Jihad Awdeh pointed at the Webley and laughed. “What are you going to do? Beat me to death with that old thing?”
Omar Yussef felt his mouth dry up. He looked down and saw that the hand holding the pistol shook. “This gun is an old one. But it works.”
But Jihad Awdeh was already upon him. He punched Omar Yussef in the temple, shoved him backward, and tripped him so that he fell to the floor. From the back of his boot, Jihad slowly drew a six-inch hunting knife. He twirled its jagged blade, smiling. Omar Yussef saw the light glint off the shaft of the knife. How could he have been so stupid as to stay below in the cave until there was this much daylight in the church?
Jihad Awdeh kicked him in the side, just below the ribs. The impact stabbed through his kidneys as surely as if it were a thrust of the knife. He groaned. Then Jihad kicked again and Omar Yussef screamed, a deep bellow.
He grabbed Jihad Awdeh’s leg, but the gunman shook free. Omar Yussef looked up. Jihad crouched above him with the knife held to his own throat. He grinned, as though he would bite the schoolteacher and drink his blood. He drew the knife lightly across his throat, sighing with pleasure. It was the same murderous gesture George Saba had described, when Omar Yussef saw him in the jail. Omar Yussef would die now, like George.
The knife was at Omar Yussef’s throat. It felt warm from having been stashed inside Jihad Awdeh’s boot. He gasped. There was a moment of pressure against the flesh of his neck. Then there was a massive blast, and another. Omar Yussef thought it was the sound of his carotid ripping under the sharp metal, the tearing of the cartilage thundering through his head. But then Jihad Awdeh toppled over onto his victim’s chest. He held his head directly before Omar Yussef’s face and gave a ghostly moan that was heavy with the stale reek of cigarettes. Then he dropped his head. His brow struck Omar Yussef on the chin. The murderer was dead.
Chapter 28
Omar Yussef shoved Jihad Awdeh’s corpse away. It rolled heavily onto its back. The dead man’s hand released the knife. It tinkled on the stone floor. Blood seeped from two wounds in Jihad Awdeh’s side and pooled about Omar Yussef. The schoolteacher felt its warmth melting through his jacket. He pushed himself up to escape the gore and backed a few paces away from the corpse, as though unsure that the murderer wouldn’t rise and try to take his life once more.
There was a silhouette in the doorway to the church. It moved toward Omar Yussef. This was the man who had saved him, firing from the other end of the church with enough accuracy to strike Jihad Awdeh, rather than the victim pressed to the stone beneath him. As the shooter came on, his footfalls echoed about the ancient walls. Omar Yussef stared at the dark figure. When Awdeh had held the knife to his throat, he had been sure he was about to die. So sure that the relief of his reprieve was still somehow unreal.
The figure passed through the first dusty shaft of light from the high windows. The police beret on the man’s head was askew. Omar Yussef saw a hand gloved tightly in black leather straighten it. The footsteps came closer. It was Khamis Zeydan. Now was the time when Omar Yussef would learn if his suspicions were misplaced, if the police chief were as befouled by murdered blood as he thought. Khamis Zeydan had saved him by killing Jihad Awdeh, the man who had beaten and humiliated the police chief only two hours before. But would he finish off Omar Yussef too?
Three other policemen rushed through the Gate of Humility and ran down the aisle behind their commander. The police chief turned to look at them and then quickened his pace toward Omar Yussef. He reached the schoolteacher and stared at him hard, tapping the barrel of his pistol against his false hand. His face had the fierce callousness of one who has killed, one who will kill. Omar Yussef lifted his eyes toward the sunlight where it cut the blackness high inside the church. He filled his lungs, and in that moment he pictured Khamis Zey-dan, young and suave and filling their favorite student cafe in Damascus with laughter, and he knew that whatever his old friend had become, he would remember that youthful warmth on his face and it would draw him far from this gloomy church in time and space. Omar Yussef held that breath.
Khamis Zeydan holstered his gun. He looked down at Jihad Awdeh. “This bastard’s dead,” he said. He turned to his men. “Get this son of a whore out of the church. I don’t want anyone to know that I shot him, and certainly not that it happened inside this holy place. You two, carry him over to the station. You, get a bucket and a mop. Clean up the blood.”
“His rifle is down in the cave,” Omar Yussef said.
“Let’s go and get it. We’ll see what else he left down there.”
Omar Yussef hesitated.
Khamis Zeydan cocked his head and wrinkled his moustache. “I just saved your life. Do you think I’ll murder you, now?”
“I’m sorry, Abu Adel,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m not thinking straight.”
“Well, that has been to your credit lately. You had reason to suspect people. Even me. But now you can start taking things at face value once more.”
“I don’t know if I will, ever again.”
Khamis Zeydan went down the steps to the Cave of the Nativity. Omar Yussef followed. His legs felt weak. In two days, he had been near to his own death three times, and he had seen even more dead bodies, of people he loved and of those he feared. It was too much. He sat on the bottom step and put his hands on his head.
“He was about to kill me,” Omar Yussef said.
Khamis Zeydan slung Jihad Awdeh’s Kalashnikov over his shoulder and looked inside the rucksack. “What’s in here? Food.” He looked over at Omar Yussef. “You’re right about that. You’d be dead now for sure, if Maryam hadn’t told me you were coming to the church.”
“Maryam?”
“You left a message with my desk sergeant. I’m sorry to say that I was drinking after I dropped you at your home. I kept thinking about George Saba’s wife, the way we found her with her children under her arms. I’ve seen so many people dead, Abu Ramiz, but I hated myself for letting that happen to Sofia Saba. So I locked myself in my office and started back on that bottle of whisky. I came out to take a piss, and the sergeant told me you had called. I drove down to your house. Maryam was in a terrible state. She told me you’d gone to the church. It seems I got here just in time.” He came toward Omar Yussef. He pulled Jihad Awdeh’s black vest from the rucksack, stuck his hand in one of the pockets, and pulled out a fistful of shiny copper tubes, a dozen spent MAG cartridges. “Well, look at this.” He let them drop back into the rucksack. “I guess we’ll call this Exhibit A.”
