Oasis of Night

by J. S. Cook

  I lay beside him, lazily kissing him, while he found my cock and stroked me, his hand sliding in a languorous rhythm, building my arousal slowly. Bright sparks formed and burst behind my eyelids, and I listened to myself moaning as he worked me, drawing me closer and closer to the edge of the precipice. It wasn’t Ibrahim Samir I was seeing behind my closed lids, but Sam Halim, tanned and nude, his slim body writhing, his hands clenched into fists as I brought him to completion. My imaginary Sam came hard and so did I, panting like I’d just run a five-minute mile.

  “It’s all right.” Samir’s hand trailed down my cheek, traced the line of my lips. “I am not him. It is all right, wahid busa bass, just one kiss.” His mouth was warm and gentle. “You are not him, either.” He smiled sadly. “Now you know my secret.”

  And now you know mine.

  He touched the gold cartouche I wore on a chain around my neck. “This was a gift?” I nodded. “From him?”

  “Yes. He brought it to me. He said in times past, Egyptians would draw a circle around a name they wished to remember. They called this circle a cartouche.”

  “Captain Halim is a good man. I wish I were like him.” He sighed. “We are looking for the man who killed the taxi driver, Shiva El Rawy. He may or may not be the same man who killed Pasha Nubar.” He took a breath that to my ears sounded almost like a gasp. “Could you not love me, just a little?”

  I didn’t have an answer for him, and he knew it. I got out of bed and pulled on a robe, lit a cigarette. The noises in the street were quieter now, and the movement of traffic had slowed. Soon it would be dark, and the muezzin’s call to prayers would be heard. I wondered where Sam was and I wondered, too, if he prayed in his confinement, or if he no longer counted on the mercies of his God. I had never seen him pray, but I imagined he did it as he did everything—carefully, deliberately, his whole attention dedicated to the moment.

  Octavian had to be behind Sam’s disappearance; I was sure Sam had returned to Cairo looking for him. Find Octavian and you’d find Sam, but for that, I needed someone who was infinitely acquainted with Octavian’s nasty history. I needed someone who had fallen prey to Octavian’s machinations before and who knew the kinds of things the Greek was capable of. “Picco—he’d know. I need to get in touch with Picco. Alphonsus Picco—how come I never thought of that before now?”

  I was talking to myself. Ibrahim Samir had dressed and slipped silently away, leaving nothing behind except a rumpled bedsheet and a faint patina of hurt.

  THERE WAS only the briefest of pauses for the international connection; Chris picked up after three rings, and I could hear cafe noises in the background. “Hello, Jack. Say, you must’ve really missed me, huh?”

  “Save it, Romeo. I’m looking for your boyfriend.”

  “What was that? It’s pretty noisy here. Say it again?”

  “I’m looking for Picco. Is he around?”

  “Aww, Jack, I’m hurt.” Chris laughed. “He’s on duty right now, but he’s coming by later on. There something maybe I can help you with?”

  I told him I needed intelligence on Jonah Octavian: if he was in Cairo, and, if he wasn’t, where else he might be. Maybe Octavian had seen me coming and gone in the other direction, back to Newfoundland. I told Chris I strongly suspected Octavian had something to do with Sam’s disappearance, but I left out my impromptu desert interview with MacBride’s band of commandos. “See if the Newfie police have any information on him. I know they were itching to get hold of him, so maybe I can do us both a favor.”

  “Will do. Anything else?”

  “Tell him to cable me whatever they have. I’m still at the Acacia Court hotel.” It was risky, asking him to cable me, since a cable could be interrupted, but I didn’t think it wise to tie up the international telephone exchange, especially not during wartime.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Say, Chris, how’s the old place running?”

  “It’s running swell, Jack, although everybody keeps asking where you are. I’m getting sick of telling them, and Phonse thinks you’ve found yourself some rich Egyptian guy to keep you company. He says you’re probably floating down the Nile on a boat, eating figs while some pretty slave boys fan you with big palm fronds.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Yeah, skip that. Picco’s been watching too many movies. Remind me, Chris, What did I ever do without you?”

  “Jack, I haven’t got it in me.” I could practically hear his grin. “The subject’s just too painful.”

  He rang off, and I went into the bathroom to start the shower running. On my way back, I noticed the yellow envelope the desk clerk had handed me on my way in. I tore it open and scanned it quickly. The message had been hastily written in pencil on a scrap of rough paper that looked like it had been torn out of a book. THE AMERICANI CAN HAVE INFORMATION IF HE GOES TO 17 SHARIA EMAD EL DINE AND ASKS FOR MUKBAR.

  I showered as quickly as I could, dressed in fresh clothes, and was at the front door of the hotel in ten minutes. I hailed a cab and directed the driver to the Sharia Emad El Dine. I’d taken a few Egyptian pounds with me and removed a little insurance from the wall safe in my room—the Colt .45 automatic I’d brought to Cairo. I tucked it into the waistband of my trousers, under the hanging tail of my short-sleeved shirt.

  SEVENTEEN SHARIA Emad El Dine was a drab gray building next door to a large Welsh department store carrying everything from a needle to the proverbial anchor. It was occupied by a wholesaler, so I assumed Mukbar, whoever he might be, would be waiting for me upstairs. As I got out of the cab, I noticed a thin man in native dress standing across the street, pretending to examine something in a nearby window. I didn’t hang around to see what the hell he wanted. After my experience with the Pasha, I wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances with strangers and dark doorways.

  There was no buzzer at number seventeen to announce my arrival, but maybe Mukbar wasn’t the type to stand on ceremony. I went up three flights of rickety stairs made of wood so old even the termites had given up on it. At the top, there was a narrow corridor of open doorways. I chose the one closed door in the bunch and tapped on it. It swung open to reveal a small man in continental dress, with a pale, round face and the biggest eyes I’d ever seen outside of a Betty Boop cartoon. He was smoking a thin Egyptian cigarette, holding it between the tips of his thumb and finger in a very particular gesture. “Yes? How am I able to help you?” His voice was soft but not feminine, and I couldn’t readily place his accent. Austrian? Swiss? He might even be German, except it was hard to believe any German would be brazen enough to advertise his presence in Cairo these days.

  “I’m looking for a guy called Mukbar. Are you him?”

  He smiled, and twin dimples appeared in the round, smooth cheeks. “Yes, I call myself Mukbar. Do come in. The heat of the day is most oppressive.” He stood back to allow me entry, and I saw that every interior wall was covered with pages of newspaper. He had even pasted newspaper on the ceilings. “You must be Stoyles, or Stoyles-bey as the locals would have it. Some coffee?” He lifted the pot and poured deftly. “One cannot forget civilities even in a time of war. Sit down, Mr. Stoyles, and be comfortable. We have much to discuss, you and I.”

  “Yeah. You said you had information.” I chose a wingback chair and sat down. There was an ashtray on a small table at my elbow, precariously positioned atop a stack of news magazines, all of recent vintage, including quite a few scandal sheets. Some of these had passages marked off in violet pencil. These same passages were annotated in a spidery hand: telephoned, no reply; send telegram; denial; research further. “You know something?”

  He tucked himself into a narrow, high-backed chair and crossed his legs delicately. “I am in a business, Mr. Stoyles, that makes information my”—he simpered—“business.” He sipped his coffee and took a drag off his cigarette. “Several days ago, you arrived from Newfoundland in search of Captain Samuel Halim of the Cairo police. He, in turn, came to Cairo on the trail of….”

  “Yeah?�
�� The walls of the little room seemed to press in on me, a narrow prison made of black-and-white print. Mukbar watched me carefully, his huge eyes still and penetrating. It felt as if his gaze were somehow dissecting me.

  “I cannot merely say, Mr. Stoyles. That is not how I do business.” He arched an immaculately groomed brow. “You would suggest an appropriate price?”

  I dug out my wallet and thumbed through my stack of American dollars. “Just say when, pal.” He let me get to fifty before he said anything, and I got the feeling this was just for starters.

  Mukbar took the money and counted it, then folded the bills away. “Captain Halim came to Cairo on the trail of one Jonah Octavian.”

  “Does it have anything to do with war profiteering?” Picco and I had gotten onto something in this line, and Octavian had tried to take us down for it. Odds were he was up to his old tricks on this side of the globe.

  “I cannot say. I do not have that information.”

  I wasn’t in the mood. “Yeah? Well you better have some kind of information, or I swear to God, I’ll break you like you’ve never been broken.” I clenched my fists. “Now stop wasting my goddamn time, or I’ll go over there and smear that sick smile all over your face.”

  “Hm.” It wasn’t quite a laugh. “Clearly you are a man for whom violence is a ready solution. How disappointing.” He sighed. “Ah, well. Jonah Octavian is the son of Captain Halim’s aunt. That is to say, Mr. Stoyles, he is Captain Halim’s first cousin. In fact, I believe they were boyhood playmates.” He flicked the fingers of his free hand and a white card appeared in his palm; as he turned it over, I saw it was a photograph.

  “Is this… Sam?” The boys were about eight or nine years old, and it was one of those photographs you might see in anybody’s family album: two kids in swimming suits, standing with their arms round each other’s shoulders, grinning into the camera. The background was all beach and sky, the image of a perfect summer’s day. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You wish further proof?” The same sleight of hand and a second photograph appeared, this one with an adult Sam standing next to a man who was clearly Jonah Octavian. They were smiling at one another, and Octavian had a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

  “Okay.” It was really hard to accept what the photograph was showing me, but I tried. “So Sam is related to Octavian. Maybe they were even friendly once.”

  “Maybe they are friendly still.” He crushed out his cigarette. “Mr. Octavian is a very strange man, moving easily between the various levels of society, yet lighting nowhere. He is like the great Nile moths which hover and hum like tiny birds, but which at heart are insects.”

  “Skip the allegory. I just paid you fifty American dollars, so start talking.”

  “Or what, Mr. Stoyles?” His lips parted. “You will… beat it out of me, perhaps?”

  Something inside of me snapped, and I was up out of the chair and charging toward him. Then I was suddenly on the floor, while something I realized was his knee pressed into the back of my neck. My left arm was twisted painfully behind me, and no matter how I struggled, I couldn’t move.

  “You see, Mr. Stoyles, like the hummingbird hawk moth, not every creature is as he initially appears.” He let me up, and I rolled slowly over into a sitting position.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “A few simple movements, enacted quickly.” He shrugged. “Like Mr. Octavian, and like that moth, I have learned to adapt to my environment. Come, let us have no more of these silly theatrics.”

  I got up and went back to my chair. “Fine.”

  He lit a fresh cigarette from a pack at his elbow. “Mr. Octavian keeps a country house near the oasis at El Fayoum. Few people know about it. Indeed, few people know anything about Mr. Octavian. He has been in his country home since his return to Egypt. If you follow the desert road to El Fayoum, you will find him. Good-bye, Mr. Stoyles.”

  “Good-bye? What the hell is this? What do you mean, good-bye? What’s Octavian doing in El Fayoum? Who’s there with him? And don’t tell me you don’t know.” This whole thing left a nasty taste in my mouth. “Guys like you always know.”

  “Mr. Stoyles, that is all the information I have. If I were you I would not waste time here talking endlessly to one such as myself. I would be making arrangements to get to El Fayoum—before it is too late.”

  I felt sick when I left Mukbar’s place. If the little man was right—if Sam and Octavian were relatives—it threw a whole new light on the matter. Maybe Sam hadn’t been kidnapped. Maybe he’d gone because he wanted to go, because he and Octavian were in it together, for money or whatever other reason people find to betray everything they believe in.

  The walk back to my hotel was more or less a straight shot with little chance of getting lost, and I reasoned the fresh air would do me good. The more I thought about it, the more things started to fall into place, and all in all, it made a pretty ugly picture. What if Sam had planted that diorite bowl in the Newfoundland Museum and enlisted Blount’s help to get me to Egypt? Maybe I’d been handpicked by whoever Sam was working for, and he’d only come into my cafe that day because he was acting on orders from his superiors. It only stood to reason what I’d taken for friendship was actually a sophisticated seduction attempt, a way to secure my participation in a complicated scheme he’d hatched with his cousin Jonah Octavian. I needed to get to El Fayoum, but I didn’t see how I was going to do that without a car. Asking to borrow one would attract too much attention. If I were home, the matter would be easy. I’d borrow Chris’s car and drive out there myself—but Chris was in Newfoundland looking after my Heartache Cafe, and I was here in Cairo, as helpless and on my heels as if I’d been sucker-punched in the twelfth round.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it.

  I was being followed. It was the same guy I’d seen when I’d gotten out of the cab on the Sharia Emad El Dine to see Mukbar: a small, nondescript man in native dress. So far, he hadn’t done anything except follow, always staying the same distance behind me. If I were at home, I’d have ducked down a few laneways and side streets to try and shake him, but I didn’t know Cairo very well, and I was afraid of ending up hopelessly lost—maybe in an unfriendly part of the city. The best I could do was keep him in my sights and hope he’d eventually lose interest.

  I was wrong. I’d just passed under the awning of a building on the Sharia Ibrahim Pasha when I felt something sinewy tighten around my neck—not enough to cut off my air, but enough to keep me quiet. The man at the other end jerked me into an alley between two buildings and shoved me up against a wall. “You ought to know better, Stoyles-bey. Wandering around Cairo and asking questions is going to get you into serious trouble.”

  “Who are you?” I struggled to turn around, but he twisted the cord a little tighter.

  “You will not talk. You will merely listen. The man calling himself Mukbar advised you incorrectly when he told you to go to El Fayoum. You would do well to stay in Cairo, for your health.” The cord twisted tighter and tighter, cutting off my air, and I fought against it until I heard my own heels drumming on the ground, then everything went black.

  I WOKE to the feeling of someone’s hands on my face, gently slapping my cheeks. “Jack… Jack, wake up. Come on. Wake up.”

  I looked up into kindly blue eyes. “Tex. You got a knack for showing up, you know that?” His penchant for appearing out of nowhere just when I most needed him was deeply suspicious.

  “Come on. Let’s get outta here.” He dragged me to my feet and walked me out of the alley. It was late, maybe some time after midnight, although I couldn’t be sure. “The quicker we can get you back to your hotel, the better.”

  “No, I gotta go to El Fayoum.”

  “El Fayoum? At this time of night? What for?”

  Tareenah had indicated that Tex was a secret Allied operative, just as Sam was, but MacBride’s warning still rang in my ears. Maybe he was wrong and maybe he was right, but did I really know
who to trust? Everywhere I turned there was treachery. Nobody was who he seemed to be, and I couldn’t rely on anything anybody said. “I… want a change of scenery.”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh” was all he said. “I got a car you can borrow.”

  “Yeah? You’d let me use your car?” I massaged my neck. Whoever had been on the other end of that rope was serious about his work. I felt like I had whiplash. “You trust me?”

  “Sam Halim trusted you.” He reached out and dusted me down. “That’s good enough for me.” He took an automatic pistol out of his pocket. “Brought a little insurance, too. You never know what’s waiting for you. Best to be prepared.”

  It might not be a bad idea to keep him close, where I could see him. “Maybe you ought to come with me.”

  “Maybe I ought to.” He put the gun away and fell into step beside me. “El Fayoum, huh? So what’s in El Fayoum that’s so important to you, Jack?”

  TEX’S CAR was a decommissioned army truck you could drive anywhere, including off a cliff. The dunes were no problem. It took a couple hours to get to the oasis, which meant we landed there while it was still dark. We stopped for gasoline at a rickety shack near Tirsa, and the American owner’s Turkish wife knew Jonah Octavian and his house; it stood out by virtue of it being the one farthest from the road. We killed the lights as we approached and cut the motor so we wouldn’t give ourselves away. The house was white—a symbol of power in Egypt—and sprawling, with lots of fancy grillwork and clumps of aloes and date palms planted out in front. Tex and I approached on foot with guns drawn, but there was nobody around. The household, it seemed, had retired for the evening.