Free The Devil's Breath by Graham Hurley Page B

Manhattan. Quite why he’d been asked to secure the job, he didn’t know. It had simply been orders, another terse phone call from Mohammad Kabbaul, the Damascus Arab, the one he’d listened to all those months ago back on the West Bank,the one who’d confirmed the way it had really been with his son, the one who’d promised him his very own helping of
jihad
. Holy war. Revenge.
    The old man reached for a length of waste cotton and bent over the open trunk of the car. He’d chosen the car himself, a month and a half back, from a dusty street-corner lot over in Brooklyn. Kabbaul had come with him on that occasion and they’d taken a cab from Newark. Sitting in the back of the rattling Chevvy, the old man gazing out at the Manhattan skyline, Kabbaul explained what was to be done. They needed something anonymous, he’d said, something reliable. They’d take the car back to Newark, to a lock-up garage Kabbaul had rented, and there the old man was to start work. He was to install special equipment in the trunk. There had to be room in the trunk for a tank of liquid, some pipes, a pump and whatever else the old man might need. Kabbaul had said he was no engineer, but he thought it would have to be a big car.
    It was. The old man had circled the used-car lot, looking at the models on display, the state of the tyres, the bodywork, the huge engines caked with oil under the propped-up hoods. Privately, he thought the prices outrageous, but Kabbaul had already told him that money didn’t matter, and so in the end he’d chosen an ’84 Oldsmobile for $2300, light tan, the long expanse of hood balanced by a huge trunk. It was the kind of car that littered the streets of Newark, or Brooklyn, or the Bronx. The old man had seen hundreds of them already, and knew it was perfect.
    They’d driven the Oldsmobile back to Newark, the old man at the wheel. The car handled like a boat, swaying and yawing and dipping on the pot-holed roads. By the time they’d crossed Manhattan, he knew there was a problem with the rear shockers and made a mental note to do something about it, telling Kabbaul there’d be more money to spend. Kabbaul had shrugged the warning aside. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he’d said. ‘You must make the car good for one journey. One journey only.’
    The old man, confused, had asked why, negotiating the busy sliproad on to the New Jersey turnpike, half-listening while theArab told him what was to be done. Soon, he’d said, they’d take delivery of a sealed drum. In the drum would be a liquid. The drum was equipped with a special one-way valve. The old man’s job would be to install the drum in the trunk of the Oldsmobile and figure out a method of getting the liquid out of the drum, turning it into some kind of mist, and piping it on to the streets outside. The old man, thinking already of the gear he’d use, how simple the proposition was, had asked about the liquid in the drum.
    ‘What is it?’ he’d said. ‘What is this stuff?’
    Kabbaul had said nothing for a moment, fingering the tarnished chrome trim around the door. Then he’d looked across at the old man. ‘You remember Balata? The first time?’
    The old man had nodded. Balata was a refugee camp near Nablus, an hour and a half north of Ramallah. The
Intifada
had started there after a two-day riot in Gaza. The old man hadn’t seen it for himself, but the Israelis had applied the same tactics a thousand times since. Water-cannon. And riot sticks. And tear gas. And, when everything else failed, a sudden fusillade of bullets, totally indiscriminate, kids lying dead on the street. The old man had glanced across, safe now on the New Jersey pike.
    ‘So what’s the stuff?’ he’d said again. ‘The stuff in the trunk?’
    ‘Gas.’
    ‘What kind of gas?’
    ‘Tear gas. The gas the Israelis use.’
    The old man had nodded. The Israelis used the gas a lot, whenever there was trouble. He’d seen the spent canisters himself, lying on the street after