Читать книгу The Spoils of War - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 20

In the morning, a guard took him to wash, and then to the courtyard to pray with other men, all of whom seemed to be guards, not prisoners. He tried very hard to concentrate his mind on the glory of God. After prayer, he ate with them.

Then they took him to an office. Zahirah was there, freshly dressed and made up. She had glossy enlargements of the photos from the flashcard in neat rows on her desk and taped to the wall behind her.

She also had Rashid’s passport and backpack. The presence of those two items on a corner of her desk gave Rashid hope. He sat quietly while she worked away at her computer, typing rapidly, a pencil clenched in her lipsticked mouth; she grabbed the pencil to scribble notes that she pasted to her computer screen.

“Do you want to help us, Rashid?” she asked after ten minutes. “We intend to find out exactly what happened to your friend—to Salem. And then, if it is within our power, to avenge him.”

You were the ones who beat him first! Rashid’s brain was already split in two; half wanted to help the Palestinian Authority, and half viewed that Authority as the enemy of every Palestinian.

“We can help you,” she continued. “If you will help us. Hamas will not help you; they have lost the dig, and all they will care about is the lost money. They cannot go outside of Palestine to ask questions. So they will likely concentrate on you.” She paused for effect. “And on your mother—who we can protect. We can. You can, if you help us.”

Rashid had no loyalty to Hamas; they had paid the bills after the death of his father and brothers, and his mother loved them, but they had shown their true colors when he worked for Salem. He had very little loyalty to Israel; years of Hamas propaganda and experience of Israeli police methods in Acco combined to make Israel more of an enemy than a home. The thought of travel, anything outside the constant war that was all around him, was more tempting than anything he had heard. And the possibility of avenging Salem, even indirectly, might help him deal with the fact that when Salem had needed him, he had run.

Still, he hesitated. Even with nothing to go home to, no job, no future, he still hesitated to commit to the Authority.

Zahirah held up the clearest photo of the slut Saida disporting herself with the gold cup. “Rashid, listen to me, please. This Saida—she has left the country. Yes, we know that. She has gone to Cyprus—perhaps Crete; I’ll know in an hour. I think she has many of these items. I think she intends to sell them on the black market.

He raised his hands. “What would you have me do?” he asked.

Zahirah smiled broadly, showing most of her white, even teeth. “You have a clean Israeli passport. You speak English. You know Saida. We want you to help us find her and bring her back.”

That sounded so appealing that Rashid answered her smile with his own. Excitement began to rise within him. “I think I could do that.”

Zahirah began to make piles of documents atop the photos. She pressed a buzzer under her desk and in answer a young man appeared at her door. She waved to him.

“This is Ali, your keeper. You have much to learn. You will have to leave tonight. The colonel will want to see you before you go.”

Ali wasn’t much older than Rashid—Salem’s age, in fact. He smiled at Rashid, who looked down at the ground to hide his confusion. Then he smiled a little in return.

Ten minutes later, he was learning to use a cell phone for clandestine communications. And he had chosen a side.