The old Samaritan watched Sami cautiously from the back seat with his dazed, faded eyes. Maybe he lied to us simply 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 fiancee 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.