Cree was talking, stating his role at the UN, and the gunman was shouting and shoving Omar Yussef in the chest and Omar Yussef was pushing himself forward and a gun that had been trained on Cree was turned on Omar Yussef and he looked at the gun and stepped forward onto the barrel and felt it below his collar bone.
“They’re from the UN,” he shouted.
“That’s why we’re taking them, uncle.”
“Then take me. I’m with the UN.”
“We need a foreigner.”
“I’m much more important to the UN than they are. I’m important to the UN’s whole operation in Palestine. Take me.”
“No, uncle.” The gunman growled each word with a thrust of the rifle. His eyes were yellow behind the stocking cap.
“Abu Ramiz, it’s okay. Go to the hotel-” Cree barely had opened his mouth to speak, before the gunman spun and smashed his rifle barrel flat into the Scotsman’s teeth. Cree went to his knees. The gunman pulled his pistol.
He’s going to shoot him. Omar Yussef frantically grabbed the gunman’s arm, but the thickset man shook him off.
The gunman lifted his arm and brought the side of the pistol down flat on the back of Cree’s head. The Scotsman pitched forward toward the dusty blacktop, out cold.
Omar Yussef tried to catch the falling man. He couldn’t hold him, but he lowered him quietly. He stood. “You’re a fool,” he shouted at the gunman. He knew this wasn’t the way to talk yourself out of a hostage situation, but he’d spent an evening dissimulating before Maki for the sake of Eyad Masharawi’s freedom, even hinting that he might be as corrupt as the professor wished him to be. He’d had enough diplomacy. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed a UN official.”
The other gunmen saw the tall foreigner laid out on the ground and their shouting grew louder with panic. Two of them grabbed Wallender and shoved him into the back of the second jeep. One of them cuffed the Swede across the cheek as he entered the jeep. It roared into the dark, taking four of the gunmen with it. Wallender’s ghostly face glimmered through the window and was gone.
The gunman who had struck Cree stood over the body. He ordered the other gunmen to get going.
Omar Yussef grabbed the gunman’s forearm. “I said, you’ve killed him. Where are you taking the other one?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. This one’s not dead, and I wouldn’t have had to hit him at all if you’d done as you were told, uncle.”
“Don’t call me uncle, you bastard. You’re not from my people. You’re a destroyer of Palestine. Dogs like you disgust me and every decent Palestinian. No one ever tells you how much they hate you to your face, because everyone’s frightened of you. But they hate you nonetheless. I’m not scared, though. I don’t care what you-”
In the dark and the dust and with tears coming to his eyes, Omar Yussef failed to see the pistol, flat in the gunman’s hand. He felt a white flash that shot from the left side of his head through his entire body and exploded out of his eye sockets. The eruption lit Gaza as bright as day and Omar Yussef saw the place clearly. He heard the words Khamis Zeydan had spoken to him in the breakfast room: There is no single, isolated crime in Gaza. Each one is linked to many others, you’ll see. When you touch one of them, it sets off reverberations that will be heard by powerful people, ruthless people. What wickedness had he uncovered that these men should strike back like this? In the split second that the white light flashed around his head, Omar Yussef saw every crime ever committed in Gaza. He would start to solve those crimes when he woke up. He wondered if he would wake up.
The white flash was over and the dust storm had stopped. There was calm inside Omar Yussef. He must have been gone from Gaza.
Chapter 11
It was cold and dark when Omar Yussef came to. He shivered and hugged himself, and he heard a voice noting that he had moved. Where is Magnus? he thought. Are they holding us in the same room? He listened for signs that Wallender was there.
Omar Yussef shivered again. A hand lifted his head and fed him water. The movement of his neck was like a spike through his brain and he cried out. The water spilled onto his chin and chest, but he sucked down as much as he could. It tasted like an Alpine spring and he wondered if he was outside in the chilly night. He hoped it was true, because there were no Alps in Gaza, so perhaps he was somewhere else. When he choked, he rolled onto his side. His head gave a single massive pulse of pain with the motion and he bellowed again. A hand rested on his shoulder and patted him. Friendly kidnappers, he thought. Bastards. He pushed the hand away. “Fuck off,” he said.
There was a laugh. “I swear by Allah, he’s almost back to his normal cheerful self,” a voice said, and there was another laugh. He recognized the voice, but its owner was in Gaza, and Omar Yussef had convinced himself that the gunman had hit him so hard he had cleared the border fence, right out of the stinking Gaza Strip.
“Sami, help me get him upright.”
The familiar voice again, and he knew the name it spoke. His brain jarred as they propped him against the padded headboard. The friendly kidnappers had given him pillows and-now he felt it beneath him-a mattress. His squirming brain dropped the pain down into his neck and shoulders and on into his stomach, where it rolled like the boys he had seen roughhousing on the beach beside their fishing nets. The pain blotted out the lovely mountain views he had imagined when he tasted the water and forced him to remember that he was in Gaza. He was in bloody Gaza, he knew it, and he cursed again.
“Shame on you,” said Khamis Zeydan.
Omar Yussef breathed heavily. He put his hand to his face, on the left where the pain was worse. His eyes were covered in cloth. He put a finger beneath the cloth to lift it and a shiver of light bolted into his eyeball. Slowly, he rolled the bandage up to his forehead and exposed both his eyes to the light.
“We tried to fix your glasses,” Khamis Zeydan said. “The lenses aren’t broken, but the frame is a little bent.”
Omar Yussef took the glasses. He slid them on. They sat awkwardly on his nose, the right lens half an inch higher than the other one. His hotel room came into focus. Perched on the bed either side of him sat Khamis Zeydan and Sami Jaffari. They smiled, their faces pale, sensing the pain of the blow that had knocked him cold. Beyond the foot of the bed, James Cree sat in a gilt rococo chair with his elbow on the small vanity table. A bandage wrapped his head and his eyes were open wide, staring, drawn and sleepless.
“Sami found you outside,” Khamis Zeydan said. “He was down in the lobby and he heard shouting, so he went to look. He found the two of you, unconscious. It looks like you were both pistol-whipped. James came to about an hour ago. You’ve been awake for a while, but you haven’t made much sense.”
“Magnus?”
“Kidnapped by the Saladin Brigades. How do you feel?”
Omar Yussef groaned. “Can you turn off the air-conditioning? I’m very cold.”
Sami went to the corner of the room by the door, out of Omar Yussef’s sight. The infuriating purr halted and he felt warmer. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence, but he couldn’t get back to the mountains, so he opened his eyes and straightened his back.
“Are you okay, James?” he said.
Cree lifted a glass of whisky. “I’m well looked-after.” There was a bottle on the vanity next to him.
Khamis Zeydan laughed. “Scotch was the first thing James asked for when he came around in the lobby. Fortunately, there were no Islamists present. He was surrounded by delegates of the Revolutionary Council, who, as you know, are not strong adherents to the proscriptions of the Prophet, peace be upon him. A number of delegates were able immediately to oblige our Scots friend with their hipflasks. Though one of them, who claims to be a doctor, wanted to give you smelling salts.”
Omar Yussef looked confused.
“I said to him, Does it look like my friend has simply fainted? Put away your stupid smelling salts. Our party is full of people who obtained their medical degrees behind the Iron Curtain.” Khamis Zeydan smiled. “For medicinal purposes, I also gave James a bottle from the supply in my suitcase.”