The Samaritan's secret

Kanaan smoothed his hair back from his brow. “It’s Le Vainqueur. Napoleon used to wear it.”

“In the Empress Josephine’s boudoir, perhaps. Surely not during his campaign in Palestine.”

“I expect that here he would have had even greater need to disguise the foul smells all around him.”

“Is that why you wear it?”

Kanaan rocked his head back and laughed. Jamie King came outside and shook the wealthy man’s hand. “It’s good to see you again, Jamie,” Kanaan said.

He led them to a shaded gazebo at the edge of the lawn. Pink clusters of wisteria dangled from the slatted roof. The servant brought cold carob cordials in tall glasses. Mint leaves floated among the ice cubes.

“You told the foreign journalist that Hamas must be punished,” Omar Yussef said, in Arabic.

“Journalists.” Kanaan spoke in English and waved a disdainful hand. King smiled obsequiously. The businessman gestured to his guests to sit in the low wicker chairs arranged to face the view.

“Punished as Nouri Awwadi was?” Omar Yussef slurped the carob juice and felt immediately cooler.

Kanaan lifted his glass and watched the light come burgundy red through the cordial. “This is very good for your digestion, Jamie,” he said.

“Delicious.” The American took a small sip and glanced nervously at Omar Yussef.

She’s worried I’m starting a fight with Kanaan, he thought. He tried to reassure her with a smile.

Kanaan switched to Arabic. “I heard Awwadi was killed by a jealous boyfriend.” His lips twitched, eager to spill someone else’s secret.

“The rejected suitor of his new wife? That’s what his father says, but I don’t believe it.”

A hot breeze rustled the wisteria. “I didn’t say it was his wife’s boyfriend.” Kanaan winked.

“Whose boyfriend, then?” Omar Yussef froze with the cordial halfway to his mouth. “Are you saying Awwadi was homosexual?”

“I apologize for our Arabic chatter, Jamie, we’re just gossiping about mutual acquaintances here in Nablus,” Kanaan said in English.

King disturbed her fixed smile long enough to take another sip of her cordial.

“Do you remember the classical Andalucian poem by Walladah about a homosexual fellow?” Kanaan said, in Arabic. “It says that ‘if he saw a penis up a palm tree, he’d turn into a whole flock of birds’ in his eagerness to reach it. That was Awwadi, despite his impressive wedding to a casbah girl on the back of a white horse.”

Could Awwadi have been Ishaq’s lover? Omar Yussef wondered. He seemed disturbed when I told him of the Samaritan’s death.

Kanaan grinned. “Don’t look so shocked. Why do you think a man in Nablus goes to the Turkish baths?”

“I imagine you have your own private bathhouse up here,” Omar Yussef said. He had seen Awwadi’s corpse. It wasn’t something to laugh about.

Kanaan’s smile faded and he looked out across the valley, where Nablus spread like so many broken white teeth. He cleared his throat and spoke to Jamie King in his punctilious English. “I’m delighted to welcome you to my home, Jamie.”

“I’ve been in Nablus a few days and every time I look up I see these great houses,” King said. “It’s amazing to be able to visit one.”

“Treat it as if it were your own home, please.” Kanaan bowed. “Have you been to see the progress on the new school I’m funding in the casbah?”

“I have.”

“I hope it gave you a good feeling about your work. If it weren’t for the World Bank loan you organized for local infrastructure, even I wouldn’t be able to build such a school.”

“It’s a wonderful project. It’s unfortunate that the money may be about to come to an end.” King sipped her cordial. “If the former president’s secret accounts can’t be traced by Friday, the bank is planning to cut off aid to the Palestinians.”

Kanaan shook his head and stroked his broad chin. “By Friday? I was told about this possibility on my last trip to Washington, but I didn’t know a decision was so close.”

“It’s only two days away.”

“It would be a disaster.”

Omar Yussef thought the World Bank’s boycott would be less of a catastrophe for the millionaires along the ridge than for the poor inhabitants of the casbah. He cooled his palms with the condensation on his glass.

“Are you perhaps close to uncovering the whereabouts of the secret accounts, Jamie?” Kanaan spoke quietly, looking at his fingernails.

Omar Yussef watched the American. Does she see through Kanaan’s show of nonchalance? he thought.

“I’m expecting a report any time now from one of my investigators in Geneva,” Jamie said. “I hope it will give us some new ideas.”

“But here in Palestine, you have made no progress?”

Jamie shook her head. “No leads. To be frank, it seems to me that many Palestinian officials are not eager to see this money recovered.”

“Why would that be?”

“They were recipients of the former president’s under-the-table payments. The less that’s known about all that, the better, as far as they’re concerned.”

Kanaan shook his head. “So people aren’t being helpful?”

“Those that try to be of assistance,” Omar Yussef said, in English, “find themselves dead.”

Jamie looked sharply at Omar Yussef. Her cell phone rang in her briefcase. She took it out and glanced at the screen. “It’s from Geneva. Maybe there’s some news. Excuse me.” She walked out of earshot with the phone.

Kanaan ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “Isn’t it a bit boring, ustaz, to work for these foreigners?”

“The people I work with are fascinating,” Omar Yussef said.

Kanaan puffed out his lips. “If you say so. I find Americans too serious and literal minded. In any case, I like your atti-tude, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef sucked on a cube of ice. Here comes the payoff, he thought. He knows Jamie won’t track down the secret accounts without local help, and he thinks that means me. He wants me on his side. So that he can be the first to the money?

“I could make good use of a man like you.” Kanaan’s eyes drifted to the left, as though he’d just had an idea. “Really, working on these boring development projects year after year, it must be like drinking coffee from the same dirty cup every day. I could offer you a position in my company where you would have wonderful opportunities and every day would be different.”

“I always drink my coffee the same way-bitter,” Omar Yussef said. “I didn’t come here to be bought off. I came here to find out what you know about the death of Ishaq.”

“Ishaq?” Kanaan narrowed his eyes, as though straining to focus on the distant ridge across the valley. Omar Yussef thought the rich man’s jaw trembled slightly. “What does that have to do with the World Bank?”

“He was about to meet Miss King when he was killed. Did his partnership with you put him in jeopardy?”

“He was a close associate, but our business wasn’t anything dangerous.”

“Nonetheless, he was murdered. Then Awwadi, who was a follower of your rival for power in Nablus, Sheikh Bader, was killed-right after the sheikh slurred the man who once led your faction.” The wicker easy chair creaked, as Omar Yussef leaned toward Kanaan. “It’s dangerous to be either for you or against you.”

“Fuck Sheikh Bader.”

Omar Yussef was taken aback by Kanaan’s sudden vehe-mence and vulgarity.

Kanaan lowered his voice. “You have me all wrong, Abu. .”

“Abu Ramiz.”

“Brother Abu Ramiz, I don’t pretend that I’ve never been involved in questionable things. I’m a businessman, a Palestinian, and successful. You may draw your conclusions from that. But I’m no killer.”

“You have higher morals than that?”