The Samaritan's secret

Omar Yussef glanced back toward Roween’s house. He saw that Khamis Zeydan noticed his look. “My secrets,” he said, “are of a different kind.”

Chapter 22

Omar Yussef left breakfast the next morning with a fervent promise to Nadia that he would accompany her to eat qanafi later that day. “Even if I have to run through a volley of rifle fire to bring you a plate,” he said. In the lobby of the hotel, he called Jamie King’s room on the house phone and got no answer. He went over to the reception desk and found the manager picking his teeth with the green plastic cover of an official identity card.

“Have you seen the American lady this morning?” Omar Yussef asked.

The manager flinched and tried to slip the identity card into one of the pigeonholes behind him without Omar Yussef noticing. “She went out a few minutes ago, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef glanced at his watch. It was nine-thirty. If I move now, I can be at Kanaan’s place in time to join Jamie for her ten o’clock appointment, he thought, whether she likes it or not.

He hailed a taxi outside the hotel and ordered the driver to take him to the home of Amin Kanaan. The driver wiggled his hand, palm upward, to signal that he didn’t understand.

“Up there,” Omar Yussef said, pointing out of the window toward the mansions on the ridge.

“That Amin Kanaan?” The taxi driver looked Omar Yussef up and down, doubtfully.

“You can stop on the way and buy me an expensive suit, if you’re anxious for me to impress him.” Omar Yussef grated out a scoffing laugh. “But I won’t give you a bigger tip.”

“Even so, ustaz. There’s an Israeli base up there, and Kanaan has his own guards, too. It’s a long way from the town.”

“You’re right. He lives in a very exclusive neighborhood. So you won’t have to worry about traffic.”

The driver pulled off with a sullen glance at Omar Yussef in his rearview mirror.

The guards at Kanaan’s elaborate iron gates sent the taxi driver to wait out of sight behind a stand of pines. One of them remembered that Omar Yussef had been to the mansion before and ushered him through.

As Omar Yussef panted along the arcade of cypresses to the house, a liveried servant came to the front door and waited for him with his hands behind his back, his blue tunic a small blot on the tan surface of Kanaan’s enormous home. The sun glinted into his eyes from the windows of three big jeeps on the gravel lot beside the house. He assumed the boxy, black Mercedes G500 was Kanaan’s. A dusty Cherokee with signs on each side that said TV was parked beside Jamie King’s white Suburban.

“Madame isn’t at home this morning, ustaz,” the servant said, giving his mistress’s title a French pronunciation.

“I’m not here to see madame this time,” Omar Yussef said. He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Tell your boss to get the garden air-conditioned. I expect he can afford it.”

He went into the hall. The morning sun dazzled at the far end of the foyer. A handful of silhouettes moved beyond the glass, but Omar Yussef couldn’t make them out, even when he shaded his eyes.

“Shall I tell my boss you’re here to sell him air-conditioning?”

“I’m with the lady from the World Bank,” Omar Yussef said.

The servant grinned and opened the gilt door to the salon where Omar Yussef had met Liana. “Your colleague is in here, ustaz.”

Jamie King sat on the sofa in her chalk-striped suit. She looked at Omar Yussef with mild reproach. “Usually when I set a meeting with Palestinians, they either arrive late or forget altogether,” she said. “This is the first time a Palestinian has kept an appointment I didn’t even make with him.”

“I promise this won’t be the last time I surprise you.” Omar Yussef smiled.

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“Where’s the great man?”

“Mister Kanaan is outside. He has company.”

Omar Yussef walked to the window, feeling the quiet air-conditioning cool him. From the shade of the brocaded curtains, he peered at the group he had seen from the foyer. A burly man with messy gray hair held a heavy video camera on his shoulder. A sticker on the side of the camera identified the foreigners as a news team from an American cable channel. A small blonde with a fluffy microphone on a short boom fiddled with the dials on a recorder strapped to her waist.

A pair of men walked toward the camera in conversation. Both were tall. One wore the khaki vest favored by television correspondents to signal a manly taste for action. The other man did the talking, while the journalist frowned with exaggerated concentration. Omar Yussef recognized the second man, in a checked sport jacket and open-necked pink shirt, as Amin Kanaan.

The reporter stepped back so the cameraman could frame Kanaan in a close-up. Omar Yussef twisted the ornate handles of the French doors and opened them enough to hear what was said outside.

“Mister Kanaan,” the journalist asked, in a resonant Midwestern American accent, “what’s your response to the allegations about the death of the former president?”

Kanaan looked grave. “This is a tawdry and perilous allegation by agitators in Hamas,” he said. His English was poised and distinguished. It was clear to Omar Yussef that Kanaan’s full vowels and distinct t had been learned from an Englishman, not an American, and he imagined that Kanaan would see this as a sign of good breeding. “The president was a symbol for the Palestinian people, as well as a father and brother to all of us. Hamas has slandered the morals of the entire Palestinian people with this accusation, and they must be punished.”

“Punished? How?”

“Hamas must retract the slander or face the consequences.”

“Does that mean civil war?”

“We who loved the former president cannot back down. Even so, be assured we will not draw blood, unless they do so first.”

The servant who had shown Omar Yussef into the salon appeared on the patio and waited a few yards behind the cameraman.

“Palestinian media report that people are upset. They think Hamas shouldn’t have publicized this allegation,” the reporter said. “Does this weaken Hamas politically?”

“Hamas will pay a price for its slander,” Kanaan said. “I hope it will only be at the polls, because the Palestinian people love democracy.”

The reporter glanced at the sound technician, who gave him a nod. “Okay, we’ve got it,” he said, shaking hands with Kanaan.

Not exactly a grilling, Omar Yussef thought. The sheikh made a tactical error. People are starting to resent him for making them face this possible cause of the president’s demise. No one wants to think badly of a dead man, no matter what they would’ve believed about him when he was alive. As chief of the late president’s party in Nablus, Kanaan only has to keep this story bubbling for Hamas to look worse and worse.

Kanaan waved the news crew around the mansion toward their jeep. The servant stood on his toes and whispered into Kanaan’s ear. Omar Yussef stepped out onto the red-tiled patio. Kanaan smiled at him.

Amin Kanaan appeared both coarse and cultured, like a peasant made good. He had a wide, thick nose, pitted and rough, as though it had been modeled quickly from clay between two thumbs. His skin was uniformly brown, tanned by a better class of sunshine than the intense rays scouring the people of Nablus. His gray hair seemed at once to drift on the breeze in a debonair wave and to be locked in place by lacquer. When he shook Omar Yussef’s hand, Kanaan left a delicate residue of jasmine on it.

“I haven’t come across that cologne before,” Omar Yussef said.