Decker continued forward on his hands and knees. He had almost reached the end of the line of crates. If there were some scrap of cover beyond, he could outflank them. He could sneak around and take his shot.
“This is so tiresome,” sighed El Aqrab.
Keep him talking. “What happened the day of your graduation?” Decker asked. “You’d finally earned your doctorate, as a young man too. Your family must have come to celebrate your triumph. Didn’t they? A week later, you betrayed them.”
El Aqrab strode back toward Emily. He towered over her. He ran a hand along her face. “I remember,” El Aqrab said. “Yes. My graduation.” He stroked Emily’s cheek. “You’re right. I had been looking forward to it for the longest time. My father had promised to attend, and I wanted him to see me as they gave me my diploma. I thought it would make him proud.” He laughed. He began to play with a lock of Swenson’s hair and, slowly but surely, the story tumbled out.
His father had come, late, he said, as always, and the old man had made that speech that no one listened to, and spent the entire evening talking with his brother, Ibrahim. Decker was right. He had set them up, all of them, and he was glad he had.
“I was Ishmael to Ibrahim’s Isaac,” he added bitterly. “I was the elder son. I should have been my father’s heir, his pride. But he killed my mother, Rabi’a, because she was too strong for him, and because she was Palestinian. He hadn’t minded earlier, when he was younger. No, he had loved her then. And he had used her family’s money to begin his business empire. But, as he grew more and more successful, she no longer fit into the plan. She became an embarrassment to him and to his Sunni and Maronite business partners. And so he fed her full of sleeping pills and drowned her, before my very eyes, and then married that ten-dinar whore. He drove me from his heart. He deserved to die. They all did. So with the help of the Israelis, I betrayed them to Amal, only to have the Israelis betray me.”
“Who betrayed you?” Decker asked. Keep him talking. He crawled and crawled and came upon the final crate in the long line. He peeked around it. He could see tents. He saw ben Saad and then the other man, and Swenson tied up to that chair. “Who was he, El Aqrab?”
Decker looked desperately around. But there was nowhere left to hide. The nearest cover was a good ten yards away, or more. He’d be dead before he even crossed the halfway mark. He was trapped. El Aqrab had known it all along. There was no way to outflank them. The terrorist had just been playing with him.
“Who do you think it was? Who else would the Knesset choose but the Minister of Defense.”
Decker leaned his back against the crate. He looked at the gun in his hand. And then he suddenly remembered. “Garron,” he whispered. “It was Garron who authorized the deal. He must have.”
Jamal laughed. “I think even Yuri was a little shocked when I approached him with the proposition. It was so simple really. Together we made it appear my father and brother had collaborated with the Zionists. In exchange for information about Syrian and Amal positions, which I was more than happy to provide, Garron promised to protect my father’s properties and businesses after the invasion. Allowances would be made, he said. My father’s fortune would pass on to me. A few days after we leaked the news, Amal guerrillas killed my father, my brother and my father’s wife. Burned them alive in that car. That was an added bonus. But I was arrested and sent to Ansar II in Gaza. I had gone to my father’s house, you see, to collect the cash he always kept there in case of a forced departure. I was making my way south through ‘Ayn ar Rummanah. I planned to cross the Green Line near Ash Shiyyah where I knew the guards. And I had almost made it to the airport. Almost! I could see the airplanes on the runway just beyond Tahwitat al Ghadir when I was stopped by the IDF. The Zionists had agreed to let me go, but they betrayed me. Yuri wanted the money, you see, from my father’s safe — almost two and a half million dollars. He gave it to his son to fund his next campaign for Housing Minister. Even then, he had ambitions to become Prime Minister. And then, to make things worse, I was released by Ariel Miller. After three days. Three days! I became a marked man. It appeared as if I too had collaborated with the Zionists, just like my father and brother. So I slipped back into Lebanon, where I arranged to meet Mohammed in the neighborhood of Bi’r Hasan.”
Ben Saad recounted the story of how he had set up his childhood idol, Mohammed Hussein, how he had seduced the legendary El Aqrab into that bombed-out building near the sports arena.
“Mohammed had come to kill me,” he continued. “And he almost did. But I told him that I hadn’t known about my family’s betrayal, and that the Zionists had leaked it to Amal so that my father and brother would be killed by their own people. I told him Garron had authorized my release so that I’d be killed as well. And he believed me. He believed me! He didn’t want to be a puppet of the Zionists. So he put his gun down and came up to me. He hugged me in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks, and — as he looked at me and smiled — I stabbed him in the stomach. I wanted it to last, you see, because you can tell a lot about a man when you watch him die. I needed his identity.”
“But how did you manage to keep it secret?” Decker asked. “All these years?”
Ben Saad described how he had gone back and killed the remainder of El Aqrab’s family and friends, either directly or with the help of the Maronite militia. Then he had gone north to Kazakhstan… where he had almost been discovered. A man named Ali showed up one day at the camp, and he recognized Jamal. He confronted him, threatened to expose him to Gulzhan Baqrah unless he paid him off. Jamal ben Saad refused. So Ali had told the guerrilla leader, and Baqrah had tortured Jamal personally.
“They strung me up by my elbows. Then Gulzhan whipped me. He whipped me to within an inch of my life, and I confessed to everything. I wanted him to know. I had to share it with him after that, you see. And Gulzhan, to my complete surprise, to my everlasting shame, Gulzhan thought fit to let me go.”
Gulzhan had sensed Jamal ben Saad’s black hatred for the Zionists. And he had recognized his talent for destruction, his passion and his ruthlessness.
After his release, Jamal went up into the mountains. He told Gulzhan that he wanted to be left alone to pray. But, in reality, he planned to throw himself off a cliff. He wanted to die. Then, something happened that he hadn’t counted on. Alone, in the freezing wind and snow, looking down upon the training camp, he’d had a vision.
“I saw the Archangel Gabriel,” he said. “He came to me, to me, and held me in his arms, and rocked me until I cried no more. He told me what I should do, the man I should become. I was… reborn. I became a true mujahadeen. I no longer needed to play the part of El Aqrab. I was El Aqrab.”
Ben Saad stretched and straightened up. It was strange, almost uncanny. He actually seemed to metamorphosize into another person as he reached into his robes, as he waved his arms about like a magician, and suddenly lit a match. He brought it to his face. He stared into the flame. “Your weapon, Agent Decker. This is the last time I shall ask you. Soon the entire mountain will become a mosque,” he said, “with me within the mihrab of the Cumbre Vieja, a moveable mosque of water to purify the world. A mosque of my design to house the fourth prayer of the Hajj for the great Ummah, with a qibla running back to Mecca.” He lowered the match toward Emily’s face. He held it by her eye, immediately beneath a strand of the magnesium that stuck out like a fuse. “Everybody will die, including you and your woman. But, if you surrender now, at least she will not feel the agony of fire. It will be quick, I promise.”