Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"

Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

"He kicks her out, give her three times talaq, then changes his mind and wants us to be the marriage counselors. How were we to know, Pakad?"

Habiba needed a shave. His grizzled face twitched with fear; his uniform needed ironing. Daniel had brought him back to Headquarters and he looked out of place in the sterile emptiness of the interrogation room. An antiquity.

Forty years of pocketing petty baksheesh and dishing out bureaucratic indifference, thought Daniel, and now he's terrified that indifference is going to be twisted into something cruel.

"There was no way to know," Habiba repeated, whining.

"No, there wasn't," said Daniel. The man's anxiety was starting to wear on him.

"What difference would it have made had we looked for her?" insisted Habiba. "When this Butcher wants someone, he gets her."

There was awe in the old policeman's voice when he spoke of the killer. Awe undercoated with contempt for his own police force.

He thinks of the bastard as superhuman, some kind of demon-a Jewish demon. The helplessness-the homage to evil-angered Daniel and he had to restrain himself from dressing the old policeman down.

"Marriage counselors," muttered Habiba. "We're too busy for that kind of nonsense."

Anger overtook restraint.

"Of course you are," said Daniel. "Feel free to return to Kishle. Don't let a murder investigation keep you from your pressing business."

Habiba flushed. "I didn't mean, Pakad-"

"Forget it, Officer Habiba. Go back to Kishle. Don't worry, your retirement's intact."

Habiba started to say something, thought better of it, and left the room.

Daniel looked at his watch. Six P.M. Goodbye, family; goodbye, Shabbat. The husband was in another room, being comforted by relatives under the watchful eye of the Chinaman and Shmeltzer. Daniel had tried to get something out of him but the poor guy was too distraught, frozen silent, near catatonic, only the hands moving-scratching his face bloody. The imperviousness to pain chilled Daniel's heart.

Maybe Daoud could do better. He was due over from the Old City any minute. No mistaking the joy in his voice at being reeled in-jubilation at being regarded as someone with special talents. And relief at being pulled off the Roselli surveillance. The timing couldn't have been better-last night's watch had now provided the monk with an ironclad alibi.

Daniel tried to imagine Roselli as a yeshiva student, wondered how long the monk would stay faithful to his latest mistress. The spartan lodgings and seventeen-hour days Buchwald demanded from his students might not prove too different from the rigors of monkhood. But Daniel suspected that Roselli was one of those philosophic grasshoppers, leaping from creed to creed. A searcher destined never to find what he was looking for, because you had to fill your own void. No rabbi or priest or mullah could do it for you.

Not that the searchers would ever stop searching. Or flocking to Jerusalem. The city was a psychic magnet, drawing in the Rosellis of the world and those who promised them salvation. At that first meeting at The Star, Shmeltzer had bemoaned the influx of fanatics and nut cases as if it were a new phenomenon, but the attraction was as old as Jerusalem itself. Pilgrims and self-flagellators, crucifiers and false messiahs, visionaries, dervishes, charlatans, and the willfully blind. Determined to squeeze blood out of every rock, hallucinate sacred flames licking from every arid clump of mesquite.

Searchers, some of them undoubtedly mad, others teetering on the brink of madness. Yet, despite them, the city endured wave after wave of destruction and rebirth. Or maybe because of them.

Mad but benign, seeking internal order.

Unlike the slashing, plundering, mocking monster he was after.

Beast of the highway.

Disorder, internal collapse-hell on earth-was what this one craved.

Daniel resolved to burn him.

He sat behind a one-way mirror and watched Daoud conduct the interview. Hardly a sophisticated concealment, but if Abdin Barakat noticed it, he gave no sign.

The Arab detective had all the right moves-authority, compassion, patience, appeals to a husband's desire to find his wife's murderer and avenge her death. But to no avail in the beginning: Barakat blocked him out as completely as he had Daniel.

If grief was proportional to devotion, no man had ever possessed greater love for a woman than Abdin Barakat for Shahin. His grief was silent but all the stronger for it, as eloquent an opera of woe as Daniel had ever heard.

He looks dead himself, Daniel thought. Sunken-cheeked, stiff, lifeless features, lusterless eyes half-hidden in the darkness of cavernous sockets. The coarse complexion bleached pale as gauze bandage. A young man mummified by suffering.

Eight years older than Shahin, but that still made him young. Tall, sparely built, with short, poorly cut hair, the cracked fingernails and grease-stained clothes of a working man.

An ironworker in one of the stalls in the Old City. Repairer of pots and pans, family business-the father was the boss. And the landlord. For four married years, home had been two rooms tacked on illegally to the top story of the Barakat family dwelling in the Muslim Quarter. A cooking space and a tiny bedroom for Abdin and Shahin-their names rhymed; it implied a certain harmony-because without children, what need was there for more?

The childlessness was at the root of the divorce, Daniel was sure. Four barren years would have stretched the tolerance of Abdin's family. The Muslims had no use for a woman who didn't bear, made it exquisitely easy for a man to dispose of her: Talaq, verbal denouncement unencumbered by justification, set the divorce process in motion. Three denouncements, and the break was final.

On the other side of the mirror, Barakat began weeping, despite himself; the breakdown was beginning. Daoud handed him a tissue, He clutched it, wept harder, tried to force back the tears but failed. Burying his face in his hands, he moved it back and forth, as if shaking his head no. Daoud pulled out another tissue and tried again.

Patience paid off. Eventually, after two hours of listening and tissue-offering and gently prodding, Daoud got Barakat talking-softly but rapidly, in near-hysterical spurts.

A fragile victory, and the Arab detective knew it. He put his body language into the interrogation, bringing his face so close to Barakat's that they could have kissed, placing his hands on the husband's shoulders and exerting subtle pressure, his knees touching Barakat's knees. Shutting out the room, the universe, so that only questioner and answerer existed in empty white space.

"When's the last time you saw her, Mr. Barakat?"

Barakat stared at the floor.

"Try to remember. It's important, Mr. Barakat."

"M-Monday."

"This past Monday?"

"Yes."

"You're certain of that?"

"Yes."

"Not Sunday or Tuesday?"

"No, Monday was the day-" Barakat burst into tears, buried his face in his hands again.

Daoud looked past the heaving shoulders, through the mirror at Daniel, raised his eyebrows, and tapped the table silently. Glancing at the tape recorder on the table, he waited until Barakat's sobs diminished to sniffles before continuing.

"Monday was the day what, Mr. Barakat?"

"It was… complete."

"What was complete?"

No answer.

"The third talaq?" prompted Daoud.

Barakat's reply was barely audible: "Yes."

"The divorce was final on Monday?"

Jerky nods, tears, more tissues.

"Was Shahin scheduled to leave your house on Monday?"

"Yes."

"Where was she planning to go?"

Barakat uncovered his face. "I don't know."

"Where does her family live?"

"There is no family, only a mother in Nablus."

"What about the father?"

"Dead."

"When did he die?"

"Many years ago. Before the…" Tears flowed down the sunken cheeks, wetting the lacerations and causing them to glisten.

"Before you were married?"

"Yes."

"What about brothers or sisters?"

"No brothers or sisters."

"An only child? Not a single male in the family?" Daoud's tone was laden with disbelief.

"Yes, a great shame." Barakat sat up straighter. "The mother was a poor bearer, useless organs, always with the female sicknesses. My father said…"

Barakat stopped mid-sentence, turned away from the detective's eyes. One hand picked absently at the scratches on his face.

"What did your father say?"

"That…"Barakat shook his head, looked like a dog that had been kicked too often.

"Tell me, Abdin."

A long moment passed.

"Surely the words of one's father are nothing to be ashamed of," said Daoud.

Barakat trembled. "My father said… he said that Shahin's mother's loins were cursed, she'd been possessed by a spirit-a djinn. He said Shahin carried the curse too. The dowry had been obtained deceitfully."

"A djinn."

"Yes, one of my old aunts is a kodia-she confirmed it."

"Did this aunt ever try to chase out the djinnj Did she beat the tin barrel?"

"No, no, it was too late. She said the possession was too strong, agreed with my father that sending Shahin away was the honorable thing to do-as a daughter, she, too, was afflicted. The fruit of a rotten tree."

"Of course," said Daoud. "That makes sense."

"We were never told of the djinn before the wedding," said Barakat. "We were cheated, my father says. Victimized."

"Your father is a wise businessman," said Daoud. "He knows the proper value of a commodity."

Daniel heard sarcasm in the remark, wondered if Barakat would pick it up too. But the young man only nodded. Pleased that someone understood.

"My father wanted to go to the waqf," he said. "To demand judgment and reclaim the dowry from the mother. But he knew it was useless. The crone no longer owns anything-she's too far gone."

"Far gone?"

"Up here." Barakat tapped his forehead. "The djinn has affected her up here as well as in her loins." He scowled, sat up higher, square-shouldered and confident, the guilt-ridden slump suddenly vanished. Reaching out, he took a drink from the water glass that, till then, had gone untouched.

Watching the change come over him, Daniel thought: Plastering over the rot and mildew of sorrow with a layer of indignation. Temporary patchwork.

"The mother is mad?" asked Daoud.

"Completely. She drools, stumbles, is unable to clean herself. She occupies a cell in some asylum!"

"Where is this asylum?"

"I don't know. Some foul place on the outskirts of Nablus."

"Shahin never visited her?"

"No, I forbade it. The contagion-one defect was bad enough. The entire line is cursed. The dowry was obtained deceitfully!"

Daoud nodded in agreement, offered Barakat more water. When the young man had finished drinking, Daoud resumed his questioning, searching for a link to Shahin's whereabouts after her expulsion, inquiring about friends or acquaintances who might have taken her in.

"No, there were no friends," said Barakat. "Shahin shuttered herself in the house all day, refused to have anything to do with other women."

"Why was that?"

"Their children bothered her."

"She didn't like children?"

"At first she did. Then she changed."

"In what way?"

"They reminded her of her defect. It sharpened her tongue. Even the children of my brothers made her angry. She said they were ill-trained-a plague of insects, crawling all over her."

An angry, isolated woman, thought Daniel, no friends, no family. Stripped of the security of marriage, she'd have been as helpless as Fatma, as rootless as Juliet.

Picking off the weak ones.

But where had the herd grazed?

"Let's go back to Monday," said Daoud. "The last time you saw her, what time was it?"

"I don't know."

"Approximately."

"In the morning."

"Early in the morning?"

Barakat tapped his tooth with a fingernail and thought. "I left for work at eight. She was still there…" The sentence died in his throat. All at once he was crying again, convulsively.

"She was still there what, Abdin?"

"Oh, oh, Allah help me! I didn't know. Had I known, I never…"

"What was she doing when you left for work?" Daoud pressed softly but insistently.

Barakat kept crying. Daoud took hold of his shoulders, shook him gently.

"Come, come."

Barakat quieted.

"Now, tell me what she was doing the last time you saw her, Abdin."

Barakat muttered something unintelligible.

Daoud leaned closer. "What's that?"

"She was… Oh, merciful Allah! She was cleaning up!"

"Cleaning what up, Abdin?"

Sobs.

"The kitchen. My dishes. My breakfast dishes."

After that. Barakat became withdrawn again, more mannequin than man. Answering Daoud's questions but perfunctorily, employing grunts, shrugs, nods, and shakes of the head whenever they could substitute for words, muttered monosyllables when speech was necessary. Pulling the information out of him was a frustrating process, but Daoud never flagged, taking the husband over the same territory time and time again, returning eventually to the issue that had driven a wedge between him and Shahin.

"Did she ever take steps to correct her defect?" Phrasing it so that all the responsibility rested on the woman's shoulders.

Nod.

"What kind of steps?"

"Prayer."

"She prayed, herself?"

Nod.

"Where?"

"Al Aqsa."

"Did others pray for her as well?"

Nod.

"Who?"

"My father petitioned the waqf. They appointed righteous old men."

"To pray for Shahin?"

Nod. "And…"

"And what?"

Barakat started to cry again.

"What is it, Abdin?"

"I-prayed for her too. I recited every surah in the Quran in one long night. I chanted the zikr until I fainted. Allah shut his ears to me. I am unworthy."

"It was a strong djinn," said Daoud. Playing his part well, thought Daniel. He knew what Christians thought of Muslim spirits.

Barakat hung his head.

Daoud looked at his watch. "More water, Abdin? Or something to eat?'

Shake of the head.

"Did Shahin ever consult a doctor?"

Nod.

"Which doctor?"

"A herbalist."

"When?"

"A year ago."

"Not more recently?"

Shake of the head.

"What's the herbalist's name?"

"Professor Mehdi."

"The Professor Mehdi on Ibn Sina Street?"

Nod.

Daoud frowned, as did Daniel, behind the glass. Mehdi was a quack and illegal abortionist who'd been busted several times for fraud and released when the magistrates took seriously his lawyer's claims of ethnic harassment.

"What did Professor Mehdi advise?"

Shrug.

"You don't know?"

Shake of the head.

"She never told you?"

Barakat started to throw up his hands, got midway to his shoulders, and let them drop. "He took my money-it didn't work. What was the use?"

"Did she see a medical doctor?"

Nod.

"After she saw Professor Mehdi or before?"

"After."

"When?"

"Last month, then later."

"When later?"

"Before she…" Barakat chewed his lip.

"Before she left?"

Nod.

"When before she left?"

"Sunday."

"She saw this doctor the day before she left?"

Nod.

"Was she going for treatment?"

Barakat shrugged.

"What was the purpose of her appointment?"

Tension, then a shrug.

Daoud tensed also, looked ready to throttle Barakat. Tapping the table with his fingertips, he sat back, forcing a reassuring smile onto his face.

"She saw this doctor the day before she left, but you don't know for what."

Nod.

"What was the doctor's name?"

"Don't know."

"Didn't you pay his bill?"

Shake of the head.

"Who paid the doctor, Abdin?"

"No one."

"The doctor saw Shahin for free'.

Nod.

"As a favor?"

Shake of the head.

"Why, then?"

"A U.N. doctor-she had a refugee card. They saw her for free."

Daoud edged his chair closer to Barakat's.

"Where is this U.N. doctor's office?"

"Not an office. A hospital."

"Which hospital, Abdin?"

There was an edge in the detective's voice and Barakat heard it clearly. He pressed himself against his chair, shrinking back from Daoud. Wearing an injured look that said I'm doing the best I can.

"Which hospital?" Daoud said loudly. Getting to his feet and standing over Barakat, abandoning any pretense of patience.

"The big pink one," said Barakat, hastily. "The big pink one atop Scopus."

Patients began arriving at the Amelia Catherine at nine-thirty, the first ones a ragtag bunch of men who'd made the walk from the city below. Zia Hajab could have started processing them right then, but he made them wait, milling around the arched entry to compound, while he sat in his chair sipping sweet iced tea and wiping his forehead.

This kind of heat, no one was going to rush him.

The waiting men felt the heat, too, shuffling to avoid baking, grimacing and fingering their worry beads. Most of them bore obvious stigmata of disease or disability: bandaged and splinted limbs, sutured wounds, eye infections, skin eruptions. A few looked healthy to Hajab, probably malingerers out for pills they could resell-with what they were paying, pure profit.

One of them lifted his robe and urinated against the wall. A couple of others began grumbling. The watchman ignored them, took a deep breath and another sip of the cool liquid.

What they were paying, they could wait.

Only ten o'clock and already the heat was reaching deep inside Hajab, igniting his bowels. He fanned himself with a newspaper, peered into the tea glass. There was a lump of ice floating on the top. He tilted the glass so that the ice rested against his teeth. Enjoyed the sensation of chill, then nibbled a piece loose and let it rest upon his tongue for a while.

He turned at the sound of a diesel engine. A UNRWA panel truck-the one from Nablus-pulled up in front of the hospital and stopped. The driver got out and loosened the tailgate, disgorging twenty or thirty men who limped down and joined the grumblers from the city. The groups merged into one restless crowd; the grumbling grew louder.

Hajab picked his clipboard off the ground, got up, and stood before them. A sorry-looking bunch.

"When may we enter, sir?" asked a toothless old man.

Hajab silenced him with a look.

"Why the wait?" piped up another. Younger, with an impudent face and runny, crusted eyes. "We've come all the way from Nablus. We need to see the doctor."

Hajab held out his palm and inspected the clipboard. Seventy patients scheduled for Saturday Men's Clinic, not counting those who walked in without appointments, or tried to be seen with expired refugee cards or no cards at all. A busy Saturday made worse by the heat, but not as bad as Thursdays, when the women came-droves of them, three times as many as the men. Women were weak-spirited, crying Disaster! at the smallest infirmity. Screeching and chattering like magpies until by the end of the day, Hajab's head was ready to burst.

"Come on, let us in," said the one with the bad eyes. "We have our rights."

"Patience," said Hajab, pretending to peruse the clipboard. He'd watched Mr. Baldwin, knew a proper administrator had to show who was in charge.

A man leaning on a cane sat down on the ground. Another patient looked at him and said, "Sehhetak bel donya"-"without health, nothing really matters"-to a chorus of nods.

"Bad enough to be sick," said Runny Eyes, "without being demeaned by pencil pushers."

A murmur of assent rose from the crowd. Runny Eyes scratched his rear and started to say something else.

"All right," said Hajab, hitching up his trousers and pulling out his pen. "Have your cards ready."

Just as he finished admitting the first bunch, a second truck-the one from Hebron-struggled up the road from the southeast. The engine on this one had an unhealthy stutter-the gears sounded worn, probably plenty else in need of repair. He would have loved to have a go at it, show what he could do with a wrench and screwdriver, but those days were gone. Al maktoub.

The Hebron truck was having trouble getting over the peak of Scopus. As it lurched and bucked, a white Subaru two-door came cruising by from the opposite direction-from the campus of the Jews' university. The Subaru stopped, rolled several meters, and came to a halt directly across the road from the Amelia Catherine. Probably a gawker, thought Hajab, noticing the rental plates and the yellow Hertz sticker on the rear window.

The door of the Subaru opened and a big guy in a dark suit got out and started walking toward the Amelia Catherine. The sun bounced off his chest and reflected something shiny. Cameras-definitely a gawker-two of them, hanging from long straps. From where Hajab sat they looked expensive-big black-and-chrome jobs with those oversized lenses that stuck out like noses.

The gawker stopped in the middle of the road, oblivious to the approaching truck despite all the nose it was making. He uncovered the lens of one of the cameras, raised the machine to his eyes, and started shooting pictures of the hospital.

Hajab frowned. That kind of thing just wouldn't do. Not without some sort of payment. His commission.

He pushed himself out of his chair, wiped his mouth, and took a step forward, stopped at the sight of the Hebron truck coming over the peak and headed straight for the guy with the cameras, who just kept clicking away-what was he, deaf?

The driver of the truck saw him late, slammed on the brakes, which squealed like scared goats-another job for an expert mechanic-then leaned on his horn. The guy with the cameras looked up, waved hello like some kind of mental defective, and stumbled out of the way. The driver honked again, just for emphasis. The guy with the camera bowed and trotted across the road. Headed right for Hajab's chair.

As he got close, Hajab saw he was a Japanese. Very big and broad for one of them, but Japanese just the same, with the goofy tourist look they all had: ill-fitting suit, wide smile, thick-lensed eyeglasses, the hair all slicked down with grease. The cameras hanging on him like body parts-Japanese babies were probably born with cameras attached to them.

They were the best, the Japanese. Rich, every one of them, and gullible-easy to convince that the commission was mandatory. Hajab had posed for a group of them last month, gotten five dollars from each one, money he still had in a coffee can under his bed in Ramallah. His own bed.

"No pictures," he said sternly, in English.

The Japanese smiled and bowed, pointed his camera at the rose garden beyond the arch, snapped a picture, then swung the lens directly in line with the front door.

"No, no, you can't take pictures here," said the watchman, stepping between the Japanese and the door and wagging his finger in the big yellow face. The Japanese smiled wider, uncomprehending. Hajab searched his memory for English words, retrieved one Mr. Baldwin had taught him: "Forbidden!"

The Japanese made an O with his mouth, nodded his head several times, and bowed. Refocusing his camera-a Nikon; both of then were Nikons-on Hajab. The Nikon clicked and whirred.

Hajab started to say something, was distracted for a moment by the rattle of the Hebron truck's tailgate chains, the slamming of the gate on the asphalt. The Japanese ignored the noise, kept shooting Hajab's portrait.

"No, no." Hajab shook his head.

The Japanese stared at him. Put the first camera down and picked up the second. Behind him the Hebron truck drove away.

"No," Hajab repeated. "Forbidden."

The Japanese smiled, bowed, started pressing the second camera's shutter.

Idiot. Maybe "no" meant yes in his language-though the ones last month had understood. Maybe this one was just being obstinate.

Too big to intimidate, Hajab decided. The best he could do was disrupt the photographs, follow up with a little pantomime using his wallet.

He told the idiot: "U.N. say, must pay for pictures," put his hand in his pocket, was prevented from proceeding by the swarm of Hebron patients hobbling their way to the entry.

Aggressive bunch, they pushed against him, tried to get past him without showing their cards. Typical Hebron animals. Whenever they were around, it meant trouble.

"Wait," said Hajab, holding out his palm.

The Hebron patients pressed forward anyway, surrounding the big Japanese and beginning to stare him with a mixture of curiosity and distrust as he kept taking pictures.

"Cards," announced Hajab, spreading his arms to prevent any of them from getting through. "You must show cards! The doctors won't see you without them."

"He saw me last month," said a man. "Said the card wasn't necessary."

"Well, it's necessary now." Hajab turned to the Japanese and grabbed hold of his arm, which felt huge under the suit sleeve: "Stop that, you. No pictures."

"Let the man take his pictures," said a man with a bandaged jaw and swollen lips, the words coming out slurred. He grinned at the Japanese, said in Arabic: "Take my picture, yellow brother."

The Hebron ruffians laughed.

"And mine."

"Mine, too, I want to be a movie star!"

The Japanese reacted to the shouts and smiles by snapping his shutter.

Hajab tugged at the Japanese man's arm, which was hard as a block of limestone and just as difficult to budge. "No, no! Forbidden, forbidden!"

"Why can't he take his pictures?" a patient demanded.

"U.N. rules."

"Always rules! Let us in-we're sick!"

Several patients pushed forward. One of them managed to get around Hajab. The watchman said, "Stop, you!" and the sneak halted. Stooped-over little fellow with sallow skin and a worried ace, he pointed to his throat and his belly.

"Card?" said Hajab.

"I lost it," said the man, talking with effort in a low croak, still holding his belly.

"The doctor won't see you without it."

The man moaned in pain.

"Let him in!" shouted someone. "He vomited in the truck, stunk it up."

"Let me in-I have to vomit too," said another voice from the crowd.

"Me, too. I have loose bowels as well."

Laughter, followed by more crudities.

The Japanese seemed to think the merriment was directed at him; he responded to each jest and rude remark with a click of his shutter.

A circus, thought Hajab, all because of this camera-laden monkey. As he reached up to pull down the Nikon, several rowdies made for the door.

"Stop your pictures!" he said. "Forbidden!" The Japanese smiled, kept clicking away.

More patients were pushing through now. Heading for the front door, not a single of them bothering to show his card.

Click, click.

"Forbidden!"

The Japanese stopped, lowered his camera and let it rest against his broad chest.

Probably out of film, thought Hajab. No way would he be permitted to reload on hospital property.

But instead of reaching into his pocket for film, the Japanese smiled at Hajab and held out his hand for a shake.

Hajab took it briefly, withdrew his hand, and held it palm up. "Twenty dollars, American. U.N. rules."

The Japanese smiled again, bowed, and walked away.

"Twenty dollars," laughed a patient as he walked.by.

"Twenty dollars for what, a kiss?" said another.

Hajab thought of going after them, stepped aside instead. The Japanese stood in the middle of the road again, pulled a third camera, a smaller one, out of his jacket pocket and took more of his damned pictures, then finally got in his Subaru and drove off.

Nearby all the Hebron patients had gotten to the door. Only a few stragglers remained, limping or walking the stingy, halting steps of the truly disabled.

Hajab headed back to the shade of his chair. Hot day like this, it didn't pay to expend precious energy. He settled his haunches on the thin plastic seat and wiped his brow. If things got crazy inside, that wasn't his problem.

He sat back, stretched his legs, and took a long sip of tea. Unfolding the paper, he turned to the classified section, became engrossed in the used car ads. Forgetting his surroundings, forgetting the Japanese, the jokers and malingerers. Not paying the stragglers one bit of attention, and certainly not noticing two of them who hadn't arrived on the truck with the others. Who'd emerged, instead, during the height of the commotion created by the Japanese, from a thicket of pines growing just outside the chain-link border at the rear of the hospital compound.

They wore long, heavy robes, these two, and dangling burnooses that concealed their faces. And though they hadn't been required to use them, in their pockets were refugee cards closely resembling the ones issued by UNRWA. Reasonable facsimiles, printed up just hours before.

Inside the hospital, things were indeed crazy. The air-conditioning system had broken down, turning the building into a steam bath. Two volunteer doctors hadn't shown up, appointments were already running an hour behind schedule, and the patient load was heavy, injured and sick men spilling out of the waiting room and into the main hallway, where they stood, squatted, sat, and leaned against the plaster walls.

The stagnant air was fouled by unwashed bodies and infection. Nahum Shmeltzer staked out a place against the north wall and watched the comings and goings of doctors, nurses, and patients, with a jaundiced eye.

The little false mustache was ridiculous, perched above his lip like a piece of lint. He hadn't shaved or showered and felt as unclean as the rest of them. To top it off, the robes Latam had provided him wercabrasive as horsehair, heavy as lead. He was sweating like a sick man, starting to feel really feverish-how was that for method acting?

The only bright spot was the smile the costume had elicited from Eva. He'd picked her up at Hadassah, taken her home, tried to get her to eat, then held her for four hours before falling asleep, knowing she'd be up all right, waiting by the phone. The old man was close to death; she kept wanting to return to the hospital, afraid of missing the moment he slipped away.

Still, when Shmeltzer had gotten up at five and put on the Arab get-up, the corners of her mouth had turned up-only for a moment, but every little bit helped… Shit, he was uncomfortable.

Daoud didn't seem to mind any of it, he noticed. The Arab stood across the hall, blending in with the others, cool as rain. Making occasional eye contact with Shmeltzer, but mostly just fading into the background. Backing up against the door of the Records Room and waiting for Shmeltzer's signal before making unobtrusive movements with his hands.

Movements you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for them. The hands busy at the lock but the face blank as a new note pad.

Maybe Arabs weren't bothered by this kind of thing, thought Shmeltzer. If they could be trusted, they'd make great undercover men.

Arabs. Here he was, surrounded by them. Except for prison camp duty in '48, he'd never been with so many of them at one time.