The Samaritan's Secret E-Book

Matt Rees

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Omar Yussef Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 413

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

When Omar Yussef travels to Nablus, the West Bank's most violent town, to attend a wedding, he little expects the trouble that awaits him. An ancient Torah scroll belonging to the Samaritans, descendants of the biblical Joseph, has been stolen. But when the dead body of a young Samaritan is discovered, a seemingly straightforward theft inquiry takes an unexpected turn. As Omar sets out to find the perpetrators of this murder, he is driven down into the murky alleys and tunnels of the old casbah in Nablus. Here, as he uncovers the secret deals of one of the region's richest businessmen, and the shadowy world of the tiny Samaritan community, he begins to wonder whether he will be able to attend the wedding after all...

Leseprobe

The Samaritan’s Secret

Matt Rees was born in South Wales. He has covered the Middle East as a journalist for more than a decade, including six years as Time magazine’s Jerusalem bureau chief. Atlantic Books published the first Omar Yussef novel, The Bethlehem Murders, in 2007, and the second, The Saladin Murders, in 2008. The Bethlehem Murders won the CWA John Creasey Dagger.

See more at www.mattbeynonrees.com.

ALSO BY MATT REES

The Bethlehem Murders: An Omar Yussef Novel

First published in the United States in 2008 by Soho Press, Inc., 853 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2009 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright © Matt Rees, 2009

The moral right of Matt Rees to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84354 650 4eISBN 978 0 85789 914 9

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To my father David

Your eyes took me back to the days that are gone

They taught me to regret the past and its wounds

—Ahmad Shafik,

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 1

Lime green paint on the domes of the neighborhood mosques punctuated the khaki limestone in the Nablus casbah. Like tarnished copper tacks, they seemed to pin the Ottoman souk and the Mamluk caravanserai to the floor of the valley. Otherwise even the stones might get up and run away from this dirty town, Omar Yussef thought.

The distant siren of an ambulance rumbled in the stomach of the city and Omar Yussef felt the last crispness of dawn burn away in the sun. With his habitually shaky hand, he stroked the meager white hairs covering his bald­ness and clicked his tongue. These few strands wouldn’t save his scalp from sunburn, and he could see that the day would be hot. Sweat itched behind his tidy gray mustache. He scratched his upper lip petulantly.

He turned from the valley and contemplated the sparse spring grass stippling the rocky flank of Mount Jerizim. Let’s see who gets burned worse—you or me, he thought. The mountain arced, sullen and taut, to the row of mansions on its ridge, as though tensing its shoulders to endure the heat of the day.

A turquoise police car pulled up. The driver’s window lowered and a smoldering cigarette butt spun onto the side­walk. “Greetings, ustaz,” Sami Jaffari said. “Get in.”

Omar Yussef left the paltry shade of the lacquered pinewood canopy outside his hotel, opened the door of the patrol car and stretched a stiff leg into the passenger’s side.

“Grandpa, morning of joy.”

Bracing himself against the car door, Omar Yussef looked up. From the balcony of a second floor room, his granddaughter waved. In her other hand, she clutched a book. He wiggled his fingers to her in greeting. “Morning of light, Nadia, my darling,” he said.

“Don’t forget, you’re taking me to eat qanafi today.”

Omar Yussef’s mustache curled downward. Sweet things were not to his taste. But Nablus was famous for this dessert of goat cheese and syrupy shredded wheat, and this was Nadia’s first time in the town. He anticipated that the inquisitive, methodical thirteen-year-old would want to compare the qanafi from a range of bakeries and he would have to gulp it all down and grin indulgently. Even his considerable prejudice in culinary matters couldn’t outweigh his love for this girl. He waved to her again. “If Allah wills it, we’ll eat qanafi soon,” he said.

“Sami, make sure you bring my grandpa back in time for a midmorning snack in the casbah,” Nadia called.

“He’s on official police business now,” Sami shouted. “We have to investigate the theft of a valuable historical relic.”

“I’m warning you. I’ll tell Meisoun to call off the wedding, if you don’t bring him back in time. She won’t marry you if I tell her you’re not nice to little girls.”

Sami stuck out his tongue and put a thumb to his nose. Nadia giggled as the car pulled away from the curb. “You’re going to get fat in Nablus, Abu Ramiz,” Sami said, slapping Omar Yussef on the knee.

“It’s you who’ll start to gain weight, because by the end of this week you’ll have a wife to cook for you.”

Sami swerved to avoid a long, yellow taxi that drifted languidly out of a side street. He rummaged for a pack of Dunhills in the glove compartment. “Police work in Palestine keeps me thin,” he said, shaking a cigarette loose and lighting it. “It’s four parts nervous tension and one part genuine danger. I burn more calories thinking about my day than most people would by running a marathon.”

Sami had become leaner since Omar Yussef last saw him in Gaza almost a year earlier. In the police car, Omar’s initial impression was of a healthy, contented young man, but as he looked harder he sensed this was a mask for some­thing apprehensive and angry. It was as though the police officer had been forced to swallow the criminal outrages of Nablus and had found that they ate away his muscle and left his flesh tight on his bones.

Sami picked his teeth, discolored almost to the shade of his tan by the thick coffee he drank to stay awake on long shifts. “I’m looking forward to seeing my old childhood friends at my wedding,” he said. “I’m very lucky that you and your sons were able to get permits to pass through the checkpoints. It’s been years since I spent time with Ramiz and even longer since I saw Zuheir.”

Omar Yussef forced a smile.

Sami lifted his palm, questioningly. “What’s wrong?”

“Zuheir is much changed.” Omar Yussef looked at his feet. “He’s become very religious.”

“Then he’ll be at home in Nablus. This place is one big mosque.”

“He’s very different from the boy who went off to study in Britain a few years ago.” He thought of the square-cut beard and the loose white cotton his son had taken to wearing, the regular prayers and the stern disapproving face. He didn’t know how far his son had ventured into the unbending world of indignant imams, but the question disturbed him.

“It’s lucky you gave up alcohol, or Zuheir would be trying to force some major lifestyle changes on you,” Sami said with a smile.

“If I hadn’t given up alcohol, it would’ve killed me and I might not have lived long enough to see my son become an adherent of a crazy, hard-line version of our religion.”

“May Allah forbid it.” Sami slapped Omar Yussef’s thigh. “Enough of such thoughts. This is a day of pleasures. I have to go down to the casbah later to finalize arrangements for the wedding with the sheikh. Then we’ll have a reunion with your sons at the hotel.”

“After we’ve checked on the theft at the Samaritan syna­gogue and talked to their priest.”

Sami shrugged. “Crime is also one of the pleasures of Nablus.”

“I’m a connoisseur. Thank you for bringing me.”

“I knew you’d be intrigued, as a history teacher who’s knowledgeable about all elements of Palestinian culture.” Sami sucked in some smoke. “They are part of Palestinian culture, aren’t they?”

“The Samaritans? They’ve been here longer than we have, Sami. They claim to be descended from some biblical Israelites who remained in this area when their brethren were exiled to Babylon. In a way, they’re Palestinians and Jews and neither, all at the same time.”

Sami pulled over and peered out of the window. “I think it’s in here,” he said.

Omar Yussef raised himself out of the passenger seat with a grunt. His back ached after the long ride from Bethlehem the previous day, squashed into a taxi with his wife, his granddaughter and two of his sons. To bypass the security checks around Jerusalem, they had taken the desert backroads. He was fifty-seven and unfit, so the bumpy ride and the heat had exhausted him.

On the sidewalk, Omar Yussef straightened his spine. He pushed his remaining hair into place with his palm and nudged his gold-framed glasses to the bridge of his nose with the tip of his index finger.

He looked up a walkway of cracked steps between two apartment buildings, bright green weeds cutting through the polished stone paving, creeping over the railings at each side of the path. The door of the Samaritan synagogue, set forty yards back from the road, was a tasteless metal panel painted brown to look like wood. Seven bulbous lights on long, upright stems surmounted the stone canopy at the entrance. The building was a low square faced in the same limestone as the apartment blocks around it. Its basement level was painted pink.

“I thought it would be older than this,” Sami said. He stamped out his cigarette and set off up the steps.

“They had a much older synagogue down in the casbah,” Omar Yussef said, “but they left the old town fifty years ago, because their Muslim neighbors wouldn’t sell them land to expand their homes as their community grew. So they moved up here.”

Sami waited at the top of the first flight of steps. “But they don’t even live here anymore.” He pointed above the roof of the synagogue to a cluster of buildings on the ridge of Mount Jerizim. “They went up there, out of the way of everyone.”

“Out of the way of the first intifada, Sami. Those were violent times in Nablus. You can’t blame people for trying to get away.”

They reached the final set of steps. To their left, grilles of curling black metal guarded the six arched windows of the synagogue.

“The bars on that first window are new,” Omar Yussef said. “They’re the only ones that aren’t rusty.”

Sami leaned over the railing at the side of the entrance and examined the bars. “You’re right, Abu Ramiz. The window has been scorched by something, too.”

Omar Yussef glanced at the ledge. Jagged black smudges slashed the polished stone. In the yard below, a square frame of rusty metal leaned against the pink wall, its bottom edge ripped away. “The original bars.” He turned to Sami and smiled with one side of his mouth. “As the representa­tive of the police, I think perhaps you might draw some conclusions from this.”

Sami tapped the new black grille. “The thieves got in through this window.”

Omar Yussef rubbed his chin. “Thieves who had enough explosives to blow away those bars.”

“Nablus isn’t short of explosives experts.”

“But it is short of Samaritans, and even shorter of their priceless historical documents.”

Sami lit another cigarette and took in some smoke with a sharp breath. “Let’s go and see this priest.”

Chapter 2

Along each jaundice-yellow wall inside the synagogue, ragged prayer books were wedged tight or stacked haphazardly on their sides behind the glass of their book­cases. A curtain of blue velvet embroidered with Hebrew characters in gold thread hung behind a dais at the head of the hall. The thick walls preserved the chill of night in the air. Omar Yussef shivered and pulled his French collar higher, pressing it to the slack skin of his jaw.

“It’s as cold as a cellar in here,” Sami said.

“Or a grave.” Omar Yussef caught Sami’s frown. “Don’t worry. I may not be certain that this truly is a day of pleas­ures, as you put it, but by the time of your wedding, I’ll be cheeriness personified.”

Sami walked down the aisle toward the blue curtain. Between the Hebrew characters, the outline of two stone tablets had been stitched into the material. “Can you read this, Abu Ramiz?” Sami asked.

“No, but the tablets are a representation of the command­ments given to the Prophet Moussa, I think. The ones that contained the Jewish law.”

“The Samaritan law.”

A man of about seventy years approached from a stairwell at the back of the room. He was tall and slender, like an evening shadow. He wore a white ankle-length cotton robe, a long vest of coarse gray wool, unfastened at the front, and a fez wrapped with a red cloth so that it resembled a turban.

“The Jewish law is very similar to ours, gentlemen,” the old man said, “but their holy texts include seven thousand mistakes. The books of the Samaritans are without error.”

“Then you are without excuses for your mistakes.” Omar Yussef smiled. “That’s a terrible fate.”

“No one is ever short of justification for their sins in this part of the world.” The man’s mild eyes appeared unfo­cused and bemused, like café habitués Omar Yussef had met in Morocco who smoked too much kif. He shook hands with Omar Yussef. “I’m Jibril Ben-Tabia, a priest of the Samaritan people. Welcome to our synagogue.”

Sami stepped forward. “Lieutenant Sami Jaffari of the National Police. This is my colleague Abu Ramiz.”

“From Bethlehem,” Omar Yussef said. He glanced at Sami. His granddaughter had been trying to make a detec­tive of him since he had been forced to investigate accusa­tions of murder against a favorite former pupil over a year ago. Despite his insistence that he was happy as a history teacher in the Dehaisha refugee camp, Sami seemed now to have made his change of career official.

The priest tilted his head as though wondering why an investigating officer should have been brought from Bethlehem. He kept Omar Yussef’s hand in his.

“The lieutenant asked me to join him because I have a special interest in Palestinian history,” Omar Yussef said. He raised an eyebrow at the young officer. “I understand the crime relates to one of your historical documents.”

“It did.” Ben-Tabia let go of Omar Yussef’s hand and raised his arms in a shrug. “But I must apologize, honored gentle­men, particularly to you, Abu Ramiz, for bringing you all the way from Bethlehem for nothing. The crime is solved.”

Sami dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel. “Solved?”

The priest glanced sharply at the cigarette butt on the floor and rolled his lower lip over the edge of his mustache. “Yes, there was a theft, but the stolen object has been returned. So, you see, your intervention is unnecessary.”

“Has the criminal been apprehended?”

“Everything has been sorted out to my satisfaction.”

“I’m here now, so my satisfaction enters into this, too, your honor,” Sami said. He held the priest’s gaze.

“Very well,” Ben-Tabia said. “Please, let’s sit. I’m not so strong these days.”

Omar Yussef and Sami sat on the front bench. The priest took a seat in the second row.

“I must apologize,” he said. “I would offer you coffee in greeting, but this synagogue is only used for the first prayers of every month and no one but me is here to prepare a drink for you today.”

Omar Yussef waved his hand. “Coffee is unnecessary. Your regular place of prayer is on top of the mountain?”

“As you surely know, Brother Abu Ramiz, the Samaritans have a long history in Palestine.” The priest’s face became grave and proud. “We have lived here in the shadow of our holy mountain, Jerizim, since the Israelites entered the land of Canaan. Our community has dwindled to little more than six hundred, but we remain, protected by Allah and our adherence to the ways of our people.”

“It’s one of the greatest traditions of Palestine,” Omar Yussef said.

The priest bowed his head. “During the violence of the eighties, we moved out of this neighborhood and created a new village on top of Jerizim, including, of course, a syna­gogue.” He lifted a long finger and pointed out of the window toward the ridge. “We wanted to be close to our holiest place.”

“I’m new to Nablus,” Sami said. “I’ve never been up there.”

“Welcome to our city.” Ben-Tabia lowered his head, closed his eyes and placed his palm over his heart. “The site of our ancient temple is just beyond the crest of the ridge, the smooth flat stone where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. It’s where Adam and Eve lived when they were expelled from Eden. It’s the home of Allah.”

“Quite an address.” Sami smiled. “I’d like to come up and see it.”

Omar Yussef thought the priest hesitated before he said, “You will be most welcome, Lieutenant.”

“What exactly was stolen from you, sir?” Omar Yussef asked. “It was an old religious document of some kind, I understand.”

“Though we moved our community to the mountain, we maintained this synagogue and we continued to keep our most precious documents here. It was one of these that was stolen.”

“From where?” Sami said.

“From a safe in the basement.”

“The safe was blown?”

“Blown? Ah, yes, with some kind of explosive. But the safe has been replaced. There’s nothing for you to examine.”

“When was the theft?”

“A week ago. Yes, or perhaps a little more.”

“You didn’t report it immediately?”

The priest fidgeted with the ends of the gray vest. “I was ordered not to do so. By the thieves. They told me that if I involved the authorities, they would destroy the scroll.”

“The scroll?” Omar Yussef twisted toward the priest.

“Our greatest treasure was stolen, Abu Ramiz,” Ben-Tabia said. He lifted the tips of his fingers to his beard, as though he might pull it out in despair at the thought of such a calamity. “I felt terrible shame that it should be during my tenure as a priest here in our synagogue that the Abisha Scroll might be lost.”

“The Abisha?” Omar Yussef’s voice was low and reverent.

“What’s that?” Sami said.

“A famous Torah scroll,” Omar Yussef said. “The oldest book in the world, they say.”

The priest raised his eyes to the ceiling. “The five books of Moses, written on sheepskin three thousand six hundred and forty-five years ago. It was written by Abisha, son of Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron who was the brother of Moses, in the thirteenth year after the Israelites entered the land of Canaan. Every year, we bring it out of the safe only once, for our Passover ceremony on Mount Jerizim.”

“It must be very valuable,” Sami said.

“It’s beyond all value. Without this scroll, our Messiah can never return to us. Without this scroll, we cannot carry out the annual Passover sacrifice, and if we fail to sacrifice on Passover we cease to be Samaritans and the entire tradi­tion of our religion comes to a terrible close.” The priest’s eyes were moist.

“You said the thieves told you to keep quiet?” Omar Yussef spoke softly.

“I was blindfolded and taken to a place where I was shown the stolen scroll. They took me because they knew I would be able to recognize it and tell the rest of the community that it was safe. Then they demanded a million dollars for its return.”

“Did you pay?” Sami asked.

“We don’t have a million dollars.”

“But the Abisha Scroll has been returned?”

“We asked for help from all our friends in Nablus.” The priest lifted his hand in front of him, fingers pointing upward. “Perhaps one of them was able to influence the thieves.”

“What friends?”

“We’re part of the local community. My accent is like everyone else’s in Nablus—I say Oi, when I mean to say I, just like the people in the casbah. We have friends among the business community, wealthy, powerful friends.”

“Did one of them pay the ransom for the Abisha?”

“No one told me they did so. I finally reported the scroll stolen during the weekend, because our Passover takes place in three days and, as I told you, the entire ceremony would have to be abandoned if I couldn’t carry this scroll in our procession. But the scroll was returned overnight. I came here this morning to meet you, as your office instructed me to do when I called in the theft. But then I found the scroll on the steps, safe in its box. My prayers had been answered.”

“Just like that?” Sami spoke calmly, but Omar Yussef heard the suspicion in his voice. “The thieves didn’t tell you they’d returned it?”

“No one comes here unless they’re accompanied by me. I have the only key to the building. They must have known I’d find it.”

“Who knew that the scroll was kept in the safe?”

“Many people in Nablus.”

“Who knew where the safe was?”

“We often welcome guests such as you in this synagogue. Then, there are international scholars who come to study our community. Any one of them might know where the safe is kept.”

“Was the scroll damaged when the safe was blown?”

“No, it’s in good condition, thanks to Allah.”

“Let’s take a look.” Sami stood.

The priest rose with some reluctance and led them to the back of the synagogue.

At the foot of a whitewashed stone staircase, he opened a heavy metal door and entered a small office. A tall green safe the size of a refrigerator stood in one corner. “A moment, please. The combination,” he said, working his fingers to mime the twisting of a dial. He shut the door behind him.

When the priest allowed them to enter, he beckoned to Omar Yussef. On the desk, beside a pile of ragged prayer books, was a box with three curved sides covered in dull, blotchy hide and less than two feet in length. Omar Yussef bent close and saw that the case was overlaid with silver panels, oxidized to a dark gray tone. He lifted his hand toward it and glanced at the priest. Ben-Tabia nodded and Omar Yussef touched the box. He felt a thrill of electricity pass through his hand. He smiled at the priest. “It’s one of the most beautiful objects I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“The box was made several hundred years ago on the orders of one of my predecessors in the priestly caste,” Ben-Tabia said. “Inside is the ancient scroll, but I cannot show you that today. Only on Passover may it be seen.”

“The workmanship is wonderful.” Omar Yussef ran his hand over the raised silver. Under its grimy coating, it was decorated with scenes from biblical stories. At the center of one of the plates was an image of a building that looked like a castle with high walls surrounding a courtyard and a central turret. Omar Yussef stroked a fingertip around the outline of the building.

“That’s our temple, which once stood on top of Mount Jerizim.” The priest inclined his head toward the place where Omar Yussef’s hand rested. “The Jews say the temple was in Jerusalem, where your famous Dome of the Rock now stands. But we know it was on Jerizim.” He swallowed hard. “May I return the Abisha Scroll to the safe? It makes me nervous even to have it here on the table.”

Sami left the room with Omar Yussef, while the priest again worked the combination on the safe.

In the stairwell, Sami pursed his lips. “He’s lying,” he whispered.

“You’re right,” Omar Yussef said. “Why would someone steal the scroll and simply give it back?”

The priest came out of the office and shut the metal door. He straightened his fez, gave a brittle, polite smile and gestured for them to lead the way up the stairs.

“Forgive me if I seem to be overprotective of the scroll, pasha,” he said.

Omar Yussef blanched at the unearned senior rank mistakenly accorded him by the priest. Thanks be to Allah that he doesn’t expect me to arrest anyone, he thought.

“It truly is important to the redemption of the entire world,” the priest continued. “You see, our holy texts tell us that the Messiah will be born to the tribe of Levi or Joseph. We Samar­itans are all that’s left of those two tribes. But what makes us Samaritans? Only that we celebrate Passover and also the Feast of Tabernacles in the way taught by our tradition.”

“With the Abisha Scroll at the head of your procession.”

The priest opened a hand to acknowledge that Omar Yussef’s understanding was correct. “If we were to miss both these festivals for a single year, we would no longer be Samaritans. The lines of Levi and Joseph would come to an end, and there would be no possibility of a Messiah being born to redeem mankind.”

Omar Yussef stroked his chin with his knuckles. “Were there other ancient documents in the safe?”

“A few, but nothing else was taken.” The priest looked out of the window at Mount Jerizim. “Most of our ancient documents are kept in my house on top of the mountain. Some are almost a thousand years old. But none are nearly as old as the Abisha Scroll. Only the most valuable are stored here in the safe.”

“Do you preserve all your people’s old texts?”

“The Torah scrolls and original manuscripts used in reli­gious services.” Ben-Tabia pointed toward the blue curtain above the dais. “When they can no longer be used, these documents are packed away there inside the holy ark.”

“Why don’t you throw them away?” Sami asked.

“For the same reason you Muslims don’t use pages from the Koran to wrap falafel.” The priest smiled, but Omar Yussef saw a glint of hostility behind the old man’s outmoded spec­tacles. “Each page from a prayer book must be preserved, even if it’s beyond repair.”

He lifted a corner of the velvet curtain to reveal a low box built into the wall. At first it looked like a bench, but Omar Yussef saw that it was hinged at the back. “In here we safe­guard many fragments of documents, all unusable, but still filled with the holy word. We call them ‘Allah’s secrets.’ ”

The priest dropped the curtain. “If you would like to see the Abisha Scroll itself, not just its box, please come to our Passover celebration on Jerizim later this week. I am happy to invite you.”

“Do we have to convert to Samaritanism to attend?” Omar Yussef laughed with a short, coughing exhalation. “Neither Sami nor I are particularly committed to Islam.”

“Conversion to our religion is only possible for women who wish to marry our men, pasha,” the priest said. “But we should be honored to have men like you share our celebra­tion.” He laid his hand over his heart. “People come from all around the world—foreign journalists and international academics—to watch our ancient rites.”

“It’ll be a great pleasure, Your Honor,” Omar Yussef said.

The priest went out onto the wide top step at the entrance to the synagogue. As Omar Yussef and Sami followed him to the door, they heard footsteps hurrying outside. Ben-Tabia froze, his eyes wide.

A breathless voice called to the priest from the steps: “Long life to you.” Ben-Tabia looked quickly at Sami, then dropped his eyes to the floor. Omar Yussef took a short breath and felt the muscles in his back tighten. The tradi­tional greeting meant someone else’s life had ended. The voice came again: “Your Honor, we have to call the police.”

Sami stepped through the door. Omar Yussef followed. A tall young man with a thick mustache stood at the foot of the last flight of steps. His thin chest heaved with the effort of running from the street. He flinched when he saw Sami’s uniform.

“Who’s dead?” Sami spoke sharply.

The young man glanced at the priest, but Sami descended a few steps and leaned toward him.

“Come on, what’s happened?”

The breathless man looked over Sami’s shoulder and called to the priest. “It’s Ishaq, Your Honor. Ishaq is up on top of Mount Jerizim, at the temple.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” The priest spoke slowly, as though his tongue were prodding through a minefield.

The young man coughed hard. “Your Honor, Ishaq has been murdered.”

Chapter 3

A shepherd in baggy Turkish pants and an old blue seer­sucker jacket drove his herd toward the scanty pasture on Mount Jerizim. He maneuvered the goats to the side of the road, making way for Sami’s patrol car. A small black kid sprang stiff-legged from a rock and landed on the shaggy brown backs of the others. Omar Yussef smiled at the little goat’s exuberance. He caught the mustiness of the herd on the cool air of the mountain, an inviting scent after the exhaust fumes and trash-can stink of Nablus. But there had been a murder on this mountain and Omar Yussef narrowed his eyes to look beyond the lively animals toward the ridge where someone lay dead.

Sami called police headquarters to report that he was en route to a murder scene. He held his walkie-talkie with his left hand, steering and changing gear with his right. The car veered toward the drop at the edge of the road when­ever he reached for the gearshift.

The old Samaritan watched Sami cautiously from the back seat with his dazed, faded eyes. Maybe he lied to ussimply because he doesn’t trust the police, Omar Yussef thought. By Allah, the law around here doesn’t usually inspire confidence. The priest couldn’t know that Sami’s an honest officer. The odds, after all, would be against it.

Sami slipped the walkie-talkie into its dashboard mounting and looked at the priest in the rearview mirror. “You’re all related up here, aren’t you? All you Samaritans?” he said. “Does this Ishaq have a big family?”

The priest flinched and put his hand over his mouth.

“Well?” Sami turned in his seat. “His family?”

Ben-Tabia leaned forward. “Are you the Sami Jaffari who was one of the Bethlehem deportees exiled to Gaza by the Israelis?” he said.

Omar Yussef saw Sami’s jaw tighten.

“How did you manage to get a job back here in the West Bank?” the priest asked.

“I got a permit,” Sami said. He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it out of the window.

“From the Israelis?”

“Obviously.”

“But they deported you to Gaza because they said you were a dangerous gunman.”

Sami ground the gears down into first as the road ribboned around a steep curve.

The priest persisted. “How did you change their minds?”

Omar Yussef knew how. His friend Khamis Zeydan, Bethlehem’s police chief, had convinced the Israelis of the truth about Sami—the young officer had been working undercover among the town’s gunmen when the Israelis arrested him. Khamis Zeydan had even obtained a permit for Sami’s Gazan fiancée Meisoun to join him in the West Bank.

“Don’t you think a job on the Nablus police force is a continuation of Sami’s punishment?” Omar Yussef said to Ben-Tabia.

Sami clicked his tongue. “Abu Ramiz, please, let it rest.”

The priest’s voice became surly. “He must have connec­tions,” he said. “That’s all I mean.”

And connections are suspect, Omar Yussef thought. Tainted links to the crooks at the top, even to the Israelis. “Sami’s like you,” he said. “You have a Torah like the Jews. But you’re defined by the seven thousand differences between your holy text and theirs. It’s the same with Sami and his connec­tions. It’s the differences that’re important.”

The priest folded his arms across his chest, sat back in his seat and stared out of the window.

They reached the Samaritan houses on the ridge. The well-maintained streets were neater than a Palestinian village and empty, except for a few teenagers playing basketball in a small concrete lot. They stopped their game to watch the police car pass. Blinking into the sun, the children bore the unmistakable signs of inbreeding. Their bullet-shaped heads sat askew on their necks and their big ears stuck out.

“Which way from here?” Sami said, quietly.

The priest directed Sami straight through the village. They came around a knoll at the shoulder of the ridge and up to a gravel parking lot. Signs in Hebrew and English welcomed tourists to the Samaritan holy place. Sami cut the engine and a deep silence enveloped them.

A group of five men loitered, peering down a steep slope into a glade of trees. One of them waved when he saw the priest emerge from the police car. Behind the men, the low walls of an old fortress and its domed inner buildings were silvery in the sunshine.

Beyond the Samaritan village, the ridge extended toward the mansions that had been visible from Nablus and, further away, the red and white communication towers of the Israeli army base at Tel Haras.

Omar Yussef shuffled along behind Sami and the priest. Though he was younger than Ben-Tabia, he was conscious that his movements were stiffer, his pace slower. In the silence of this remote peak, without the background racket of the town, his panting sounded prodigious. Sweat formed in his mustache, as he tried to keep up with the others. He promised himself he would take a walk every day to improve his fitness, when he returned to Bethlehem.

The men gathered around the priest as he reached them. Each shook Ben-Tabia’s hand without looking at his face and kissed his cheeks three times, mumbling something to him. A slight hum rolled out of the valley. Omar Yussef heard the regular, echoing beat of a distant pile driver and the call of a single muezzin.

Among the pines on the slope, a lumpy blue and white object was wrapped around the foot of a tree. Omar Yussef pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and squinted at the lifeless body of a man. “Sami, let’s go and look,” he murmured.

Sami put his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder and whis­pered. “Abu Ramiz, I took you to the synagogue because I thought you’d be interested in the scroll. I brought you up here because I was in too much of a hurry to drop you at your hotel. But—”

“The scroll was left on the priest’s doorstep and at the same time a body turned up on the edge of his village.” Omar Yussef lifted his finger at the young policeman. “Come on, Sami. You promised me an investigation into the theft of a historic document, but that particular intrigue has been resolved. You owe me a mystery and that body is it.”

Sami shook his head with a gloomy smile and stepped down the rocky slope toward the trees. Omar Yussef followed awkwardly. He bent to support himself with his arm and descended sideways. Slipping in the loose dirt, he struck his knee on a rock. His elbow shook, taking his weight. He sensed the group of Samaritans watching him, but he didn’t look up. He was sweating with embarrassment at his frail condition. When he reached Sami, he wiped his forehead and neck with his handkerchief.

The dead man was of medium height and wore a white shirt and blue slacks. His feet were bare. His midriff folded around the tree trunk, his legs falling down the hill on one side of the pine and his torso curved around the other. His hands and knees were bound with electrical wire. Omar Yussef breathed heavily. He caught Sami’s eye. The young man whispered: “He’s been tortured, Abu Ramiz.”

Sami pointed out the contusions around the corpse’s neck and head. The thin chest was purpled with bruising where the bloodied shirt had been pulled open. The finger­tips had been scorched.

The dead man was probably in his midtwenties. His sky blue eyes were open and stared at Omar Yussef with some­thing that looked like recognition. Omar Yussef had the feeling that he had seen them before, but that didn’t seem possible. He blinked and averted his face, unnerved by the familiarity in those eyes. He cleared his throat and exam­ined the bruises. “Was he beaten to death?”

“I don’t see any other wounds, at least not the kind that would be fatal. There could have been internal bleeding. Perhaps the beating damaged his organs.” Sami leaned closer to the man’s head. “I suppose the neck could be broken. It’s at an awkward angle.”

Omar Yussef pointed to where the Samaritans stood. “He either fell or was thrown from up there. This tree blocked his fall.”

“There’s no blood around,” Sami said. “I expect he was killed before he dropped down here.”

They made their way back to the ridge, Sami following behind. Omar Yussef was grateful to him for waiting. By the time they reached the group of Samaritans, his shirt was heavy with sweat and the wind across the mountain chilled it against his shoulders and belly.

“Who found the body?” Sami said.

A short, thick man in a dirty blue shirt and a baseball cap that bore the logo of a cheap Israeli cigarette brand raised his hand. “I came up here to open the site for the tourists and I saw it,” he mumbled.

“What time?”

“A little before eight. It wasn’t there last night, I’m sure of that. An American arrived just before I left—someone who works with one of the international organizations—and she was surprised that there are pine trees up here.” The caretaker smiled. “You know these foreigners; they only expect to see olive groves, real Middle Eastern stuff. I told her the pines were planted not long ago to reduce the wind on the mountaintop and we both looked very closely at them. I would’ve seen the body.”

“When were you and the foreigner looking at the trees?”

“Just before sunset. About six o’clock.”

“So you came along the ridge this morning and looked over the edge of the path and saw the body?”

The short man shook his head. “I saw blood on the Eternal Hill first. I thought a jackal had brought its prey here, so I looked around because I didn’t want the tourists to stumble onto a half-eaten goat. Then I found Ishaq dead in the trees.”

“Where’s the Eternal Hill?”

The caretaker pointed across the path to a sloping rock ten yards square. Sami and Omar Yussef stepped toward it. Blood puddled black at its center. A gory trickle ran to the bottom of the gentle, rippling slope of granite. Thicker daubs led up to the top.

“He was tortured there in the middle of the rock,” Sami said quietly. “These other marks must be where the body was dragged over the rock, before he was thrown into the trees. Some time during the night.”

Omar Yussef turned to the priest. “The Eternal Hill is where the ancient Samaritan temple stood?”

“This rock is the peak of the mountain,” the priest stam­mered, “the home of Allah.”

“It looks just like the stone inside the Dome of the Rock,” Omar Yussef said.

“The Jews say that Abraham bound Isaac there on the peak of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. You Muslims just took over their tradition. But Mount Jerizim is where it really took place and that’s why we built our temple here and made it the center of our faith.”

Omar Yussef stared at the priest. “And now it’s covered in blood.”

The priest made a sound that was both a gasp and a sob.

A police jeep pulled into the parking lot and six officers got out. One of the officers pulled a rucksack from the jeep and walked purposefully toward Sami.

“Who was this Ishaq?” Omar Yussef said. “He was one of you? A Samaritan?”

“He’s one of us,” the priest said.

“What did he do?”

“He works—worked for the Palestinian Authority. He lived in the village with his wife.”

The policeman with the rucksack went down the slope toward the body. He slipped in the dirt and landed heavily on his backside. The other officers laughed as they followed him over the lip of the incline. The embarrassed policeman grabbed at one of his colleagues and tried to trip him. Sami called to him sharply.

Omar Yussef rubbed his chin. “Who would want Ishaq dead?”

The priest lifted his arms and let them drop to his sides. “No one, no one.”

“That can’t quite be true, can it?” Omar Yussef sucked one end of his mustache. “What does the Samaritan reli­gion say about evil things such as murder, Your Honor?”

The priest looked at the blood on the broad rock. “One of our holy books says, ‘The sinner goes to the flames and I have no compassion for him.’”

Omar Yussef raised an eyebrow. “You mean the dead man was a sinner?”

“What?” Jibril Ben-Tabia blinked. “No, I mean the murderer. The murderer goes to the flames.”

“He’ll have to die first. The only one in danger of the flames right now is Ishaq. Do you have compassion for him?”

The priest’s head dropped forward. In the quiet of the mountaintop, he whispered: “Compassion? Yes. He was my son.”

Chapter 4

The priest fretted his white beard with shaking fingers. He ran his toe along the edge of the broad rock where the ancient temple once stood and stared at the blood of his son.

“Allah will be merciful upon him,” Omar Yussef said.

The priest removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes hard. “Do you have a son, pasha?”

“I have three,” Omar Yussef said. He glanced at the Samaritan men. Hands in pockets, they had the uneasy list-lessness of teenagers at their first family funeral. But their eyes were alert and trained on the priest’s back.

“What a blessing, pasha.” Ben-Tabia returned his thick glasses to his nose and his eyes seemed to shrink away behind them.

Omar Yussef recalled his awkward reunion with Zuheir and his son’s new religious dedication. “Thanks to Allah,” he said.

He moved to the priest’s side. His back ached and he would have rested his foot on the rock, but some sense of propriety prevented him. Perhaps it’s the rock’s holiness, he thought. No, it’s the blood.

The priest’s eyebrows twitched. “I don’t know what fric­tion usually passes between a father and his son, pasha. I know only that there was tension between me and Ishaq. I have nothing to compare it to, but I must judge myself harshly, even so.” He hesitated. “It was difficult sometimes, Abu Ramiz. He was not content.”

“Not content with what?”

“The village, Nablus, his wife.” The priest groaned. “Certainly not with me.”

“Why not?”

“I was rigid with him. What else could I do? I have two daughters, but my attention and my hopes focused on my son. You understand that, pasha. It’s the way things are in our society. Women count for less.”

Omar Yussef, who loved Nadia best of all his grandchil­dren, grimaced.

“When Ishaq was a boy, I was only a priest. By the time he was a man, I was a leader of our people.” Ben-Tabia shook his head. “The standards that I demand of all the Samaritans applied to him even more forcefully.”

“He failed to live up to them?”

“Perhaps he only failed because he wanted me to know that I had failed him as a father.”

Omar Yussef realized that he had, after all, rested his foot on the holy rock. He withdrew it to the grass at the edge of the footpath. “Now is not the time for such judgments, Your Honor. A father’s high expectations are natural, and a son’s rebellion yet more so. You must forgive yourself, at least while you mourn.”

Jibril Ben-Tabia drew a hand across his forehead. “He was a good boy, in spite of everything,” he murmured. “He helped everybody. It was as though he couldn’t deny anything to anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are some boys in the village who are, you know, not right.”

“They’re handicapped, you mean?”

“Ishaq always played basketball with them and talked to them. No one else bothers with them, except their imme­diate families. They’re outsiders.” The priest dropped his mournful eyes to the rock. “He was a good boy, but as his father I was forced to be critical of him.”

Ben-Tabia turned to Omar Yussef and drew himself up straight. He was six feet tall, five inches greater than Omar Yussef, and his fez made him appear even taller. He took a long breath that was loud in the stillness of the hilltop. “I was Ishaq’s father, but I was also his priest. That means I have certain duties now, pasha. His body must be washed and dressed in white. We must carry out the funeral before sunset. Our tra­dition is for the priest to read from Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-two, as the body is lowered into the grave. Probably you don’t know it, pasha, as a Muslim.”

Omar Yussef glanced down at the blood on the rock. “‘They have corrupted themselves,’” he said. “‘They are a perverse and crooked generation.’”

The priest stared at Omar Yussef, curious and wary.

“I’m Muslim, as you point out,” Omar Yussef said, “but I grew up in Bethlehem back when it was still a town with a Christian majority, and I taught for many years in a Christian school. I know all sorts of things you might expect to be a mystery to a Muslim.”

Sami climbed from where Ishaq’s dead body lay onto the path along the ridge. “Your Honor, was Ishaq married?”

The priest’s eyes were distant. He made a murmur of assent through his pursed lips.

Sami turned toward the Samaritan men. “Has his wife been told of his death?”

The caretaker raised his hand and pointed toward the village. “I called my wife earlier and told her to go and tell Roween. She’ll have done that by now.”

“Roween is Ishaq’s wife?”

The short man lifted his chin to indicate that Sami was correct and turned his attention to the policemen on the slope below.

“I’d better go and see her,” Sami said.

In the village, the boys were gone from the concrete lot. Sami went into a small grocery to buy cigarettes and ask directions to Ishaq’s house.

Omar Yussef looked up toward the hilltop where the corpse lay. He remembered Sami’s question about the Samaritans. Part of Palestinian culture, yes. They’re murdered just like we are, he thought.

The bright morning sun made him squint, but he felt gloomy. He recalled the Samaritan priest’s regrets over his son. He vowed to be as forgiving as he could about Zuheir’s decision to quit his job at a British university for a position at an Islamic school in Beirut.

Sami jogged back from the shop. He lit a cigarette as he ran the car slowly along the street to a small park. The thin grass was studded with deep, rectangular pits, arranged in ranks and lined with concrete.

“This must be where they cook the sheep they slaughter for their Passover,” Omar Yussef said.

Sami took a sharp drag. “Ishaq had a front row seat for the big kill, then. That’s his house, right next door.”

They went to the front entrance and were greeted by a short woman in her late twenties with dry auburn hair cut like a man’s and parted on the left. Her thick eyebrows had been plucked, but as they grew back they met above her upturned nose. Acne mottled red and purple triangles between the corners of her mouth and her jaw.

The woman glanced past Omar Yussef to the police car at the curb and he saw that her eyelashes were wet with tears. “Please come in,” she mumbled. “Feel as if this were your home and you were with your own family.”

The door opened onto a living room furnished with sofas upholstered in velour swirls and an elegant cherrywood dining set.

“Greetings. We’d like to talk to Ishaq’s wife,” Omar Yussef said.

The woman bowed. “Double greetings. I’m Roween al-Teef, Ishaq’s wife,” she said. “Please wait, ustaz, while I prepare coffee for you.”

On the wall, there was an enlarged photo of a man bowing to receive a kiss on the forehead from the old president. Sami froze in front of the photo. Omar Yussef adjusted his spectacles and squinted: the president, wearing the checkered keffiyeh that was his trademark, puckered his lips before the smiling face of Ishaq, the son of Jibril the priest.

Sami and Omar Yussef sat on one of the stiff sofas in silence. Sami stubbed out his cigarette in a ceramic ashtray painted with a blue symmetrical design in the Armenian style and stared at the photo.