Omar Yussef sucked on a cube of ice. Here comes the payoff, he thought. He knows Jamie won’t track down the secret accounts without local help, and he thinks that means me. He wants me on his side. So that he can be the first to the money?
“I could make good use of a man like you.” Kanaan’s eyes drifted to the left, as though he’d just had an idea. “Really, working on these boring development projects year after year, it must be like drinking coffee from the same dirty cup every day. I could offer you a position in my company where you would have wonderful opportunities and every day would be different.”
“I always drink my coffee the same way-bitter,” Omar Yussef said. “I didn’t come here to be bought off. I came here to find out what you know about the death of Ishaq.”
“Ishaq?” Kanaan narrowed his eyes, as though straining to focus on the distant ridge across the valley. Omar Yussef thought the rich man’s jaw trembled slightly. “What does that have to do with the World Bank?”
“He was about to meet Miss King when he was killed. Did his partnership with you put him in jeopardy?”
“He was a close associate, but our business wasn’t anything dangerous.”
“Nonetheless, he was murdered. Then Awwadi, who was a follower of your rival for power in Nablus, Sheikh Bader, was killed-right after the sheikh slurred the man who once led your faction.” The wicker easy chair creaked, as Omar Yussef leaned toward Kanaan. “It’s dangerous to be either for you or against you.”
“Fuck Sheikh Bader.”
Omar Yussef was taken aback by Kanaan’s sudden vehe-mence and vulgarity.
Kanaan lowered his voice. “You have me all wrong, Abu. .”
“Abu Ramiz.”
“Brother Abu Ramiz, I don’t pretend that I’ve never been involved in questionable things. I’m a businessman, a Palestinian, and successful. You may draw your conclusions from that. But I’m no killer.”
“You have higher morals than that?”
Kanaan shook his head. “I simply don’t need to kill.” He swept his hand to take in the mansion and the town below. “From this hilltop, I hear the gunshots down in Nablus, but I never know if they’re killing each other or celebrating a wedding. Do you think my wealthy neighbors are all running around with guns in their pudgy little hands, settling scores?”
“As long as there’s cash in those soft hands, you can find someone else to hold the gun for you. That doesn’t make you blameless,” Omar Yussef said. “Ishaq’s killing was somehow connected to his dealings with you, even if it wasn’t you who beat him to death.”
Kanaan winced.
“Beaten to death, that’s right.” Omar Yussef brandished his glass. The ice cubes tinkled in his shaking hand. “Tortured and beaten.”
The wealthy man covered his face with his thick, hairy fingers. Was he the boy’s lover, as Roween thought? Omar Yussef wondered. He doesn’t seem to have known exactly how Ishaq died. He appears truly horrified to hear about the torture.
“You Fatah people took a nice young man with a good head for numbers and you made him into a dirty little villain who hid your money all over the world,” Omar Yussef said. “Ishaq intended to hand over the Old Man’s secret account details to the World Bank. So you decided to prevent him.”
“What’re you saying? That I killed him?”
“Did you kill him?”
“That’s insane. I loved him.”
“Loved him? How?”
“I loved him, that’s all.” Kanaan stood and lifted both his arms to the canopy of pink buds above him. “I don’t pretend that the aims of the Fatah party are entirely pure. But neither was Ishaq. He was homosexual.”
“Morals are suddenly important to you?”
“He disappointed me. Too many people knew about his preferences.”
“So they suspected your sexuality, because you were close to him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have a wife.”
“So did Ishaq.”
“I have a real wife, a beautiful, accomplished woman, not a frowsy little sham wife chosen by the tribal elders.”
“You loved him,” Omar Yussef sneered.
“Not like that.” Kanaan pulled out a fistful of wisteria petals and rolled them between his fingers. His voice was quiet. “For the sake of our society, we must be led by men of clear morals.”
Omar Yussef growled out a scornful laugh. “I forgot to mention, Awwadi told me he’d obtained some files of dirt on you top party men. He got them from Ishaq. So don’t talk to me about moral leadership.”
Kanaan looked suspiciously at Omar Yussef. “I live amongst politicians, Abu Ramiz. I bribe them, I buy dinners and cars for them, pay for their children to go overseas for a decent education. As you see from the opulence of my home, this has proved a healthy invest-ment.” He turned to his mock-Classical palace with a resentful scowl in which Omar Yussef read the traces of all the wickedness the rich man had committed to pay for it. “But when these politicians get sick, I have to put them in quarantine, so they don’t infect me.”
“What was Ishaq’s sickness? Why did you kill him?”
“I didn’t kill Ishaq. I could never have done such a thing. I believed he had a bright future.”
“Who would you not sacrifice if they got sick, as you put it? Your wife? Or is she expendable, too, in the national interest?”
“I would sacrifice everything for Liana.”
Liana had inspired the devotion of Amin Kanaan and Khamis Zeydan. Yet it seemed neither man had given her quite what she wanted. Omar Yussef’s impression of her had been that the course of her life had somehow been taken out of her hands, leaving her resentful. He thought Ishaq might have suffered from a similar bitterness, prevented by social constraints from finding a love that would bring happiness and bound to a partner whose fondness he couldn’t return.
Jamie King snapped her cell phone shut and returned to the gazebo. She shook her head. “I don’t know if this is really anything,” she said. “It could be a lead from Geneva, but it may just as easily be nothing.”
“What’s that?” Omar Yussef said.
“I’ll have the details soon. I can’t say until then.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Kanaan asked.
“I’d really appreciate it if you could try to break through some of the barriers I’ve run into at the upper levels of the government,” Jamie said. “There’re some people who were close to the former president and who’re reputed to be corrupt. You know who I mean. See if you can get them to give me a lead, anonymously. No questions asked.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“If the money does get cut off on Friday, I’ll try to save the joint projects we have underway with you, Mister Kanaan.”
“Of course.”
“I’d better get back to the hotel. My people in Geneva are faxing me the documents they’ve unearthed. I should get on top of it.”
Kanaan bowed, as Jamie turned toward the house.
Omar Yussef lifted himself out of the wicker chair. Before he followed the American, he looked into Kanaan’s muddy eyes. “I’m a student of history, Your Honor Amin. You might think that means I care only about the past. But the future is more important to me. I remember the future.”
Kanaan opened his palm. “Pardon me?”
“I remember the future our leaders told us about when they returned from exile,” Omar Yussef said. “The future as it might have been.”
“It still might be, if Allah wills it.”
“If Allah willed it, he would have sent the Palestinians different leaders.” Omar Yussef stepped out of the gazebo and squinted into the sun over Nablus. “And Ishaq would never have met you.”
Chapter 23
The manager of the Grand Hotel prodded at the inner workings of his fax machine. He slammed down the cover and rubbed his ashtray-colored face with both hands.
Omar Yussef entered the empty lobby, while Jamie King parked her Suburban. He passed the desk and pressed the elevator call button. “Peace be upon you,” he said.