The Samaritan's secret

Abdel Rahim paused before a low metal door, stroking his beard.

“This entrance is usually disguised with boxes like this one,” Abdel Rahim shouted over the noise of the machines. He slapped his hand on a tea chest, lying on its side above an oil-storage tank. Another half dozen chests had been tossed behind the grimy tank.

“Maybe the Israelis found the tunnel after all,” Omar Yussef yelled. He took his hand away from the shampoo drum and wiped it on his handkerchief.

“No, the boxes were in front of the door this morning when I came down to get the furnace going.”

“So someone came this way today.”

Abdel Rahim yanked open the heavy door. It moved no more fluidly than Omar Yussef’s worn-out knees. The bath-house manager fumbled for a flashlight in the dust behind a shuddering generator and shook the batteries inside it until the bulb was illuminated.

“It’s risky for you to go in this passage, ustaz,” Abdel Rahim said. “You aren’t from Nablus and, if you happen to meet some-one, they might suspect you of being Israelis undercover.”

“It’ll be I who will suspect them,” Omar Yussef said, “of murdering Nouri Awwadi.”

“Perhaps you should wait for the police?”

Khamis Zeydan made his way between the raucous machines, buttoning his blue uniform shirt.

“The police force is already here,” Omar Yussef said. He took the flashlight.

The ceiling of the tunnel was high enough for him to stand upright, but his instinct was to hunch in the dark, constricted space. A few hesitant steps in the dampness of the tunnel and the small of his back already ached with tension. Abdel Rahim shoved the metal door shut behind them and the rattling of the generators dropped to a low hum.

Omar Yussef cast the flashlight around the blackness. You’ve done it again, old fellow, he thought. If you come across the killer, will you beat him into submission with this flashlight? Perhaps you’ll distract him with a lecture about the construction of these tunnels in the time of the Ayyubid caliphate, while Khamis Zeydan sneaks up and overpowers him.

The walls of the passage were bare stone. The floor was packed dirt, muddied by water seeping down from the baths. He bent to examine the mud.

“Are these footsteps?”

Khamis Zeydan came up beside him and leaned over his shoulder. Boot prints cut the wet dirt. “Point the flashlight at the wall,” he said.

The stone was dashed with mud. Omar Yussef touched it. “It’s wet,” he said. “With splashes from these puddles.”

“He came this way, not long ago.”

Omar Yussef squinted ahead. The harder he looked, the more threatening the darkness seemed. He directed the flashlight forward. The murderer had moved quickly, again splashing mud along the wall that had yet to dry. I know the killer came this way, but I don’t know how far he went, he thought. He might be just in front of us, waiting.

That thought halted him suddenly and he peered once more into the darkness. Khamis Zeydan failed to notice he had stopped and his bowed forehead struck Omar Yussef painfully in the back of his neck. Both men cursed. The air in the passage was damp and still, and Omar Yussef’s breathing was heavy. He pushed on until they reached a junction of two passages. He flicked the flashlight in each direction. The tunnels stretched into blackness.

Omar Yussef glanced at Khamis Zeydan. “Abdel Rahim didn’t tell us the passage split,” Omar Yussef said.

“He certainly didn’t. Maybe it’s not the only thing he dummied up about. Want to go back and chat with him again?” Khamis Zeydan punched a fist into his palm.

“Thanks for your illustration. But the shriek I heard from him when he discovered Awwadi’s body sounded genuine to me. Whatever he failed to tell us, I don’t think he’s the killer. Let’s keep going.”

Khamis Zeydan raised his nose. “He said the passage ended in a halva factory. Do you smell sesame?”

Omar Yussef detected a hint of sweetness drifting on the faintest of drafts from the right. “That way,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan started to the right, but ran into the back of Omar Yussef once more. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll never catch up if we have to wait for you to get your breath back.”

Omar Yussef ran the beam of the torch along the wall of the passage to the left. “There’re splashes of mud that way,” he said. He bent to run his palm across the surface of the stone. “Still wet.”

The police chief slapped his friend on the thigh. “You’re quite a detective,” he said. “Let’s move. My shirt’s sweaty from the bathhouse and it’s starting to freeze me in this draft.”

The left passage sloped upward, paved now with slabs of limestone slicked by green mold and stinking water. The angle of the passage and the poor plumbing suggested to Omar Yussef that they had reached Awwadi’s Yasmina neighborhood, the highest part of the casbah, where the air had been rotten with the scent of broken pipes.

The tunnel grew colder. Omar Yussef tried to warm himself by thinking of the baths, but Awwadi’s corpse loomed out of the steam, shining and bloodless. Awwadi was involved in the resistance, so he would be a natural target for the Israelis, he thought. But it’s too hard to believe that he was hit by the Israeli army in the casbah during the day. He must’ve been killed because of the dirt files-maybe by someone who was named in them.

Around a corner, the passage ended in a cramped spiral of stone stairs. Omar Yussef shared a glance with Khamis Zeydan and went up. His mouth was dry. He halted and listened to the silence between Khamis Zeydan’s footsteps. He came around another twist in the spiral and reached a door. A milky light crept beneath it. He turned to Khamis Zeydan, who smiled with resignation. Omar Yussef pushed against the metal door. It opened easily.

The door led into an empty storeroom with a dirt floor and a low arched roof. The air was pungent with the heavy smell of soiled straw and goat dung. Omar Yussef headed for the steps on the far side of the room. The light seemed unnaturally golden, until he realized that he was almost outside and this was only the ordinary radiance of day. He smiled. How quickly the glow of sunlight is forgotten by those beneath the earth, he thought. He heard the mild stamping of feet and the goat smell grew stronger. Another few steps and he came to a dirty plank fence penning half a dozen jostling goats. He shaded his eyes from the sunshine in the courtyard of the Touqan Palace.

Running footsteps approached the palace’s tall gate. Khamis Zeydan drew Omar Yussef back into the shadows of the stairway. The excited goats collided with the rough planking of their pen. A group of bearded young men entered the courtyard. Two of them carried Kalashnikovs. Holding their rifles with one hand, they fired into the air.

On the terrace above the courtyard, a heavy man ducked under a line of laundry.

“Abu Nouri, give thanks to Allah, your son is martyred,” one of the young men shouted. “May Allah be merciful upon him and grant you a long life, until he invites you to sit at his side in Paradise.”

Nouri Awwadi’s father dropped forward and braced himself on the stone wall at the edge of the terrace. He put his hand on his low forehead. The young men cried out that Allah was most great and fired off more rounds, the reports cracking around the courtyard. The goats thrashed their heads and rolled their vacant eyes.

Khamis Zeydan tugged Omar Yussef’s shirt and led him back into the storeroom. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

Omar Yussef shook his head.

“Those bastards are Hamas,” Khamis Zeydan said. He rubbed his uniform insignia between his thumb and fore-finger. “I don’t want to have to explain to them what one of their official enemies is doing here just after their leader’s neck has been broken.”

Omar Yussef handed the flashlight to Khamis Zeydan. “I understand,” he said. “You go back. I’ll wait here.”

“With them?”

“In this storeroom. They’ll go to the funeral soon. There’s something I need to check here.”

“What?”

“This is where Awwadi lived.”