Stalin's Hammer: Cairo: A novel of the Axis of Time

by John Birmingham

  She nodded and took another drink, a little more carefully this time. The alcohol was calming her nerves, but not dulling her senses yet.

  “Did any of the others have markings, like that, from the camps?”

  Mister al Nouri shook his head.

  “No, but one of the men, he had many crude tattoos on him. They were markings of the sort one would have put on oneself in prison. He had dozens of these markings, including the Jewish star.”

  The Star of David, thought Julia.

  “This is not how we do things,” said al Nouri, stepping away from the window and beginning to pace up and down between the coffee tables and small nests of armchairs in the club lounge. “I must emphasize again, Miss Duffy, how impressed I am with His Highness putting down these dogs, but I cannot contain my anger at what a mess they have made of Mr Hilton’s hotel. And this blame falls on me, al Nouri. It will be me, al Nouri, who has to explain this to my cousin, al Nouri, the local chief of the police, and my other cousin, al Nouri, the chief of the secret police in the city. A man can never have too many cousins but between family, sometimes, the disagreements and the falling out can be even more ferocious than between mere colleagues. I need to make this right, Miss Duffy. When the heavy hand of vengeance is laid upon these dogs, it must be the hand of al Nouri. Yes?”

  Her phone buzzed and she almost dropped it and her drink as she juggled the bourbon from one hand to the other and keyed in her pin code. She no longer trusted her fingerprint reader. It had been getting less and less reliable over the years.

  “It’s Harry.”

  The phone stirred again and began to buzz in her hand like a goddamned vibrator. More texts from Harry all piling in on top of each other. Most of them were one and two word variations on the same themes. I’m okay, how are you? Or, Where are you?

  Julia flicked her thumb up the screen repeatedly until she came to the last couple of messages. Mister al Nouri appeared at her elbow, but remained a respectful distance away, forced to bend forward at the hips to peer at her phone.

  “It is His Highness, yes? Excuse me for intruding, Miss Duffy? But His Highness is also my guest and Mr Hilton would want me to…”

  “It’s cool,” she said, waving a hand at him. She scrolled back up the message list and then back down, taking care to read each one properly this time.

  “I don’t think he knows what happened to me,” she said. “He’s saying something happened in the bar…” She rolled her eyes. “Well duh, Harry. He says they got out. He must mean him and his friend. They were going somewhere safe.”

  “Good, good,” said al Nouri. “Going somewhere safe is a most excellent idea. This is why I have brought you here to the lounge, and made all of the other guests leave. Some of them had to be beaten. But for your safety, Miss Duffy, no beating is too severe. This of course is al Nouri’s joke. Only one or two of the guests were manhandled from the lounge, and their roughing up was quite light. If you were to make His Highness aware of al Nouri’s efforts on your behalf, I would be most grateful, as would my cousin, al Nouri, and my other cousin, al Nouri.”

  “Sure thing, Al,” she said, not really paying attention. Julia read the last of the messages and blinked in surprise. She was just about to tell the Egyptian that Harry was on his way back to the hotel when her phone rang.

  It was him.

  “His Highness! Most excellent!” Mister al Nouri actually touched her on the hand holding the cell phone, he was so excited. Then he remembered himself, apologized, and backed off a step, gesturing that she should answer the call.

  Julia had only one bar of coverage and she half expected to lose the connection as soon as she opened it, but she answered the call anyway.

  “Harry,” she said. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  His voice came back, but poorly. She could only make out every third or fourth word, but he seemed to be saying he was close and would be there soon. Julia hated to do it, but she broke the connection. It would be easier to get a small text message through.

  In club lounge, she sent. A few seconds later he replied.

  Okay.

  ###

  “Well that’s a relief,” said Harry. He blew out the breath he’d been holding. “She’s up in the club lounge,” he told Fontaine. “They’ve probably got a lot of the guests up there under lockdown.”

  “And she didn’t dump you, guv. That’s good, innit?”

  “Not yet she hasn’t,” Harry said as they re-entered the grounds of the Hilton through a side entrance. It was busy with emergency service vehicles coming and going, but nothing like as chaotic and jammed up as the main drive. They had left the black London cab back at the laundromat and now rode in a van in the livery of MI6’s laundry service. Harry had wondered how they would negotiate the island’s fucked-up traffic but Fontaine, who had taken the wheel instead of Henderson, smoothly cleared every delay by simply waving fistfuls of American dollars at the nearest uniformed police officer, who quickly set about whipping any obstacles out of their way. One even fired his revolver into the air to move an especially obstinate ambulance. The journey did take twice as long, even though they were moving against the flow of traffic, but it was an impressive effort nonetheless.

  Angus felt no compunction about leaving the road surface and tearing up the Hilton’s carefully manicured lawn to avoid further delay. He pulled the van into a loading dock around the back of the main building and cut the engine. Harry heard the roller door rumble up in back. He hopped out of the cabin to be greeted by Vivian Richards St. Clair.

  Viv wasn’t looking nearly so jolly as normal, and while he nodded at Harry, he saved a fearsome glare for Fontaine and the other operators as they helped Professor Bremmer down out of the back of the truck. The German was swaddled in bandages, which he hadn’t needed before and didn’t really need now, except as camouflage.

  “Where the fuck have you been, Angus?” Viv growled. “I’ve had to bribe everyone in this dump while I was looking for you lot, after you decided to shoot the arse out of it.”

  “No need for the attitude, guv,” Fontaine said casually. “We didn’t start shooting. We didn’t even come in until the shooting started. It was the Israelis or the Smedlovs kicked off this shit show.”

  “Yes, well let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who,” said Harry. “They did well, Viv. They got old Ernst out without a scratch and I didn’t get shot in the arse, which is always good.”

  St. Clair took Bremmer by the arm and moved him away from the truck, talking to him in a low voice, and gesturing for the two younger operators to follow him and stand guard over their charge. He returned at the double to Harry and Fontaine.

  “Look, this isn’t fucking Mos Eisley’s bar. It doesn’t fucking matter who shot first, does it? What matters are all the dead bastards in the after-action report I have to file, and the fucking bonus we won’t be getting any more because of all those inconveniently dead bastards in me after fucking action report. Not to mention leaving me here with me dick in the breeze like Doctor fuckin’ Manhattan.”

  Fontaine shrugged, even more casual than a moment ago.

  “Fog of war, guv. If you have a problem with how things turned out, why don’t you go talk to the geezers what caused all the bother in the first place? You’ll probably find their bodies are still lying around the cocktail bar. It’ll do you more good than trying to blame us, because we’re just gonna tell you to fuck off.”

  Viv ground his teeth, but Harry saw him throw off his annoyance and lay his gun sights back on the issue at hand, just as he’d seen him do countless times during the war. Viv threw up his hands.

  “Right, you’re right, I’m just pissed off is all. I really wanted that bonus.”

  “You’re going to give them Bremmer and the villains who tried to nab him,” Harry said. “C will have to be happy with that. Especially if this Skarov character goes in the bag too. You give them this villain, Viv, and I promise you
Six will go down on their knees to kiss your very large black arse. It’ll be bonuses and arse kissing all around.”

  “We’ll see,” Viv said quietly. “I don’t have much of a stiffy for this mad plan of yours to give the professor back to them, Harry.”

  It was never a good sign when Viv used his first name like that.

  “We’ve got our sticky fuckin’ fingers on him now. I reckon we’re sweet to just fuckin’ scarper, eh? What’s the point of letting him go when you had to kill all them geezers to put him within your possession in the first fucking place?”

  He’d started to move them away from Bremmer, and from the van, which Henderson was leaning against, smoking a cigarette. The driver waved them a cheery goodbye.

  Harry was about to explain all the precautions they had taken to ensure they didn’t lose track of Bremmer, but Viv interrupted him. “There’s something you ought to know too, guvnor, and I’m guessing you don’t, seeing as how you’re all relaxed and shit about this major fucking cock-up.”

  “What’s that?” Harry asked as they moved out of the inexplicably deserted loading bay and through a set of flapping plastic doors into a corridor. Two hotel security men stood on the other side, smoking and leaning against the wall. Submachine guns hung on leather straps from their shoulders. Viv passed them each a thick handful of currency, and it was suddenly very fucking explicable how they’d managed to pull into an empty loading dock.

  “It’s your missus, guvnor,” said Viv. “Some ‘orrible men had a red-hot go at her, and I’m afraid she’s had to kill them, rather a lot.”

  Harry stopped in his tracks.

  “Bugger me,” he said.

  ###

  Julia handed the phone to the hotel security man. She was on the hotel’s private wi-fi now, and her connection to Harry was flawless, but she couldn’t get him to see sense. He was pitching a fit about the attack on her. Mister al Nouri took her phone and spoke into the handset with practiced ease. The technology was not new to him.

  “It is I, Your Highness, al Nouri. Your fiancée has handed me the phone that I might explain what happened. I believe she grows frustrated, Your Highness, by her inability to make you understand that she is all right, and so I, al Nouri, will do so. This is only appropriate because it was al Nouri who ensured your fiancée survived the attack of these Russian dogs. It was I, al Nouri, who put these dogs down, Your Highness, just as it was I, who is still al Nouri, who cleared the club lounge of Mr Hilton’s hotel with a minimum of violence to ensure her prospective majesty was not much inconvenienced, although please do allow me to say, Your Highness, I am sure that had she found it necessary to clear the club lounge for herself she would have done so with exemplary violence. This may be because she drinks so much. I would not like to say. I am al Nouri if you should happen to be talking to our most excellent King Farouk about this any time soon.”

  Julia took the proffered phone from al Nouri.

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’m sure that really helped.”

  But the sarcasm was lost on the Egyptian.

  “Harry? Are you still there?”

  “I will be there in a few minutes,” he said. “The twenty-fifth floor, right? And we need to talk about this fiancée business.”

  He hung up before she could confirm the location or explain Mister al Nouri’s insistence upon assuming she and Harry were to be married. She had finished her drink but resisted the urge to pour another one. Instead she took a small, single serve bottle of soda water from a bucket of ice.

  Mister al Nouri issued instructions to his men at the door, one of whom hurried off down the hallway, presumably to meet Harry and the others. Julia was no longer shaking. She had seen a lot of combat as an embed, both back uptime in the 21st and here during the war in both the Pacific and European theaters. That sort of shit could go either way. It could deaden the nerves, or scrape them raw and painful. It seemed hers had gone dead. She felt nothing about killing the men who had tried to kidnap her. On the other hand, she was a tightly packed ball of conflicting anxieties, frustrations and curiosity about whatever Harry had got himself into.

  She was watching the chaos downstairs, sipping at her water, when al Nouri returned.

  “This German guy Harry is bringing,” Julia said. “Do you know him? Or sorry, do you know of him?”

  Mister al Nouri nodded brusquely.

  “Professor Bremmer, yes. All of this, it is all somehow connected to him.” He gestured at the tiny figures scurrying around below them. “Cairo is a city of spies, Miss Duffy. We always have a number of them here in Mr Hilton’s hotel. But never have I seen as many as the last week, and most of them gathering like flies around the professor. They seemed content to merely watch him until His Highness arrived.”

  The look al Nouri gave her was loaded with significance.

  “You think Harry is responsible for this?” Julia asked.

  “Oh no, no. Not at all. Not responsible as such, no. But his appearance was certainly a… What do you say? Not a cataclysm, or a catastrophe…”

  “A catalyst.”

  “Yes, that too. Perhaps you might know why?”

  The goofy, relaxed, almost dippy persona was gone as Mister al Nouri regarded her with the uncomfortable intensity of an experienced interrogator. Or possibly a torturer.

  “Perhaps you had best ask him yourself,” said Julia. “I think they’re here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Any frustration or anger Julia may have felt towards Harry evaporated as he hurried through the door, shouldering his way past the muscle, ignoring Mister al Nouri, and advancing on her with his arms open wide. She stepped into the embrace and hugged him fiercely, wincing and biting down on her pain as Harry’s grip tugged at her stitches. As swish as the Cairo Hilton was, it did not run to dermal-bonding glue.

  Both asked if the other was all right, the questions tumbling in a rush and piling up on top of each other. It was only after hugging long enough to make everybody else in the room feel awkward that they let go and Harry turned to the hotel’s security man to introduce himself.

  “Harry Wales,” he said. “Are you the bloke who looked after Julia?”

  “I am al Nouri,” said Mister al Nouri. “And yes, Your Highness, I had the privilege of shooting one or two fellows on behalf of your fiancée.”

  Harry turned his head towards Julia with a quizzical look that she waved off with a “don’t bother” gesture.

  “And this would be Professor Bremmer?” al Nouri asked as two of St. Clair’s hired guns carried a man on a stretcher, his face swaddled in bandages, into the lounge. The big West Indian security contractor preceded them, and a man of maybe Harry’s age, sporting curly blond hair brought up the rear. Julia assumed Harry’s friend, or contact, or whoever this Bremmer was, had been injured, but he peeled off his bandages and carefully climbed up off the stretcher, with a helping hand from the only female member of the mercenary team.

  The club lounge was too large to be crowded out by so few people, but it still felt a lot busier than it had just a few minutes ago. The hardware didn’t help. Everybody was carrying weapons, including Harry, who seemed to have picked one up along the way.

  “Professor Bremmer this is my… partner, Julia Duffy,” Harry said. “And this is Mr…”

  “Mister al Nouri, at your service,” said Mister al Nouri. “The house of al Nouri is always at everyone’s service. How might I help you, Your Highness, Herr Professor?”

  The German bowed in a manner that bespoke his old world origins.

  “I am apparently to return to my room and into the captivity of the people who have kidnapped my family,” he said, demonstrably unimpressed with the plan. He wasn’t the only one. Viv was apparently glowering about it too.

  “This is bullshit,” he muttered.

  “What?” Julia asked, not getting any of this.

  “Long story, darlin’,” Viv said, inserting himself into the small group.
“You’re head of hotel security, right?” he said to al Nouri, and without waiting for an answer he carried on. “You’ve got some villains on your manor, guv.”

  Mister al Nouri frowned, getting the rough meaning of what had been said, but not understanding the literal translation.

  “Russians. East Germans. Fuckin’ Romanians. Maybe Serbs. Who can tell, eh?”

  “And Jews!” al Nouri said, as a cartoon light bulb went on over his head.

  “Them too, yeah,” Viv agreed. “Anyway, they all want a piece of the professor here.”

  “Your friend al Nouri can protect‌—” began al Nouri.

  “No,” Harry put in patiently. “We don’t need you to protect Herr Bremmer. We need you to give him over to them.”

  The Egyptian looked as confused as Julia felt, but Harry flashed that winning smile of his and placed a hand on his forearm.

  “I’m very grateful for the assistance you rendered my fiancée,” he said, so emphasizing the dreaded word that Julia had to suppress a smile. “My family will be too, and I’m sure they will pass on to King Farouk their wishes that your assistance receives the recognition it deserves. I will, of course, do so in person when I meet with His Highness at the earliest opportunity. Tomorrow, if not tonight.”

  Julia was certain al Nouri actually levitated a few inches off the expensive carpet at that.

  “But of course, Your Highness, of course. Any assistance al Nouri can possibly render, al Nouri will render in full, sir! I assume you have a cunning plan. You English, you always have a cunning plan. You are perfidious, no?”

  He turned to Bremmer.

  “You were in Room 626? Yes?”

  Bremmer did not seem surprised that the man knew his room number. Julia sure as hell wasn’t. Beneath his old school Hollywood brown-face schtick, al Nouri struck her as extremely competent and dangerous. Hell, she already knew that from direct experience.

  Bremmer confirmed his room number and al Nouri clapped his hands together, turning to Viv.