'Did he say anything else?'
'No. From the way he said it I knew he'd? hurt her. Id come up there with intentions of killing him and knew now that the time had come. He was coming closer, holding the knife in his palm, his eyes on me, beady, like those of a weasel. I started laughing, playing the fool, saying I was only joking and that the rest of the money was right there, behind the tree stump.
''Get it,' he ordered, as if talking to a slave. I told him it was buried under the stump, that it was a job for two men to roll it away.'
'You took a chance,' said Daniel. 'He could have killed you and come back later for the money.'
'Yes, it was risky,' said Anwar, clearly pleased. 'But he was greedy. He wanted everything right then and there. 'Push,' he ordered me. Then he knelt down beside me, holding the knife in one hand, using the other to try to roll the stump. I pretended to roll, too, reached out and pulled hard at his ankles. He fell, and before he could get up I grabbed the hammer and hit him with it. Many times.'
A dreamy look surfaced behind the eyeglasses.
'His skull broke easily. It sounded like a melon breaking on a rock. I took his knife and cut him. Kept it for a memorial.'
'Where did you cut him?' asked Daniel, wanting a wound match on tape, all the details taken care of. The body had been dug up and sent to Abu Kabir. Levi would be calling within a day or so.
'The throat.'
'Anywhere else?'
'The? the male organs.'
Two out of the three sites where Fatma had been butchered.
'What about his abdomen?'
'No.' Incredulity, as if the question were absurd.
'Why the throat and genitals?'
'To silence him, of course. And prevent further sin.'
'I see; What happened after that?'
'I left him there, went to my house, and returned with a spade. I buried him, then used the spade to roll the log over his grave. Right where I showed you.'
Abdelatif's remains had been lifted from a deep grave. It must have taken Anwar hours to dig it. The trunk hiding the excavation. Which made Daniel feel a little less foolish about sitting for hours, just a couple of meters away. Watching the house, keeping a dead man company.
'The only money you paid him was ten dollars,' said Daniel.
'Yes, and I took it back.'
'From out of his pocket?'
'No. He had it clenched in his greedy hand.'
'What denomination?' asked Daniel.
'A single American ten-dollar bill. I buried it with him.'
Exactly what had been found on the corpse.
'Is that all?' asked Anwar.
'One more thing. Was Abdelatif a drug user?'
'It wouldn't surprise me. He was scum.'
'But you don't know it for a fact.'
'I didn't know him,' said Anwar. 'I merely killed him.'
He wiped the tears from his face and smiled.
'What is it?' asked Daniel.
'I'm happy,' said Anwar. 'I'm very happy.'
Like a suite at the King David, thought Daniel, walking into Laufer's office. Wood-paneled and gold-carpeted, with soft lighting and a fine desert view. When it had been Gavrieli's, the decor had been warmer-shelves overflowing with books, photos of Gorgeous Gideon's equally gorgeous wife.
In one corner stood a case full of artifacts. Coins and urns and talismans, just like the collection he'd seen in Baldwin's office at the Amelia Catherine. Bureaucrats seemed to go in for that kind of thing. Were they trying to dress up their uselessness with imagined links to the heroes of the past? Over the case hung a framed map of Palestine which appeared to have been taken from an old book. Signed, inscribed photographs of all the Prime Ministers, from Ben Gurion on down, graced the walls-the pointed suggestion of friends in high places. But the inscriptions on the photos were noncommital, none of them mentioned Laufer by name, and Daniel wondered if the pictures belonged to the deputy commander or had been pulled out of some archive.
The deputy commander was in full uniform today, sitting behind a big Danish teakwood desk and drinking soda water.
An olive-wood tray holding a Sipholux bottle and two empty glasses sat near his right arm.
'Sit down,' he said, and when Daniel had done so, pushed a piece of paper across the desk. 'We'll be
