, flailed around the room getting the unclean thing out of his clothes.

Then he sat, his arms crossed on his chest, and waited.

He heard steps in the hall, conversations, snatches of laughter, once, a startled scream.

More steps in the hall, sharper, and the click of a woman’s heels. His door opened.

There was a man and a woman. The man was middleaged, thin, smoking. The woman was younger, but not by much, wore heels and a short skirt.

Men with guns brought two chairs.

“I am Colonel Mahmoud Hamal and this is Zahirah,” the man said. “You are Rashid George Halaby?”

Rashid nodded.

“You know who I am?”

Rashid shook his head.

“Perhaps you have heard me called the Tax Collector. Hmm? I am responsible for the security of our Palestinian Authority in regard to antiquities. You work for Hamas?”

The question pierced through Rashid’s other fears; something to be dreaded, something for which he had not prepared an answer. So he said nothing, tried to keep his eyes down. He had heard of the Tax Collector. Salem had mentioned him—feared him, even.

“How long have you been with Hamas?” Colonel Hamal was looking at a manila folder.

Rashid looked at him with lowered eyes. The colonel was wearing a suit, had a silk tie, and a heavy gold ring on his finger. Rashid blinked to keep tears off his face.

The colonel waved the folder at him. “You are Rashid George Halaby. You live in Haifa. You run errands for Hamas. You had two brothers killed in the Intifada by Jewish soldiers. Your father died in Jordan in a riot. Your mother teaches at a Muslim school. Why not just say these things?”

Unbidden, Rashid’s eyes rose and met the colonel’s. The man smiled.

“You have an Israeli passport. As far as I can tell, you have never been arrested in Israel. Are you a Muslim?”

Rashid nodded.

“How do you come to have an Israeli passport?” the woman asked. Her voice was warm, her Arabic slightly accented.

“We live in Acco. Not Haifa.” Rashid spoke softly, as if he was afraid he might be overheard. They must know these things. Haifa was an Israeli town. Acco had a big Palestinian population, one of the biggest in Israel. “I’m a Palestinian.”

The man waved his hand, his attention still on the documents. “Acco, then. Either way, you are not from Gaza or the West Bank. You have an Israeli passport.” Hamal threw it on the table in front of the boy. “Why didn’t you proclaim it? I have no jurisdiction over you.”

Rashid couldn’t think of a reply. He couldn’t think at all. All answers were going to lead to the same place— Hamas, Salem, Hamas, Salem. Had he killed the man with the hammer? Did they know? He shrugged, the motion stiff. Rashid rubbed the back of his hand over his face, rubbed his lips. The arresting officers had not been gentle.

“What were you doing here?” Hamal paused for effect. “In Gaza?”

“Working. With a friend.” Rashid thought that sounded harmless, but both the man and the woman smiled.

“What were you working on?”

Rashid’s lips trembled.

“How long have you been with Hamas?” Hamal asked again.

“Since my brothers died.” Rashid answered savagely.

Hamal nodded. He smoked for over a minute. “You were working with a friend. Digging, perhaps?”

Rashid didn’t know what to say, because these people seemed to know so much. And he had no idea what they wanted. But after too long a hesitation, he said, “Yes,” softly.

The woman leaned forward across the table. “Is your friend Salem Qatib, Rashid?”

Rashid gave himself away with his reaction, and read it on them. But the mention of the name caused much of the fear to drop away. They were in it now. He raised his eyes, met hers. She was attractive; her eyes were big and friendly. She wore scent.