The Samaritan's secret

dirty, and they’re very expensive.”

“But you’re cheap,” Khamis Zeydan said.

The servant smiled, straightened the gold brocaded hem of his blue tunic and closed the door behind him, leaving them alone.

“What’s eating you?” Omar Yussef said.

“Did you see the way that bastard looked at my foot?”

He’s about to see the woman he loved when he was young and vigorous, and he’s going to be limping on a diabetic foot, Omar Yussef thought. He ought to be happy I’m around to make him look virile by comparison.

“I can’t stand the disrespect,” Khamis Zeydan said. “It’s bad enough that I have to put up with insubordinate young policemen in my division. They saw a little action as gunmen during the intifada, so now they all think they’re heroes and they won’t take orders from me.”

“It’s the same problem with all our young people,” Omar Yussef said. “The older generation failed to liberate Palestine, so in their eyes we deserve no respect. You should hear how the girls speak to my staff at the school.”

“They should be thrashed.”

“Is that what you do with your policemen?”

“It’s what I’d like to do to that servant, the arrogant bastard. I’ll hang him up by his girly little pencil mustache.”

The servant opened the door and leaned back against its raised giltwork, looking down his nose at Khamis Zeydan.

Liana moved quickly into the room and greeted them. She wore a sleeveless red silk dress that pouched a little over the slackness in her gut. Her eyes were painted more heavily than they had been when Omar Yussef had seen her before, and her face was stiff and joyless.

A second servant carried a tray of coffee to a low table.

Liana invited her guests to sit. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed my husband. He’s already gone down to Nablus this morning on business,” she said.

“A deadly kind of business,” Khamis Zeydan said.

Liana looked closely at him. “Dear Abu Adel, don’t misunderstand what I said about my husband when last we met. He may not be pure, but whatever he does, it’s never against the interests of the Palestinian people.”

Khamis Zeydan drank his coffee with a noisy slurp, a surreptitious raspberry blown at Liana’s husband.

Omar Yussef sat on the edge of his armchair. “Dear lady, your husband has embarked upon some kind of small war with Hamas in the town.”

“As I said, he never acts against the interests of the Palestinian people.” She lifted her chin.

She looks strong and defiant, when she holds herself that way, Omar Yussef thought. I have to admit it’s attractive. “This fighting can’t possibly benefit the people.”

“He’s fighting for a good reason, not for the fun of it.” Liana continued her scrutiny of Khamis Zeydan. “He’s not that kind of man.”

Khamis Zeydan growled once more and set his cup on the table, rattling it in the saucer.

“What’s his reason, then, for taking on Hamas?” Omar Yussef asked.

“He had to get something back from them, something important,” she said, “and now Hamas is fighting back.”

Suddenly Liana’s more interesting than I expected, Omar Yussef thought. “Something important? What exactly?”

Liana ran her tongue across her painted lips. “Documents that were stolen from him.”

The dirt files. “Did Suleiman al-Teef steal them?”

“Who?”

“What did these documents contain?”

“Information on top Fatah men,” Liana said. “He had to get them back. If they remained in the hands of Hamas, they’d use them to cause a real civil war. You heard how they slandered the Old Man.”

“How did Hamas get the documents?”

“They were stolen from my husband.”

“By whom?”

Liana shrugged.

“How did your husband come to possess these documents?” Omar Yussef said. “They originally belonged to the Old Man. Who gave them to Amin?”

Liana looked hard at Omar Yussef. “I didn’t say that they had belonged to the president. What makes you think that?”

Khamis Zeydan rolled his upper lip like a camel protesting the whip.

I messed this up, Omar Yussef thought. “I must have confused these papers with something else. Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve come across two dead bodies in four days. It’s very disorienting for an old schoolmaster.”

Liana raised one of her painted eyebrows. “The documents were gathered by my husband, not by the Old Man. They contain dirt on top party people. They were meant as an insurance policy, in case Amin were ever threatened.”

“Or blackmailed?”

Liana’s eyes were half closed, but alert. “Blackmailed about what?”

Khamis Zeydan sucked in his breath. “My friend Abu Ramiz has heard some unsavory rumors about your husband’s sexual appetite, Liana,” he said.

The woman’s eyes widened and she raised her voice for the first time. Omar Yussef detected a vicious edge that was at odds with the silk and gilt all around her. “You have quite the wrong idea about my husband,” she said. The skin on her throat shook and she turned to Khamis Zeydan. “Whatever grudge you may bear against Amin from the old days in Beirut, Abu Adel, I expect you to stand up for the reputation of a man who has struggled and sacrificed for his people.”

The police chief glanced at a porcelain statue of a leaping nymph on the side table by his armchair. He pushed a button by the nymph’s foot and a lamp set in her outstretched hand lit up. “Yes, he’s a great struggler for our people.”

Liana’s face grew stiff. She leaned over and clicked the button to shut off the light in the nymph’s grasp. Her hand lay on the table by the lamp. Against her fingers, tanned and freckled, the gold in her wedding ring seemed unnaturally bright. Khamis Zeydan gripped the arm of his chair, until his knuckles were white. Omar Yussef sensed the tension and knew that the former lovers would have touched, had he not been present.

“Perhaps you could tell me about Amin’s relationship with Ishaq?” he said. “So I don’t have to listen to what others might say about it.”

Liana drew a long breath and stared at her hand on the table. She lifted it and touched her forehead. “Amin had a big argument with Ishaq before his death.”

“He died four days ago. When did they argue?”

“A few weeks back.”

“Did it have something to do with these files about the Fatah leaders?”

Liana shook her head.

“Did Amin speak to you about it?” Omar Yussef asked.

“He didn’t have to. I was there.”

Omar Yussef wet his lips. “What happened?”

“Ishaq burst in here, very angry.” Liana covered her eyes. “He made accusations, against both me and Amin. They weren’t true. I told him so, but he refused to believe me. He ran out of here and I never saw him again.”

“Was it the last Amin saw of him?”

“Amin talked to him afterward by phone. I don’t know what they said. I couldn’t stand to think of the boy’s rage. He was so close to us.”

“What was the accusation?”