The Haj - Leon Uris [224]
‘You are making a mess!’ Ursula screamed.
‘YAHHHHH! YAHHHHH! YAHHHHH!’ the Haj yelled as he pulled out the knife, then plunged it into the Effendi’s heart up to the hilt. ‘YAHHHHH! YAHHHH! YAHHHHHHH!’
He withdrew the dagger and stood panting in joy. Ursula leaned against him and closed her eyes.
‘We make love now, Ursula!’
‘Are you crazy!’
‘Yes, I am crazy! Take off your clothes and we make love!’
He kicked Kabir’s body off the couch and it skidded down the steps. He flung her on the couch and leaped on her. It was like a thousand insanities of pain and happiness in a thousand paradises and hells. It was, she was, entirely magnificent.
Ibrahim wrapped Kabir in sheets of plastic as Ursula cleaned up the traces. They dragged the corpse out to the dock and dumped it unceremoniously into the speedboat alongside the poisoned Persian. As he tied an anchor around the legs of Kabir, she placed Sultan’s dishes in a sack to be dumped with their quarry. In a moment they sped out to the middle of the lake.
Both Ursula and Haj Ibrahim remained in Zurich as though nothing had happened. The Effendi Kabir had been known to disappear for days and even weeks without explanation. For two weeks he wasn’t even missed and everyone thought surely he had rushed off to Saudi Arabia. When it became apparent that he had vanished, it was impossible to establish foul play. There was no body, no witnesses, no apparent crime. Some routine inquiries were made, but the final police report said that the Effendi and his bodyguard had simply disappeared without feasible explanation. So far as the Swiss were concerned, that was the end of that.
When the first snows of winter fell, the arbitration conference broke up in disarray. On a bitter cold December day, Frau Emma Dorfmann and Franz took Haj Ibrahim to the airport for the long flight back.
Ursula remained in Zurich for several more weeks, then quietly slipped out of the country to rejoin the fortune she had skimmed off Kabir over the years.
17
WHILE THE CONFERENCE WENT on in Zurich, Colonel Farid Zyyad had obtained confessions from almost all of the Avenging Leopards who had been arrested in Manger Square. The cooperative ones were permitted to exchange their prison sentences for ‘volunteer’ service in a special unit of fedayeen, or freedom fighters, and were put into training for future guerrilla raids against Israel.
The few who did not cooperate after weeks of interrogation and torture were given long prison terms. Aside from knocking their teeth out and other crude beatings, Farid Zyyad had perfected favorite forms of inflicting pain. Both were creations of the desert and the desert’s heat.
The victim was tied on a table and covered with a wet cloth. He was then pressed by a hot iron from foot to chest. By controlling the temperature of the iron, they could ensure that the resulting burns and infections increased only slightly with each pressing.
Zyyad’s second favorite form of torture was saved for the most persistent of the rebels. They were simply wrapped each in a heavy blanket, tied up, and laid out in the midday sun. When one passed out from heat prostration, he would be revived long enough to gain sufficient strength to be wrapped up once more.
Jamil had gotten it all. His teeth were gone, he was a mass of bruises. He had been pressed a dozen times until his body became bloated with pus. He had been wrapped in the blanket on another dozen occasions.
About the same time Haj Ibrahim changed planes in Athens, Jamil was dragged between two guards before Zyyad. The boy was in blistering agony but conscious enough to still feel every bit of pain.
‘Well, you dirty rotten little animal, I don’t have to play with you anymore. Do you know what I am going to do with you, Jamil? I am going to give you to your father as a present.’
Jamil was taken to a secret enclosed and dreaded little yard in a far corner of the prison where one of the guards tended several dozen cats. Jamil was placed into a large burlap bag, six cats were thrown in with him, and the bag sewn shut.
When Farid