Free Vicious Circle by Robert Littell Page A

off to today, Mr. Max?” he asked as Sweeney settled onto the
     seat next to him.
    “I want to see the wake,” Sweeney said.
    “Roger, Mr. Max,” Roger said, an eager smile spreading across his round face, the gold crowns glittering in his lower jaw.
     “The wake it is.”
    There was a grinding of gears and a violent shudder under the hood as the Lada, with a backfire that sent several men ducking
     for cover, started up the road. A hundred yards further along they came to the Palestinian Authority check point. Another
     baby-faced policeman, this one wearing a crisp blue uniform and a blue beret and carrying what looked like a brand new Chinese-manufactured
     Kalashnikov tucked under his arm, took Sweeney’s passport and passed it to a short mustached man wearing goggle-like sunglasses
     and a green belted raincoat.
    The Green Hornet, as Sweeney dubbed him, looked up from the passport. “Max could be a Jewish name,” he announced in perfect
     English, scrutinizing Sweeney through the open window.
    “Jesus could be a Jewish name, too,” Sweeney shot back.
    “Jesus was not a Zionist,” Green Hornet said.
    “There’s a lot of things Jesus wasn’t,” Sweeney retorted. “A Christian is one of them.”
    “Westerners cannot resist giving lessons to Palestinians,” observed the Green Hornet. “One day you will understand that there
     are also things to be learned from us.”
    Sweeney smiled uncomfortably. He didn’t see himself getting into a theological discussion with the boss of a Palestinian policemanwho had one finger on the trigger of a Kalashnikov. “Look, I’m not Jewish,” he said. “Sweeney is an Irish Catholic name.”
    Roger leaned across the seat. “Sweeney is a friend of the Palestinian people,” he said in English. (Sweeney always came across
     with a generous tip at the end of the day, a charitable action Roger liked to encourage.)
    The Green Hornet handed the passport back through the open window and turned toward the next car. Struggling with the gear
     box, Roger jammed the stick shift into first and, with a series of jerks, managed to get the Lada rolling in the direction
     of Gaza City.
    A Mercedes taxi filled with Arab women and valises piled high on the roof rack overtook the Lada, kicking up a cloud of chalk
     dust that obliged Sweeney to cover his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. Laughing at the discomfort of his passenger, Roger
     swung around a Bedouin boy, a goat slung around his neck, leading a string of camels, and a donkey pulling a cart sagging
     on its axles under a load of oranges, then splashed through a swamp of sewage onto a side road that took them, within minutes,
     into the heart of Gaza City.
    With the abduction of the Fiddler, who was believed to be somewhere in Gaza, security was high on this side of the border,
     too; Palestinian police armed with submachine guns stood in front of their jeeps surveying traffic at every crossroad. The
     streets, dust-clogged and reeking from garbage, teemed with barefoot children and women in long robes lugging baskets of vegetables.
     Clustered around small tables in bleak cafes, bearded men smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and played backgammon. At every corner
     claxons shrieked; there were very few stop lights in Gaza and each intersection had become a test of manhood as drivers tried
     to bluff their way through. The Lada swung past the sprawling office complex in central Gaza known as Al Saraya, where the
     Palestinian Authority held court; workmen on bamboo scaffolds were rebuilding the wing that had been bombed into rubble by
     Israeli helicopters before the cease fire went into effect. Leaning on the horn, Roger inched the car through a horde of people
     waiting for the bride and groom to emerge from a wedding hall, and turned into the Gaza neighborhood of Shajaiyah. “The martyr
     lived in his family’s house down the narrow street there,” Roger said, pulling onto the side-walkand cutting the engine. Carefully