Meisoun gave Omar Yussef a phone message on a slip of paper when he arrived at the Sands Hotel. “It was a lady named Nirnberger,” she said. “She spoke very fast in English, so I didn’t understand the other details, ustaz. I hope I wrote the number correctly. Perhaps she too is a secret agent.” Her friendly smile made him feel weak. He wanted to collapse onto the reception desk and tell her the disturbing story of his day. He decided to call his wife, instead, as soon as he had dealt with the message.
As he mounted the stairs, he caught the scent of grilled chicken wafting from the breakfast room. “Meisoun, that shish tawouk smells good. Please have the kitchen send some up to my room, and a plate of hummus. ” He felt a stab of guilt that he could be consumed by the commonplace sensation of hunger so soon after seeing Cree’s corpse.
“Of course. To your health, ustaz,” she said.
The corridor outside his room was quiet. The hotel’s occupants were with Khamis Zeydan at the president’s office for the Revolutionary Council meeting. Omar Yussef listened to his slow feet on the carpet. It seemed a foolish thought, but he felt that death remained on his trail, no more than a few paces behind, as it had been throughout his days in Gaza. He heard its footfalls in the silence as he walked, dropping with a hiss like words of warning.
Omar Yussef’s room was hot and stuffy. He searched near the door for the switch Sami had used to shut off the air-conditioning, so that he could reactivate it. He found a digital gauge, a small dial and tiny, colored icons of a red sun and a blue snowflake. He fiddled with the dial, elicited some electronic bleeps, and waited, but nothing happened. He undid the buttons of his shirt, went to the telephone and dialed the number on Meisoun’s note. The line connected to a cellphone surrounded by the low, rushing sound of a speeding car’s interior.
“This is Nancy,” said a voice in the car in English.
It was a hands-free phone, like the one Omar Yussef’s son Ramiz had in his car. It gave him an uneasy feeling of talking into nothingness. “Missus Nirnberger?” Omar Yussef said.
“ Miz Nirnberger.”
Omar Yussef wondered what that meant. “This is Omar Yussef speaking.”
“Mister Yussef, thank you for calling me back.” Nancy Nirnberger sounded American to Omar Yussef. She spoke with a deliberate excitement, as though it were delightful to receive a call, and whose call could be more unexpected and agreeable than one from the principal of the UN girls’ school in Dehaisha camp? “I’m heading up the negotiating team that was on its way to the checkpoint when James was hit.”
Omar Yussef nodded at the phone. Then he remembered that she couldn’t see him. “Yes, of course,” he said.
“We’ve talked through the situation with our guys in Jerusalem and New York, and we’re inclined to think that it’s too risky for foreign nationals to be in the Gaza Strip right now. In light of what happened to James. So we turned around at the checkpoint and we’re en route to Jerusalem again. As we speak, all other foreign employees at our Gaza City office are on their way out of the Strip.” Then, as if she were holding up a new dress for him to admire, Nirnberger added: “What do you think?”
I think it’s too risky for me, too, even if I’m not a foreigner who’s worth keeping out of harm’s way. “I agree that it’s very dangerous.”
“We’ll coordinate negotiations for Magnus’s release from the office in Jerusalem. We feel that from there we’ll be able to manage contacts with senior government and security guys on the Palestinian side. But we need for you to remain on the ground in Gaza to provide situation assessments and to make material contacts.”
“To make what?”
“To meet the guys who have Magnus, if they want to set a meeting.”
Omar Yussef gripped the receiver tightly. “I see.”
“None of the local hires in our Gaza City office are as close to this as you, so you’re the man on this one, Mister Yussef.” Nirnberger’s tone reminded Omar Yussef of the American politicians he had seen in television interviews. He imagined her with her head held to the side, nodding archly, a knowing smile slightly suppressed, as though she had heard all the secrets. “Is there anything you need, in the meantime? Just name it.”
“The hospital would like James’s details so they can notify the next of kin and transport the body.”
“Taken care of, Mister Yussef. Already done. We haven’t just been sitting around. Don’t worry. We’re behind you.”
You certainly are. “Did James have close family?”
“I don’t know, really. I didn’t personally handle that.”
“He had a great-grandfather who’s buried in the British War Cemetery here in Deir el-Balah. I know the grave meant a lot to him. Perhaps his family would like him to be buried there, because of his personal bond with the place.”
Nirnberger dropped the bonhomie. She sounded as though she were speaking without moving her jaw. “Well, we can put that to them, but I think it’d be a mistake to set up a new tomb that might be the focus of anti-UN demonstrations down there.” She cleared her throat and reverted to her cheery tone. “So there’s a British cemetery in Gaza, huh? What’s up with that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who’d have thought there’d be a bunch of dead Brits buried way the heck down in Gaza?”
“Gaza has a special relationship with the dead.” Omar Yussef’s grip grew tighter still. “I will keep you informed of what I learn here, Missus Nirnberger.”
She let the missus go this time. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get Magnus out of there.”
“If Allah wills it.”
“You bet.”
The hotel room was dark. Omar Yussef flicked the switch on the nightstand lamp. He rubbed his shoulder where the stone had hit him in the riot at Cree’s burning car. He gave a rasping laugh when he realized that the shoulder hurt so much he’d almost forgotten the wide bruise on the side of his head. The idea of food had made him nauseous all day, but now he was famished. He put the shish tawouk out of his mind; it only made him more ravenous to think of it being prepared downstairs. He dialed his home. Once again, Nadia answered.
“Hello, Nadia. What’s happening there? Everything all right?”
“Grandpa, did you see the website?”
“I was only able to have a very quick look at it.”
“What did you think?”
Nadia’s voice was reedy with excitement. Omar Yussef wondered how much he could tell her about the reality of what her Agent O had gone through since she last saw him. He feared that the filth surrounding him like the dust on the air would harm her. “I liked the website,” he said. “The lady who showed it to me on the computer was very impressed, except that now she thinks I’m a spy.”
Nadia laughed.
“When I come home, I want you to show me how you do the design,” Omar Yussef said, “and how you put it into the computer so that it comes out in a computer on this end, too.”
“It’s easy, Grandpa.”
“Only because you’re very clever. Is Grandma there?”
When Maryam came to the phone, a child was whimpering in the background. “It’s Dahoud,” she said. “He misses you. He saw something about Gaza on the news and he’s been crying all evening. He said he wouldn’t go to bed ‘until uncle calls.’”
Maryam and Omar Yussef had adopted Dahoud and his sister Miral at the turn of the year, after the violence of Bethlehem took their parents. The boy’s concern for him touched Omar Yussef. The poor little fellow had already lost a beloved father and no doubt feared the death of the man who had stepped into his place. “Tell him I’m fine, he can go to bed now, and I’ll see him soon.”
“When will that be, Omar?”
“I don’t know.” He cleared his throat and tried to sound nonchalant. “You saw the news?”
“No, I told you, Dahoud saw it. But I can’t get any sense out of him. Why? What happened?” Maryam’s voice was edgy and loud, as though she had dived suddenly into the phone.
Omar Yussef hesitated. “Well, Magnus was kidnapped by the Saladin Brigades and another UN fellow who was working with me was blown up in his car-”
Maryam gave a high-pitched gasp. “By Allah, Omar, you have to get out of there.”
“I have to see to Magnus’s release, Maryam. The UN won’t send anyone else. They’re scared to have a foreigner here.”
“Don’t they have local Gazan staff?”
“I assume they’re keeping their heads down.”
“So should you. Are you to be sacrificed?”
“Maryam, I can handle this.” He could imagine her shaking her head at the other end of the line.
“You’re not so tough, Omar. Just because you stood up to the gangs in Bethlehem last year, doesn’t mean you can do the same thing in a strange town. Gaza is a terrible place.”
“I can take care of myself. And Abu Adel is here too. He won’t let me do anything risky.”
“Abu Adel may be police chief in Bethlehem, but in Gaza he’s nothing. They’ll kill him as though they were squashing an insect. And he can be just as rash as you, Omar.”
“Who are they, Maryam?”
“Whoever it was who kidnapped Magnus and blew up this other man.”
“It might not be the same group.”
“That only doubles the threat.”
Omar Yussef never liked to argue with Maryam. Usually, her perspective was more simplistic than his, and he would grow angry when she failed to understand the subtleties that were evident to him. This time, he knew she was right, and just as surely he knew he had no choice but to defy her logic. “Maryam, I need you to be calm. I don’t want you to upset Dahoud any more than he already is, or Nadia and the other children. Now, go to Dahoud and tell him not to worry. And Maryam-”
“What?”
“If you don’t put on a convincing show, Nadia will see through you. So you’d better really persuade yourself that your poor husband will be all right.”
“I can handle Nadia.”
“She’s a lot more difficult to bamboozle than the gunmen of Gaza, my darling. So don’t take it lightly.”
There was a knock at the door. “Maryam, room service is here with my dinner. You see, you were so flustered that you didn’t check if I was eating properly.”
“I’m derelict in my duty as a wife,” Maryam said. “Come home where you’ll be safe-from dangerous men and bad hotel cooks.”
Omar Yussef hung up with a few endearments.
He picked at his grilled chicken and dabbed some flat bread into the plate of hummus. He wondered what Magnus was eating, in whichever filthy little room the Saladin Brigades had hidden him. His mind gravitated to the corpses in the morgue at Shifa Hospital, no matter how he tried to focus on his food. His stomach ached for nourishment, but it turned at the thought of the dead men laid out on the dissecting tables. His head was heavy; the bruise on his temple had come back to life and was pulsing and jabbing at his brain. He opened the minibar. There was a large bottle of mineral water, some rosewater colas and canned fruit juices. He smiled bleakly at the empty racks in the small refrigerator, designed for miniature whiskies and vodkas. Allah be thanked that the Islamists of Gaza put so little temptation in my way, he thought.
He sat at the foot of his bed until the chicken was cold, slowly working through the plastic bottle of water. It halted the nausea and soothed the pumping sensation in his temple. He considered sleeping, but he couldn’t slow his thoughts. Instead, he listened to the wind, loud against the picture windows, and the pattering of the dust it blew against the panes.
It was almost midnight when there was a knock at the door. Omar Yussef froze. A pause, then a second knock.
“Abu Ramiz?”
It was Sami’s voice. Omar Yussef opened the door. The young man stood confidently in the corridor, smoking. His black T-shirt was tight across his muscular torso and he had a thumb tucked casually into the belt of his jeans. He looked Omar Yussef up and down, evidently finding his raggedness amusing, and smiled. He put his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm. “How’re you feeling, Abu Ramiz?”
“Rough, Sami. Where’s Abu Adel?”
“He’s down the corridor gossiping with some of the other Revolutionary Council members in his room.”
“The meeting is over?”
“The Council? Yes, for now. Those bastards never really finish talking, though.”
“Come in.”
Sami sat at the desk and glanced at the chicken.
“Be my guest,” Omar Yussef said.
Sami picked up the chicken pieces in his fingers and ate them languidly. “Thank you, Abu Ramiz. It’s the best shish tawouk I’ve had in an age. I haven’t eaten very well since I was deported from Bethlehem.”
“You miss your mother’s cooking?”
“It’s the best.”
“I know, I’ve tasted it.”
“Of course you have. My father speaks highly of you, and naturally I know your reputation around town as a man of integrity.”
“When will the Israelis let you come home, Sami?”
The young man turned a cube of chicken in his fingers, regarding it meditatively, like a connoisseur with an expensive cigar. “When my home is burned to the ground and demolished by my neighbors.” He chewed the chicken and looked at Omar Yussef. “Not before then.”
“Do you have any news of Magnus?”
Sami shook his head. “I’m trying to find out who killed James. I believe that will lead us to Magnus.”
“Remember you told me about the Husseini Manicure? That’s what had happened to Odwan before he died. I thought of telling you about it, when you were driving us back from the morgue, but I just couldn’t stand to speak of it.”
Sami ate another piece of chicken. He licked his fingers and nodded with understanding at Omar Yussef.
“The Saladin Brigades might murder Magnus in revenge for Odwan’s death,” Omar Yussef said. “Can we find him before they discover that their comrade has been killed?”
Sami shook his head. “No chance. If they don’t already know Odwan’s dead, they’ll have found out before dawn. They have men inside the jail with hidden cellphones. They know everything that goes on in the Saraya and all the other prisons and military bases. But I don’t think they’ll kill Magnus.”
“They have to show a response, to avenge Odwan.”
“I don’t get the sense that they’re ready to escalate things as far as killing more foreigners. They’ll choose something else. Something domestic that will send a message to the top people in Gaza, but that won’t bring the entire outside world down on them.” Sami held the plate of hummus in his palm and ran his bread around the edge of the chickpea paste, brooding.
“How did the Revolutionary Council meeting go?”
“Abu Adel says it was tumultuous. And dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Omar Yussef remembered what Khamis Zeydan had said about the growing confrontation between the security chiefs.
“General Husseini accused Colonel al-Fara of corruption. He called for an official investigation of al-Fara.”
“But General Husseini is corrupt, too, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but these Councils are strange. If someone accuses you of something, you can’t just turn around and say, ‘By Allah, you’re as corrupt as me.’ It makes you look like a stupid kid whose only defense is to turn the charge back on the accuser and, more importantly, you’re admitting the truth of the accusation.”
“So what did Colonel al-Fara do?”
“Abu Adel says al-Fara was silent. But everyone else was in uproar.”
If al-Fara was silent, Omar Yussef calculated it was a perilous sign. In that silence, the Colonel would have been plotting his revenge.
Omar Yussef remembered the comical exuberance, the heavy paunch and the wet, pebble-gray eyes of General Husseini, the man who probably had asphyxiated Bassam Odwan. Across the table at the Council, he imagined the lank, black hair and mustache of Colonel al-Fara, the bony hand collecting sputum in a tissue and the cigarette smoke flaring from his nostrils. Al-Fara, the torturer of Eyad Masharawi. The meeting of the Council had set the two men up for a final confrontation. With what new evil would they move to their endgames?
“Who will lose this battle between Husseini and al-Fara?”
“The first one to show weakness,” Sami said. “You know the proverb: When the cow falls down, many knives come out. Each of them has enemies who’ll be eager to cut off a piece of the carcass, as soon as it’s vulnerable.”
“Did anyone mention the bomb that killed James?”
“At the Revolutionary Council? No, it didn’t come up. Everyone was focused on the fight between Husseini and al-Fara.”
Omar Yussef took a strawberry-banana juice from the minibar and handed Sami a rosewater coke. He poured the thick, syrupy liquid into a glass for himself. It was the nearest thing to food he could keep down. He wanted to sleep, but there was still one thing he needed to talk about.
“Sami, that story Odwan told us about the Qassam rockets. Is it correct?”
“That they brought a single prototype to Gaza through the Rafah tunnels and manufactured masses of them here?”
Omar Yussef nodded.
“Yes, it was a North Korean missile transported through Iran,” Sami said. “Now everyone’s trying to secure an even bigger weapon. The group that uses it successfully against Israel will gain a lot of prestige on the street and be able to impose its will on the president.”
“The Saladin Brigades?”
Sami shrugged. “The more trouble the Saladin Brigades make, the more the president needs to keep them on his side. If you want money from the president, step one is to make a lot of trouble in Gaza and to kill some Israelis from time to time. Ultimately, the president will pay you to keep a lid on it.”
Omar Yussef put his forefinger to his chin and frowned. “We know the Saladin Brigades don’t have this new prototype missile, because it was stolen from them after they smuggled it into Rafah. So who does have it? That’s what we need to find out. Perhaps we can present the Brigades with the missile in return for Magnus’s freedom.”
Sami looked serious as he finished the last of the hum-mus. “You’d better think that through, Abu Ramiz. Whoever has the missile won’t be handing it over to you, and the nastiest men in Gaza will be trying to find it and take it away from them, too.”
Omar Yussef realized that, even if he found the missile, he could never give it to the Saladin Brigades. No matter who possessed this missile, they would use it to kill, to draw down the Israeli army on the refugee camps, and to dominate the corrupt politics of Gaza. If he found it, he would have to destroy it. But then how was he going to bargain for Magnus’s life?
He groaned and put his hand to the bruise on his temple. “The UN negotiators aren’t coming. They turned back at the checkpoint. They think it’s too dangerous here. We’re alone, Sami.”
“We’re better off without them. Those people think they have all the answers, but they don’t know how to listen. They’re useless to us. They’re a shekel-worth of shit.”
Omar Yussef looked at the young man, surprised at his vehemence.
“I’ll try to arrange a meeting with the Saladin Brigades people here in Gaza, so you can ask them about what happened to James,” Sami said. He wiped his hands on a napkin, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his back pocket, and stood. He smiled apologetically. “I know you don’t like me to smoke in here, Abu Ramiz, so I’ll say goodnight. You need to sleep.”