The Samaritan's secret

“We have less than two days.”

“That’s not much time, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef held his watch to his ear. It was still ticking. “I’ll do my best, don’t worry.”

“Hey, keep trying.”

He was about to hand the phone to his son, when he remembered what he had wanted to ask the American. “Jamie, when we first met, you said that Ishaq told you he could lay his hands on the bank documents within an hour.”

“That’s right. I spoke to him by phone to arrange a meeting. We talked only briefly before he was killed.”

“The documents must be in Nablus, if they were so close at hand. Did he say anything else about where they were?”

“Nothing substantive.” King was quiet for a moment. “I’m trying to remember his exact words. He said something like, ‘I put them out in the open, where anyone could see them. But no one except God would ever know they’re there.’”

Out in the open. Omar Yussef remembered Roween telling him that Ishaq had said he was involved in something so dangerous that he wanted to bury it behind the temple. Does that mean the altar on top of Jerizim? That’s where offerings were left, where the Samaritan God would see them, and that’s where their temple was. “Didn’t you think that was strange? You didn’t ask him to explain what he meant?”

“Everyone in the Middle East is always making references to God, ustaz. In my limited experience, it usually means nothing. I thought he’d tell me exactly where the documents were soon enough.”

“Thank you, Jamie.” In his tiredness, Omar Yussef forgot to speak English. “May you have a morning of goodness.”

“And may you be of the family of goodness,” King responded in Arabic. “That much of your language I’ve managed to learn, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef smiled and gave the phone to Ramiz. “I’ve finished.”

“You didn’t hang up. You see, you have to press this red button.”

“Sami, is there a Fatah guy in Nablus named Suleiman al-Teef?” Omar Yussef asked.

Sami tapped his good hand thoughtfully against the cast on his right forearm. “It doesn’t sound familiar, Abu Ramiz.”

Omar Yussef leaned against the window frame. He listened to the bursts of sporadic gunfire and waited for the sun to show across the valley. When it came, the gunmen would sleep and await the cover of the next night to rejoin their battle. He had not much longer than that-thirty-six hours-to find three hundred million dollars. It seemed too short a time. In Nablus, there were centuries of wickedness to uncover beneath every ancient stone.

Chapter 25

Khamis Zeydan hobbled to his jeep and tossed his keys in the air. Omar Yussef juggled them, snatched them to his chest, and frowned at his friend.

“You expect me to drive?” he said.

“My foot’s all numb,” Khamis Zeydan said. “I can’t work the clutch.”

“It’s not an automatic? I can’t drive this car.”

“It’s not a car. It’s a jeep.”

“I’m a bad driver, even with automatic transmission and good roads. You think I’m going to drive up that mountain on a tiny, twisting road in an enormous damned jeep-and change gears at the same time?”

Khamis Zeydan slapped his hand on the turquoise hood of the police jeep. “Later today I’ll see if I can trade this in for a nice comfortable Audi sedan at the police depot- something with only one previous lady owner, if that suits you. In the meantime this will have to do,” he said. “And I’m sorry it doesn’t have a cup holder and a CD player and airconditioning. I’m also sorry that the ashtray is full. But most of all I’m sorry that I have to stand here listening to you complain. Just drive.”

Omar Yussef lifted himself toward the driver’s seat with a grunt. His shoulders felt weak and he dropped his trailing foot back to the pavement. “Why do they make these vehicles so far off the ground?”

“So pedestrians will be able to duck underneath the chassis when you run them down.” Khamis Zeydan leaned over from the passenger seat, grabbed Omar Yussef’s shoulder, and hauled him inside.

The jeep hopped along the road. Omar Yussef clenched his teeth, trying to avoid the pedestrians wandering out of the casbah. A taxi came up behind him and sounded its horn impatiently. “Shut up, you son of a whore,” Omar Yussef muttered.

Khamis Zeydan laughed quietly and lit a cigarette. “Mind the tomato cart,” he murmured, with the Rothmans between his lips.

A drop of perspiration stung the corner of Omar Yussef’s eye. “Mind the what?” he said, blinking to clear the sweat. He heard a sound like the sudden crushing of a cardboard box and then a shout.

He rolled the jeep to a halt. At the passenger side window, a bony man with a keffiyeh wrapped like a turban around his head yelled that they had overturned his cart. Khamis Zeydan took a brief look at the tomatoes spread like poppies across the dirt at the roadside and grinned at the vendor. “Show me your market license,” he said, “or get out of my sight.”

The man pulled off his keffiyeh and flung it toward his tomatoes with a curse.

“We should help him pick them up,” Omar Yussef said.

“Let’s go. And no more stops for vegetables,” Khamis Zeydan said.

“A tomato is a fruit.” Omar Yussef stabbed at the gearshift.

“What?”

“It’s not a vegetable. It’s the fruit of the tomato plant.”

Khamis Zeydan stared. “Just leave the grocery shopping to your wife, schoolteacher.”

“I’m looking forward to the empty road above the town.” Omar Yussef sighed. “I can’t keep track of all these things coming at me in so many directions.”

The engine roared as they climbed the hill. Khamis Zeydan advised Omar Yussef to keep the jeep in second gear. When the apartment buildings at the edge of Nablus thinned out, they turned onto the twisting, narrow road to the peak of Mount Jerizim.

Khamis Zeydan threw a cigarette out of the window. He dropped his eyes to Omar Yussef’s right foot. “We’ll never get there at this rate. You can give it more gas, you know. The engine’s noisy, but it isn’t going to blow up.”

At the entrance to the Kanaan mansion, Omar Yussef tried to pull over, but the engine stalled and he let the jeep come to a halt in the middle of the road. He pushed open his door and dropped to the ground.

Khamis Zeydan leaned over and yanked the hand brake with his good hand, just as the jeep started to roll backward. “Were you planning on walking down to the town, after you wrecked my jeep?”

Omar Yussef tossed the keys into his friend’s lap and pushed his door shut.

The servant at the mansion’s main entrance greeted Omar Yussef with a twitch of his mustache. “Sorry. Still no airconditioning in the garden, ustaz,” he said.

“We’re here to see His Honor Kanaan.”

“The boss isn’t here, but you can see Madame.”

Omar Yussef felt a pulse of frustration. He wanted to confront Kanaan about the man he had sent to kill him and the war he had started in the casbah. He didn’t need anything from Liana, but it would be impolite to leave now and Khamis Zeydan would want to see her again, anyway.

The servant led them across the polished hallway, held open the door to the salon, and glanced at Khamis Zeydan’s limp. The policeman noticed and elbowed him in the ribs as he passed. The servant snatched Khamis Zeydan’s arm and shoved him into the room. “Mind your step,” he said. “Don’t fall on the rugs. You’ll make them