Omar Yussef reached the bottom of the steps. He held the gun in his left hand, so that when he turned into the cave his body would keep its detail obscured from the orange glow. He stepped around the corner.
Jihad Awdeh looked up and smiled at the schoolteacher. “So they sent the special forces.” He laughed and took a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket. He flicked the cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame. He must have been lighting a candle when Omar Yussef had heard him upstairs, not a cigarette.
Omar Yussef squinted into the dim light. Jihad Awdeh’s Kalashnikov lay on the floor in front of him. The gunman had a small rucksack, presumably loaded with food in case of a siege. Omar Yussef wondered if there were explosives in the backpack. He might intend to take the cave, or the church, or anyone who came for him to Paradise at his side. Beneath his Astrakhan hat, Jihad Awdeh’s head was bandaged from the blow it took when the tank shell hit the Saba house.
“Get up and come with me,” Omar Yussef said.
“Come where? Are you collaborating with the Israelis still? Are they waiting outside the church for you to bring me in?” Jihad Awdeh laughed, and it echoed like a hundred angry voices around the low cave.
“You’re the collaborator, Jihad.” He wasn’t himself sure if he was bluffing and he didn’t care. He spoke with the conviction of a man who had seen so much wrong that he needed now to assert what he knew was right.
Jihad Awdeh’s smile disappeared. “If I’m a collaborator, why am I hiding from the Israelis in the middle of the night?”
“You must have done something to turn them against you,” Omar Yussef said. “You must have gone too far even for them.”
The bitter grin returned to Jihad Awdeh’s face. He pushed the gray Astrakhan hat back on his head and slipped a finger under his bandage to scratch his scalp. “Fuck your mother, schoolteacher. Are you a good shot?”
“How good would I have to be to hit you down here?” Omar Yussef risked pushing the empty gun forward a little, threatening Jihad Awdeh with it. He didn’t move toward Awdeh. He wanted to keep him where he was, eight yards away, in case the younger man rushed him.
“So you’re going to take me in for what, exactly?”
“You are the collaborator. You guided the Israelis to Louai Abdel Rahman. You used a laser sight to confirm for them that they had the right man and to point out exactly where he was. Your mistake was to leave behind a MAG cartridge at the site of the assassination. At first, when I found those cartridges it led me to suspect Hussein Tamari. Dima Abdel Rahman told me that her husband spoke in the darkness to someone called Abu Walid. Hussein Tamari was Abu Walid. But only tonight did I discover that your eldest boy is Walid, too. George Saba told me he saw you bending to scoop something off the roof of his house before you left that night. But he also said that only Hussein Tamari was firing. You must have picked up the spent MAG cartridges from his gun. You put them in your pocket, because you wanted to cover your tracks in case the Israelis came to Beit Jala to find out who was shooting from the roof of George’s house. If they found the cartridges, they’d know it was Hussein, and that made it a little too close to you. You were working for them, and you didn’t want them to know that your boss had been shooting across the valley at them, because maybe they’d figure that you were in on it. But when you were lying in the long grass waiting for Louai Abdel Rahman to come to his house, one of the cartridges must have fallen out of your pocket. That’s the one I discovered. I kept the shell casing as evidence. I picked up another one that you missed on the roof of George Saba’s house. Then you found out that Dima Abdel Rahman had overheard her husband speaking to Abu Walid and you killed her, too.”
Jihad Awdeh waved his cigarette. “No, I didn’t kill that bitch.”
“So the rest is true?”
“Fuck you. You don’t know what a mistake you’re making. I’m the head of the Martyrs Brigades.”
“So was Hussein, and look what happened to him.”
“Hussein died because he was greedy. The reason the Israelis wanted to kill Louai Abdel Rahman was because his family was operating explosives factories. They were all in on it, including the old man Muhammad. Louai was the family’s connection to all the resistance groups. He used to sell bombs to Fatah, but he also supplied Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front. He sold to criminals, too. When Louai died, Hussein decided to take over all the Abdel Rahman businesses. I told him he should only take the auto shops. If he took control of the explosives factories, I warned him, the Israelis would come down on him. But he was greedy. The explosives used by the Abdel Rahman boy to blow himself up in Jerusalem yesterday came from one of the labs Hussein took over. So, just as I warned him, the Israelis killed him.”
“Who told the Israelis the bomb was made at one of those labs?”
“Well, of course, I did, Abu Ramiz.”
“You?”
“I planned the mission. I sent the boy off with the bomb. The Israelis weren’t sure if they should kill Hussein. But after the bomb exploded in the market, I knew they’d have to get rid of him.”
“And with Hussein gone, you’d be in charge of the Martyrs Brigades in Bethlehem.”
Jihad Awdeh nodded and breathed smoke from his nostrils.
“But why did Yunis Abdel Rahman become a suicide bomber?” Omar Yussef said.
“A martyr, Abu Ramiz. You should refer to him only as a martyr.” Jihad Awdeh smiled sarcastically. “Self-disgust, I suppose you might say. It’s his father’s fault really. He’s a nasty piece of work, old Muhammad Abdel Rahman. Muhammad told the kid that Dima was fucking Hussein Tamari. He said she had wanted Louai out of the way so she could be with Hussein and that she had persuaded Hussein to help the Israelis kill her husband. Muhammad expected the boy to kill Hussein, so the family could take back their stolen auto business. Maybe the explosives workshops, too.”
“But Yunis killed Dima instead.” The boy had spoiled his father’s plan by directing his anger not at Hussein, but at the woman he considered the most unconscionable of his brother’s betrayers.
“That’s right. He killed her for betraying his brother. It must have seemed easier than killing Hussein—he didn’t know the Israelis were going to do the job for him. He killed her and tried to make it look like a random rape. Or maybe he got a kick out of seeing what she looked like in the dirt with her ass up in the air. By the way, you were there too. Did you like her ass? I hear she was a special little pet of yours. How special was she? The police had covered her body by the time I got there, but the guards let me have a look. A lot of the guys got an eyeful.”
Omar Yussef swallowed hard. “Why were you there?”
“To tell Yunis Abdel Rahman that his dear Dad had made him a killer for nothing. I told him Dima was innocent and that Hussein didn’t even know who she was. The boy was quite upset at the news, you can imagine. Disgusted with himself and his father. Guilty. No family business, no future. I told him he could redeem himself by carrying out an operation. He agreed immediately.”
“Why did the Israelis come to your apartment tonight, if you’re their collaborator?”
“They wanted to warn me not to keep the explosives factories operating. Or perhaps they just wanted to give me some cover. No one’s going to think they’d raid a collaborator’s home.”
Omar Yussef pointed at the second staircase out of the cave. “Let’s go. I’m taking you to the police.”