Gigi sat with her back perfectly straight against the backrest of the chair, her hands resting on her skirt, a brooch depicting a colorful bird shining brightly against her cardigan. Her sightless, pale eyes stared out from behind dark glasses as she heard the nurse tell her to ring the bell if she needed anything.
But Gigi’s mind was elsewhere. She had entrenched herself in that tiny corner of her being where she could still forgive men.
Gigi had seen humans in their full palette of nuances, from the brightest to the darkest. Her childhood memories started when the Second World War ended. The Liberation of France brought its procession of flags, celebrations, and hatred. The bangs of fireworks muffled the sounds of executions in the woods; trees sprouted human figures alongside their ripening fruits, swaying in the wind on the country roads. In her mind lived images, still vivid after seventy years, of a village cul-de-sac, where her brothers had taken part in a spectacle of revenge and violence.
She had lost her vision soon after.
It was said that it was due to an illness, but no one knew which. She had never complained. Despite the horror she saw, she could not stop loving her brothers. She began her long life as a girl with empty eyes and the memory of the savagery that could live hidden of good men. She had chosen to believe in human goodness, though, for the alternative was too terrible and not a way to live. She had chosen hope.
But there were days when she doubted that course. Like today.
This Moswen had buried her niece, her treasure, alive. What was his heart like?
So, as much out of a sense of self-preservation as anything else, she had retreated to a place within where she did not think, or reason or judge. A place where she gave up trying to understand and instead invoked the invisible thread that connected all things.
It was the place of prayers.
The doctors had talked to her for a long time, explaining that there was no hope for Jessica. The degradation of her body, and especially her brain, had reached the point of no return. Jessica, they said, was gone. They had made up their mind, and all they needed was for her to agree.
Gigi slid her hand over the contours of the rough cotton bedsheet until her fingers found Jessica's. She could feel their warmth, but it was only the feeble heat of the last embers of a dying fire.
She prayed. A prayer of love and joy. For a moment, she chose to believe that Jessica could live again. In the darkness of her head appeared a vision of the long dunes of the beach near her home in France. She saw Jessica, the blonde little girl with so much life and energy, talking to Jessica the adult she had become on this bed, in this room, the Jessica that was painfully thin with rough, chapped lips and yet, who smiled.
The two Jessicas were talking, playing, laughing, learning from each other. But suddenly in her vision there was someone else, like a third expression of Jessica. An observing, benevolent deity, surrounded by light. It was this image that spawned the first inklings of hope in the old woman’s chest. She tried to give it more depth and life: she felt the wind in their scattered hair, the smell of the yellow flowers against the salty sea-breeze, the prick of the sun, the roughness of the sand and the dried salt from a swim beneath the waves. The light of the angel in the dunes.
She clung tightly to that burgeoning hope. She waited, perhaps for just the most insignificant of miracles; but nothing moved, nothing changed.
Jessica was gone, and she would not come back.
Perhaps the doctors were right. She should not stand in their way any longer.
But then suddenly, Gigi sensed a slight change in the movement of the air, accompanied by the slightest scent of lilies. Her remaining senses were suddenly alert to the presence of someone in the room.
“Hello, you must be Gigi,” a male voice said in French.
Gigi knew the voice.
Harmonious in the bass with a slight pause at the end of the sentences. Austere intonation despite its youth, as if sharing a solemn secret. A southern accent with angular shades. All wrapped in the refined perfume of oriental flowers, with an aftertaste of earth and rain and some other note that hinted at something toxic. Was it gasoline?
“I remember you, you were at the church,” Gigi said softly without turning. “You were with Seth.”
“Thaddeus di Blumagia. I am glad to see you again.”
Thaddeus remained perfectly still, and this intrigued Gigi. Usually, faced with infirmity and the proximity of death, young people tended to fill the space around them with words, gestures or wasted energy, anything to put distance between themselves and this inevitable reality. But Thaddeus remained still, and although Gigi was sure she heard him speak, his words could have quite easily been the product of her imagination, such was his calm.
“Do you mind if I stay a while?” Thaddeus asked.
“Please, do,” Gigi replied.
“Thank you.”
She heard the paper wrapper crumpling, and smelled the stronger scent of lilies as he placed the bouquet on the bedside table. She recalled the twittering of the ladies who gushed at how handsome Thaddeus was, during the wedding reception. But Gigi studied every smell, every movement of the air, every sound around him. She stared at him with all her senses.
And she knew that Thaddeus possessed something else, far rarer than beauty.
His presence was more than electric: it was disrupting every thread of energy in the room, including within herself. Yet he had not touched anything, moved an inch, nor made any sound. Gigi tried to conjure up a word that would explain that feeling, box it and put it back into the realm of the familiar. She couldn’t.
“I'm sorry about Seth, I know he was a dear friend,” Gigi whispered.
“I hope he's at peace, wherever he is,” Thaddeus replied, in a neutral voice, after a silence.
“Have you heard? They have arrested a man.”
This time Gigi heard footsteps; Thaddeus had approached the bed. He came so close that she recognized in his breath the toxic, flammable note that had announced his arrival in the room: it was not gasoline, but turpentine. Thaddeus was an artist, Gigi remembered it now. He walked around the bed.
In the silence, the old lady heard an almost imperceptible rustle of sheets. Then Jessica's fingers, folded within her own, moved slightly. But Gigi was adept at deciphering the invisible: and knew that it was only because the young man had taken Jessica’s other hand into his.
None of them spoke for a long while. Outside in the hospital corridors, life went on.
“Are you happy with your hotel?” Thaddeus asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“I have left my card on the table,” he whispered. “Ask someone to call me if you need something. Anything. I know Seth and Jessica would have wanted you to have everything you need.”
“I am her only remaining family. The doctors are waiting for my agreement to...” Gigi choked. The words had not been uttered, and yet there they were.
Disconnect her from life support.
Disconnect youth, disconnect hope and all the days to come. Disconnect the whole world, leaving only loneliness. As the tears washed down her face, she felt Thaddeus's fingers rest lightly on her arm.
“She must live,” he murmured. “Give her one last chance. One more day.”
Gigi heard him leave the room. When the door closed, it was as if something was suddenly missing, as if the absence of some crucial atoms had left the universe unbalanced.
She listened again.
All that remained was the distant sounds of the hospital, the murmur of the machines, and more imagined than real, the feeble breathing of her niece.
She must live.
Gigi pondered Thaddeus’ sentence, enveloped in the dissipating scent of lily and turpentine. As their echo faded, she knew the words he spoke were no prayer, but a commandment from a prince who dared to instruct the gods.
She had found the word she was looking for, to name that intense, fearless, raw presence she had felt around Thaddeus di Blumagia.
Power.
25
“So you got your man?” Max said, defiantly. “So I can have my passport back.”
“You still haven’t explained what you were doing in Giza at that time,” Aqmool replied, not looking up from the papers that lay across his desk.
“I have already answered all your questions. My passport. Please.” Max reached out a hand and Aqmool raised his gaze.
Max’s jaw was tight, his eyes ringed in shadow and there was a tense, strained tone in his voice. Aqmool pulled out the file with Max's passport but simply dropped it onto his desk and then placed his hand on it, as if to keep it safe.
“Did you d-d-drill the hole?” he asked.
“No. No!” Max exclaimed, “I told you before. I hadn’t been to Giza for months!”
“And the man who called you?”
“I also told you that already. He claimed he was from the SCA.”
“Describe the voice. Did he speak to you in English or Arabic?”
“In English. No Egyptian accent, more eastern European.”
“And Jessica Pryce, did you know her?”
“Never heard of her.”
“And yet she was in all the newspapers.”
“Which I don’t read. But I will be sure to catch up when I get home, once you return my passport, which you have no reason to keep now that you have a suspect in custody. Or is that not the whole story?”
“Room X,” Aqmool said, ignoring Max’s question. “How did Moswen get there?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He isn’t talking. The guards say he got in from the main entrance, together with the victims. Someone is lying. And I think you're l-l-lying too.”
Max saw Aqmool fold his long fingers around the passport but before he had time to wonder what the policeman intended to do with it, shouts and gunshots echoed against the walls outside.
Aqmool rushed to the window, hastily but without panic. Outside, the commotion grew in volume. Large numbers of police were rushing down the corridor, readying their weapons. The door swung open, and a junior officer reported to Aqmool that protesters were attacking the station. Aqmool returned to his seat behind his desk and proceeded to lock all the drawers of his desk shut.
“What’s going on?” Max asked.
“R-r-riots. We are prepared. This building has seen worse. But our interview is over. You'll need to leave from the back; it’s safer. I will make sure you are accompanied.”
“And my passport?” Max asked.
“The interview is only over for now,” Aqmool said, coming around the desk. “With Moswen charged, there are new facts to review.”
Max started to protest, but then everything seemed to slow down.
Shouts first. Then a blast. It threw Max to the ground, and only then did he hear its deafening roar. An explosion had ripped through the police station. His limbs were making decisions without him. He saw himself crawling over the debris and the world was suddenly reduced to smoke, dust and terror.
Aqmool had unholstered his weapon and rushed out of the room, leaving Max alone. He saw people grappling with fire extinguishers and a blood-soaked body kneeling in the rubble. Everyone else was running. More explosions, more heat. Then two silhouettes running, too young to be policemen. What were they doing here? Who were the attackers and who were the defenders?
A gray steel locker stuffed with papers caught fire and fell to the ground in a deafening crash. Max lay frozen on the floor, heart beating too hard, throat burning. Then felt himself being pulled up to a kneeling position against a wall.
Aqmool shouted into his ear, pointing down the corridor: “We can’t get out from the front. You need to get to the rear exit. Go to the end and then turn left. You understand?”
Max nodded.
“Now get going!”
Aqmool disappeared, a Glock 9mm semi-automatic in one hand.
Max managed to get up. He was about to head off down the smoke-filled corridor when he spotted his passport still on Aqmool’s desk. He grabbed it, stuffed it in his pocket and then ran in the direction of the exit. He had not yet reached the end before thick smoke obscured his vision so that he had to feel along the walls with his hands.
It was then that he heard a male voice, choked with tears, pleading.
“The door is stuck! Help me, I beg you, help me!”
Eyes bulging from their sockets, trying desperately to push his way through a crack between a door on the opposite side of the corridor, was Moswen.
A large cabinet was blocking the door, preventing it from opening further. Max tried to push it aside, but the bare metal scorched his hands. He then tried leaning against the wall and pushing with his feet, but still, the cabinet did not budge. The heat of the fire was coming closer with every second, his lungs protesting at the smoke suffocating him.
Was there any sense in trying to save a murderer, especially if it meant losing his own chance at survival? In a split second, Max stared at the panic-stricken face on the other side of the jammed door. The memory of the horror seeping through the small hole in the pyramid’s stone wall – the screams, the ghostly dust, the smell of decomposed flesh and dead flowers – they were all that man’s doing. An eye for an eye.
Max edged away from the struggling, gasping figure and pushed on through the smoke towards the end of the corridor to safety.
“Come back, I beg you!”
Max paused long enough to look into Moswen’s eyes, long enough to remember the gut feeling he had had earlier that day: that man could not possibly be the one. It took someone extraordinary to pull that off, and Moswen was a mere mortal, guilty of many things, but innocent of that crime. But before Max could think any more, Moswen, eyes bloodshot, sweat running down his desperate face, wailed breathlessly, “Oxan Aslanian! Oxan Aslanian! He’s the man you must find! Please help me!”
The plastic frame of the suspended ceiling crashed next to Max, warped and melted; the unsupported panels fell and blocked the doorway that would have taken him to safety. The corridor was in flames. His eyes only a blur of tears, he knew he had waited too long. Casting around desperately, leaving a screaming Moswen behind, he smashed through one last unobstructed doorway, praying to find exits on the other side.
There was one. A lone window looking onto a concrete courtyard. Three floors below.
The cries had stopped, and he thought of Moswen, only a few feet away and already surely dead. All around him, he heard the roar of the fire and the groaning of the timber beams and columns as they began to give way to the heat.
He knew he had to jump, to grasp this one chance. He saw with cruel clarity the things and the love he was leaving behind and the brilliant simplicity of all his past happiness. He heard the terrible crunch of timber and plaster collapsing together, and then took one last breath of the smoke-filled air that scorched his lungs. As he jumped, he thought of the last words he had said to his mother.
“Nothing will happen. I promise.”
26
Kamal Aqmool lay in the ambulance, trying not to lose consciousness.
The assault on the police station was over. The firefighters had been delayed in arriving as all the streets leading to the station had been blocked. When they did come, they found a charred wreck, dripping with the black sludge of ash mixed with water. The army was still on the heels of protesters, and the battlefield, with its tail of TV crews, had moved to Tahrir Square.
More than twenty wounded. Two dead. A policeman, and Moswen.
“The German architect,” Aqmool stuttered with intense effort.
“Who?” his assistant asked.
“Hausmann,” Aqmool finally managed.
“We don’t know.”
The left side of Aqmool’s face was ravaged. His left eye, nose, lips – all was a messy mass of torn flesh. From his shoulder to just above his right elbow, a gaping wound was matted with a blackened cloth. The pain was so intense that it engulfed Aqmool, body and soul.
&n
bsp; “He must not talk,” the paramedic ordered.
But he needn’t have worried. With a slow and exhausted groan, Aqmool slipped into a world beyond words.
Franklin rushed towards the ruined police station, a knot of fear in his stomach. Why didn’t he think of it before?
All the streets were blocked, so he had to walk, trying to weave his way through crowds that crackled with nervous excitement. Looking around, he did not recognize the Cairo he loved. Its warmth and peacefulness were nowhere to be seen. The violence and fear that had taken their place seemed profoundly unnatural and only fueled the dark premonition that pressed him forward.
He arrived at the police station. The building he had left only an hour before was now in ruins. He picked his way through the smoking remains, burying his nose in the crook of his arm to block the stench. He stepped carefully over broken furniture, charred computers and thousands of papers floating in the dirty water. A single shoe lay in the midst of a mass of broken, indistinct shapes. Then, standing amongst the rubble, he saw a figure he recognized: the FBI agent, Aaron Rodriguez. Franklin called over to him, but Rodriguez just ignored him.
“So. Franklin Hunter lives.”
The detective turned to see Aziza Rust, a look of deep scorn on her face. Speaking to one of the Egyptian policemen in her entourage, she motioned to Franklin and said, “This man has no clearance to be here. Can you escort him beyond the perimeter, please?”
The policeman nodded and stepped toward Franklin, but the detective did not move and asked calmly, “Was the evidence room hit?”
The policeman grabbed his arm and Franklin struggled. “Rust, answer me!”
But the FBI agent had turned away. Rodriguez ran over, separated Franklin from the policeman and lead him toward the hastily constructed perimeter of what used to be the station compound.
“What are you doing here?” Rodriguez hissed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Aaron,” Franklin snapped back, “you know as well as I do what's going on here. Just tell me if it is still there.”
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 12
