“You are both fools,” he said to the other two.
“Then you remain silent if you wish,” Fazal said. “This is the police here! You are the fool, Zahir.”
“Let’s hear it,” Farmer said.
Another silence.
Reardon thought for a moment they’d lost it.
Then Fazal said. “A messenger from our prince was killed last Sunday.”
“Where?” Reardon said at once.
“At the airport,” Fazal said. “Coming off the plane from Washington.”
“What was his name, this messenger?”
“Amin Abbas.”
“Get on the phone,” Farmer said to Gianelli. “How do you spell that?” he asked Fazal.
“A-M-I-N,” Fazal said. “A-B-B-A-S.”
“Have you got that?” Farmer said. “Amin Abbas, run an airlines check.”
“Who killed him?” Reardon said.
“Enemies within our government,” Anwar said.
“Who?” Reardon said. “Give me names.”
“I have no individual names. It was a group called Order of the Holy Crusade.”
“What were you doing at the airport?” Hoffman asked.
“We were there to meet him,” Fazal said.
“We saw him fall...” Anwar said.
Zahir was shaking his head. And massaging his groin.
“Detective Gianelli, Fifth Squad,” Gianelli said into the phone. “Run this through your computer for me, will you?”
“So many policemen,” Fazal said.
“We could not get to him.”
“Guy named Amin Abbas.” Gianelli said. “Where he was coming from, where he was headed, the complete ticketing. I’ll wait.”
“We followed the ambulance...”
“First to one hospital, then to another...”
“And finally took possession of his body.”
“Why’d you want his body?” Farmer asked.
“He was carrying the timetable,” Fazal said.
“What timetable?” Reardon asked.
“He should have had it in his possession. But it was gone. There was nothing in his pockets.”
“What timetable?” Reardon asked again.
Zahir erupted in Arabic again. This time he didn’t come up off the bench. He simply said the words softly and menacingly, a short warning meant to silence his pals once and for all. He accompanied this with a stare designed to turn their blood to shit. Neither the words nor the stare worked.
“A timetable that fell into the wrong hands,” Fazal said.
“Whose hands?” Reardon asked at once.
“A man named Peter Dodge.” Fazal said.
“Marvelous, tell them everything,” Zahir suddenly said in English.
“Shut up,” Hoffman said. “What about Dodge?”
“I just told you,” Fazal said. “He got possession of the timetable.”
“What damn timetable?” Reardon said.
“An important timetable,” Anwar said.
“For what?” Farmer asked.
“I don’t know,” Fazal said. “We were only told to get it back.”
“From Dodge?”
“Yes,” Fazal said.
“Who told you to get it back?”
“He did,” Fazal said, and nodded at Zahir, whose balls were better now, but who still had a scowl on his face.
“You the boss here?” Reardon asked him.
No answer.
Gianelli put down the phone. “Abbas was ticketed Phoenix-Washington-New York, connecting the next day with the Concorde to Rabat.”
“Where the fuck is Rabat?” Hoffman said.
“Morocco.” Ruiz said.
“What was he doing in Phoenix?” Reardon asked Zahir.
No answer.
“Is that where you guys are from?” Farmer asked. “Morocco?”
No answer. The two friendlies were now having second thoughts, Reardon guessed. In a police station, people always had second thoughts. First they spilled their guts, and then they wondered whether they’d said too much. The bossman’s intransigence wasn’t helping much, either. Still setting a bad example. Mouth compressed in a tight little line, eyebrows pulled down, all the curses he could think of glowering in his dark eyes.
“Mister, you’re the one who’s gonna take the fall here, you know that, don’t you?” Reardon said.
“Sure, these other jerks are just accomplices,” Gianelli said, immediately picking up on Reardon’s drift.
“They already said he’s the one told them to go get that timetable,” Hoffman said. “That makes him...”
“I was only following orders,” Zahir said.
“What orders?”
“To recover the timetable.”
“How’d you get these orders?”
“I received a phone call.”
“Who from?” Reardon said.
“I don’t know.”
“Hold it,” Farmer said, “let’s take this from the top, okay? What you’re saying is that somebody sent you to Dodge’s apartment to get this timetable — whatever the hell kind of timetable it is — but you don’t know who this person is, or was, this person who called you, is that about it?”
“I know the person who called me,” Zahir said. “But he was only relaying a message from someone else.”
“All right, who called you, let’s start there.”
“One of my countrymen.”
“A Moroccan?”
“We are not Moroccans.”
“Whatever the fuck you are,” Hoffman said, “what’s this countryman’s name?”
“I don’t know his name,” Zahir said. “Only his voice.”
The detectives all looked at each other. Farmer sighed.
“Okay, this man whose voice you know but whose name you don’t,” he said, “calls you. What did he say?”
“He said that a man named Peter Dodge was in possession of a valuable timetable, and we should recover it from him.”
“And that’s all he said?”
“That’s all he said.”
Now it was the turn of the other two Arabs to jump up and start yelling in Arabic. The detectives listened to it, not understanding a word. Ruiz scratched his head. Farmer was wondering if anybody on the uniformed force was of Syrian or perhaps Iraqi extraction. Now and then, a few English words came through.
“Our orders...”
More Arabic.
“You know what...”
Arabic again.
And finally, from Anwar, in a burst of angry English, his forefinger under Zahir’s nose as if he were about to skewer him. “Our orders were to kill him!”
Zahir was off the bench again, exploding in Arabic.
Hoffman wondered if he should kick him in the balls again.
Reardon signalled to let them play out the string.
“Or anyone else who had seen the timetable!” Fazal shouted.
Silence.
The three Arabs looked at one another.
Gianelli wondered if they were going to kiss and make up.
“You two got the right idea,” Reardon said, and wondered how much they knew about American law. “If you were acting on orders, there’s no sense you taking the rap.”
“But we were!” Anwar said.
“Sure,” Reardon said, and turned again to Zahir. “Is that true?” he asked.
Zahir nodded.
“You had orders to kill Dodge?”
“To recover the timetable,” Zahir said.
“And to kill him,” Fazal said. “Why are you being such a stubborn fool? Do you want to be hanged?”
“Orders to kill him, yes.” Zahir said softly, and sighed.
“Because he’d seen this timetable, is that right?”
“He’d seen it, yes.”
Marvelous fucking reason to kill a man, Reardon thought, he sees a timetable.