‘You mean Phares killed him?’ Aida put a hand to her throat. ‘B–but we never heard! Phares never said …’
‘Even those close to the prince thought he had gone to Europe. We invented a cover story that was most effective in keeping tongues from wagging. It is imperative that El Kébir goes about his current mission feeling he is safe to do so. Otherwise, if he were to draw in his horns, we would never catch him. And this infernal tide of antiquities leaking out of the country through criminal hands will never be stopped.’
Aida felt faint. So many shocking things … she couldn’t even start to process them in her mind.
Alastair rose from his seat and came over to her, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder: ‘Now, go home, Aida. You have a good man for a husband, and a hero too. Be patient, and when Phares comes home, you will have a wonderful surprise to tell him.’
Her voice was quiet and a little shaky as she bade him goodbye. ‘Thank you, Alastair. You’ve been a real friend. Don’t tell him about this visit. I will in due course, when it’s all behind us.’
‘Of course, my dear. Mum’s the word.’
* * *
That same afternoon, Aida took a flight back to Luxor and by late evening, she was back at Hathor. The house was quiet and suddenly she ached for Phares as never before. She felt empty, but not hungry, and asked only to have some soup taken up to her room.
As she sat on the veranda, her supper untouched, she watched the moonlight on the lawn casting shadows from the palms, making the garden seem like an enchanted fairyland. There was no stir of the trees, no sound; the motionless flowers in the beds lay open to the night. High up on a sycamore, a sleepy kite moved on his perch; a bat fluttered noiselessly across the starry sky. The peace of the night in the moonlight after the heat and the noise of the day should have stilled her troubled mind, but nothing could assuage the confusion and guilt that assailed her.
She took stock of the last few days. How utterly disloyal she must have seemed to Phares! She really didn’t deserve him. Even confronted with what she had seen and heard at the cottage, she should have given him the benefit of the doubt. She couldn’t blame the anonymous letter, which had sown the first seeds of distrust in her mind, because in her faithless heart, the truth of it was that she had been completely unjust towards her husband. That night when he seemed so aloof, she had been so preoccupied with her own jealousy and suspicions, she hadn’t even tried to gently get to the bottom of what was making him so distracted. She had bombarded him with questions and had not listened when he had asked her to trust him.
She’d been cold, pushed him away whenever he’d wanted the comfort of her arms … her warmth. Awake at night, she had heard him pace up and down the veranda, smoking one cigarette after the other – she found an ashtray full of the half-smoked butts the next morning. Now, it all made sense.
Aida looked into the night. Beyond the garden flowed the Nile, and behind that, the Western Mountains and the desert … Phares’s love. An entirely different world lying under the same moonlight: a vast expanse, stark as a moonscape under this peculiar luminosity.
A dangerous place in which he was toiling right now for all she knew.
Where was he now? Could he see the moon? Was he thinking of her? Did he feel the love she was sending to him across the night?
‘Oh, Phares, I’m so very sorry,’ she whispered as tears of regret and shame ran down her cheeks. ‘God, please make him safe!’
* * *
The night was still, the full moon bringing its own unearthly pale glow to the quiet desert, outlining the eerie and lifeless scene of shadowy crevices, stark rocks and mountain ridges.
Phares felt the solid presence of Captain Charles Montgomery on horseback beside him, dressed similarly in Bedouin robes, and felt relieved that once again he had been teamed with this brave and experienced English officer. Montgomery had the requisite sharpness for the mission, paired with a genial humour that made him such a good companion. On first meeting it was perfectly possible to misjudge the man, with his loud laugh, bonhomie and cheery tone that seemed more suited to a British hunt breakfast than escapades into the desert of Upper Egypt. Still, Phares knew better. They’d had each other’s back during their last escapade in the Western Desert – each saving the other’s life in the face of enemy snipers – and he had no doubt, should things turn ugly tonight, they would protect each other again without hesitation.
Phares looked back along the line of eight camel-mounted Nubian guards and two more English officers. He felt confident that they would get the better of their elusive opponents this time, though the smugglers were as shifting and secretive as the desert sands in which they hid.
‘We’re not far now,’ said Montgomery, his gaze roving ceaselessly from left to right, constantly on his guard. ‘Lucky we got that tip-off … and all thanks to you, Pharaony.’
‘Atef was a relatively lowly link in the chain, but proved useful,’ Phares agreed. ‘If he hadn’t put me together with his cousin, we certainly wouldn’t be here.’
Montgomery grinned. ‘You’re getting rather good at this. Are you sure you don’t want to hang up your surgical gown and come and work for us permanently?’ At Phares’s amused, sceptical look, he laughed quietly. ‘Well, your man came up trumps! We’ve never been able to trace dealers higher up the chain and have this kind of intelligence before. Let’s hope it all comes good tonight.’
‘I’m confident my informant knows his stuff and won’t lead us on a wild goose chase. We know the size of the mission, the number of men involved, and the coordinates of their meeting place.’
‘Not only that, this time we are assured that the King Rat himself will be here to officiate.’
King Rat … That was a good name for El Kébir, Phares mused. Clever, sinuous and devious, the boss of this criminal network was never to be found at any scene when the Egyptian police had made previous arrests.
‘Let’s hope so,’ he agreed fervently. ‘Because if we fail to run him to ground this time, there’s little doubt El Kébir will go into hiding for good. He must have a sense that the net’s closing in on him. I expect he’s told himself this big operation will be his last for a while.’
Montgomery gave his usual easy grin, belying the astute sharpness behind his affable expression. ‘Well, the man’s greed will turn out to be his downfall, eh? Always a criminal’s undoing … But let’s not count our chickens yet – we’ve still got to apprehend the scoundrel.’
Phares and the three English officers rode for twenty minutes along the beaten desert track that led from Qena, confident their disguise and the group of Nubian guards would prevent any Bedouin agents of El Kébir noticing them. He’d learned from experience that, although true to its name the desert might look deserted, it could also be full of watchful eyes. Between still land and still sky, the only motion was a ballet of bats that glided in moonlight streams as if the sky was the most fabulous of fairground rides.
Like wildcats, the Nubians crouched on the high humps of their camels, carbines at the ready. From their shoulders floated the ends of their keffiyehs, which each wore wound about his head and neck. One of the men turned to confer with Montgomery, who raised his arm in a signal.
They had reached a plateau between a circle of flat-topped crags. Under the eerie light of the moon, everything appeared like a great white world of desolation. This was the place, they needed to get into position. According to their intelligence, the delivery – the biggest haul of priceless antiquities El Kébir had yet tried to shift – would be made here.
Seamlessly, the men divided into two detachments. They had prepared for this: one group with Phares and Montgomery would take one side, hidden among the shadowy outcrops of rock, while the other, led by the two English officers of Montgomery’s close team, would take the other.
A whisper from one of the Nubian guards, and another arm signal from Montgomery, was met with a low whistle from the other detachment. Phares followed their line o
f sight, narrowing his eyes as he watched two pairs of advancing headlights approaching rapidly across the plateau.
Now the men were crouched, rifles in hand, behind the boulders at the base of the crag. Phares, craning his neck to see the ground above him, thought he had heard something – a rock fall – and it was then that he noticed the glint of a carbine shining in the moonlight. He signalled to Montgomery: men, hidden in the rocks above them. Both flattened down, assuming they had been lucky enough not to be spotted yet. Knowing the smugglers had their own snipers ready to pick them off once they had come into the open, the Nubian guards were in position further round the base of the circular crag with a good vantage point. Phares trusted the Nubians would be ready to cover them.
The two vehicles drew nearer and stopped about twenty yards away. Doors opened, and four Bedouins got out, two from each car. One of them was carrying a briefcase. They started towards a gaping hole in the nearby mountainside, which looked to be the mouth of a cave.
Like cockroaches from the cracks, two men in galabeya and emma, the national dress of the landowners of Upper Egypt, scurried out of the rocky grotto and all six men disappeared inside.
A veritable Aladdin’s cave, thought Phares, wondering what treasures lay within.
In a trice, Phares and Montgomery broke cover, heading for a stack of boulders at the entrance to the cave. Immediately, shots cracked and bullets whistled overhead as the riflemen who had been hidden above them started to fire, and from the other side of the crag, the other two English officers and their men returned their volley without respite. As Phares crouched beside Montgomery behind the boulder, he turned to see a shadowy figure at the mouth of the cave lift his rifle in their direction, only to be felled instantly by a bullet from Montgomery.
Shots peppered the rocks around them and lit up the night sky, filling it with the pungent smell of gunpowder, but this time Phares was convinced the team had their plan in place and were well organised. This was no more than they had expected and as his eyes followed the line of the track across the plateau, he gave a grim smile of relief.
A band of about fifty Nubian and Egyptian guards under the command of Egyptian officers was bringing up the rear. They swarmed in, the kind of amply sized reinforcement they had lacked last time but which now would help them defeat the criminal operation. Gunfire rang out as this great troop unleashed an unceasing volley of shots. From above, the enemy riflemen didn’t have a hope of withstanding this level of firepower. The Nubian guards, which the English officers had left in the perfect strategic position, made sure that no one got away this time. Those who weren’t wounded or killed staggered swiftly out of the rocks, hands in the air.
Inside the cave nothing stirred. No one else had attempted to flee. It was not until the gunfire had ceased and all that could be heard in the cool of the desert night were the cries of the wounded that there was any movement from within. Then a group of men – one behind the other – emerged, hands behind their heads in an indication of surrender. One of them, Phares saw, walked with a less submissive tread, and above the keffiyeh covering the lower part of his face burned a pair of furious eyes. This, he was sure, must be El Kébir.
A group of Egyptian officers who had entered the cave now returned to the open, bearing several large wooden packing crates. Phares let out a heavy breath and exchanged a smile with Montgomery. This had all gone to plan. There was a tension that remained in Phares, however, like a coiled wire in his gut. It would only be relieved once El Kébir, the man they had been hunting for so long, was unveiled.
He walked over to join the chief of police, one of whose officers was prodding the chest of this main suspect with his rifle … the leader of the whole criminal operation, one which led to a steady stream of contraband heading through Libya to Greece. The Bedouin lowered his scarf. There was nothing in his posture to denote shame or defeat, just a burning hatred emitted like a laser from a pair of hawkish light-brown eyes.
It took a moment for Phares to register the man without his usual round glasses.
Adly Geratly … Isis’s father … a man he had known for the past twenty years. A neighbour, a guest of his father on many an occasion. A learned historian; after Aida’s father, the most knowledgeable man Phares knew when it came to his country’s wealth of antiquities …
A wealth Geratly had been claiming for himself.
Phares’s mind struggled to take in the enormity of it all. He approached with such a sickening dread, he couldn’t find the words to express it. But it was Geratly who spoke first:
‘You just couldn’t stop yourself, could you? Always wanting to be the hero, eh, Pharaony? Surgeon … spy … scalpel … gun … You love it, don’t you? And the ladies flocking around you … I suppose you’re proud of yourself.’ Geratly’s eyes were scorching, his voice a furious rasp.
Fury turned the moon-bleached desert around him red and Phares had to hold himself back from striking the man with his fist. Instead, he took a steadying breath. ‘You disgust me,’ he countered coldly. ‘To think you caused the death of one of our noblest, finest intellects! Ayoub was a friend and mentor to me. I will never forgive what you did to that family. Nor will my wife, whom you’ve robbed of a father. Just tell me … why?’
Geratly looked away from him. ‘Ayoub had decided to talk to people he shouldn’t have … was getting too near the truth. I didn’t know the man would have a heart attack. I thought framing him would put an end to his meddling.’ He turned to stare at Phares with contempt. ‘And to your betrothal to that half-breed, khawagaya El Masri girl.’
Understanding began to dawn in Phares’s mind. ‘I bet it was you who put the prince up to it. Drug Aida, put her in a harem … teach her a lesson – was that it? That ibn kalb, son of a bitch, was your partner in crime, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if you cooked the whole thing up together.’ Phares, by now struggling to contain his savage fury, felt the full truth of it all wash over him. ‘Hadn’t you done enough to the El Masris? … I suppose you had me lined up to marry Isis? If Aida was no longer a suitable match, then your daughter would be next in line.’
Geratly’s silence confirmed it all.
Phares was done. He gave his adversary one final glare of revulsion then turned on his heel, making a silent vow not to let this man’s poison infect him a moment longer.
At last, here was an end to it. Months of watching, waiting, following, planning … Despite Geratly’s taunting words, Phares did not relish playing the action hero – he was much more at home in an emergency room. A deep, honourable love for his country had led to his involvement in this whole business, and now he could retire from it all.
More than anything, he just wanted to get back to Hathor, to the soft, sweet, safe harbour of Aida’s arms.
* * *
Sunlight was streaming through Aida’s bedroom window when she woke the next morning and for a split second, she wondered if yesterday had all been a dream. These days, her sense of reality seemed elusive as a desert mirage. For a moment she lay motionless, listening the chirping of birds in the trees. I mustn’t linger any longer, she told herself. Jumping out of bed, she went to the bathroom to wash and dress. Even though she was not a surgeon or even a doctor, she made sure to be prompt, feeling she needed to be at El Amal in Phares’s absence to represent him. Now that she was his wife, the hospital was her responsibility too.
The long white hospital building sat with its semicircular graceful wings, looking as though it were built of crystal in the clear morning sunlight. The two fountains in the garden were attracting sparrows, fighting noisily over the water, while the cooing of pacific doves from the tall eucalyptus trees added their own softer counterpoint.
Aida had done all her ward rounds for the morning and was just going back to the staffroom when she paused in the corridor. She had overheard something through the open door of Isis’s office – part of a conversation which was obviously not intended for her ears.
‘Here, Naima, take this,�
� the hard, abrupt voice of Isis Geratly said. ‘Deliver it to the postbox outside the gates of Hathor, like you did the other day.’
Aida tiptoed closer to the door, praying the two women wouldn’t realise she was there. Her heart was beating as though it might leap out of her throat any minute and she found herself holding her breath, wondering whether or not to go into the room.
‘But …’ Naima was protesting.
‘No buts … Just do as you’re told. I’ll give you fifty piastres when you come back.’
‘But Nurse Pharaony’s here in the hospital, I can give it to her now. Why do I have to go all the way to Hathor? I have a lot of work today.’
‘Don’t argue with me, do as I say! Anyway, surely with your brother being sick, you could use the extra money?’
Spontaneously, Aida rapped on the half-open door to Isis’s office and stepped inside without waiting for a response. Every bone in her body told her this had everything to do with those cruel anonymous notes. Tackling Isis face to face was the only way she had to confirm her suspicions and put a stop to the malicious hand that was writing them.
As she went in, Isis looked up and paled. Naima, the young nurse, was holding a small, familiar-looking yellow envelope. She was on the point of leaving the room, but Aida laid a hand on her arm: ‘Just a second, Naima.’
Isis stood up, her perfect jaw clenched, her eyes shining with repressed anger. In fact, the anaesthetist looked so forbidding that Aida could almost imagine flames shooting from her mouth.
‘I get the distinct impression you’re not happy to see me, Isis.’
‘I’m rather busy. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to knock before entering?’
‘The door was ajar. Anyhow, I won’t take up much of your time.’
Song of the Nile Page 60
