“The orders to kill the UN man came from Rafah,” Omar Yussef said. “From Yasser Salah.”
Now Abu Jamal spoke slowly and carefully. “Why did Salah want to kill you?”
“I had been to his family home in Rafah to investigate the kidnapping of the Swede. Yasser Salah is the one who connects all these strands. That’s where we’ll find the missile.”
Abu Jamal coughed and spat into a tissue. “Lieutenant Fathi Salah came to us to sell the missile. He was a Military Intelligence officer. Perhaps they have the missile.”
Omar Yussef shook his head and stroked his mustache. “Fathi was scared and alone when he met Odwan. That’s because he was operating without the permission of his boss General Husseini.”
“Why didn’t he sell the missile to General Husseini?”
“He would have, but Yasser couldn’t allow that. If his boss, Colonel al-Fara, discovered that he’d sold such a strategic weapon to his greatest rival, it would’ve been the end for Yasser.”
“Selling the missile to the Saladin Brigades was the neutral option?”
Omar Yussef nodded. “But something went wrong in the sale. It didn’t matter to Yasser, because he could still sell the missile to Colonel al-Fara. But he had to get rid of his brother, first.” Omar Yussef rubbed his palms as though washing them. “He knew General Husseini would blame Odwan for Fathi’s killing.”
“So Yasser Salah sold out his own brother. But why would he kidnap the Swede?”
“I don’t know yet. Perhaps it had to do with his degree from al-Azhar. He bought the degree so he could be promoted. Maybe he feared being demoted or punished for corruption, if the bogus degrees were exposed.”
Abu Jamal shook his head. “It’d be too risky for Yasser. Anyway, al-Fara’s officers get promotions for corruption. You may be right about the missile though.” He leaned toward Attiah and whispered. The burly man went to the back of the apartment and spoke into a phone in a low voice. “We’ll go to look for the missile at Salah’s house,” Abu Jamal said.
“When?”
“We had another mission planned for late tonight, so everyone’s on standby. We’ll be ready soon.”
“We’ll come with you.”
Abu Jamal clicked his tongue and raised his chin. No.
“You’re forgetting the Swede.” Omar Yussef stared at Abu Jamal.
The head of the Saladin Brigades squeezed his chin thoughtfully in his good hand. “All right. Stay out of the way, though. I don’t want another UN guy’s death blamed on the Saladin Brigades.”
If I die, Omar Yussef thought, you won’t have any trouble. No one will so much as pick up the phone to call you.
Chapter 27
It was eleven that night before Abu Jamal decided he had gathered sufficient weaponry to be certain of taking out the Salah home. Omar Yussef paced the darkness above the stationery store. He was sure Yasser had the missile, but he couldn’t be positive that this second Salah brother was also behind Wallender’s kidnapping. If he was wrong, he wanted to know quickly, so he could pursue different leads to free the Swede.
Omar Yussef gave a low growl of frustration. These were hopeless thoughts-if Wallender wasn’t at Salah’s house, he wasn’t going to find him at all. His colleague would remain at the mercy of whichever of the different gangs might be holding him. The Saladin Brigades would reclaim their missile, have it copied, shoot it over the border fence into Israel, and draw down a new war on the people of Gaza. At least someone will be happy, he thought. He clenched his fists behind his back.
Heavy footsteps approached fast from the rear of the apartment. In the darkness around the far sofa, the orange tip of Sami’s cigarette dipped toward the coffee table and was crushed out. He was standing next to Omar Yussef when Attiah Odwan came to the door. Across his strong, rounded chest, he braced a Carl Gustav sub-machinegun. He had eight grenades clipped to his belt and his vest was bulky with spare magazines for the gun. He gestured with his head for them to follow.
At the foot of the stairs, three jeeps idled with their headlights off. The men inside had wrapped their keffiyehs around their faces against the dust. Omar Yussef never wore this checkered scarf, but he wished he had one now, even though it was a mark of rustic simplicity. He couldn’t tell if he was cold because he wore only a shirt or because the tension in his muscles cut off his blood. He coughed and sat beside Sami in the first jeep. Abu Jamal came quickly down the stairs. He put on a green forage cap and took his place in the front seat. Attiah Odwan jogged to the corner of the main street and glanced quickly along it before gesturing to the convoy to move. He slid into the back seat beside Omar Yussef.
As he edged across the seat to make room, Omar Yussef struck his head on something metal. The blow reignited the bruises from Wallender’s kidnapping and he grunted with the pain. He turned to glare at one of the gunmen in the luggage space at the back of the jeep, who was withdrawing the thick tube of a shoulder-launched missile like the one Omar Yussef had seen used against General Husseini’s home that morning. The gunman put the missile next to another which he held upright between his legs. The gunman tapped his knuckle against the missile launcher where it had hit Omar Yussef’s head and shrugged, his apologetic eyes showing between the folds of his keffiyeh.
“Be careful,” Omar Yussef said. “One bullet will be enough to blow my head off. Don’t waste your missile.”
Abu Jamal glanced to the rear of the jeep and spoke to the man with the LAW anti-tank missiles. “When we get there, stay close to me.”
The jeeps went fast down the main street. If it had been quiet in the early evening, now it was ghostly and empty. The nights in Rafah belonged to the gunmen, the smugglers and, sometimes, the Israeli undercover squads.
Sami lit a cigarette and handed the pack to the grateful gunmen in the back. Attiah Odwan declined the smokes.
“What do you intend to do at Salah’s house?” Omar Yussef asked Abu Jamal.
Abu Jamal’s head and shoulders rocked with the jolting of the jeep over the rough road. He was loose and relaxed. “We will achieve revenge for Attiah’s brother,” he said.
Omar Yussef knew there would be more deaths tonight. In the quiet jeep, he wondered if his reasoning about Yasser Salah was correct. What if he was bringing down this merciless, heavily armed force on an innocent family? A low hint of panic pulsed through him. He thought perhaps he should slow the gunmen down, while he ran through his logic again. “You might need Yasser Salah alive,” he said. “To guide you to where the missile is hidden.”
“Someone in the family will remain alive to show us,” Abu Jamal said. “I don’t expect it will be Yasser. He isn’t the type.”
“Yasser knows the truth,” Attiah said, quietly.
Omar Yussef turned to the burly man squeezed onto the back seat next to him. “The truth, Attiah?”
“The Salah family demanded the death of my brother Bassam, because they said he killed their son,” Attiah said, staring into the dusty darkness beyond the window. “Their demand was correct under our traditions of blood vengeance. But it wasn’t true that Bassam was the killer. Now, under those same traditions, I will take revenge. My revenge is true.”
Omar Yussef thought about that for a while. “Do you expect the Salahs to put up much of a fight, Abu Jamal?”
Abu Jamal lifted his hands before him in a shrug. “Those who die for the resistance go to Heaven,” he said. “Those whom we kill go to Hell.”
I don’t believe in Heaven, Omar Yussef thought. He looked into the murky night. They were in the half-demolished section of Rafah, where the walls were pocked with bullet holes, framed by jagged, blasted edges ripped by tank shells. And Hell is right here.
The first jeep slowed and rounded the corner of the alley that led to the Salah family home. It crept toward the sandy lot where James Cree had parked the UN Suburban a day and a half earlier. Omar Yussef frowned. It seemed so long ago, almost as if Cree had been dead as many years as his namesake in the British War Cemetery. How old would that make me? he thought. I’ve lived lifetimes today.