Khamis Zeydan turned to Omar Yussef. “Where can we get a copy?”
“At this time of night,” Nizar said, “you won’t be able to find one.”
“We’ve only got a day to figure everything out before the president’s speech,” Khamis Zeydan said. “We can’t just wait for the stores to open.”
“Now you’re in a hurry?” Omar Yussef remembered the stacks of newspapers by Hamza’s desk in the precinct house and reached for the phone. “Let me call Sergeant Abayat. I have his cell-phone number.”
Nizar pushed the handset back into its cradle. “Not yet, ustaz. I want to know if the Honored Pasha is going to protect me from the American police.”
Khamis Zeydan glared at Nizar. He reached for the whisky. “I’ll make sure you’re protected,” he said. “Let’s drink to it.”
Nizar took his hand off the phone, and Omar Yussef dialed.
“Greetings, O Hamza,” he said, when Abayat picked up the phone. “Thanks be to Allah, everything is fine, yes. I need you to come to my hotel room right away. There’s someone here you’ll want to see. . Nizar, that’s who. Please bring the latest copy of the Metro Muslim also. The edition that came out this past evening. Do you have it?” He put his hand over the receiver and turned to Khamis Zeydan. “He has one in his office. Then come quickly with it, Hamza. It’s urgent.” He hung up.
Khamis Zeydan’s eyes were moist and gleaming as he took another drink, wild with excitement born of danger. The tiny broken veins high on his cheeks flushed.
“We’re halfway to stopping this,” the police chief said, pouring another drink for Nizar. “Changing a plan at the last minute is tough, even if the police aren’t on to you. And to carry out a hit in New York City is no easy task.”
“Really?” Nizar murmured over the lip of his tumbler, his eyes still, intense and probing. “Surely for you PLO people, New York presented no special problems.”
“In Europe, we had some freedom of movement. We made deals with the national intelligence services.” Khamis Zeydan emptied his glass and grinned. “In West Germany, we were allowed to operate freely, so long as we didn’t attack German targets. But the Americans were always too close to Israel to give us any such leeway. I can tell you, the only operation I carried out in New York-it stretched even me to my limits.”
Nizar drank slowly.
Chapter 26
Nizar leafed through to the classifieds at the back of the Metro Muslim. Hamza stood over him, his lips peeled back from his teeth and his tired eyes dry and hostile.
“I don’t like this,” the detective said. “I ought to take him in now.”
Nizar kept his eyes on the newspaper. “How far had you progressed in your crack investigation of the headless corpse? You’d never have found me. You didn’t even match fingerprints on the dead body.”
Hamza turned a glance of hurt and betrayal on Omar Yussef.
“If I hadn’t come forward, you’d still be hunting for poor old Rashid,” Nizar said.
“May Allah be merciful upon him,” Hamza said, “and may you beg the pardon of Allah for what you’ve done.”
Nizar murmured, “‘He whose hand is in the water isn’t the same as he whose hand is in the fire.’”
That’s true, Omar Yussef thought. You can’t condemn someone’s behavior until you’ve experienced their situation. He took Hamza’s hand and held it close to his chest like a man imploring a lover. “I know you see Nizar as a murderer, but you have to work with him now to save the president.”
Hamza frowned at Khamis Zeydan. “How severe is the danger to the president?”
The police chief rolled his tongue behind his mustache. “I wouldn’t let my dear old auntie sit next to him at dinner in case of a ricochet.”
“You’re canceling his speech?”
Khamis Zeydan bit at the ends of his mustache. “Not just yet. But I’m thinking about it.”
Omar Yussef remembered the Jerusalem girl he had met on the subway during his first day in New York. He recalled wishing that Palestinians back home could live as she did, driven neither by politics and ideology, nor by murder and greed. If the president died here, Omar Yussef’s granddaughter would never experience the security that girl knew. The children at Omar Yussef’s poor little school for refugees would be engulfed once more in civil war and the viciousness of thugs and killers.
“O Hamza, you need to be a little less of a New York cop and a little more of a Palestinian,” he said. “You’re from Bethlehem. You have a duty to the Palestinian people, as well as to New York. Bend the rules. If you don’t, the president may be killed here in New York. The Palestinians will have a dead leader and perhaps a civil war.”
Hamza cursed quietly.
“It’s here,” Nizar said, his voice exuberant and uneasy.
Khamis Zeydan drained his glass and leaned over the young man’s shoulder.
Nizar’s fingers rustled the margins of the Metro Muslim, an expression of bewilderment on his face. He looked like a newspaper subscriber whose breakfast had been upset by an unexpected obituary for a friend. His hopeless gaze brought Omar Yussef to his feet. “What is it?” he said.
He came to Nizar’s side and scanned the page of ads. Feidy’s Halal Butcher and Grocery. Muhammad Hammad, Esq., Attorney at Law. Experienced Muslim Babysitter Available. “Which one is it?”
Nizar’s finger hovered until it came down on an ad at the bottom of the page.
Omar Yussef read aloud: “The Hassan-i Sabbagh School. Recruiting for teachers. Qualifications: Good Islamic character. Sound knowledge of Islam. Legal U.S. status with valid Social Security number. Proficiency in English. One year experience preferable. Apply: Alamut Mosque.” An address in Bay Ridge followed.
“That address-it’s your apartment.” Hamza shoved Nizar’s shoulder. “The place you shared with Rashid and Ala.”
“What the hell does that tell us?” Khamis Zeydan slapped the page.
“It tells us our friend Nizar isn’t misleading us,” Omar Yussef said.
“How do you know?”
“Hassan-i Sabbagh was the Old Man of the Mountain,” Omar Yussef said, “the greatest, most feared leader of the medieval Assassins. We’ve come across references to them at every turn, and here they are again.”
“The Alamut Mosque too,” Hamza mumbled.
“A mosque which doesn’t exist at an address that matches Nizar’s,” Omar Yussef said. “What’s the message, Nizar? Is it in code?”
Nizar seemed to have drifted into a dream. It took him a moment to come back. He shook his head, and his long black hair slipped over his eyes. “You missed the logo,” he said, his raw voice catching in his throat.
Above the text, a small graphic showed a man in traditional Arab dress walking with an axe held above his head. Behind him came a horse bearing a turbaned rider, dignified and upright.
“Do I have to remind you of the lessons you gave us, ustaz?” Nizar said.
“What does he mean?” Khamis Zeydan asked.
Omar Yussef rubbed the white stubble on his chin. “When the leader of the Assassins rode out of his castle, he was always preceded by a man bearing an axe who would shout, ‘Turn out of the way of him who bears in his hands the death of kings.’”
Khamis Zeydan dragged Nizar’s face toward him with the back of his hand. “Well?” he said.
Nizar murmured, “There’s another assassin here to kill the president.”
“You know that from the logo?”
“The man who called out about the death of kings-that’s the signal. Another hit man is in town. Maybe he’s been here all along, as a backup. If the graphic showed just the man on his horse, it would mean we were to proceed as planned. But this is different.”