Above him, he heard another wall come down. The wooden supports of the shaft groaned and dirt puffed out through the gaps between the planks.
Omar Yussef reached the bottom of the ladder. Wallender was on his belly, edging backwards through the tunnel. Unlike the shaft, it had no wooden supports and it was even narrower-about two feet square. Omar Yussef went onto his hands and knees. “Magnus,” he whispered.
The Swede looked into the half-light that filtered beyond him from the lantern. His bloody face registered recognition. Sweat channeled dirt into Omar Yussef’s eyes as he strained to see past Wallender, but the Swede’s body blocked his view along the tunnel. The earth around them murmured and dust dropped from the roof.
He had to get them to turn back. “Yasser,” he called into the tunnel.
“Fuck your mother,” Yasser shouted. “I’ll shoot the foreigner.”
“Let’s all get out of here, Yasser. It’s going to collapse.”
The puff of dirt became a trickle, like rain all along the tunnel. Then the earth growled like a man taking a punch and the roof of the tunnel fell. Omar Yussef dived to grab Wallender’s arm. He pulled hard and the Swede shoved himself forward. The shaft around Omar Yussef filled with thick dust. In the darkness, he tried to call Magnus’s name, but he could only cough. He held the man’s arm and sensed the Swede’s desperate scrambling to free his legs and waist, then he felt the resistance lessen. He slipped backward against the planks of the shaft as Magnus came out of the tunnel and up onto his knees. He put his arms around the Swede and they gripped each other. He pushed Magnus up the ladder and scrambled behind him through the thick air. He heard stones clashing against each other above him.
“I can’t get out, Abu Ramiz,” Wallender said, from the top of the ladder. “It’s blocked.”
When the garage roof came down, it had covered the head of the tunnel. Coughing, Omar Yussef and Wallender shouted that they were underground. They listened intently to the deep silence, then yelled again.
As they waited, Omar Yussef sensed a calm in himself. He had found Magnus. Even if they were both to be stuck in this tunnel forever with no one above them aware of their fate, he had shown the Swede the kind of man he was. I might remain here, he thought, buried in Gaza with James Cree’s great-grandfather. He frowned. Something flashed through his mind for a moment, linking the old skeleton in Doctor Najjar’s morgue and the British Military Cemetery. He tried to bring the two images together once more, but he was distracted by Magnus yelling through the timber and stones for rescue.
Magnus breathed heavily. He put his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Abu Ramiz, while I was held captive, I felt very alone,” he murmured. “Though I’m still trapped, at least I have a good friend with me.” Then he raised his voice: “Tell me, did Sweden invade Norway?” He slapped Omar Yussef’s shoulder and rolled his head back, laughing. Omar Yussef saw that his companion was so relieved to be rid of Yasser Salah that even the prospect of being buried alive didn’t spoil his humor. He coughed out the dust and smiled.
The rubble above them scratched and rumbled as it was lifted away. The head of the shaft cleared and Wallender was pulled from the ladder. Omar Yussef followed him. Sami gripped him under the arms, grimacing from the light wound to his shoulder, and hoisted him onto the broken stone of the garage wall. Omar Yussef lay limp and sweating next to Magnus. The dust storm still smothered Rafah in filth and humidity, but to Omar Yussef it felt crisp and stimulating, like the air of the mountains, after the dirt in the tunnel.
Sami leaned over into the shaft that led to the tunnel and stared into the darkness. “No one else down there?” he said.
Omar Yussef lifted his head to speak the name of Yasser Salah, but he choked on it and coughed until his diaphragm bit into the bottom of his lungs.
Abu Jamal crossed the debris of the fallen garage, holding a flashlight before him. His men were tossing wooden beams and sections of tin roof and cinderblock into the garden, searching through the destruction. The chief of the gunmen stared at the exhausted Swede. Crouching and breathing deeply, Wallender was coated in earth from head to foot. He shielded his eyes from the beam of Abu Jamal’s torch.
Omar Yussef sat upright and addressed Abu Jamal. “This is Magnus Wallender of the UN, who was kidnapped by Yasser Salah. Yasser is dead, down in the tunnel.”
Abu Jamal looked at Wallender as though Omar Yussef had introduced him to the filthiest mongrel stray in Gaza. He turned the light on Omar Yussef, pulled his pistol from its holster and leveled it at him. “You bastard, where the fuck is my missile?”
Chapter 28
Magnus Wallender rose to his feet, wheezing. The skin around his mouth, where Yasser Salah had ripped away the tape, was bleeding and caked with damp mud. His thick hair stuck up in frightful wisps and his light-blue irises stood out sharply in a face dark with dirt. He rolled his shoulders back, blinked away the grit and stepped in front of Abu Jamal. “Whoever you are,” he said, “put away that gun.”
Abu Jamal looked Wallender up and down. He glanced behind him, where his men were clearing wreckage, hoping to find the missile. “I know who you are, even if you don’t know me,” he said. “It’s your good fortune that I don’t want trouble with the UN, because otherwise I’d kill you now.”
Wallender reached out for Abu Jamal’s pistol. Abu Jamal pulled away but slid the gun into its leather holster.
The gunman scratched the back of his head and gave a surly kick at a broken cinderblock. He stepped to the side of Wallender, so he could direct his complaints at Omar Yussef. “So where’s the Saladin I?” he said.
“Yasser must have hidden it,” Omar Yussef said. He stood up slowly and stared at his bleeding palms. “I need something to bandage my hands.”
“Fuck your hands. If you bleed to death, the United Nations can’t blame me for it.” Abu Jamal headed for the house.
One of the gunmen came out of the back door, shoving the father of Yasser and Fathi Salah down the steps in front of him. Abu Jamal doubled his pace and drew his pistol as he crossed the sandy garden. When he reached Zaki Salah, he put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, shoved him to his knees, forced his head back and thrust the barrel of the gun inside his mouth. “Where’s the missile?” he yelled.
Zaki shook his head. Abu Jamal yelled again, and then a third time he screamed his question. He pulled the pistol out of the old man’s mouth, slapped the barrel into Salah’s cheek and backhanded it onto his nose. Blood ran down the front of Salah’s long, white jalabiya.
Abu Jamal grabbed Salah’s beard and pulled him across the sand to where the body of Attiah Odwan lay. He pushed the old man to the ground beside the thick, muscular corpse. Salah looked at the dead gunman’s face and muttered a blessing.
“Shut up,” Abu Jamal shouted. “Your bastard son killed him. Your bastard son Yasser, who’s dead and buried under the ground beneath your garage.”
Salah muttered again, closing his eyes and praying for the soul of his son. Abu Jamal kicked the old man in the stomach. He gestured to the gunman who had brought Salah from the house. “Lift him up.”
Omar Yussef stepped into the sandy garden. He moved toward Abu Jamal. Sami held his wrist and shook his head. Omar Yussef ignored him. “That old fellow doesn’t know where the missile is,” he called.
Abu Jamal turned and glared at him.
“Do you think a man like Yasser would trust anyone? Even his own father?” Omar Yussef said.