by N E. David
He homed in to study them. Some were asleep, their long bills tucked beneath their wings, some awake and preening while others sifted through the shallows. They hadn’t changed. Just like the sky, the sun, and the Nile, they remained blissfully unaware of Egypt and its troubles – their lives were as yet untouched by upheaval. It gladdened his heart to see it. These were birds whose painted image had graced the tombs of the Pharaohs – they had survived another 3000 years – they could surely hold on a little longer.
The birds might last, but the moment did not and the sandbank and its occupants slipped by. The experience had been transitory, but with his heightened perception of his surroundings it had given him a few minutes of unexpected pleasure. His foray on deck had been rewarded and before the memory of it could be tainted by some disappointment, he decided to pack away his scope and go back down below. For the first time in a while he was excited by his discovery – not just of the birds themselves, but more of his old love of them – and he wanted to mark it in some way.
He returned to his cabin, laid down his things then sat at the dressing table and opened his notebook. His intention was to add the word ‘Spoonbills’ to his bird list, probably with a star by it to indicate a particularly good view.
But if the point of such entries was to record what he’d been doing, then his recent jottings told a very different story. They showed it had begun with Spur-winged Plover, although that had been some days ago now. Then he’d absent-mindedly followed it with the name of Lee Yong. Further down the page, after what appeared to be a random space, were the words ‘Hossein Rasheed, 10000 Egyptian pounds’ and what he assumed was the telephone number of the police station in Aswan. It didn’t seem right to follow that with ‘Spoonbills’. The logical thing was to add ‘Reda’ or ‘Mrs Biltmore’ or even some of the others to his list. He was fighting a losing battle and he would have to start over. But it was too late for that now and with a feeling of resignation, he put down his pen and went down to breakfast.
It was an opportunity to catch up on what the group had discussed after he’d left the dinner table the night before – although there’d been little, if any, progress. The internet was still shut down, so there were no emails in or out. Phone lines remained difficult, but those with mobiles had at least been able to send texts, and most had succeeded in contacting and reassuring their loved ones as to their safety.
Other than that there’d been little else to do and rather than sit and speculate, they’d welcomed the captain’s initiative and spent the evening watching Casablanca. It had been shown in English with Arabic sub-titles, and according to David the main point of interest had been the reaction of the party of Germans. They’d either failed to understand it, or had understood it only too well as they’d taken themselves off to their rooms where they’d spent their time playing cards. Everyone else had enjoyed it.
What had changed, though, was the general atmosphere. The day before had been filled with tension and with no-one sure of how much danger they were in or how they were going to get out of it, there’d been an air of uncertainty. But now the ship had set sail and they were on the move, they felt they were heading towards a solution and with the prospect of returning home, things had become more relaxed. Contrary to hysterical opinion, they had not been murdered in their beds. Nor were they in, or going to Cairo, Alexandria or Suez or any of the other major trouble spots. True, there’d been a ‘minor disturbance’ in Aswan, but that was behind them now and as yet there were no reports of problems in Luxor. Cocooned on the boat, they were floating free, and with the wide expanse of the Nile acting as insulation, to all intents and purposes they were in a world of their own.
“I was looking at the original schedule this morning,” said Keith, pouring a round of coffee. “If we make Luxor tonight, which all being well we should do, I don’t think we’ll have missed out on very much you know.”
“Oh, and how do you work that out?” David was busy tucking into a plate of scrambled egg. The breakfast offering had substantially improved and now there was a cooked option available, although it had not quite returned to the standard they’d first enjoyed.
“So today’s Thursday, right?” continued Keith. “Given that we lost a day yesterday, I shouldn’t think we’ll be stopping at Kom Ombo or Edfu on the way back.”
“Well that wouldn’t be a disaster,” said David. “We’ve already been to Edfu and I can’t say I’d be sorry about missing Kom Ombo. That’s supposedly a ruin with a tiny museum containing two stuffed crocodiles and not much else.”
“Ugh!” Janet shuddered. “Well, I for one don’t mind giving that a miss. I hate crocodiles. They give me the creeps.”
“You and me both, honey,” said Mrs Biltmore. “Why, I can’t stand the darned things. The reason I won’t go to Florida’s because of the alligators. Isn’t that right, Ira?”
“Yup,” said Ira. “Sure is.”
“You see,” said Mrs Biltmore, “when we were on safari in South Africa…”
With his fork poised in mid-air, David assumed an apologetic look as if he knew he was going to regret ever mentioning the word ‘crocodile’, while round the rest of the table there was a struck-dumb silence as they waited to for Mrs Biltmore to finish her story.
But she sensed their apprehension and cut short, contenting herself with an excuse. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now what we did on safari…” as she too recognised that things had changed.
Keith resumed his analysis.
“As I was saying…If we get to Luxor tonight, that gives us all day tomorrow to look round Karnak. Then we can catch our scheduled flights home on Saturday, just as originally planned.”
“You’re assuming everything will be running as usual,” said David. “There’s no guarantee of that.”
“You’ve got to make some sort of assumption. What else can you do?”
They looked in the direction of Blake in the hope he could provide an answer. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Don’t ask me. This was Egypt. Even if everything ran as usual, there was still no guarantee, anything could happen. They’d already had a revolution for goodness sake – what more did they want?
As he’d anticipated, Lee Yong did not come down to breakfast. Today she had the burden of looking after Reda and besides, she was not known for her attendances at table.
More surprisingly, neither had Joan. Polite enquiries as to her whereabouts revealed that she was suffering from a bad case of sunburn which had manifested itself overnight and she’d decided to confine herself to her room until the effects wore off. Feeling it was unsafe to leave the ship, she’d apparently spent the previous afternoon stretched out on a sun-bed on the upper deck to improve her tan –I can’t be doing with sitting in the room all day – and had fallen asleep in the full glare of the sun. She’d also been wearing eye patches, and while the rest of her face was the colour of burnt sienna, her eye sockets had remained a deathly white. According to David, in her own words she looked ‘hideous’.
“It’s as though I’ve been visited by someone from the Rocky Horror Show,” he explained. “Only for God’s sake don’t tell her I said so. Anyway, she asked me to fetch her something to eat, so if you’ll excuse me…”
He left the table and made his way over to the cold buffet where he took a plate and covered it with a selection of bread, cheese, sliced ham, fruit and a pot of yoghurt. It struck Blake that he might do the same and take it up to Lee Yong’s room. If she didn’t eat it herself, he was sure that Reda would – there was no way the young Egyptian was going to come down to the dining room.
“That’s a good idea,” he muttered under his breath and having folded his napkin, he too got up and followed David to the buffet.
He found himself preceded in the queue by Mrs Biltmore. She was apparently on a similar mission, although her plate was piled far higher than David’s and with greater variety. She and Blake exchanged polite smiles. He would not embarrass her with comment, but he’d often won
dered how she managed to maintain her bulk when she appeared to eat so little. Of the two of them, it was Ira who over-indulged (he regularly ate three sweets at dinner) and yet he remained as thin as a rake while she picked at her food and grew large. Here then was the answer. Ashamed of doing so in public, Mrs Biltmore ate in private and was preparing a picnic to consume in her room. Each to their own, thought Blake. He took a plate and heaped it likewise.
His intention was to take it straight to Lee Yong’s cabin – not that he needed an excuse to visit, but it would nevertheless serve as one. He was halfway up the stairs when he remembered Reda’s mobile phone and wallet were still on his dressing table and he decided to double back and fetch them.
Once back in his room he took the opportunity to use the bathroom and clean his teeth, so it was fully ten minutes before he presented himself at Lee Yong’s door. With a fully loaded plate in one hand, Reda’s phone and wallet in the other and feeling like a contestant on a children’s game show, he managed to fumble a knock. He was quite taken aback when Mrs Biltmore answered it.
At first he thought he’d made a mistake, and in his confusion had taken a wrong turning or come back up the wrong flight of stairs.
“I’m dreadfully sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you…” He instinctively checked the room number and when he saw it was right, “I was looking for Lee Yong…”
“Why, she’s right here, Mr Blake.” Mrs Biltmore shuffled to one side to let him in. “Lee, honey,” She called across to the other side of the room. “Here’s Mr Blake come to see us now.” She turned back to him. “We’ve been expecting you. She kept asking me where you’d got to and I said you were right there in the dining room and I was sure you’d be along just any minute.”
Blake stepped forward to allow Mrs Biltmore to close the door behind him.
Lee Yong was standing next to the dressing table in front of the net-curtained window. The floor around the desk had been cleared of its debris and the chair turned to face into the room. In it, Reda sat dozing. He was dressed in a clean set of clothes – but his feet were still bare which had allowed an ice-pack to be strapped to his troublesome ankle. Blake had fully expected he’d still be in bed, but while he’d been out watching Spoonbills, someone had been nursing the invalid since the early hours. He urgently motioned Lee Yong to come across to him and while Mrs Biltmore reverted to tending the patient, he drew her into a corner and out of earshot.
“Are you alright?” Blake’s first concern was for the Malaysian – anything else, Reda’s state of health included, was a secondary consideration.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
The careworn look which had inhabited her face for the past two days had softened, but not to the extent that it allowed her to smile and she remained a picture of seriousness.
“What on earth’s going on here?”
He nodded in the direction of the large American.
“You mean Mrs Biltmore?”
“Yes. It gave me quite a turn when she opened the door.”
“I can imagine. She and I have been talking.”
“Oh, really?”
There was a cynical tone to his voice – of the two of them, he could guess who’d been doing most of it.
“Yes. It was when we came back to the ship after the riot.” (Blake recalled seeing them together on the sofa.) “She was quite upset – I think we all were. She said it reminded her of things she’d seen in Vietnam.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yes. She told me that when she was young, she was a trained nurse in the US army.”
“Mrs Biltmore? In the army?”
Blake was astounded. Looking at her now it didn’t seem credible.
“Yes,” Lee Yong insisted. “So I thought it wouldn’t do any harm for her to have a look at Reda.”
“Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. I thought you said you didn’t want anyone else to find out. You know what she’s like. If word gets out that he’s holed up in here, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I trust her, Mr Blake. He needs medical attention – and we were never going to take him to hospital.”
“Well, that’s true.” Blake was forced to relent a little. “Although at the moment it doesn’t look as if he needs it.”
“That’s all been Mrs Biltmore’s doing. The ice-pack was her idea. She got him up this morning while I went down to his room and fetched his clothes. I was going to ask you to do it…”
But you were out birding…
“Ah…”
And for the first time in the proceedings he felt guilty.
Then he suddenly remembered his hands were still full of plated food and Reda’s belongings and he tried to redeem himself by handing them over as if they were some sort of gift.
“Oh, and I brought these.”
“Thank you. I’ll put it with the other one.”
Lee Yong relieved him of the plate and laid it on the bedside table next to a similar offering, which on closer inspection looked remarkably like the one that Mrs Biltmore had assembled.
Well, whatever else, at least they weren’t going to go hungry…
Mrs Biltmore came back over to join them. If Lee Yong could not raise a smile then she certainly could. She appeared pleased with herself.
“You’ve been busy,” said Blake. For the moment, it was as close as he could get to saying thank you.
“I do what I can,” said the American. “Why, I’m just happy to help Lee here. Ain’t that so, honey?”
Lee Yong nodded. To see them together, you’d think they were lifelong friends.
“We’re very grateful, I’m sure.”
Despite her obvious skills, Blake resented Mrs Biltmore’s intrusion. Reda was something he and Lee Yong shared, and shared alone, and it was what had sustained him over the last twenty-four hours. He’d arranged to bribe a high-ranking policeman, he’d put himself in danger to secure the young Egyptian’s release – and now his potential reward, the society and approbation of the young Malaysian, was being diluted. Not to mention that Mrs Biltmore might prove indiscreet and scupper everything. Lee Yong’s friend or not, she would have to be warned.
“You realise that you mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone. It’s important that we keep it to ourselves. This has to stay within these four walls – you do understand that, don’t you?”
“Now, don’t you go worrying on my account,” Mrs Biltmore tried blithely to reassure him. “I’m not going to say a thing. It’ll just be between the three of us. I’ve had to tell Ira of course. We’ve been together thirty years – we don’t have any secrets! But if there’s one thing you can be sure of, Mr Blake – he isn’t going to talk, you can rest assured on that.”
Blake believed it – but it wasn’t Ira he was concerned about. Meanwhile, there was Reda to consider.
“Anyway, how’s the patient?” he asked.
“Why, he looks just fine to you and me,” said Mrs Biltmore. “But under that T-shirt he’s a mass of bruises. I don’t know what they did to him in there, but they sure must have worked him over. Don’t you wonder about this world sometimes, Mr Blake? Some people are just like animals. Why, it’s a miracle they didn’t break a bone in his body.”
“They didn’t?”
“Nope. Not one.”
“What about his ankle?”
“It’s just a bad swelling. If we keep that ice-pack on him overnight, in twenty-four hours he’ll be as right as rain.”
“Well, that’s good.”
Twenty-four hours…By which time they’d be in Luxor and preparing to leave the ship. Then what were they going to do with him?
Getting Reda on board had been easy – getting him off again would be much more difficult. They could hardly rely on the same flimsy disguise as the previous evening, it was much too dangerous. It was a complication Blake still had to consider and as yet he’d given no time to it. He began to regret his early morning bout of birding – the hour he’d spent with Spoonbills would have be
en far better employed in planning. And now there was the problem of Mrs Biltmore to contend with…
Not for the first time, he went back to his room feeling distinctly apprehensive.
And not for the first time he realised that despite his good intentions, he’d yet again forgotten something. He’d finally succeeded in disposing of Reda’s mobile phone and wallet – but as a result of these mental distractions, he’d neglected to bring Lee Yong’s money. And just as he’d returned the night before with his back pocket full of it, so it now remained in his cabin. It was as though he were haunted and however hard he tried, he could simply not shake these things off.
He resolved to go back again directly after lunch.
Chapter Twenty-five
The scene in Lee Yong’s cabin had changed noticeably since his visit that morning. Mrs Biltmore had gone, although Blake was sure she would be back later in the day to check on her patient. Any tension that may have prevailed had gone with her and had been replaced by an aura of domestic calm. Reda was still sitting in his chair, the ice-pack clamped firmly to his leg, but now he was wide awake and avidly watching the television, soaking up the pictures from Tahrir Square and the commentary that went with them. He barely acknowledged Blake’s entry but focused studiously on the news.
Their roles reversed, it was now Lee Yong’s turn to lie on the bed propped up by pillows as she resumed reading the cheesy novel Blake had seen abandoned the day before. The plates of food assembled on their behalf had barely been touched and on the bedside table, two half-empty cups of mint tea stood next to each other. There was an air of homely normality about it that at other times might be found quite restful. Blake was loath to disturb them.
He wondered as to the young Egyptian’s motivation. His voluntary surrender during the riot had been an act of bravado and he’d shown no fear of the police. But he was not, Blake had concluded, a terrorist and there was no possibility he would strap himself with explosive and blow them all apart. Was he seeking martyrdom of another kind? Perhaps he’d determined to sacrifice himself for the betterment of his country – but if so, it was a selfish thought for in doing so he endangered not only himself but also those who supported him. They’d put themselves in peril to help him – Lee Yong, himself and now Mrs Biltmore – but was he mindful of the risks they were taking? Somehow Blake doubted it, and although he might profess his thanks, the young man seemed tuned to his own agenda and oblivious to their safety.
