"Doesn't fit the MO," agreed Remo.
"If we are fortunate, the preliminary findings of the FBI have been logged into the computer in the Oklahoma City branch office of the FBI."
"Would they work that fast?" "Everyone files on computer these days."
"Except you and I. Right, Little Father?"
Chiun sniffed, "I will have no truck with machines that beep at one like a nagging wife."
Smith was keying so furiously that his fingers, tapping the flat white letters and numbers on the desk, caused them to flare briefly.
"I have something!" he said hoarsely. They crowded around.
The screen displayed an FBI computer form that had been filled in. Their eyes raced down the entries. Almost at the same time, they alighted on the same line. It was headed Suspect Name.
The name typed on the glowing amber line was one they all recognized: Joseph Camel.
Chapter 13
It was perhaps inevitable that Yusef Gamal would come to be called Abu Gamalin-"Father of Camels."
Even as a boy, he had shown the strength of his namesake, the camel. He possessed camel shoulders. His curly hair was reminiscent of a camel's thick coat as well. And perhaps not as noticeably, he had the prominent nose of a camel.
A mighty nose it was, too. It was the first thing one noticed about Yusef Gamal, eventually to be known as Abu Gamalin.
So it was not strange that in his early years, the other Palestinian boys nicknamed him Al Mahour-"the Nose."
"That is not a bad nom de guerre, " his father had told him.
"It is not a warrior's name," Yusef lamented.
"There are worse things to be called," said his father in a strange tone of voice. He was looking at Yusef's face when he spoke those fateful words. And if he was looking at his face, Yusef remembered thinking, he had to be looking at his nose. It was unavoidable. Like looking up at the sky and seeing the sun. By the time Yusef turned thirteen, his voice had yet to break and the hairs on his lower body were thin and unimpressive. By then, he had killed several men, for this was what Palestinians of his age did in those days. For the intifada was in full cry in the Occupied Territories, where the Zionist entity was most vulnerable. His skill at killing Israelis came to the attention of Hezbollah, and Yusef had been summoned to Lebanon, making contact with others of his kind. There on the banks of Nahr-al-Mawt-the River of Death-he was trained in the lethal arts, wearing fatigues and a checkered kaffiyeh over his face.
They were glorious days, filled with bloodshed and maiming. Through it all, Yusef fully expected to die. He longed to die. He prayed to Allah the Compassionate that he die in mortal combat, for he had been taught that the gates of Paradise could only be opened by breaking them down with Zionist skulls.
Yusef was responsible for denuding of flesh many Zionist skulls in the hellhole that his kind had made of Beirut.
When the tide turned inevitably against the Palestinian cause, and the PLO had sold out Hezbollah and embraced the Zionist enemy, Yusef found himself not dead but very much alive. He was disappointed. He wanted to die. He yearned to die. He had been taught by the religious leader of Hezbollah that to be martyred was a thing to be embraced wholeheartedly.
"A martyr is automatically granted entrance to Paradise," Yusef was assured. "In Paradise there is no toil, no cold, no pain. Every man wears green silk, and the sweetest grapes are always within reach."
"What about women?" Yusef asked.
"In Paradise the blessed are each allotted seventy-two virgins, untouched by man or jinn. These are called houris. And they belong to the martyr exclusively."
"Seventy-two?" asked Yusef, brightened by his prospects.
Thus, finding himself in a PLO detention camp, still living for his unkissed houris awaiting him in Paradise, only compounded the matter. Here he was no longer the feared Nose, but only Yusef Gamal, out of bullets and out of hope.
"I will never dance with my houris rotting away in this place of pestilence," he complained to a fellow Hezbollah freedom fighter.
"I hear there are great opportunities in Afghanistan," said his fellow Palestinian.
"Afghanistan?"
"Yes. The godless Russians have been driven out. It is jihad."
Yusef had visibly brightened. "Holy war! Killing Jews!"
"There are no Jews in Afghanistan."
"What is the glory in that?" Yusef complained. "Afghan skulls will not break down the gates of Paradise."
"That is not what the mullahs and imams are saying."
Yusef shook his head vigorously. "No, it would take too many Afghan skulls to gain me entrance to Paradise. I do not have all my life in which to martyr myself. What good will I be to the compliant houris if I am too old and feeble to adore them? These women are expecting certain manly duties of me."
"If you change your mind, speak to Muzzamil. He will see that you get to Afghanistan."
Eventually boredom got to Yusef Gamal, and he made the acquaintance of the mysterious Muzzamil. "I am interested in Afghanistan," Yusef explained. "I understand the opportunities for martyrdom are very great there."
Muzzamil had a very thick beard and flashing opaline eyes, which immediately fell upon the exact center of Yusef's visage.
"You have an interesting nose."
"Thank you, but what about Afghanistan?"
"It is a very Jewish nose."
And hearing this insult, Yusef Gamal seized the insulter by the throat and attempted to squeeze his head off.
Others came and clubbed him off Muzzamil. "He is a hothead, forgive him, O Muzzamil."
"He is Palestinian. That is the same thing," Muzzamil said as the good color returned to his dark, bearded face. His voice sounded squeezed, but his tone was without fear or anger.
"It is sometimes good to have a Jewish nose," Muzzamil told Yusef, who promptly threw off his compatriots and took another lunge at the hateful Muzzamil.
This time Muzzamil was ready for him. Yusef, who was used to fighting with Kalashnikovs and RPG's, did not expect something as lowly as a fist to lay him out. In truth, he never saw the fist that connected with the stubbled point of his chin.
When he regained consciousness, Muzzamil was bending over him. "Your nose is not broken. That is good."
"My jaw feels like broken glass," Yusef muttered dazedly.
"It will heal. For what lies ahead, you will need that Zionist nose of yours."
"I go to Afghanistan?"