The Collaborator of Bethlehem (25 page)

“Look, you have to admit that George Saba can’t be the collaborator,” Omar Yussef said. “Hussein was assassinated tonight while George was in jail. Could he have led the Israelis to Hus-sein from inside his prison cell?”

“Since the Israelis killed Hussein,” Jihad said, “doesn’t that prove that he was no collaborator? Your accusation against him doesn’t make sense. Why would they kill their own agent?”

The Martyrs Brigades leader looked about him, as though making sure no one could overhear. It seemed to Omar Yussef that a tinge of regret passed over Jihad Awdeh’s face as he looked at the crowd of gunmen inside. Quietly, he spoke. “Just before Hussein left his headquarters for the
iftar
, Khamis Zeydan was with him. Hussein told the police chief where he was going.”

Omar Yussef remembered Khamis Zeydan’s phone call from the side of Hussein Tamari’s burning vehicle. The policeman had told him that he knew Hussein was in the destroyed jeep because he was following him when the missile struck. Omar Yussef felt a deep horror. Already he suspected his friend of betraying Dima Abdel Rahman. Certainly he knew that Khamis Zeydan hated the Martyrs Brigades boss who scorned and humiliated his authority as police chief even to his face. He had wondered why Khamis Zeydan was at the scene of Hussein’s death when he received the phone call. Jihad Awdeh wondered, too.

Jihad opened the balcony door. Voices spilled out. The living room was filling with gunmen who would depart from here to Hussein Tamari’s funeral. “I have to go now. We’re burying the martyrs.”

Omar Yussef nodded. He shook the hand that Jihad Awdeh proferred. It was cold, but Omar Yussef, too, found it chilly on the balcony. He passed through the crowd of burly men in their sweaty camouflage jackets. They carried their Kalash-nikovs, which they would fire into the air as they took what was left of the martyr Hussein to his final rest.

Omar Yussef ran his suspicions about Khamis Zeydan through his head again as he went down the stairs. If Jihad Awdeh believed the police chief was guilty, Khamis Zeydan was in danger. Omar Yussef wanted to call his friend immediately. But if Khamis Zeydan was prepared to let George Saba die for something he hadn’t done, could Omar Yussef count him as a friend any more? Was he even a man whose life was worth protecting?

As he crossed the street Omar Yussef briefly saw the silhouette of his granddaughter Nadia, still watching from the window of his house. Then she was gone.

Chapter 24

W
hen Nadia stepped away from the window, Omar Yussef wanted to hold her, comfort her, strangle the worry that kept her on watch for him the entire time he was with Jihad Awdeh. He felt that urge almost as a physical force, lifting his feet toward home and raising his arms to clasp her. But he knew he must make one last attempt to free George Saba from jail. He wondered if his granddaughter might have a better grasp on reality and the dangers he faced than he did himself.

Omar Yussef turned right along the main road, cut up toward the
souk
, and headed for Manger Square. The streets were empty, except for occasional jeeps filled with Martyrs Brigades men heading toward the funeral. They poked their rifles out of the windows and fired into the air. Each report from the guns made Omar Yussef jump. It was as though they wished to be certain that their celebration of Hussein’s martyrdom should jar him to his very soul. He breathed heavily as he labored up the hill to the
souk
and down through the empty alleys of the old town toward the church.

At Manger Square, there was silence. The broad piazza, resurfaced with a pattern of pink and white bricks a few years before for a visit from the pope, glowed faintly in the moonlight and the dim aura of the faux-Parisian gaslamps erected during the renovation. The firing continued in the distance. They would be burying Hussein now at his village, a few miles to the east, near the conical hill of Herodion. Omar Yussef was glad to be in the quietness, instead of the fury that would eat through everyone at the funeral, biting into their core with the irresistibility of pure, communal hatred and vengefulness. He crossed the northern edge of the empty square toward the police station. He glanced over at the Church of the Nativity. Two priests in brown Franciscan surplices bowed their way through the Gate of Humility. They passed along the front of the church, keeping close to the foot of the wall, where it curved inward like the base of a massive fortress.

The guard at the entrance to the police station greeted Omar Yussef. The policeman’s face was bony and undernourished. His eyes were jumpy.

“Is Abu Adel here?”

“Yes, go up to the top of the stairs. His office is there.”

“I know.”

Omar Yussef needed to make one last appeal to Khamis Zey-dan. Perhaps his friend did pass information about Dima Abdel Rahman to Hussein Tamari. Maybe he had caused her death. He might even be an Israeli collaborator who had engineered the killing of Tamari, as Jihad Awdeh suggested. But he was the only contact Omar Yussef had. He was the sole person he knew who held the key to the jail in his hand. There must be some way to persuade him to turn that key in the lock and look the other way while Omar Yussef smuggled George out of Bethlehem.

Khamis Zeydan’s office was dark, except for the light from a single desk lamp. The pool of yellow light illuminated the police chief’s gloved prosthesis. It lay so still on the desktop when Omar Yussef came to the door that he wondered if Khamis Zeydan had detached the hand and left it there out of forgetfulness. The police chief’s pistol lay in the light next to the hand. When he saw the gun, the scene immediately made Omar Yussef think of suicide, the quiet drunken moment of self-contempt in the darkness that would precede death at one’s own hand. He spoke, doubtfully: “Abu Adel?”

The glove lifted and turned the lamp toward Omar Yussef. He raised his hand to block the glare.

“Abu Adel, I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.”

There was silence from the desk. The lamp turned downward, deflecting the light away from Omar Yussef’s face. Its beam guided him to a chair on the other side of the desk. He sat on the edge of the seat.

“I apologize for my earlier anger. I should not have accused you when you called to tell me about Hussein Tamari’s death. I’ve been desperate with worry about George Saba.”

“You ought to think about someone other than George for a change.” Khamis Zeydan’s voice was thick and slurred and self-pitying. Omar Yussef knew that the darkness in the office was intended to prevent any subordinate who might blunder in from witnessing the boss with his whisky bottle.

“You’re right. Abu Adel, you’ve been a good friend to me. I mean that. Right up to this very moment, you’ve been a great friend, and I haven’t always responded. But please understand that it’s only because I’m not used to dealing with the dangers and deceits of these kinds of events. I’m just a schoolteacher.”

“Stick to teaching, I told you.”

“Yes, you did, and you were right.”

“Yeah, I told you, all right. Stick to—”

“I just spoke with Jihad Awdeh.” Even through the darkness of the room, Omar Yussef sensed a change in Khamis Zeydan’s alertness. The mumbling stopped. He was waiting.

Omar Yussef went around the desk. “Jihad believed me when I told him how Hussein Tamari killed Louai and Dima, and how he framed George.”

The shades snapped open. The cloudy moonlight cast strips across Khamis Zeydan’s face. He was upright in his seat with his hand on the cord of the shades. His eyes were intense, narrow, vicious where the light caught them. The shadows looked like tattoos or camouflage.

“You listen to me, Abu Ramiz,” Khamis Zeydan said. He coughed and gathered himself. Omar Yussef saw that the policeman was still drunk, but desperately trying to control himself. “Don’t trust a word Jihad said to you. He’s a crook and a liar. Don’t trust a word. Not a word.”

“He’s the only hope I have.”

“Then you’re lost.”

“I would have preferred to rely on you.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“So don’t tell me not to appeal to Jihad, if you won’t help. You have the key to the jail. Let’s go and free George now. We can hide him somewhere until we convince the court that he’s innocent. Maybe Jihad will help us.”

“I don’t know which part of what you just said is the most idiotic. First, I’m still a policeman, so I won’t release a convicted man from his cell. Second, you won’t get into the courtroom, let alone convince them that Hussein Tamari was really the collaborator and killer. Do you think the judges are as eager to get themselves killed as you appear to be? Third, Jihad isn’t going to help you. He helps himself. He blew you off, that’s all, Abu Ramiz, stalling until he gets a chance to finish you off quietly.”

Omar Yussef struggled to think of a way to persuade the police chief. He could grab Khamis Zeydan’s gun from where it lay on the table. With the gun held on him, Khamis Zeydan would lead him to the cells and release George. But Omar Yussef knew it would be an empty gesture. He had heard of something called a safety catch and he wouldn’t know how to disengage it. Even if he did, he could never use the gun on his friend. Khamis Zeydan would simply take it out of his hand and he would let him do so.

The police chief glanced toward the window. He stood and slid the glass open. Omar Yussef suddenly heard what his friend’s keener ear had detected. The gunfire was growing nearer.

“Is the funeral coming here?” Omar Yussef asked.

“The burial was in Teqoa. This noise must be something else.”

The firing grew more intense. It approached up the hill behind the Church of the Nativity. Omar Yussef leaned out of the window. A row of jeeps pulled around the corner and stopped in front of the police station. There must have been more of them out of sight, by the entrance, because even as the armed men piled out below, he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind him. Khamis Zeydan turned.

“They’re coming up here,” Omar Yussef said.

“No. They’re going down. To the jail.”

Khamis Zeydan picked up his gun from the desk and holstered it. “Stay here, Abu Ramiz.” He went to the door.

“Why are they going to the jail?” Even as he spoke, Omar Yussef knew the answer.
George.
“I’m coming with you.”

Khamis Zeydan was already on the stairs. Omar Yussef could see how shaky the police chief’s legs were from the drink. Both men descended the steps slowly, despite their despairing efforts to move quicker. Omar Yussef cursed his aging body and Khamis Zeydan muttered about the whisky in his bloodstream. At the entrance, the guard stood against a wall with his hands in the air. Two Martyrs Brigades men held their Kalashnikovs on him. There were at least a dozen of them in the small hallway, and more outside.

From below came the sound of an explosion. Falling metal rang through a corridor. They must have blown the door off George’s cell.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Khamis Zeydan walked straight to the gunmen holding his nervous guard against the wall. He pushed their rifles aside. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Get out of here now, or you’ll pay a terrible price.”

Khamis Zeydan’s determined arrival seemed to puncture the resolve of the gunmen in the lobby. But they were revived by the sight of their leader a moment later. Jihad Awdeh came up the stairs with a raised Kalashnikov in one hand and George Saba’s hair grasped in the other.

George’s eyes were closed by fresh bruises and his nose wept blood. As Jihad Awdeh hauled him up the steps by his scalp, blood rolled across George’s forehead and he bawled in pain.

Omar Yussef made the last few steps, clinging to the banister. In his panic, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to stand without support. He called out to George Saba, but the gunmen chanted that they would revenge the martyr Hussein Tamari, and George didn’t hear his old schoolteacher.

Jihad Awdeh let go of George’s hair long enough to lift his rifle butt and club Khamis Zeydan in the face. The police chief crumpled. The policeman who had been guarding the door bent to catch his commander. Khamis Zeydan appeared to be out cold. Jihad Awdeh called above the laughter and cheers: “This way the godless bastard achieves oblivion without having to waste all his whisky.”

Omar Yussef jostled with the gunmen as they pushed toward the small doorway. He caught sight of George wearing his small herringbone coat. Its shoulders were drenched with blood. The gunmen took swings at the prisoner whenever they were close enough.

Omar Yussef was almost the last through the door. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw Muhammad Abdel Rahman. The gunmen must have brought the old man to see them exact their justice on the Christian who had led the Israelis to kill his son. Muhammad’s face was blank, deathly. Omar Yussef wondered what it was that he knew about the way Louai died, about Abu Walid, about the killing of Dima, his daughter-in-law. Then he thought that the knowledge of having lost two sons in a few days, one to an assassination and another who took his own life in the act of destroying ordinary people with a bomb strapped to his midriff, would be enough to make a man seem almost dead himself. Muhammad noticed Omar Yussef stumbling out of the police station at the back of the crowd. He turned away and wrapped his face in the end of his
keffiyeh
.

The mob of gunmen moved to the edge of the square. From the center of the crowd, someone tossed a rope over the arm of one of the fake gaslamps.
Oh, God, it’s happening,
Omar Yussef thought. He rushed toward the group, barely able to breathe. How could he stop them? He would get to the center of the crowd and throw himself over George. He reached the back of the melee. He shoved between two of the gunmen, screaming to them to make way.

There came a cheer and Omar Yussef saw George hauled halfway up the lamppost by his ankles. The tails of the herringbone coat fell over his face, so that at first Omar Yussef believed he was dead already. Then his arms moved, flailing desperately toward the crowd below as though he might catch hold of it and anchor himself to the earth. The gunmen yanked him higher until he was almost at the top of the post. Then there was a single shot, and it unleashed a full volley from the crowd of men. George Saba’s body jerked with each fatal impact.