The Fourth Assassin

Marwan again, Omar Yussef thought. He glanced at Khamis Zeydan. The police chief stroked the glove on his prosthetic hand.

Hantash pushed himself to his feet. “I have to leave, ustaz. I’m refereeing a basketball game at the community center. Where can I find you? I’ll be in touch if I discover anything useful. Rashid is a good Muslim, and I want to help find him. Also, I like your son, though we never see him at the mosque.”

“I’m at the Stuart Hotel in Manhattan.”

Hantash flicked his fingers together as though he were counting money.

Omar Yussef gave a laugh that sounded as though he were choking. “We’re not big-money men. My room is paid for by the UN. I’m the principal of their school in Dehaisha. My friend Abu Adel is security adviser to our president.”

Khamis Zeydan whistled and raised his eyebrows. “My friend gives away all my secrets,” he said, standing and shaking his foot to get the blood flowing. “You’ve been very helpful, Brother Nahid.”

At the cubbyholes in the hall, Omar Yussef fretted the tassels on his loafers. Sergeant Abayat suggested that these former PLO gang people might deal out street justice to a drug dealer, he thought. Hantash knew Nizar was dealing drugs. He also knew that the Alamut Mosque was connected to the Assassins, so perhaps he’d be knowledgeable enough to have left the clue about the Veiled Man. “If you were aware that a Palestinian was pushing drugs to people in this neighborhood,” he called across the carpet to Hantash, “what would you do about it?”

The young man flicked out the lights in the mosque. In the darkness, his throaty voice was deep. “I’d turn him in to the police, ustaz. That’s all.”

Omar Yussef waited at the door for Khamis Zeydan to lace up his shoes. “Should we go to Marwan now?”

“It’s getting late,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Marwan might have customers-even a front has to have a few. He might not be free to talk. Go tomorrow, so you can catch him when the cafe is quiet.”

At the top of the steps, the traffic lights dazzled on the wet pavement. Beyond the intersection at the end of the block, the warning blinkers flashed red on top of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Cars rattled down the side street past the green light. Omar Yussef breathed the cold air. The men in the mosque prayed in the direction of Mecca, but the home of Islam in the Saudi desert seemed to be on another planet. He wondered how they even knew which way to turn. Did their prayers rise to the sky and bounce down to the holy city, like a call from a satellite phone?

Across the road, a man stirred in front of a thick retaining wall by the intersection. The traffic lights changed, and a car made a right turn, its headlights illuminating the man’s face and his black coat. He was watching Omar Yussef. The car moved on, and the man disappeared. Omar Yussef headed toward the end of the block, but when he reached the corner there was no sign of the man. He stared into the darkness along the empty street.

“Just because you have a new coat doesn’t mean we ought to hang around in the cold,” Khamis Zeydan said. “The subway is in this direction. Hurry up.”

Omar Yussef followed his friend reluctantly, looking back every few paces to search for the man who had been watching him. His pulse ran fast. Though he had seen it only for a moment, he had recognized the stern, bearded face.

It was Ismail. The fourth Assassin.

Chapter 15

The snow drifted down over First Avenue. In the long UN Conference Hall building, Omar Yussef wiped its traces from his brow with a handkerchief. Delicate flakes attached to the tall, picture window and slipped down the pane as the heat from the hallway seeped through the glass. A new snowflake settled, and he touched his finger to the spot, wondering if the pattern of the ice crystal outside was as unique as the fingerprint he left on his side of the window.

The brief glimpse the snowflakes gave of themselves before they melted away reminded him of the flicker of light that had illuminated Ismail’s face. The sudden appearance of the fourth member of The Assassins disturbed him. Was Ismail’s presence in New York connected to the murder in the apartment where his three former friends lived?

A short Latino woman rolled her cleaning cart by him, favoring her left hip as she hefted her heavy buttocks. She halted outside the General Assembly Hall and polished the window where a group of schoolchildren had been pressed against it. Feeling guilty, Omar Yussef rubbed away his fingerprint with his handkerchief.

He followed the cleaner’s progress down the hallway. Its simple modernist design wasn’t to his taste. He preferred the traditional vaulted ceilings and colorful tiles of the Middle East. But it was a good place from which to watch the snow come down, and he felt its delicate beauty touching his face still.

He checked his watch. It was almost 10 A.M. He would show himself at the conference this morning-just to keep his boss happy, since he had missed yesterday’s opening session- then he would take the subway to Bay Ridge to talk to Marwan. He turned back to the window, but the magic of the snowflakes was sullied by his memory of the blood he had seen in Little Palestine.

A slim Russian blonde led a party of tourists toward the mural of Norman Rockwell’s Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Omar Yussef whispered. Behind the tour group, he stared at Rockwell’s mosaic faces filling the wall. They were supposed to represent all the nations of the world. They looked back at him like the melange of ethnici-ties that stared through the window of any crowded New York subway car. None of them, he thought, looked like him.

The Russian guide led the tourists past Omar Yussef. They broke around him as though he were a rock in a stream. When they were gone, only one man remained beneath the mural, leering at him.

“Morning of joy, Deputy Director-General Abdel Hadi,” Omar Yussef said.

“Morning of light, Abu Ramiz.” The schools inspector approached Omar Yussef and reached out to touch his quilted coat. “This isn’t up to your usual fashionable standards.”

“Perhaps I could borrow one of your polyester suits, instead.”

“Or your son could lend you some prison fatigues.”

Omar Yussef’s head went back as though he had been jabbed on the nose.

“Your friend Khamis Zeydan was trying to get the president to intervene with the New York police last night. On behalf of your son. I just happened to be in the president’s suite at the time.” Smug at his proximity to power, Abdel Hadi’s breath shivered sensuously, like a cat’s purr. “Sadly, the president decided there was nothing he could do.”

“There’s no need for interventions. My son will soon be released.”

“Perhaps your UN pals would do something for the boy. I’m sure it would interest them to learn that their keynote speaker is the father of a murder suspect.”

Even if we were part of the same delegation, this man might undermine me. That’s the way of Palestinian politics, Omar Yussef thought. With me attending as a UN delegate, I’m truly fair game. “My son isn’t a suspect.”

“How do they put it-he’s helping the police with their inquiries? Is that it?”

Omar Yussef clicked his tongue.

“As he once helped the Israelis?” Abdel Hadi said.

“He did nothing of the sort. The Israelis arrested him along with hundreds of other youths from Bethlehem. It was a big intifada sweep. Almost every male below the age of thirty was taken in. There was nothing to it. You know that.”

Abdel Hadi flattened a lick of black hair over his dark, bald scalp. He brushed the dandruff that adhered to his fingers onto the tail of his jacket and licked his lips with the tip of his yellowish tongue. “Your son is accused of murder-”

“Not accused of anything-”

“-yet you maintain that circumstances will soon enough reveal him to be harmless.”

“Of course he is.”