Bloodline (32 page)

Hassan reached into the sports bag and took out the bottle of water, which he gulped down. He was thirsty, yet the cold water didn't relieve him. About to pick up the rifle to take the shot, he was disturbed by the sound of a car driving toward him. He immediately hid the rifle with his body and waited for it to go past. He looked at the passengers, who weren't interested in him as they drove toward the center of the village.

Enveloped in silence again, he picked up the rifle and looked through the sights at the doctor. The view was blocked by the broad back of the café owner, who was giving her a glass of
something. When he left, she was still smiling at him, engaging him in gentle conversation. Now her whole body was visible again, sitting under the awning, drinking orange juice. He pressed the rifle stock against his cheek, put his finger on the trigger, breathed deeply, said a small prayer, and slowly, cautiously, without jerking the gun, began to squeeze the trigger.

There was firm resistance on the spring of the trigger and then a tiny metallic click. For an instant Hassan found himself wondering how small the sound of a gunshot could be until, through the sight, he saw that the doctor was still sipping her orange juice. Reluctantly Hassan pulled the trigger again. The same resistance and metallic click and silence.

He leaned back from the sight, turned the gun in his hands, and pulled at the bolt to open the breech. The mechanism would not shift. He yanked at it with a strange panic rising in him. What was he afraid of? Missing the shot? That the gun might explode? The wrath of the imam? The fate of Bilal, who had also failed?

Hassan yanked again, vigorously trying to dislodge whatever had jammed the rifle, but to no avail. He looked up into the distance to see the doctor still sitting at the far table. She wasn't leaving—not yet. He stopped pulling on the bolt lever and instead took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He looked at his hands. They were sweating and shaking. He got to his knees and briskly wiped them on his shirt to dry them. And still the doctor sat at the table.

Hassan reached into the sports bag beside him and his fingers closed around the handle of the pistol concealed inside. It was warm to the touch, the sun heating the bag and the metal of the gun's grip. He drew it out, and stood and stared down at the distant figure of the doctor at the café, the words of Bilal screaming in his ear: “
She is the only one who can help me!
”

A
S
Y
AEL SAT GAZING
over the empty square, with only the occasional car or pedestrian disturbing the silence, she saw a young man carrying an old sports bag walking toward the café.

He sat down three tables away and stared at the menu. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, common to young people throughout the world. But unlike the Druzim who glanced at her indifferently, this young man immediately looked away the moment her eyes met his. He looked up into the enormous carob tree, then at the pool in the middle of the square, then up at the birds perched on top of the buildings.

Yael didn't give it another thought and slowly sipped the fresh orange juice that the owner had squeezed for her. She read some of the papers, but something drew her to look at the young man again. And the moment she did, she realized that he'd been staring at her. She smiled at him, but he immediately averted his eyes again.

Hassan's muscles felt like coiled steel. She was right in front of him, although he looked everywhere but at her. He willed himself to be invisible. The pistol was lead in his hand as it threatened to slip from his sweaty fingers and clatter on the ground.

They were not alone. There were others at the café. When he did what must be done, he would have to run, run as far and as fast as he could. He might be caught or he might escape,
inshallah
. But as he looked anywhere except at the woman he must kill, he thought of Bilal and the fate of one who had failed.

But still the words of his friend would not be silent in his ears.

“She is the only one who can help me.”

Hassan rose to his feet . . .

Y
AEL WATCHED
as the young man suddenly stood and pushed the chair back. He walked quickly out of the café and into the main square. He'd neither eaten nor drunk anything, and he
hadn't even spoken to the café owner. Odd. But Yael thought nothing of it except that as she looked at him, he suddenly stopped at the edge of the pool, as though deep in thought, as if his reflection in the water were his alter ego. Then he turned and faced her. In embarrassment, Yael glanced back at her papers until she realized, to her profound disquiet, that he was walking straight toward her table.

She could feel him coming closer and closer and something deep inside her clenched tight like a knotted rope. She didn't look up but her peripheral vision saw his shadow, his shape, as he walked to her table. She felt that she should run, that she should have listened to the warnings of her friends not to come here. People like her weren't welcome here. People like her . . .

The chair opposite scraped backward and the young man sat sharply down on it. Leaning forward across the table, he whispered, “I have a gun. It is in my hand under the table and I will kill you if you speak.”

Yael did not make a sound. Her eyes, too afraid to move, were locked on his, fixed like those of a coma patient.

The young man swallowed and whispered, “You are Dr. Cohen. Aren't you?”

“Yes.” Yael's voice was dry as dust.

“I . . .” Hassan halted and both of them waited what felt like an eternity for him to speak again. He reached over and drank some of her orange juice. Amazingly, this arrogance annoyed her as much as she was shocked by him saying he had a gun. His hand clenched and unclenched the handle of the pistol beneath the table.

“I was sent to kill you . . .”

She so desperately wanted to scream for help, but Yael was suddenly struck mute. And her fear was replaced by confusion when Hassan continued. “You saved my friend, Bilal, didn't you?”

It wasn't really a question and Yael had no conscious intention
to answer. But she felt her lips move nonetheless. “Yes, I did,” she gasped. And then reason slowly subsumed fear as a strange courage welled up from nowhere. “Who are you?”

Hassan was sweating profusely despite the breeze. He gulped down more orange juice, but this time it didn't matter to Yael. His next words sounded as though they were forced out of his body. “You must swear to me, swear on the most holy, that you will say nothing to anybody about what I'm going to tell you.”

“You have a gun. Just ask and I'll swear to you anything.”

The young man looked as though he were sinking into despair. The muscles in his face seemed to twitch as if he might collapse. “You must swear,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

“Why? What do you want? What did I do?” The questions tumbled out of Yael's mouth in quiet gasps.

Hassan didn't answer but his eyes didn't leave Yael's.

“How do you know Bilal?” asked Yael, reaching out for something, anything.

The effect of the question on Hassan was profound. His shoulders slumped and his eyes dropped. “He is my friend. My brother. I was ordered to kill you. But . . .”

Yael hung on to the silence, hoping he'd continue.

“It's all gone so wrong . . .” Hassan's eyes suddenly filled with tears, which he didn't blink away. His gaze returned to Yael, but this time it was like looking at a different man: determination had devolved almost at once into exhaustion.

“I was ordered to kill you, but Bilal . . . he told me . . . he said you were the only one I could trust. He said you were the only one who could save him . . .”

E
VEN THE PRISON GOVERNOR,
who had seen most things in his twelve years superintending one of the most fractious penal
colonies in Israel, was surprised by the number of visitors the remand prisoner was getting.

First it was the police taking statements; then a government lawyer appointed by the courts; then his imam; then the kid's cousin; then a journalist, and heaven only knows how he managed to get permission to interview the lad; and now it was a senior officer from Shin Bet.

But provided they had the right clearance papers, there were no grounds for him to object. The governor's sole responsibility was to ensure the kid's welfare and that he showed up for his day in court. After that, he would likely be some other prison commander's problem. Although he'd carried bombs, they hadn't gone off, and his crime was murder, so once he'd been through the courts, he'd probably go to an ordinary prison and not one for Arab terrorists or Palestinian militants, like this prison.

He knew the man from Shin Bet. They'd met in a conference in Hadera on internal security where he'd given a speech and they discussed how to process Palestinian informers in the prison system. That was four years earlier, and he was surprised at how much the Shin Bet man had aged and some of his hair had turned white.

Obviously this kid was something more than your average fanatic and the meeting didn't sit comfortably with the governor—not at all.

E
LIAHU WAITED
in the interview room for Bilal to be brought to him for interrogation. Within a minute the door opened and one of the section guards walked in. He was followed by Bilal. The young man entered with a strangely hopeful air, but that quickly vanished when Bilal saw Eliahu behind the table, and he stopped dead at the door to the room and wouldn't move.

“Inside, you,” ordered the guard.

Bilal shook his head. “No. No!”

Eliahu Spitzer stood from behind the desk. In fluent Arabic, he said gently, “Bilal, calm down. I just want to talk to you.”

“No!” Bilal shouted. “No, I'm not going in there. Not with him. Put me back in my cell. I won't talk to this man.”

“What the hell's got into you, boy?” demanded the guard. “Stop being so fucking stupid.” Losing patience, the guard grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him into the room. The guard was a huge Russian who'd emigrated six years before from St. Petersburg, and Bilal was no match for his brute strength. He sat him in the chair and tethered the handcuffs to one of the armrests.

“Why handcuff him?” asked Eliahu.

“Standard procedure,” said the guard, who retreated to the wall.

“I want to be alone with the prisoner,” demanded Eliahu.

“No,” said the Russian.

“I said I want to be alone. Now leave.”

The Russian looked at him coldly. “I can't do that.”

Eliahu looked at him coldly. “It's not a request.”

The guard didn't know who Eliahu was, but he knew, just from his manner, just from the way he presented himself, that he was authority, and as a Russian he knew that he had to do as authority demanded. He knew better than to argue any further. But as the big Russian left the room he decided the governor should know the man was alone with the prisoner. The governor was famous for his micromanagement.

As the guard closed the door, Eliahu turned his attention solemnly to Bilal. “So, my young friend. You seem to have been in the wars,” he said so impassively that he could have been having a conversation in a café with a friend.

“What do you want? What are you going to do with me?”

Eliahu picked up his briefcase from the floor and placed it on the desk between them. “Y'know, Bilal, there comes a time when
it's better for everybody that a sacrifice is made. Your sacrifice was supposed to be on the Western Wall of the Temple . . .”

Bilal tried to get out of the chair but the handcuffs kept him tethered. He shook them in a vain attempt to free himself, but it was useless, and the chair was bolted to the concrete floor. “What are you doing here? Why are you doing this? I don't understand.”

“You've seen things, Bilal. Things you were never meant to see.”

Again Bilal tried to break free from his chains.

Eliahu opened his briefcase and took out a hypodermic needle. “Calm down, Bilal. This will make you into a martyr—just what you wanted.”

Bilal looked at it in unutterable fear. Here, again, was Malak al-Maut, the Angel of Death. He'd come a second time for Bilal, just as he'd come to the hospital.

Suddenly his body went limp, as though all energy and fight had gone out of him. He was about to die. He could scream but it wouldn't help. He could fight and kick, but the man would just stand behind him. His only hope was to play for time. And pray.

“May I first say a prayer?” he asked softly.

Eliahu smiled. “No, my friend. You'll have plenty of time to pray in heaven . . . or wherever it is you people go.”

He pulled out a vial of clear liquid and stuck the hypodermic needle into the rubber end of the bottle. He sucked a syringe full of the liquid and returned the bottle to his case. For some reason Bilal noticed that the Jew didn't push a small amount of liquid out of the needle, as he'd seen on many American television hospital dramas.

Eliahu began to stand, when, above the general noise of the prison, footsteps could be heard in the corridor coming nearer and nearer. Suddenly the door of the room opened and Eliahu hid the needle behind the opened lid of his briefcase.

The prison governor walked into the room with a different air from their first greeting in his office.

“You might be important where you come from, Spitzer, but in this prison I make the rules, and people who come in here obey them. No prisoner can be left alone with a visitor for any reason, ever. My guard stays in this room. Is that quite clear?”

Bilal turned and screamed at the governor, “He was trying to kill me!”

The governor looked quickly at both of them and said, “Shut up, Bilal. Now listen to me, Mr. Shin Bet. You may be a big shit in Jerusalem, but you're not even a fart in my prison.”