by By Jon Land
He took her hands and kissed her lightly on both cheeks. The colonel was wearing carpenter’s pants and a dress shirt but no tie. The inside of the building smelled of paint and sawdust, and Ben could see one of al-Asi’s fingers was bandaged.
Turning to Ben, the colonel swept his hands across the scope of the building. “What do you think of my new headquarters, Inspector?”
The old one in Jericho, Ben knew, had been destroyed by Israeli shelling a year before.
“It seems to be coming along.”
“Not as quickly as I had hoped,” al-Asi conceded, gazing at his hands. “This building was going to be razed to make room for yet another hotel. I appropriated it when the outbreak of violence changed the owner’s plans. I’m not much good with a hammer and nails, as you know. With my budget cut to the bare bones, though, I must learn fast.” Al-Asi hooked a hammer over the loop of his carpenter’s pants. “You should know that my Israeli counterparts remain especially determined to catch you both.”
“They’ve contacted you?” Ben probed.
“A polite phone call with an oh-so-carefully cloaked warning to turn you over should our paths cross. Disappoint them and I was politely warned this building would not be here tomorrow morning.”
“What did you say?”
“That I am the only thing standing between Israel and another dozen suicide bombers every month.”
“You sound bitter, Colonel,” Ben noted.
“These have been difficult times, that’s all. Honesty is missing from the new Israeli administration. Our working relationship is gone. So much wasted. We’ve lost everything we gained.”
“Again.”
“You understand.”
“My father would have.”
“He was ahead of his time, Inspector,” al-Asi said reflectively.
“Because he wanted peace.”
“And because he understood that to get peace, we must deal with the Israelis. That the other Arab countries will forsake us the moment it best suits their needs and interests.”
“Then why was he killed, Colonel?” Ben asked, while Danielle continued to look at them in silence.
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“That he was murdered by my former commander in the Palestinian police, Omar Shaath. I would like to hear more.”
“Regrettably, there is none.”
“So you have no idea why Shaath killed my father. What my father did upon his return that led to his assassination.”
Al-Asi sighed. “Your father advocated that the Palestinians make their own peace with the Israelis or risk losing far more than they had already. His was the lone dissenting voice against a violent response. Even a man of his stature and position, though, could not by himself sway the rest of the council.”
“What kind of council?”
Al-Asi looked uncharacteristically uneasy. “An ad hoc group of Palestinian leaders that formed in the wake of the Six-Day War. All of them men who had lived through 1948 and didn’t believe it could get any worse. The Six-Day War in 1967 proved them wrong. They gathered to discuss what could be done about it.”
“You’re saying my father was a part of this council,” Ben said, vaguely recalling his father’s departure from Michigan around that time. Jafir Kamal had said he was going away for a while on business, not saying how long exactly, nor where exactly he was going. Ben and his mother had driven him to the airport. Ben remembered a kiss and warm embrace. It was the last time he’d ever seen his father.
Al-Asi nodded. “The members initially welcomed Jafir Kamal with open arms, believing he had returned to retake his place as a hero to our people and lead them in the struggle to take back our land.”
“He disappointed them.”
“His was the voice of reason in a time that did not call for it. His comments fell on deaf ears.”
“Shaath was a member of this council.”
“Yes.”
Ben swallowed hard. “When he murdered my father. . .”
“He could have been acting on his own,” al-Asi said, anticipating Ben’s question. “Or following orders.”
“So my father was killed, and yet the council still failed to mount the kind of violent response to the Israeli occupation he tried to stop.”
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ben replied, realizing in that instant that al-Asi knew far more than he was saying.
* * * *
Chapter 31
W
here in Gaza is the merchandise?” Ben asked Anatolyevich from behind the wheel, once the three of them were on their way. Colonel al-Asi had supplied a sedan with rare diplomatic plates that would assure safe passage along the road that connected the West Bank to Gaza, as well as provide clearance through the volatile Eres checkpoint.
“The fishing piers on the Mediterranean coast,” the Russian replied, disinterestedly.
“The shipment is on a boat?” Danielle wondered.
Anatolyevich smiled. “Something like that, yes.” He looked back at Ben. “Interesting that you returned to your homeland, just as your father did before you. Two of a kind. Two fools. Two cowards.”
“I think it’s time you told me what you know about him.”
“We met once,” the Russian nodded. “In 1967, when he came back after the Six-Day War. . . .”
“I call for a vote!”
The shouting and thrusting of fists had reached a frenzied pitch when Jafir Kamal rose from his seat at the table occupied by Palestinian council members and waited for the other men to quiet themselves.
“I wish to be heard before we vote,” he said sternly.
“There has been enough talk, Abu Kamal! It is time for action!” a council member exclaimed.
“Enough of our people have died! If we do not respond forcefully now against the Israelis, the lessons of al-Nakba, the catastrophe, will remain lost upon us,” a second council member insisted, referring to Israel’s founding in 1948 that had cost thousands and thousands of Palestinians their homes.
“Min al nahr ila al barh,” the leader of the council intoned. “This land will be ours,from the river to the sea!”
“Yes!” Jafir Kamal agreed, turning toward him. “My point precisely: Enough of our people have died.”
“So you would sit back and do nothing, while the Israelis steal our land, burn our homes?”
“How does he know?” another of the council members challenged bitterly. “He has no home here any longer. The great Jafir Kamal has come from his new home in America to save us all.”
“He should have no voice, no vote!”
“Agreed!”
More voices added their acknowledgment until the chorus of shouts aimed at him rang in Jafir Kamal’s ears. Through it all a young boy dressed in a shapeless, worn-out shirt and tattered trousers struggled to distribute a tray full of tea to the council members. The jostling hand of one smacked the boy as he was handing a cup to another, and the warm liquid spilled over the man’s robes. The council member backhanded the boy in the face and sent the remainder of the cups flying.
Jafir Kamal helped the boy to his feet and watched him scramble back toward the kitchen before responding to the criticism leveled at him. “It is true I moved my family to America. It is true I came back in the wake of the war, leaving my wife and two sons behind.” He hardened his gaze. “And it is also true that the land on which I was raised, and raised my family, now serves as an Israeli military outpost. I’d say that entitles me to a voice and a vote.”
“You speak the language of an ass, Abu Kamal.”
“Yes, because that is what all of you have become. You chastise me for being an outsider,” Jafir Kamal said, turning toward the stranger who stood still and silent in the corner of the room. “And yet it is an outsider to whom you turn for help.”
“Our friends in Egypt sent him to help us,” another of the council members added.
“You mean our friends in Russia, don’t you?” Kamal argued,
staring at the stranger.
“What’s the difference if it gets us the weapons we need?”
“Of course,” Jafir Kamal said cynically, regarding the stranger with disdain, “so we can fight the Egyptians’ and the Syrians’ war for them, a war they have already lost.”
The council members looked at each other incredulously.
“You would have us make peace with the Israelis, then, Abu Kamal?” the leader challenged.
“If favorable terms can be arrived at, yes, I would. I would like to propose sending a delegation to meet with the Israeli leadership.”
“Madness! They would never hear of it! They don’t even recognize our right to our own land,” another voice insisted.
“The American life has turned you soft,” the council leader added, “while you tell us to be hard. You would have us betray our heritage, our faith, even encourage the inevitability of our own destruction. Your people, Abu Kamal, your people.”
The young boy returned with another tray full of tea and began to distribute the cups more carefully.
“You heard the man,” said a young soldier named Omar Shaath, who towered over Jafir Kamal when he stood to face him. “Once a hero, you are a hero no more. You are a disgrace to your people who should be gone from here now.”
Jafir Kamal refused the boy’s offer of a cup with a slight smile and a shake of his head. “Not until I’ve cast my vote, whether you wish to count it or not. But first I’d like to hear the substance of this plan.”
“We’ve already heard enough!” Shaath bellowed, feeling for the pistol wedged into his belt. “Now, be gone from here before I—”
“I don’t mind explaining myself again,” a new voice interjected from a darkened corner of the back room. The windows had been covered up and, without electricity, the sole illumination came from lanterns which cast a murky glow over the new man’s sallow face. He was a young man, late twenties or early thirties judging by his looks, but his raspy voice bore the brunt of experiences well beyond his years. “In fact, I welcome it. My country holds Abu Kamal in the highest esteem and would welcome his support.”
The man from Russia directed his next words toward Jafir Kamal.
“We are prepared to bring the shipment in through Jordan, as soon as the final approval, and arrangements, are in place.”
“You do not expect payment?”
“Your victory over Israel will be payment enough. The weapons are strictly top of the line and not limited to small arms. Enough to equip a small army. Five truckloads to start with, already waiting across the border for you to give me the go-ahead.”
“You wish us to do your country’s dirty work for you,” Jafir Kamal accused.
“My country is the only true ally of your people, of all the Arab peoples. For us to openly help you take back what is yours would lead the United States into taking an even more active role on behalf of the illegal Israeli state. It must be done this way, in darkened rooms and secret shipments, until the tide has turned and you have your land back.”
“Do you have anything more to say, Abu Kamal?” the council leader asked.
Jafir Kamal shook his head and met the hateful stare of the hulking Omar Shaath.
“Then the call for a vote is accepted. All in favor, raise your hands.”
All the members, save for Jafir Kamal, raised a hand. In the darkened back corner of the room, the Russian smiled.
“How fast can you manage the delivery?” the council leader asked him.
“Give me a few days,” the young man promised. “Then you will have all the guns you need.”
Ben sat behind the wheel dumbstruck. Sweat glued his hands to the wheel. More perspiration soaked his shirt and rolled down his face. The Russian’s tale made him feel as if his father were in the car with him. He felt hot, shivered anyway.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Isn’t it obvious, comrade?” Anatolyevich grinned. “I was the young man in the corner.”
* * * *
Chapter 32
S
till grinning, Anatolyevich looked to Danielle. “Surprised, Pakad?”
“Not at all.” Danielle fixed her eyes on the Russian, as she stroked her cheek theatrically. “What might you have done in the former Soviet Union, let me see . . . I’ll bet it was KGB, or GRU— military intelligence. No, how about GRU and later KGB. Attached perhaps to Middle Eastern affairs. You would have been what, twenty-five years old in 1967?”
Anatolyevich smiled like a man who’d been found out. “Thirty.”
Danielle turned from him to Ben. “The Russians had military advisors and support personnel all through the Middle East back then, especially Egypt. Word is the Egyptians sent them into Israel in the wake of the Six-Day War to stir up the opposition.”
“Very good, Commissar Barnea,” Anatolyevich complimented sharply.
“The Egyptians wanted their Russian friends to support a guerrilla war waged by the Palestinians against the Israelis,” Danielle continued. “And if the Israeli government learned today you were one of those Russians, you’d be in danger of being deported. Back to Russia.”
Anatolyevich looked flustered for the first time. His lips trembled with rage. A vein bulged at his temple. “You think I don’t know who you are, the two of you? Your lives are a joke. You’re both frauds.” Anatolyevich swung toward Ben, spittle dribbling from both sides of his mouth. “Just like your father was a fraud.”
“Why, because he didn’t want to fight your battles for you?”
“Our plan might have worked!” the Russian raged. “If a man like your father had signed on to lead it. Imagine my disappointment when he alone voted against the Palestinian council’s plans for what would have been the originalintifada.” The Russian shook his head. “The routes, and diversions, everything arranged. I was ready to have the guns brought in.”
“But you never did. Otherwise, the council would have used them. So what went wrong in 1967? Why were your weapons never delivered?”
Anatolyevich steadied himself with a single deep breath, then yawned and stretched comfortably. “I think I’ll take a nap. Wake me when we reach the Gaza seaport and maybe I will finish my story.”
* * * *
Chapter 33
W
e’re closed,” Jacob Katz said to the man who’d been rapping on the door of his shop. “It’s the Sabbath.”
The man stuck his foot in the door before Katz could shut it. “Yeah, well we got an appointment, you and me.” An American accent, not quite southern.
Katz took a longer look at the man; big and broad with eyes glittering like the diamonds that filled the store’s display cases. One of the man’s ears was bandaged and his cheek was blistered, as if from sunburn. The rest of his skin was leathery rough. He held a cowboy hat in his hand, a hat that looked shiny around the brim.
“I don’t have what you want,” Katz managed. “I’ve got it stored somewhere else.”
“Figured you would,” said the cowboy. “Just as I figured you were likely thinking about keeping it for yourself.”
“No, I was just waiting—”
The cowboy pushed open the door and Katz backed off, not resisting.
“I’ve done everything they asked,” Katz insisted, trying to sound confident. “Give me until tomorrow. I’ll have it here then.”
“Yeah,” Jim Black said, looking around, “that’s what I told them you’d say. I told them to cut you a break. What the fuck you want from him, I said?” He faced Katz. “They weren’t as sympathetic as me.”
Black walked on, inspecting the contents of the cases. “Nice stones.”
Katz said nothing.
“I hear you do a lot of finish work on them right here.”
Katz nodded. “In the back.”
“Could you show me?” Jim Black asked, sounding genuinely excited.
“What?”
“Could you show me how you do it?”
Katz realized he
didn’t have a choice. “Sure. Right this way.”
Katz moved through the shop into an alcove where he pressed in the proper combination into a keypad. He had maneuvered himself to block his actions from view, but the cowboy didn’t seem to be paying attention, looking disinterested until they entered the work area.
