Khamis Zeydan grunted.
Omar Yussef fingered the edges of the silver plate on the front of the box with the raised image of the temple. Could this be what Ishaq meant by ‘behind the temple’? Not in the scroll, but behind this piece of silver? He slipped a fingernail beneath the rim of the plate. A shred of black gum came up. This hasn’t been opened in a while, he thought. He worked at the edge of the silver panel until he could push a finger behind it. He pressed down on the calfskin and slipped his hand inside. He came out with nothing but a rancid film of four-hundred-year-old calf’s grease on his palm.
“Well, that’s it,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Ishaq’s secret died with him.”
Omar Yussef dropped the Abisha Scroll to the bench and came swiftly to his feet.
Khamis Zeydan glared at him.
“That’s what Ishaq told Roween,” Omar Yussef said. He stared toward the front of the synagogue.
Khamis Zeydan followed his gaze. “O peace, what’s up with you now?”
“Ishaq told her that the thing he was working on was a secret between him and the old president and Allah. The president’s dead, and Ishaq said that when he died, too, it would be ‘a secret known only to Allah.’” Omar Yussef stumbled into the aisle and hurried to the front of the synagogue.
“So you’ve somehow figured out Allah’s secret?”
“Exactly.” Omar Yussef nodded. “Allah’s secret.”
“Really, the god of the Samaritans decided to share it with you?”
“No, but the priest did.” Omar Yussef climbed onto the dais. “When I came here with Sami, the priest told me the Samaritans never destroy old religious documents, even after they become unusable. They put them inside this trunk.”
He lifted the long lid of the pine bench. The sharp scent of aging parchment rose from the yellowed rolls inside. He turned to Khamis Zeydan.
“The priest said they call them ‘Allah’s secrets.’” Omar Yussef kneeled, dug his hands into the pile of parchment and pulled out an armful.
“The secret Ishaq shared with his god?”
Omar Yussef nodded. “In here.”
Khamis Zeydan reached into the trunk and tossed out a heavy scroll. He coughed at the dust rising from the recesses of the cabinet.
Scrolls and books in frayed bindings piled on the floor around them and the air grew dusty and sour. Khamis Zeydan coughed so hard he retched.
Omar Yussef slid his fingers to the bottom of the long trunk. He felt the seam of the old dry wood. The parchments at the bottom were brittle as baklava pastry.
Then he touched it. Plastic. He pulled against the weight of the documents on top and brought out a manila folder encased in a freezer bag. The folder was thick with spreadsheets and columns of numbers, all headed with the eagle of the Palestinian Authority and the address of the president’s office in Ramallah.
Khamis Zeydan whistled quietly.
“Banks in Switzerland, companies registered in the Caribbean,” Omar Yussef said, leafing through the file. “This is it.”
“By Allah,” Khamis Zeydan whispered.
Omar Yussef returned the folder to the freezer bag and held it to his chest with both hands. He noticed that the pulse of excitement he experienced when he set foot on the temple stone and when he touched the Abisha Scroll was absent. The file felt heavy with death.
Khamis Zeydan pulled out his cell phone. “I’m calling Sami,” he said. “I want him to take care of this. I don’t want any other officer asking me questions about that dead Samaritan over there, and I certainly don’t want anyone else to know that you have three hundred million dollars in your shaky little paws.”
Omar Yussef knelt by Jibril. The dead man’s skin was as bloodless and dry as the parchments piled on the floor around the ark. He must have had help when he took Ishaq and Roween to their deaths on the hilltop. He would have been too frail to overpower either of his victims alone. But Omar Yussef would never find out who had aided the old priest, now that Jibril lay dead.
Khamis Zeydan muttered to Sami on the phone. When he hung up, Omar Yussef turned to him. “Did you really shoot the priest to prevent him destroying the account documents?” he asked. “Or was it to protect the reputation of your old lover? With Jibril dead, no one knows about Liana’s illegitimate son, except her husband.”
Khamis Zeydan lit a Rothmans and shot the match over the synagogue benches with his thumb. He stared toward the ark. “That’s another of Allah’s secrets,” he said.
Chapter 31
Night receded to a mauve fringe on the ridge of Jerizim. Omar Yussef watched it slink away and breathed the unsullied cool of dawn. He kept his eyes on the mountain until the blue sky overcame its final taint, and still he stared. He twisted his mouth into a sour smile. He didn’t trust the darkness to be gone. If he turned down the hill toward the casbah, he was sure he’d see its somber essence lurking there. The sun might simmer Nablus in the heat at the valley’s bottom, but it would never burn off the shadows. In the alleys of the old town, it was always an ominous midnight.
Sami came down the steps outside the synagogue. Omar Yussef rolled the account documents and stuffed them awkwardly into the hip pocket of his pants.
“Concealing evidence?” Sami smiled.
“Are you going to search me?”
“I wasn’t anxious to investigate all along. I’m not about to begin now.”
Khamis Zeydan slouched out of the synagogue and leaned over the railing by the steps.
“The priest interrupted another attempted theft of the Abisha Scroll,” Sami said. “The thieves killed him, but they panicked and left the scroll behind. That’s the official version. What do you think?”
Omar Yussef touched his mustache. “Sami, what’s wrong with the truth?” he said. “Abu Adel was doing his job as a police officer by stopping a criminal. I’m sure we could explain the priest’s death honestly.”
Sami’s eyes darkened above his bony cheeks. “The truth is in your pocket, Abu Ramiz. The truth is that the former president salted away hundreds of millions of dollars in secret bank accounts, while ordinary Palestinians lived in crappy refugee camps and studied in crowded schools. What’s wrong with the truth? A great deal is wrong.”
Omar Yussef saw the hardness in the young man’s eyes. Khamis Zeydan expectorated into the basement yard of the synagogue. Is this the moment when Sami becomes like his mentor, Omar Yussef wondered, dirtied and compromised?
“It’s the truth, nonetheless,” he said. “Don’t give up on that, Sami. At least this money will no longer line the pockets of corrupt leaders. I don’t expect you to become idealistic about the Palestinian people, but tell me I’ve restored a little of your faith.”
Sami shoved the protruding roll of documents firmly into Omar Yussef’s pocket. “Watch out or you might lose them,” he said. The hardness left his face. “Really, Abu Ramiz, is it the job of a detective to make sure everyone knows just how bad things are?”
Omar Yussef lifted a finger, as he did when he lectured in his classroom. “Detectives are like the cloth that polishes a tarnished piece of silverware. The silver is displayed proudly, shining and admired. The cloth is tossed into a cupboard, filthy and unseen, imprinted with a record of the dirt everyone else believes to have been erased forever.”
Sami smiled. “You promised me you’d be cheerful by the time my wedding came around, Abu Ramiz.”
“You’re going ahead with the party?”
Sami raised his good arm, then tapped a knuckle against his cast. “My bride will walk on my left in the procession, and there’s no other reason to delay, anymore. Listen, what do you hear?”
“Nothing.”
“Precisely. The gunfire has stopped,” Sami said. “The battle in the casbah came to an end around the time when you and Abu Adel were in the synagogue with the priest. While we’ve been photographing the position of the corpse and dusting for prints, Amin Kanaan’s men have taken complete control of Nablus.”