The Fourth Assassin oy-4

by Matt Beynon Rees

  The president paused, adjusting his spectacles and peering after the Americans. Ismail halted his deviant translation, covering the microphone again. “This’ll make some headlines, don’t you think?”

  “Put the gun down, Ismail. Stop this.”

  “The speech isn’t over yet, ustaz.”

  The president stumbled through another paragraph. Ismail used the opportunity to plug Islamic Jihad’s backers in Beirut and Tehran. By then the hall was chaotic. Confused and angry, delegates stared toward the translators’ gallery. Khamis Zeydan mounted the dais and ushered the president toward a door beside the stage. As he left, the president dropped his speech. The pages spread across the floor. His sweating young aide gathered as many as he could before following his boss.

  Ismail turned his pistol toward the ceiling and whistled across the barrel, as though blowing away gun smoke after a fine shot.

  Omar Yussef watched the president disappear, shielded by the body of his friend, the police chief. “You’re not going to shoot him?”

  “You sound disappointed, ustaz.” Ismail lifted the translator into the spare seat and ruffled his hair. “Thanks for behaving yourself, pal.”

  The translator kept his pleading eyes on the gun in Ismail’s hand. His mouth was open and he made feeble moaning noises.

  “Nizar warned us about an Islamic Jihad assassin,” Omar Yussef said. “Where is he? When’s he going to hit the president?”

  “Nizar was right. But I’m the one.”

  “Then what was this all about?”

  Ismail watched the delegates gather in excited groups on the floor below. “I was never the best student in your class, ustaz. Still, I always listened to you. Nizar was your favorite, yet can you say the same of him?”

  Omar Yussef flexed his injured ankle, balancing with his hand against the window. “You chose not to 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.”

  The mention of his wife made Omar Yussef think of his family and of his son, who was alone in Brooklyn. “Go to Ala,” he said to Khamis Zeydan. “He’s leaving with me tomorrow. Help him pack his things. He likes you-try to cheer him up.”

  Khamis Zeydan patted Omar Yussef’s wrist. “If Allah wills it, your son’ll be on the plane with you.”

  “Go now. Magnus can take me over to the conference, after I tidy myself up.”

  Khamis Zeydan went to the door. “Come to Ala’s place after you give your speech. I’ll see you there.”

  When the police chief was gone, Omar Yussef dressed and allowed Magnus to help him on with his coat. At the entrance to the hotel, he pulled the hood over his feverish head and bent into the wind.

  They crossed the plaza at the side of the UN building. The East River was choppy and charcoal all the way across to the opposite bank. A barge glided past a derelict smokestack and an old-fashioned Pepsi-Cola sign on the roof of a red brick factory on the Queens shore. The air was cold on Omar Yussef’s clammy face, and he smiled. For the first time since he had come to New York, he felt comforted by the freezing weather. He took Magnus’s hand as they went toward the low door in the green marble facade.

  In the Economic and Social Council, a Moroccan delegate completed his speech with some hopeful cliches. The Egyptian chairman let his bored stare drift over to Magnus Wallander, who gave him a thumbs-up. He called Omar Yussef to the podium.

  “Do you have your speech ready?” the Swede said.

  Omar Yussef grinned and coughed hard.

  He shuffled up the steps to the stage and squinted over the heads of the UN staff in the pit below him. Abdel Hadi leered from the row of Palestinian delegates, his yellow teeth glowing in the low light of his desk lamp. The envoy from Libya picked his nose, and the leader of the Mauritanian delegation was asleep in his colorful robes. Omar Yussef had addressed more attentive groups of twelve-year-olds in his classroom on the last day of a semester.

  “We’ve heard this week the political statements of all the Arab countries on the subject of the Palestinians. As a resident of the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, I’ve been asked to tell you about the reality of Palestinian life.” Omar Yussef’s voice sounded thin in his head, but when he heard it through the amplifiers after a moment’s delay it seemed stronger. He laid his hands flat on the podium so that they wouldn’t be seen to shake. “Let me begin by saying that whatever you already know-the suicide bombs; the battles with the Israeli soldiers; the names of the factions, Hamas, PLO, PFLP, DFLP-these are nothing but background. The real story is the smell of cardamom in the sacks outside a spice shop in the casbah. It’s the laughter of little schoolgirls in their blue-and-white-striped smocks going home after a day at an overcrowded school. It’s the noise of the lathe in a single room in Bethlehem where men are making olive-wood beads for tourist rosaries. It’s the life that remains when politics is sluiced away like the filth a stray dog leaves in the street. Let me flush away the rhetoric of the last three days and show you the Palestine I know.”

  Abdel Hadi shook his head with disdain. The Syrian delegate rose and, taking a cigarette from his pocket, beckoned for his Lebanese counterpart to follow him to the back of the room. Magnus Wallander smiled his encouragement.

  Omar Yussef surveyed the hall. He realized that he wanted very badly to prick the complacency of the diplomats lounging before him. “You wonder how these people, whose lives you think are so full of victimhood and despair, get up in the morning. Perhaps people are killed beside them, or homes are destroyed, or relatives are held without charge for months. But they do rise in the morning, and they work and eat and laugh, and then they sleep. You don’t know how they go on, because you don’t know what’s in their heads. You only know the political cliches, the stereotypes. They don’t spend their days longing for an independent state-they know their politics is too corrupt and divided for that to be achieved. They aren’t all determined to sacrifice their children for this struggle, either. It may be hard for you to understand, but what ordinary Palestinians want and what they battle for every day is precisely what’s denied to most of your citizens in the Arab countries: freedom and economic prosperity.”

  The Libyan delegate removed his finger from his nose and flicked it angrily. The Syrian strode down from the rear of the hall, dropping his cigarette. The Lebanese stepped the butt into the carpet as he followed. The Americans glanced toward the translation gallery, fearful that this was another hoax.

  “How can you, the Arab countries, dictate a solution for the Palestinians, when you suffer from many of the same problems? In fact, you, the governing class, thrive on the lack of democracy, the inequality of wealth. Take away the Israeli occupation, and the Palestinians would be closer to freedom and a functioning economy than most of your peoples.”

  “Shame, shame on you,” the Syrian called out.

  One of the Egyptian delegates stood and yelled, “Collaborator.” His colleague hauled him back into his seat with a simpering glance at the Americans.

  Omar Yussef hammered the podium. “It is not only the Israelis-it is you who drive Palestinians into violence and poverty. You, who take no responsibility for the lives of your Arab brothers.” He lifted his hand to point at the American delegation and spoke in English. “And you, gentlemen of the United States, when you send your money to these corrupt Arab governments, pause to ask yourselves: Would I be willing to live there as a citizen? Would I live in a mud shack raising beets in the Jordan Valley for no reward? Or sit in the heat to sell a few orange sodas for ten cents on a desert highway in Syria? This week I’ve seen how people battle against the difficulties of life in New York. They fight to attain goals that may be of doubtful worth-the prosperity that brings a bigger house, a shinier car, or more luxuries at home. But at least they have aims and the possibility of achieving them. We Arabs are aimless. We wander like our forefathers in the desert, seeking water, waiting for some fanatic to come and enslave us.”

  Omar Yussef paused. Colors danced in front of his eyes. He heard the blast of Colonel Khatib’s revolver over and over. Then he realized that it was his pulse sounding in his head. He gripped the podium. When he reached for the water glass, the Egyptian chairman dropped his gavel and, with relief, declared the day’s proceedings at an end. The chairman nudged his aide, who immediately came to Omar Yussef with a congratulatory handshake and bore him away from the microphone toward the steps.

  “Fabulous, Abu Ramiz.” Magnus Wallander took Omar Yussef’s hand in both of his as he descended from the stage.

  “You’re the only one who seems to think so. I don’t feel
so good. I’m a little dizzy.”

  “I’ll get you some more water.” Magnus hurried to the back of the room.

  Abdel Hadi approached with a facetious sneer. “I thought you were about to blow yourself up, ustaz,” he said. “That was a suicide speech.”

  “Today there has been no need for suicide.” Omar Yussef heard Khatib’s gun in his head again. “It has been a day for executioners.”

  “You mean that animal who tried to shoot the president.”

  “He wasn’t going to shoot him.”

  “He was a suicide attacker. He knew he’d die, but he wanted to take the president with him.”

  Anger drew Omar Yussef up straight. “He was killed in cold blood.”

  “Nonsense. Khatib shot him as he was taking aim at the president. A suicidal attack by an animal, not a human being.”

  “No animal would seek its own death. An animal doesn’t expect to elevate itself by dying. It’s our civilization that leads down the disgusting course to the suicidal assassin. Our search for meanings higher than mere existence, life after death. It’s the ultimate achievement of our dreadful civilization.”

  Magnus returned with a glass of water.

  Abdel Hadi wagged a finger at Omar Yussef. “For a schoolteacher, ustaz, you seem to find it hard to learn a lesson.”

  “I’m a Palestinian. If I learned from my errors, I might run out of mistakes to make, and then I’d have to change nationality.” Omar Yussef drank some water. “What’s the lesson?”

  “Suicide is the entire basis of our politics.”

  “You’re forgetting murder.”

  “Either way, we always seem to find new ways to destroy each other.”

  “Not such new ways,” Omar Yussef said. He recalled the classes in medieval history that had inspired Nizar to decapitate his old friend.

  “The assassination of the president by another Palestinian here would’ve been a first, would it not?” Abdel Hadi said. “Many Palestinians were killed by rival factions during the seventies and eighties in Europe and the Arab world, but never, I believe, in New York.”