“In a way. Everything will be okay. Don’t worry.”
“Is that my shovel?” Jouda said, nervous and slightly indignant now.
“Trust me, Suleiman.” Omar Yussef stepped off the gravel path onto the grass.
Jouda had bonded the pieces of the broken gravestones and re-laid the disturbed turf around them. The one that had been marked with graffiti stood out. Jouda’s cleanser had erased the vandals’ slogans, but it also had scoured away ninety years of dust from the rock, leaving a chalky diagonal stripe across the crest of the stone.
Omar Yussef approached that grave. He read the inscription. Private Eynon Price. Royal Army Medical Corps, 53rd (Welsh) Casualty Clearing Station. 28 years. 4/5/1917. He read the inscription again. Eynon Price, Eynon Price. How do you pronounce that name? “Eye” or “Ay” or “Ee”? Eynon Price. He was sure he knew that name. Perhaps a foreigner working for the UN had a similar name, but he couldn’t recall who it might be. Then he remembered: he had heard those words, uttered by a tongue unaccustomed to English. In Odwan’s cell. When the doomed man had recounted the nonsensical babbling of Lieutenant Fathi Salah before he was shot. High Noon Price, Odwan thought Salah had said.
Odwan had believed Fathi Salah was negotiating the price of the missile, but the frightened officer was actually telling him where to find the weapon. It was here, its burial disguised as a desecration of the graves.
Omar Yussef felt a surge of strength and excitement. He had discovered the truth and now he was about to uncover the Saladin I. “Sami, start digging right here.”
Jouda protested. Omar Yussef put his hands on the man’s shoulders and spoke soothingly. “Suleiman, there has been a terrible criminal act. You heard about the bones that were found near here and taken to the morgue at Shifa Hospital?”
Jouda nodded. “It was in the newspaper, ustaz, ” he said. He kept his eyes on the grave, where Sami was peeling away the turf the caretaker had only lately re-laid.
“Those are the bones that should be in this grave.”
“Then what’s in the grave now?”
“All the evil of Gaza.”
“Leave it there then.” Jouda didn’t question that evil would reside beneath the earth.
“We can’t do that. Where will the soldier’s bones rest?”
Sami was working up a sweat, down to his chest in the sandy earth, the bandage on his shoulder bloody. Omar Yussef felt the air growing warm as the sun came up.
He thought of Lieutenant Fathi Salah, a good student and later a decent officer, but a poor man with a bad brother who pressured him to make the missile deal with the Saladin Brigades. Fathi couldn’t carry out Yasser’s dirty trade and lost his nerve. When Fathi blurted the location of the missile to Odwan, his brother shot him dead. Omar Yussef remembered Professor Adnan Maki’s dinner lecture about the alien invaders who had come to Gaza over the centuries, including these British men in the graves under his feet. But it wasn’t the outsiders who exacted the highest cost in blood from Gaza; it was the men like Yasser Salah who killed their brothers.
“Abu Ramiz.” Sami tossed the shovel out of the grave. He lifted a plywood box onto its end. It was the length of a coffin, but it was bound with wire and the wood was bright and new.
Wallender helped Sami lift the box onto the grass. Sami sent Jouda back to his yard for wire clippers. He smiled at Omar Yussef, admiring and puzzled. When Jouda returned, Sami cut the wire and beat open the nailed lid of the box with the handle of the spade.
The missile was gray and surprisingly narrow-no wider than a toddler’s torso. A yellow stripe circled it near its pointed tip and another by the fins at its base. Three foam inserts held it in place and it was packed tight with plastic ballast bags.
“Suleiman, call the hospital and talk to Doctor Najjar, the pathologist. Tell him you’ve found where the missing bones belong,” Omar Yussef said. “Tell him I’ll call the morgue to explain, as soon as I can.”
The caretaker hurried toward his house.
Omar Yussef bent to close the lid of the missile crate.
“What’s this all about?” Wallender asked.
“This is the Saladin I,” Omar Yussef said. He knocked the lid into place with the heel of his hand.
Sami came close to Omar Yussef. “How are you intending to destroy this missile, Abu Ramiz?”
“Destroy it?” Omar Yussef laughed. “We’re going to sell it.”
Chapter 30
As the wind dropped, the dust cloud settled in a final gritty film over Emile Zola Street. Omar Yussef blinked at the sky. A deep blue came through the dirt for the first time in four days. The tricolor at the French Cultural Center, next door to Maki’s house, dangled from its pole as though it were wilting in the early morning heat. Sami idled the Jeep at the curb. He rapped his fist on the plywood missile crate, which rested over the folded rear-seats, and gave a thumbs-up. Omar Yussef nodded to him and pressed the buzzer at the professor’s gate.
The blue metal door swung open and Omar Yussef entered the garden of luxuriant bushes and tall palms. He calmed himself with a deep breath and noted that it was the first time in days he had inhaled without also swallowing a handful of sand. By the fountain, the plastic doe stretched her neck from behind a bush, and Omar Yussef let her snout nuzzle into the crust of blood and sweat on his bandaged palm.
The Sri Lankan maid awaited him at the wide mahogany door. She paid no attention to the dirt that covered his face and hair, or the blood smeared across the belly of his shirt where he had stanched the flow from his slashed palms. He wondered what strange people came through this entrance that the tiny woman could take in, with a polite smile, such a horrific apparition as he must surely have presented.
“Professor Adnan is not yet up,” she said. “But, if you’re in a hurry, I will tell him you’re here.”
“Please do. Thank you.”
The maid went to fetch Adnan Maki. Omar Yussef pulled one of the bentwood chairs from under the dining table, so as not to dirty the sofa and make work for her. His back ached and his head pounded. Magnus would be washing and shaving back at the Sands Hotel now, and he wondered how soon he would be able to do the same thing. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and it showered a dusting of dirt onto the shiny tabletop. He wiped the earth away with the edge of his hand. His bandage left a damp smear on the polished surface. He drew in his breath and shook his head.
The Sri Lankan returned. She smiled and suggested a coffee. Omar Yussef asked her to make it without sugar and she went to the kitchen. He was listening to the muted sounds of her preparations, when he noticed Maki watching him from beside the Chinese cloisonne screen that masked the hallway. Maki wore a red silk dressing gown and cream silk pajamas. His gray hair was tousled. Omar Yussef looked at his wristwatch. It was eight-thirty.
“Morning of light, Abu Nabil,” he said.
“Morning of joy,” Maki said. His voice was quiet. He stared at Omar Yussef, yawned and rubbed his hands across his face to wake himself up.
“I’m sorry to disturb you.”
Maki seemed to shake off his sleepiness in an instant. He was as loud and vivacious as ever. “Not at all, Abu Ramiz. I welcome you to breakfast with me. If good company is rare in Gaza at dinnertime, then at breakfast it’s something never to be experienced.” He leered.
Omar Yussef wondered what kind of company Maki kept at breakfast in his Paris apartment, away from the conservative watchers of Gaza. It probably wasn’t much more classy than Omar Yussef must have looked at the moment. “I apologize for my appearance.”
“Would you like to clean up in the bathroom? What on earth has happened to you?”
The Sri Lankan brought the coffee. Maki told her to bring out a plate of croissants and toast.
“I’m really not hungry, Abu Nabil,” Omar Yussef said.