The Samaritan's secret

Liana shook her head, her hand over her face.

Khamis Zeydan reached for her arm and stroked it. His blue eyes were glassy. “That’s enough now, Abu Ramiz.” He stood and touched Liana’s head, his fingers reaching into the blowdried hair, pressing lightly on its lacquered bulk. When he took away his hand, her hair rose slowly to its original height.

Omar Yussef followed Khamis Zeydan out. The servant crossed the hall, his face blank and insolent, to open the front door. As he stepped into the sunshine, Omar Yussef heard a sound like the baying of a jackal. It came from the room where they had left Liana.

Chapter 26

Omar Yussef turned the key in the ignition, revved hard and gripped the wheel as the jeep bounced and stalled. Khamis Zeydan knocked the lever out of gear with his prosthetic left hand. “You’ve uncovered a few dead bodies this week,” he said. “Are you trying to make a corpse out of my jeep, too?”

“I told you I’m a bad driver.” Omar Yussef turned the starter and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The engine bellowed like a taboun oven when its flames catch a new log.

“You have to put it in gear, my brother.”

The guards at Kanaan’s gate coughed on the thick exhaust fumes. Omar Yussef blushed and fumbled with the gearshift, until the vehicle shook into motion. Once he had rattled into second gear, he stopped holding his breath.

“I can’t concentrate on driving. I keep thinking about what Liana just told us,” he said. “Kanaan and Ishaq had an argument.”

“I heard.”

“Don’t you see what that could mean?”

“Could?” Khamis Zeydan snorted.

Omar Yussef turned the jeep across the road and backed into a threepoint turn.

Khamis Zeydan looked doubtfully over his shoulder at the steep drop down to Nablus. “A hill start? This isn’t a driving test.”

Omar Yussef ran the engine noisily and lowered the hand brake, so that the jeep roared up the hill. One of the guards at Kanaan’s gate put his fingers in his ears.

“I’m turning around because we’re not going back to Nablus yet,” Omar Yussef said.

“What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to the Samaritan village. I want to see the priest.”

“What for? You want to check whether his Messiah came, after all?”

“Amin Kanaan had the dirt files, according to Liana. Then Hamas had them, because Ishaq handed them over. Liana said they were stolen from her husband. Did Ishaq steal them from Amin?”

“Awwadi stole the ancient Samaritan scroll and gave it to Ishaq in return for the files. And Ishaq gave the scroll to the priest.” Khamis Zeydan stared through the dusty windshield of the jeep.

“I don’t see why Kanaan would agree to that. They were important files and he got nothing out of the deal. Unless he wanted the Samaritans to get the scroll back.”

“It seems like that’d only be important to the six hundred Samaritans, not to Kanaan.”

Omar Yussef scratched his chin.

The Samaritan village showed white beyond the windbreak of pines on the ridge.

“Ishaq wanted the scroll back, for the Samaritans. It’s their holiest relic,” Omar Yussef said. “Maybe he was supposed to give something to Kanaan in return for the dirt files.”

Khamis Zeydan leered. “A little fireside companionship on lonely nights?”

Omar Yussef gave a slow, hesitant shake of his head. “It must have something to do with the secret account details.”

The police chief’s leer became a scowl. “Three hundred million dollars.”

“Does that sum of money make your diabetes feel more or less troublesome?” Omar Yussef laughed.

“It makes me want to throw up. That was our money.” Khamis Zeydan pointed toward the houses of Nablus in the valley. “Their money.”

“What would you do for it?”

Khamis Zeydan grimaced. “You want to know if I’d kill for it, schoolteacher? Killing’s not always so difficult, when the cause is just.”

“Are there things more shameful than killing?” Omar Yussef asked. What did his friend’s file contain that would still shame this acknowledged killer? Something worse than murder, he thought.

Khamis Zeydan watched the Samaritan village grow closer. “Are you intending to drive all the way in second gear?” he said, turning a hostile frown on Omar Yussef. “Or are you just trying to annoy me?”

Omar Yussef shifted awkwardly into third gear and the jeep picked up pace. He tensed his shoulders, struggling to hold the next curve, then he braked and let the jeep creep slowly along the ridge.

“The account numbers and passwords-that’s what Kanaan must have received from Ishaq,” Omar Yussef said. “Hamas got the dirt files. Ishaq got the scroll. Kanaan got the money, or at least the details of how to lay his hands on it.”

“Very neat. Everybody’s happy.”

“So why is Ishaq dead?” Omar Yussef thumped his fist against the steering wheel. “Kanaan was supposed to get the money. But he didn’t. The woman from the World Bank said she hadn’t traced any transactions indicating that such a sum of money had been moved. Ishaq must have held out on him, so Kanaan killed Ishaq.”

“He murdered his boyfriend?” Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “I’m prepared to believe almost anything about that bastard, but would he kill a kid he loved?”

“For three hundred million dollars? That’s real money, even to one of the richest men in Palestine.”

Khamis Zeydan raised his eyebrows.

“Ishaq said something to his wife about burying the financial details behind the temple, and he told the American from the World Bank that he had put the documents where anyone could find them,” Omar Yussef said. “Maybe they’re hidden on Mount Jerizim. Up there. Where Ishaq’s body was discovered.” He pointed toward the gray, square stones of the Byzantine fortress overlooking the Eternal Hill, the rock at the center of the ancient Samaritan temple.

As the jeep entered the village, a teenager scratched his misshapen ears and stared at Omar Yussef, his mouth wide and dumb, a basketball jammed between his elbow and his ribs.

“We’ve got one day to figure this out,” Omar Yussef said. “Or the World Bank is going to make this mess a problem for every Palestinian.”

They came to the small park beside Roween’s house. Charcoal blackened the rows of concrete flame pits, still smoking from the Passover feast, and the dry grass had been shredded by the feet of celebrating Samaritans.

Omar Yussef let the engine stall and stepped onto the curb in the silent village. When he swallowed, the movement of his Adam’s apple seemed loud in his throat.

A resonant thump cut the quiet. The boy with the strange ears shambled down the road. Every few paces he bounced his basketball, clutched it with both hands, and pulled it to the side of his head. Omar Yussef listened: the ball made a shadowy metallic chime after the deeper impact. The boy bellowed, frustrated that he couldn’t grab the ball quickly enough to hear that high note close to his ear. He senses that it would be beautiful, Omar Yussef thought.

He lifted a hand and called to the boy: “If you please.”

The boy held his basketball in front of his thighs. He slumped his shoulders and stared at Omar Yussef, his head twitching and his jaw hanging low.

“Where is the house of Jibril the priest, my boy?” Omar Yussef stepped closer.

The boy jerked his eyeballs up into his head and made a choking sound.