There was a knock at the door. Omar Yussef pulled on his trousers and answered it. Khamis Zeydan pushed past him, his shirt open over the gray hair on his chest, the white fringes on his bald head sticking up still from the pillow.
“What the hell is this?” Khamis Zeydan said. He coughed and it was as though he had sprayed an atomizer filled with Scotch around the room.
Omar Yussef’s nostrils flared at the whisky on his friend’s breath and he thought that perhaps he wasn’t the only one whose nightmares had been disturbed by the shooting. “Did you come straight from dawn prayers?”
Khamis Zeydan rubbed his face. “May Allah forgive you, it’s too early for sarcasm.”
“Something’s happening at Husseini’s place,” Omar Yussef said.
“Son of a whore. I can’t see it from my side of the hotel.”
“The management gave the Revolutionary Council people the nice sea view.”
“But you get the view of the fireworks.” Khamis Zeydan lifted the end of the curtain. “Fuck your mother,” he said, with a tone of wonder.
Omar Yussef peered outside from the other end of the curtain. “What’s going on?”
“It looks like the Revolutionary Council convened for a special session.”
“You think this is something between Husseini and al-Fara?”
“Maybe. Or perhaps the Saladin Brigades decided to show Husseini that they know who killed Bassam Odwan.” Khamis Zeydan grinned. “Could be a joint maneuver: the Saladin Brigades and Colonel al-Fara’s men.”
From behind one of the jeeps, a camouflaged gunman brought out a shoulder-launched missile. “By Allah,” Khamis Zeydan said, his eyes wide.
“What’s that?”
“A LAW anti-tank missile.”
The missile took off from the man’s shoulder with a sound like a demon’s inhalation and smashed into the third floor, where Omar Yussef had breakfasted the previous day with General Husseini.
The firing from within Husseini’s building halted. Even the gunmen on the street stopped to marvel at the destruction. Some of them stood up, their assault rifles held in one hand, pointed to the ground. Omar Yussef saw them laughing at one of their colleagues who had covered his ears against the blast. Another gave a high-five to the missile man. When they resumed their volley, it was cover for a squad of six who ran low across the street and into the entrance. They stepped over a body in military fatigues and a red beret and they went up the stairs. Omar Yussef hadn’t noticed that anyone had been hit. He stared at the body and willed it to move. He wondered if he ought to call Doctor Najjar and tell him not to go home just yet; he would be needed soon at the morgue.
The smoke cleared around the third floor, where the missile had hit. Only a small hole, the size of a man’s head, showed in the wall, but there were flames inside. Omar Yussef figured the sofas and armchairs must have ignited. Movement was visible in the room. Some shots sounded, and men came down the stairs quickly.
General Moussa Husseini appeared at the foot of the stairs. He was naked except for a pair of baggy white underpants. His big stomach was covered with thick white hair and his legs looked too skinny to support his fat torso. His bald, dark forehead was laced with streams of blood. One of the gunmen shoved him from behind. He slipped on the pool of gore seeping from his dead guard and tripped over the corpse’s legs, tumbling down the steps. The gunmen followed, kicking him. He scrambled on his knees into the street.
“It can’t be,” Khamis Zeydan said.
Husseini’s face was contorted, weeping. One of the gunmen stood behind him, lifted his Kalashnikov and shot him through the neck.
It was a sudden, single shot. Omar Yussef inhaled quickly.
The same gunman emptied his magazine into Husseini’s body. The attackers walked briskly to their jeeps and pulled away. Some went down the beach road, while a couple turned up Omar al-Mukhtar Street toward the center of town. General Husseini lay on his face in the road.
Omar Yussef put his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. Khamis Zeydan laid his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder. He tilted his head toward the street. “Come on,” he said.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Omar Yussef asked.
Khamis Zeydan shrugged. “Safe or not, unless you want to settle for the official version, we’d better go and check things out.” He hit his shoulder on the wardrobe as he made unsteadily for the door and, when he cursed, he left a cloud of whisky vapor that made Omar Yussef cough.
They were the first to climb the drive of the hotel and reach the scene. Omar Yussef’s legs felt as though his thigh bones had been turned ninety degrees in his hip sockets- his feet rejected any straight line he commanded them to follow and his pelvis was full of pins and needles. His body was exhausted after the nightmares that had ruined his sleep. But whatever dreams had tormented him, they were surely better than being awake in Gaza.
Khamis Zeydan knelt by Husseini’s body. The road was empty. “Where are the police?” Omar Yussef said.
“Husseini must have forgotten to dial the emergency operator.” Khamis Zeydan raised a sarcastic eyebrow. He felt peremptorily for a pulse in Husseini’s neck.
Omar Yussef looked down at the shattered back of the skull and the gashes in the rear of the plump torso where the gunman had fired on automatic. Excrement filled Husseini’s baggy white underpants and the dust had already settled a gritty layer over the bullet wounds. “How terrible.”
“At least he died with his fingertips intact,” Khamis Zeydan said.
Omar Yussef stared at his friend. “Even the worst of men deserves to be respected in death,” he said.
“Take it easy. You know exactly what I’m saying. Let’s have a look in his house.” They stepped over the dead guard at the entrance to the building and the blood pooling around him.
The door to the third floor salon was open. The foam in the couches smoldered, filling the room with choking smoke. There was a black blast mark on the center of the ceiling, where the crystal chandelier had been, and glass crunched underfoot.
“The missile came through the wall and struck the ceiling there,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Anyone in this room would’ve been caught by shrapnel from the missile.”
“Or pieces of the chandelier.”
Behind the long dining table, Omar Yussef found the coffee boy on his back, his arms wide and a bullet through his bony, acned cheek. His eyes were open. He looked no more than a little dazed, but he was quite dead. Omar Yussef glanced down the corridor. Two more guards lay twisted and motionless.
The shelves of crystal along the far wall had collapsed. Husseini’s collection of bottles and glasses and plates lay shattered across the marble tiles. Omar Yussef bent stiffly and picked up the neck of a smashed decanter.
“Just as all this was starting, Doctor Najjar called me from the morgue,” he said. “He found the stopper from one of these in Bassam Odwan’s throat. The prisoner choked on it.”
Khamis Zeydan sniffed a dark liquid at the bottom of another piece of partially smashed crystal. “Brandy. Do you suppose Husseini asked Odwan over for a cozy drink?”
Khamis Zeydan went into the other rooms to look around. Omar Yussef weighed the neck of the decanter in his hand and rolled it against the soft part of his throat below his Adam’s apple. Its cold touch on his sagging skin returned him to the choking moments of his nightmare. He shuddered and he put it on the table.
A siren approached along the beach road. Omar Yussef felt his pulse tick faster. When you hear a siren, he thought, you can’t help but think that they’re coming for you. A turquoise police jeep rolled to a halt near Husseini’s body. Five policemen jumped from the back of the jeep and an officer joined them from the front seat. They stood in an indecisive huddle a few yards from the corpse. The officer approached Husseini and stood over him. He pushed back his blue beret and scratched his forehead.