The Fourth Assassin

kill?”

Ismail flicked the safety catch on the gun and caught his bottom lip in his teeth. “I wanted to do something to make you proud of me.”

Omar Yussef felt tears coming. Perhaps my teachings weren’t as useless as I feared, he thought. But he was still a teacher, and he suppressed his emotions with a rough clearing of the throat. “You think I’m proud of what you said into that microphone?”

Ismail’s eyes glistened. “Proud that I decided not to murder the president. Proud that I made my protest peacefully instead.”

“You weren’t so peaceful when you tried to run me down with that Jeep.”

Ismail licked his lips. “Ustaz, I placed my faith in people who took advantage of my weaknesses. They made me into a machine. Even so, I felt awful when I was tailing you, threatening you. Once you spoke to me, it was as though I had become human again.”

Omar Yussef caressed the side of Ismail’s neck and laid his hand on the boy’s chest.

“I saw you in Ala’s apartment-just a glimpse,” Ismail said. “You looked dreadful. There was blood all around you. I wanted to console you, but I knew I had to get away. You must’ve heard me, because you came to the door. I thought you might identify me to the police, so I’m sorry to say that, in my fear, I tried to put you out of the way.”

“I see.”

“When you said you would forgive me, I felt all the hatred in me collapse. All I could think of was the memory of my school days and the faith you placed in me back then. I failed you, and I tried to destroy you as though that would erase my failure. But when you spoke to me, I thought that perhaps I could give myself another chance.”

“But what a risk you’ve taken.”

“I’m prepared to pay the price for all this.” Ismail examined Omar Yussef’s face, as though seeing a dear friend for the last time. “Just as I was ready to pay with my life if I had assassinated the president.”

“I’m glad that you chose this way instead. But I’m afraid you’ll go to jail here in America for what you’ve done.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Once you’re released, Islamic Jihad will try to track you down,” Omar Yussef said. “I’ve forgiven you, but I doubt they will. They expected you to kill the president, not to play a joke on him.”

“It’s true. They’ll come after me.”

“Could you disappear like Nizar did?”

“The Jihad always catches up with you. They’ll find Nizar in the end, too, just as I tracked down Marwan Hammiya for them.”

“It was you who forced Marwan back into drugs?”

“I blackmailed him into running a drug operation for us. I connected him with Nizar and Rashid. I ran the whole thing. Unfortunately I didn’t pay attention to Nizar’s-distractions.”

Omar Yussef heard a hammering on a door down the corridor. “The girl?”

“I only found out about her after Nizar committed the murder.”

“Which murder? He killed Rashid and Rania’s father.”

Ismail shook his head. “I was waiting for Nizar outside the cafe the night Rania’s father died. I thought he might need money and try to get some from Marwan. But he didn’t go to the cafe.”

“Then who killed Marwan?” Omar Yussef said. “Did you do it, Ismail? Had he double-crossed Islamic Jihad somehow?”

The boy let his head dip from side to side in good-humored supplication. “Not guilty, ustaz.”

Heavy boots beat along the gallery. The door opened, and Colonel Khatib stepped inside. He lifted a Colt Python, massive even in his big hand, and trained it on Omar Yussef. “I knew you were a stupid bastard, schoolteacher,” he said, “but not this stupid.”

Omar Yussef stared into the broad barrel of the gun. It seemed to dilate like the angry nostrils of the man who held it. His mouth was dry. He felt a sudden cramp in his bowels.

“It’s me you want.” Ismail laid his pistol on the desk and lifted his hands.

“You’re the fucking translator?” Colonel Khatib’s voice was hoarse, as though he had spent the previous night yelling in a crowded bar.

“No, I’m the translator.” Khatib swept his big revolver toward the young man bound in the chair. The man became shrill. “No, really, I’m only the translator.”

“He wasn’t doing the translation for the president’s speech,” Omar Yussef said.

Khatib spoke through his bared teeth. “Who did that?”

“That was me.” Ismail held himself straight. “I’m thinking of making translation my new career.”

“Translation? You bastard,” Khatib said.

Omar Yussef went toward Ismail. “When Nizar showed me the ad in the newspaper, I remembered the Assassins’ phrase about ‘he who bears in his hands the death of kings.’ I couldn’t stand to think that the happy boy I once knew had become that man. I’m glad you changed your mind.”

Ismail took Omar Yussef’s hand and rubbed the bones along his wrist affectionately. Omar Yussef smiled and squeezed back, but the boy went pale as he looked over his old teacher’s shoulder. He whispered the declaration of faith: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”

Omar Yussef followed Ismail’s eyes and saw Colonel Khatib stepping forward with his Colt raised. The blast was tremendous. Ismail’s hand wrenched out of Omar Yussef’s grip as his body lurched back onto the desk, shot through the chest, slamming against the window of the booth. A few delegates in the hall looked up at the smear of blood on the glass. Ismail pitched to the floor, spraying his papers under his body.

“Allahu akbar.” Colonel Khatib sneered at the corpse. “Translate that, you son of a whore.”

“Allah is most great,” Omar Yussef murmured. He went to his knees and took Ismail’s lifeless hand. Trembling, he averted his eyes from the boy’s wounded torso. His breath caught in his throat. Is any speech, any political declaration, worth this death, O Ismail? he thought.

“He’d surrendered,” he said to Khatib. “Why did you shoot him?”

Khatib shoved the big Colt into his shoulder holster. “Unlike your friend the Bethlehem police chief, I don’t take chances.”

Blood seeped into the pages from which Ismail had read, strewn across the carpet. Omar Yussef looked down at them. The paper was soaked, and the words were all illegible.

Chapter 31

Khamis Zeydan bent to stroke Omar Yussef’s hand and spoke with unaccustomed gentleness. “You don’t have to make this speech if you don’t feel up to it,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Magnus?”

Omar Yussef’s boss nodded with such fervor that his chair creaked. “Stay here in your hotel room and rest,” he said. “You’ve had a dreadful shock. It’s only been a few hours since that poor fellow was shot right in front of you.”

The schoolteacher lay on his bed, propped against the pillows, his shirt open to his navel. The sweats had stopped since he had taken some aspirin, but he couldn’t get enough water down to cut the dryness in his mouth. He tried to talk, but only croaked and choked. He drank another sip from the glass on the nightstand. “I’m determined,” he said, with a cough.

Khamis Zeydan settled on the edge of the bed. “Our president’s already on his way home. His flight left JFK an hour ago. I have no more responsibilities here. I can stay and look after you.”

“I’d prefer a prettier nurse.”

“I have a duty to your wife, who is also my friend, to protect you from such temptations. Even so, I’m not offering to give you a sponge bath.”