The Samaritan's Secret Read online

  “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.”

  Chapter 10

  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.”

  “So tell me your history with this woman.”

  The red and white communication towers of the Israeli base on the ridge took shape in the darkness up the slope. Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan fell silent. When they reached the next curve, the mountain hid the Israeli camp and they saw the mansions again, like short men puffing out their chests on the lip of the mountain.

  Khamis Zeydan spoke in a whisper no louder than the sound of his exhalation. “It was in Beirut in 1981. I was one of the Old Man’s special operations people, when I met Liana. She was beautiful, but most important she was free.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The policeman snorted and shook his head. “My dear old friend, you’re a wonderful, educated man with an open mind about the world. Your only problem is that you’ve only seen that world in books. By Allah, you’ve lived your whole life in Bethlehem, a town which has remained provincial and conservative despite all the changes around it.”

  Omar Yussef stiffened his jaw and glared ahead at the mansions. “You forget our student days in Damascus. That was enough action for an entire lifetime.”

  “Okay, we were hard-living students. But I graduated to Beirut, which was an entirely different class of wildness. I was at the heart of our people’s liberation movement. I traveled to Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, on operations for the Old Man.”

  “Call them what they were—cold-blooded murders.” Omar Yussef slapped the dashboard hard.

  “Calm down. Not always murders, no. But if you insist, you can call some of them murders.” Khamis Zeydan bit his thumbnail. “I was young, just thirty-three, and she was the same age. My wife was much younger than me and very traditional. My dear father chose her for me and I’d never have gone against his wishes, may Allah have mercy upon him. But he picked me a simple girl from a refugee camp with whom I had nothing to talk about. Liana was so worldly in comparison.”

  “You don’t need to make excuses. Just tell me what happened.”

  “We slept together; that’s what happened. But it isn’t the whole story.” Khamis Zeydan turned his pleading eyes toward his friend.

  Omar Yussef breathed deeply. He was pressing him too hard. “This road winds a lot on the way to the top of the hill. I took it this morning to get to the Samaritan village, so I know we still have some distance to go. Carry on with your tale.”

  Khamis Zeydan stared hard at Omar Yussef.

  “Just try to keep your eyes on the road, while you’re talking to me, will you?” Omar Yussef said. “Your driving is making me nervous on this mountain.”

  “Liana is from Ramallah, but she grew up in Europe. Her father worked there for King Hussein. She had experienced some of the freedoms of life in the West.” Khamis Zeydan wiggled his hand at Omar Yussef. “You know what I mean?”

  “I’m unworldly, as you note, but I can guess what you mean.”

  “I had never met that kind of woman, at least not among Palestinians. Suddenly I could experience all the intelligence and progressiveness of a Western woman, while also sharing the bond of Palestinian culture, of our struggle against the Israelis.”

  “So you had an affair?”

  “Her job with the party newspaper brought her to the Old Man’s bunker all the time. We often saw each other there. I was close to him in those days.”

  “What attracted her to you? Your pretty blue eyes? Or your gun?”

  Khamis Zeydan bared his teeth as though he had bitten down on the pit of an olive. “If you were forced into proximity and comradeship with such a woman, you’d have done the same thing. I was in love, and so was she,” he said. “I even considered divorcing my wife.”

  The police chief was quiet. The engine bawled as the Jeep climbed a steep section of road. Omar Yussef stared ahead, waiting for him to continue.

  “When the Israelis invaded in 1982, I went to fight them from the refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Liana stayed in Beirut. I lost my hand in the fighting and was in a hospital for a while with some other injuries. I don’t remember much about that time. I was very depressed.”

  Omar Yussef touched his friend’s arm lightly. He knew Khamis Zeydan’s destructive boozing had started after his injuries in Lebanon.

  “By the time I returned to Beirut,” Khamis Zeydan said, “Liana was no longer around.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Khamis Zeydan’s pale eyes darted toward the mansions on the ridge.

  “Kanaan?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “That bastard used to come to Beirut to do dirty financial deals with the Old Man. He’d waft into the bunker in a Saville Row suit, trailing eau de cologne and primping his long hair. While I was in the hospital, he married her and sent her back here to his hometown.”

  “She didn’t visit you in the hospital?”

  “She wrote to me later that she had come once and I hadn’t recognized her. I suppose it’s possible. I was badly wounded, drugged up and depressed. Maybe I even told her to fuck off. You know my temper.” Khamis Zeydan raised his good hand, palm upward.

  Omar Yussef laughed. “It’s an old acquaintance of mine.”

  “I’ve seen her at official functions from time to time,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Only
ever really across a room.”

  “But you’ve never been to see her at her home?”

  They passed the first of the mansions and fell silent once more. Omar Yussef was accustomed to the poverty of his people and it shocked him that there were Palestinians with the resources to build such palaces. Their designs reminded him of the Taj Mahal, the Topkapi in Istanbul, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. In the electric light shining from their tall windows, the grass threw off a hectic green like the Saudi flag. Elsewhere in Palestine, water had to be saved for the olive trees and the cabbages; here thin cypresses lined the lawns, a ravishing, wasteful opulence that was in contrast to the jagged rocks and garbage strewn over every open area in Nablus.

  They came to Kanaan’s mansion, a rectangular three-story building with massive pillars topped by a Greek pediment. The house stood in a formal garden built into the slope of the ridge, its terraces supported by tall buttressing walls. A peacock fanned its tail on the floodlit lawn and strutted into the trees.

  Khamis Zeydan pulled up and beckoned to a man in a leather jacket leaning against the gilded gate. The guard slouched toward them, spitting the shells of sunflower seeds into his palm. When Khamis Zeydan broke the wondering silence in the car, it was to answer the question Omar Yussef had asked him before they reached the row of mansions. “Here?” he said, looking along the avenue of cypresses that led to the house. “No, I haven’t been to see her here. I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

  Chapter 11

  A servant in a collarless blue tunic with gold buttons and a brocaded hem showed them into a spacious salon and tiptoed out as though he were getting away with some-thing. His dainty steps made a subdued patter on the pink marble.

  Inlaid mother-of-pearl shone coral and white from the Syrian chairs, like teeth snarling through bared lips of teak. The wrought-iron coffee tables were patterned with Armenian ceramic tiles, figured with fruit and fish in yellow and brown. In the corner, a gaudy palm tree had been painted onto a thick board and cut out, so that it stood up like a six-foot exercise from a children’s book. The artist had signed the tree across the roots.

  Omar Yussef gestured toward the painting of the palm tree. “Surely there’s room in here for a real one.”

  “A real one wouldn’t cost a hundred grand.” Khamis Zeydan lit a cigarette. His good hand shook and he glanced at Omar Yussef to see if he had noticed.

  To save his friend embarrassment, Omar Yussef turned to the door, his eyes tracing its arabesque relief. The little servant in the blue tunic opened the door and stood aside to allow a short woman in a pink suit to enter.

  Liana reached out to stroke the polished surface of an art nouveau table as she came toward her guests. That gesture is like a gambler’s tell. She’s as nervous as my friend Abu Adel, Omar Yussef thought. She held Khamis Zeydan by the upper arms and brought him down for three kisses on the cheek, advanced a step toward Omar Yussef and offered him her hand.

  Her eyes were deep, black and cool, like the eyes in an ancient Pharaoh’s portrait, and they were painted with the dramatic shades of green and blue the Egyptians used for the hieroglyphs of their tombs. That great beauty Cleopatra might have looked like Liana, Omar Yussef thought, had she lived longer, but no more wisely. Her hair was dyed black and rolled back in high lacquered waves, so that it resembled the shell of a snail. She kept her chin high. Omar Yussef wondered if that was out of a sense of superiority or to give the parallel wrinkles across her neck room to breathe.

  Liana invited them to the ornate Syrian sofas before the picture window. Khamis Zeydan seemed so loath to sit that Omar Yussef pushed his jumpy friend gently into a chair. Another servant in an identical blue tunic brought coffee on a silver tray. He held out his hand and, with an encouraging smile, caught an inch of ash from Khamis Zeydan’s cigarette. He lifted a gold ashtray from one of the Armenian tables and set it next to the policeman’s coffee cup.

  “I’m happy that you brought your friend to see my home, Abu Adel,” Liana said.

  Khamis Zeydan grunted.

  “You’re most welcome here, ustaz,” she said to Omar Yussef. “Consider it as your home and as if you were among your family.”

  Omar Yussef was about to give the formal reply, when Khamis Zeydan spoke, louder than was necessary, as though he had to force the words out. “Are you glad I brought myself?”

  “Abu Adel, I always want to see you. I wish you’d come often.”

  “Really?” Khamis Zeydan sounded bitter.

  Liana sucked in her cheeks, patiently. “Agreeable company is always a pleasure on this lonely hilltop.”

  Khamis Zeydan stubbed out his cigarette and looked up at her. His blue eyes were sad and lost.

  “My life here is like a dream,” Liana said. She fixed her eyes on Khamis Zeydan. “People always describe a pleasant experience as being like a dream. But how many of your good dreams do you remember? I seem to recall my night-mares much more clearly.”

  Liana and the policeman stared at each other in silence.

  Omar Yussef cleared his throat. “Perhaps people mean only that it’s a feeling they know is destined to pass quickly,” he said. “Like our memories of dreams, which are so vivid while we sleep, only to seem vague once we awake.”

  “Are you a friend of Abu Adel’s from here in Nablus, ustaz?” Liana asked.

  “From Bethlehem,” Omar Yussef said. “I’ve known Abu Adel since we were students together in Damascus. We renewed our friendship when he returned to Palestine to become police chief in Bethlehem after the peace agreement with Israel. We had lost touch during his period in Beirut.”

  Khamis Zeydan and Liana locked eyes once more at the mention of the Lebanese capital. Omar Yussef bit the end of his tongue at his indelicacy.

  “Abu Adel and I are in Nablus for the wedding of our young friend Sami Jaffari. He’s a policeman, but he’s also involved with the Fatah Party, so you may have heard of him.”

  “I also will be attending that wedding,” Liana said. “I attend all the Fatah functions.”

  “Your husband is an important figure in Fatah,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  The woman looked at him with pity. “Have I become such a minor character that I wouldn’t receive any invitations if it weren’t for my husband?” She waited, but Khamis Zeydan kept his eyes on his ashtray. Liana turned to Omar Yussef. “We used to live closer to the town, but we built this house ten years ago. The views are wonderful, although it’s a little isolated. Few people come up here to the peak of Mount Jerizim.”

  “I was up here only this morning,” Omar Yussef said.

  Liana inclined her head to the side. One of her large silver earrings rattled into her leathery neck and she stroked the lapis scarab embedded in it with her index finger.

  “I was with a Samaritan priest when he heard there had been a murder in his community,” Omar Yussef said. “We found the body of a dead Samaritan man at the site of their ancient temple just along the ridge from here.”

  “Allah will be merciful upon the deceased one,” Liana murmured.

  “May Allah preserve you,” Omar Yussef said.

  Ishaq had worked for Liana’s husband. Omar Yussef wondered if Liana would betray anything that might be useful to Sami’s investigation. “The dead man was an associate of your husband, I believe.”

  Liana sat up and flattened her pink skirt against her thighs. A trace of fear crept across her eyes. She blinked, and the eyes came back as dead and dull as the surface of the water in a neglected well. “Who?” Her voice was cautious and throaty, as though she feared Omar Yussef might reach out to catch the word and slap her face with it.

  “Ishaq, the son of Jibril the priest.”

  Liana turned her face away from Omar Yussef and examined the diamond rings on her hands.

  “Did you know him?” Omar Yussef said.

  “Ishaq?” She spat the word down toward her rings and her jaw shivered. “I was acquainted with him.”

  “Your husband’s acqua
intance with Ishaq was quite a close one, I believe.”

  “My husband makes friends easily. Most multimillionaires do.” Liana threw back her head and her face contorted as though she wanted to prevent a tear from escaping her eye. She sighed and thrust an arm out straight to Khamis Zeydan. “Give me a cigarette, Abu Adel.”

  Khamis Zeydan pulled a cigarette from his pack. She took it and leaned forward for him to light it. Her hand shook and the cigarette missed the flame. Khamis Zeydan gently steadied her wrist with his prosthesis, while he lit the tip.

  Liana sucked on the Rothmans and blew out a stream of gray smoke. Khamis Zeydan glanced with confusion at the leather glove covering his prosthetic hand.

  Omar Yussef watched Liana take another long drag and shiver as she exhaled. Is it merely the mention of her husband and his money that made her suddenly so edgy? he thought. “Your husband attracts friends only because he’s rich?” he said.

  She swallowed hard and looked at Omar Yussef. “My husband is charming and charismatic. But there’s no way to make hundreds of millions of dollars and remain a nice guy, ustaz. The more money a man makes, the greater his egomania and childish brutality, and the more so-called friends he requires to allow him to indulge such traits.”

  “Doesn’t that depend on whether the money is made legally, or through crime?”

  “I was a student radical in the late 1960s and a campaigning journalist in the 1970s, ustaz. I believed then that for one man even to possess a million dollars would be a crime. No matter how much the Prophet Muhammad is said to have praised the life of the merchant, I always believed there would have to have been some sort of crime involved in the acquisition of such a sum. That opinion hasn’t changed.” She looked at Khamis Zeydan. “Being with my husband hasn’t changed many of my opinions since those days.”

  Ishaq’s name seems to make her furious and nervy, Omar Yussef thought. He wondered if Amin Kanaan and Ishaq, the homosexual, had shared more than just a business partnership. “Was your husband especially close to Ishaq?”