The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “Greetings, O Ismail,” Omar Yussef said.

  In their dark, pouched sockets, Ismail’s chestnut-brown eyes were wan and surrendering. He looked like the note-taking civil servant he was supposed to be. When he smiled, it was with the feeble helplessness of one admitting a silly mistake. “Double greetings, dear ustaz Abu Ramiz.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Wasn’t this morning’s conference enough talk for you?”

  “That would be my sentiment if it weren’t for the fact that the alternative to talk may be disaster.” Omar Yussef held Ismail’s arm as the room cleared. He felt a strong bicep beneath the well-cut fabric of the boy’s dark blue chalk-stripe suit.

  “Nizar has confessed everything,” he said.

  Ismail twitched his head, confused.

  Omar Yussef recalled the deal the Israelis had forced on the boy, selling out a sheikh to earn freedom for his friends. He wanted Ismail to feel forgiveness, to extract him from the destructive embrace into which he had fallen. “I know you feel you betrayed the other Assassins in the Israeli jail—”

  Ismail put a finger over his old teacher’s lips and watched the last delegates heading for the door.

  “They told me you were ashamed, and clearly you remain so,” Omar Yussef whispered. He took the boy’s finger from over his mouth and held it in his hand. “But they’ve forgiven you. You don’t have to live in exile to make up for what happened in the jail.”

  “Ala may have forgiven me, ustaz, but Nizar never will.” Ismail’s voice was dour and rough.

  “And Rashid? Will he forgive you?”

  “In Paradise, when I join him as a martyr.”

  “So you know he’s dead. But how will you be martyred? By a severe paper cut at one of these conference sessions?”

  “They say ‘the sword brings more accurate news than books,’” Ismail said.

  “You’re an intelligent boy. Don’t take that path.”

  Ismail pulled his hand away. “Who said I had done so?” He turned and Omar Yussef saw pity and regret on his face. “Will you walk with me a little while, ustaz? It’d be good to hear the news from Bethlehem.”

  “Then why not return to your hometown?”

  Ismail pressed his notepad to his chest. “How do you think the Israelis would welcome a member of the Lebanese UN delegation? I can never come closer to Bethlehem than holding your hand now as we walk.”

  In the public gallery, the school groups left gray blotches on the carpet where snow melted from their shoes. Omar Yussef led Ismail to the tall windows.

  “There’s an assassin here in New York,” Omar Yussef said. “The police know he’s going to try to kill the president during his speech tomorrow. For that assassin, whoever he is, it would be a suicidal mission.”

  “So?”

  “Consider this a warning.”

  “Ustaz, do I look like a trained killer?”

  “I’ve met men with blood on their hands. I’ve even shaken those hands in some cases. But I still don’t know how to recognize them by their faces. I always imagine they must give themselves away with some trace of horror and disgust, but they can just as easily look amiable and kind.”

  Ismail watched another group of schoolchildren ramble along the gallery. “What do you see in the faces of these American students visiting the UN today? They’re just as guilty of murder as the American soldiers shooting tank shells at crowds of Iraqi civilians.”

  Omar Yussef’s fingers felt cold in the boy’s grip. “When I was young, I, too, blamed America for all the problems of the Arab people. But as I matured, I saw that our biggest trouble is our determination to accuse others—to play the victim.”

  “This is an unholy place.” Ismail threw his arm toward the yellow taxis jamming the avenue and the buildings vanishing into the descending snow. “Who among the believers would lament if it were destroyed today?”

  “Perhaps the believers who live in Little Palestine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You were there. I saw you when I came out of the basement mosque.”

  “Little Palestine?” Ismail grinned. “As if Palestine itself wasn’t already little enough.”

  Omar Yussef felt separated from Ismail by the angry cynicism of the zealot. He struggled to find a language the boy might comprehend. “You think Allah is known only in the places where everyone already submits to his will? Allah is here. Allah lives in New York.”

  “That’s blasphemous. Allah lives in Mecca.”

  Omar Yussef laughed. “I’m surprised at you. You think like a peasant. Allah exists where he’s needed.”

  “But you’re not even a believer, ustaz.”

  “I believe that Allah is a mystery. Do you really think he sits on top of the Kaba in Mecca? Doesn’t he feel compassion for the people of New York, even though they’re physically far away from him?”

  They came to the empty General Assembly and passed into the visitors’ area at the back. A map of the world, spreading out from the North Pole, shone in gold leaf above the dais.

  As he stared down the long aisles toward the futuristic podium, Ismail seemed transformed to Omar Yussef. Gone was the delicate, wounded clerk, and in his place stood a killer, ready to put his faith in truths so simple that nothing could be easier than to die for them, because they made of death something facile too. He had ceased to be one of Omar Yussef’s little group of Assassins. He had become simply an assassin.

  “If you carry out your plan, then this is where Allah dies,” Omar Yussef said. “Wherever he has lived—Mecca, New York—he dies here.”

  Ismail glanced along the back row of desks in the Assembly Hall, each marked with the name of its national delegation. “My plan?”

  “It’s suicidal.”

  “How could it be done in such a closely guarded place?”

  “I’m not an assassin. I can’t give you details. Who knows what components could’ve been sneaked in here? Perhaps you used money from Nizar’s drug sales to bribe a cleaner, who smuggled in a rifle, piece by piece. It could be hidden in this very room.”

  “You’re not as purely academic as you pretend to be.” Ismail stroked his beard and smirked. “Maybe I’ll recruit you for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, ustaz.”

  “I don’t like the retirement plan. I’m not interested in Paradise.”

  “If you aren’t careful, someone might try to retire you very soon.” Ismail strolled behind the empty desks of the delegations.

  “As you already did. You shot at me in Coney Island. Or were you trying to hit Nizar, because he backed out on your operation?”

  “Ustaz, I’m a diplomat.”

  “Let’s say you did try to kill me and that I forgave you. How would you feel about that? Because I do forgive you, my boy.”

  The corners of Ismail’s mouth twitched into a fragile sneer. Omar Yussef grabbed his shoulder. “I forgive you, do you hear me?” he said. Ismail blinked and looked away.

  “In the days of the Assassins, ustaz, their suicidal attacks were reviled. It was seen as unnatural to die that way.” Ismail scanned the names of the small, unimportant countries arranged in rotating alphabetical order at the delegates’ desks. “Today, suicide attacks are accepted by everyone in the Muslim world. We have no other weapon against the power of the West. You’re out of step. Your thinking belongs to another time, another world.”

  “Ismail, I won’t believe that my world and yours are as separate as you suggest,” Omar Yussef said.

  They reached the final desk in the back row. Ismail raised his chin and pointed to the single word PALESTINE, its white letters pinned to a black plastic rectangle ten inches long.

  “You see our place in your world? Right at the back and on the edge.” Ismail turned a circle with his arms wide. “Everyone is more important than us. There are one hundred and ninety-two member states with desks closer to the front than us. Who can we see from here? Oh, look, there’s Kiribati. And Kyrgyzstan. Ove
r there, Vanuatu, and Zambia. Superpowers on the world stage, indeed. But here at the back, we find Palestine, with only observer status—not even a full member. Poor little Palestine.”

  “So when we are accorded the right to speak, you think we should refuse it?” Omar Yussef said. “We should kill the president at the podium of the UN while he’s trying to remind the world that this desk at the back of the hall exists?”

  “They know we exist. They just don’t know the power we’re prepared to wield.”

  “The power to die?” Omar Yussef shook his head and sat in one of the visitors’ seats. “This desk at the back is the place in the world Palestine has found for itself. Perhaps it’s all we deserve. What about your world? There was a time when I knew you better than you knew yourself. As I listen to you now, I believe I still do.”

  Ismail dropped his head and knitted his fingers tightly.

  “O Ismail, I’m sorry to see what’s happened to you. I don’t blame you, my boy. You suffered so much in the jail during the intifada, then being away from your family and alone in Lebanon.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. I found my belief in Islam, ustaz. My love for Allah.”

  “You only love Allah this way because you haven’t loved anyone here on earth,” Omar Yussef said. He reached out a hand for Ismail. The boy sat beside his old schoolteacher, his eyes narrow and bitter.

  “What happened in the jail made me scared and angry with everyone and everything. Except you, ustaz.” Ismail stroked the back of Omar Yussef’s thin hand.

  “Angry enough to listen to some bloodthirsty imam? To be convinced that murder is a part of politics?”

  “I didn’t kill Rashid.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The president?”

  “You’re the only one I’m not angry with, ustaz.” He gave Omar Yussef’s fingers a final squeeze and rose. “I have to go to my colleagues now.”

  “I’ll see you later?”

  Ismail shook his head and blinked hard to stop his tears. “Give my love to Umm Ramiz when you get back to Bethlehem. And to my friend Ala.”

  “Ismail, wait.”

  “May Allah grant you grace, ustaz.”

  Ismail went quickly through a group of tourists who were settling into the ragged corduroy of the public seats to hear their guide describe the General Assembly Hall.

  Omar Yussef squinted toward the podium where the president would speak the next morning. He tried to picture Ismail’s tired eyes and the premature gray in his beard, but all that came to mind was the happy boy who had been the least gifted and most exuberant of his Assassins.

  The P in PALESTINE was slightly askew on the desk in front of him. He clicked his tongue, leaned across the pine barrier, and reached for the black plastic mounting to correct it. The guide who was lecturing the tourists called to him and warned him not to touch. He waved his hand to calm her. He couldn’t reach the plaque anyway.

  Chapter 30

  Colonel Khatib slouched through the entrance of the General Assembly. He caught the eye of Khamis Zeydan, who was standing in the doorway, and grinned with a sardonic malice. From his seat a few rows away in the public gallery, Omar Yussef detected some kind of understanding between the two policemen in the grim, curt nod with which Khamis Zeydan responded. Khatib lumbered down the steps and settled into a seat directly behind the president in the back row of the Assembly. He gathered his black leather jacket over his paunch, rubbed his square, bald head, and surveyed the chamber with a surly detachment.

  Khamis Zeydan followed Khatib down the steps, his pale blue eyes glaring around the Assembly. He came to the barrier between the public gallery and the delegate area in front of Omar Yussef, leaned over, and whispered: “Your boy Ismail is here, right?”

  Omar Yussef’s eyes tracked along the ranks of desks, as he quietly recited the English alphabet to be sure he wouldn’t pass over the Lebanese delegation. Ismail was in his seat, sharing a joke with his boss. “I see him,” Omar Yussef said.

  Khamis Zeydan followed Omar Yussef’s gaze. “The president’s due to speak in a few minutes, and that boy’s sitting there laughing like a baby playing with a rattling gourd. Maybe you’re wrong about him.”

  I’ve never wanted so much to be mistaken, Omar Yussef thought, biting the knuckle of his forefinger.

  Khamis Zeydan took up a vantage point beside Colonel Khatib and leaned forward, whispering to the president. Omar Yussef’s throat was dry; but when he fingered the UN identity card in his pocket, it became slippery with sweat. He extended his neck to check that Ismail was still in his seat.

  The door of the public gallery came open with a sudden burst of shouting. Shoving past a white-shirted guard, four young Americans ran down the short aisle. One of them, wearing a blue sweatshirt with the Israeli flag across the chest, unfurled a banner: President of the Murderers, it read. The others called out insults and charged at the Palestinian delegation. The president dropped low in his chair, the shoulder pads of his suit nuzzling his ears.

  “Terrorist Jew-killer,” one of the protesters shouted. “Worse than Hitler.”

  Khamis Zeydan and Colonel Khatib came to their feet, grappling with the protesters. Khatib took a slim girl in her early twenties and slammed her to the floor. Her heckling became a wail of shock and pain. Khamis Zeydan slapped the youth who held one end of the banner and shoved him so that he tumbled over the girl. The president’s bodyguard wrestled with the other two demonstrators as a pair of UN security guards hurried down the steps to help.

  Omar Yussef looked away from the melee toward the Lebanese delegation. Just then, Ismail rose and, with a smile, whispered to his boss. He went down the aisle and headed for an exit near the front of the hall.

  Behind the turquoise marble of his desk on the podium, the chairman glanced nervously toward the fracas as he gabbled through the day’s agenda. The president would be the second speaker, after the Jordanian foreign minister’s introductory remarks. Omar Yussef stared at the exit Ismail had used. Above it, tired green lights flickered in the translators’ galleries. He turned toward Khamis Zeydan, but the police chief was on the floor, pinning one of the protesters.

  Omar Yussef checked his watch. The president was scheduled to speak in less than ten minutes. He hurried out of the hall. To his left, a security guard barred the entrance to the delegates’ area. Omar Yussef wiped the sweat from his UN I.D., flashed it at the guard, and entered a long corridor, which sloped down along the side of the General Assembly. At the far end of the passage, he saw Ismail dodge around a corner.

  The corridor was silent as Omar Yussef limped over the thin carpet. The pain in his ankle lanced through his shin. What would he tell Ismail when he caught up with him? That the president’s speech would be nothing but empty rhetoric? That it would be foolish to sacrifice oneself only to prevent this man making promises he could never keep? Omar Yussef had tried the previous day to dissuade Ismail. He could think of no new arguments with which to reason against a boy determined to kill for his god—and he was certain that Ismail had risen from his desk to commit murder.

  At the bottom of the corridor, it split into a staircase and a gallery that curved behind the stage of the General Assembly Hall. Omar Yussef assumed that, if Ismail wanted to shoot the president, he would position himself as close to the stage as possible. Omar Yussef went into the gallery. His loafers tapped on the bare, whitewashed floor, echoing in the empty quiet. On the other side of the wall, the world was gathered, but Omar Yussef felt profoundly alone.

  As the gallery rounded the back of the hall, Omar Yussef realized that it had no outlet onto the stage. He came to a few small windows with a view of the plaza behind the UN building. The bare trees cowered in the wind, and rain splattered from a massive tubular steel sculpture like blood spitting from a body under the volley of a machine gun.

  Omar Yussef doubled back. Applause rattled through the wall from the Assembly, and he knew the president was making his way to the stage. He clicked his tongue: th
e detour through the gallery had wasted time. With a hissing intake of breath and a grimace at the agony in his ankle, he mounted the stairs.

  Two flights up, he was sweating with pain and exertion. Beside a heavy door marked TRANSLATION, a red light flashed in a black pad mounted on the wall. Omar Yussef swiped his UN I.D. across the pad and jerked the door handle. It didn’t move. He was flushed with adrenaline. He felt sure that Ismail must be behind this door.

  He had to find another way in. He was about to continue to the floor above, when the entrance opened and a middle-aged Asian woman emerged. She smiled at Omar Yussef and held the door for him. Premature aging has its advantages, he thought.

  He entered another curving gallery, but this time there were doors along the left-hand side. He opened the first one and saw a low-lit booth with two seats. Its window fronted onto the General Assembly Hall. Before each seat, a microphone on a long black neck reached out of a desk. An olive-skinned woman, enunciating clear, loud French, turned quickly to Omar Yussef, then looked away. Below the window, the president was at the podium, organizing his papers. Omar Yussef spoke no French, but he heard the woman use the words “Mesdames et Messieurs.” The speech is starting, he thought.

  He went along the corridor, pushing open the doors. Beyond them, translators with Arab features transformed the president’s words into Russian, Spanish, Chinese.

  The last door stuck when Omar Yussef turned the handle. He shoved with his shoulder, groaning as he pushed hard off his injured ankle. He took a breath. Inside the room, he heard a familiar voice. With another effort, he forced the door back a few inches and edged around it.

  He stepped on something soft that resisted his weight. Looking down, he saw a young Arab man in a white shirt and blue necktie, his wrists tied to his ankles behind his back. He shifted his stance, and the man rolled beneath him. Omar Yussef came down on his elbows as the door slammed behind him.