man’s life is at stake. Don’t waste my time with your cheap accusations.”
“No one’s time will be wasted any longer,” Jihad Awdeh said. “In fact, it’ll all be sorted out tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“The trial of your friend George Saba is set for tonight at eleven o’clock.”
“When was this scheduled?”
“You’d have to ask the judge. Apparently, he became interested in moving quickly.”
Hussein Tamari rested his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm, and this time he gripped it tightly, with command. “You see that this matter is out of my hands.”
Omar Yussef rose. What use was the strength he had felt? He was powerless in the face of the world. Even if he believed he carried some inner, moral toughness, it was no use to his friend. As he walked to the door, he felt the gunmen’s eyes burning the flesh on his back.
Chapter 15
Attorney Marwan Natsha decorated the entryway to his office with gaudily framed Koranic calligraphy and copies of his diplomas. Omar Yussef stopped to cast his eye over them, welcoming the opportunity to catch his breath after three flights of stairs. The degrees were in thick, black Gothic script. They were from Hebron University and issued in the mid-eighties. The segments from the Koran were in slashy kufic characters, curling the names of the Prophet and his followers around the edges, as lush as the stitching on an embroidered cushion. The extracts from the Muslim holy book suggested to Omar Yussef that the man might be religious, perhaps even a supporter of Hamas. It gave him some hope. Omar Yussef was no believer, but he had observed that, among his compatriots, the more a man followed the way of Allah, the less likely he was to accede in the corruption of the law. Maybe this lawyer would put up a good defense for George.
The quiet anteroom was dark and cold as twilight came on. Omar Yussef flicked the light switch. There were more framed pages from the Koran and a tan leather couch so worn that it looked as though someone had passed a bad night’s sleep on it in sandpaper pajamas. A desk lamp cast a dim glow from within the back office against a frosted glass door. Omar Yussef opened the door.
A long, thin man looked up from a file of papers through a cloud of cigarette smoke. There was a guilty cast to his gray face. The religious calligraphy was decorative and nothing more, Omar Yussef realized. Hamas supporters didn’t smoke Rothmans during Ramadan. Omar Yussef left the frosted door open to create a fresh draft in the blue air, so that he might breathe a little.
Marwan Natsha lifted himself from his chair. He moved like a man with a hangover dragging himself out of bed. He gestured questioningly with his cigarette. Omar Yussef waved that it didn’t offend him. There was relief in the attorney’s sad, wet eyes. He flopped back into his seat and pushed the papers away from him across his desk with a bony hand.
“I am Omar Yussef. I am a friend of George Saba.”
Marwan Natsha dropped his thin shoulders forward. His slack chin rested on the knot of his gray tie, and his melancholy face became even more desolate.
“I understand you are to defend George at the hearing tonight. I have information that will help you.”
“Oh, dear.”
Omar Yussef paused.
Marwan Natsha looked up and sighed. His voice sounded like it ached in his throat, as your legs might on the day after a long walk. “Uncle, you don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand? This is a capital trial. I want to save George Saba.”
“Nothing can save him, sir.”
Omar Yussef pulled his chair closer to Marwan Natsha’s desk. The lawyer edged back into his chair as though he were threatened by the advance of the man across the cherrywood from him.
“I have known George since he was a boy. I was with him a few nights ago when he went to his house to confront some Martyrs Brigades people. He forced them away from his home, but they threatened to return. When they came back, it was to make allegations of collaboration. This whole case is a matter of revenge on their part.”
There was no sign in Marwan Natsha’s gray face that he found anything encouraging in what Omar Yussef said. If anything, he seemed deeply discomfited.
“I also discovered information at the site of Louai Abdel Rahman’s murder that convinces me Hussein Tamari took part in that killing. I believe he returned later to kill Louai’s wife, because he discovered that she gave me information about his role in the shooting. Tamari is also the man who has framed George Saba.” Omar Yussef waited for Marwan Natsha to ask a question. “Are you not interested? We don’t have very long.”
“We have until eleven tonight.”
“That’s only six hours.”
“Six hours. Six days. It makes no difference. I’m afraid he’s going to be found guilty.”
Omar Yussef was angry. “I found a bullet from Hussein Tamari’s gun at the place where Louai was killed.”
Marwan Natsha lit another Rothman with a shaky hand and was silent.
“That means Tamari was there,” Omar Yussef said.
“But it doesn’t mean he shot Louai Abdel Rahman.” Mar-wan Natsha curved his spine slowly forward over the desk as though testing each vertebrae and picked a photocopied sheet of paper from the file. “This is the ballistics report on Louai Abdel Rahman’s death. The two bullets that killed him were from some kind of American sniper rifle
