The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  As he exited the reception area I followed the group of women, directly behind them, as they were ushered through double doors into the emergency area. One of the medical staff, a young man with a beard, stared at me with green eyes. I smiled, sailed past him.

  The area beyond was filled with cubicles with green plastic curtains separating them. Relatives waited by beds. A few beds were empty. I kept walking. There was a pair of doors at the end of the corridor. Above them was a sign in Arabic and the word Wards. I pushed through them. My mouth was dry. Every nerve in my body tingled. Any second now someone would shout at me.

  But no one did, and as I kept walking the doors behind me closed and the hubbub of noise quietened. Two male nurses in white passed. Then a doctor in a white coat came towards me. He looked European, Italian maybe, or Spanish.

  I put up a hand as he came near.

  “Where are the wards for the foreigners?”

  He smiled and pointed behind him. “Up the stairs, just here. Take a left and you will see them.”

  I took the stairs fast. The corridor to the left was quiet. It had a set of yellow double doors blocking my way and a security guard with a machine gun standing in front of them.

  I slowed, reached in my bag, found my passport, held it towards the guard as I came up to the door.

  “I have come to see my husband,” I said.

  He looked at the passport, then took an iPhone from a jacket pocket.

  “Please hold it open and here,” he said. He held his hand to his chest.

  I held it as he asked. He took a picture of me, then opened the doors with a swipe card and pushed at the one nearest door to him to allow me though. A rush of relief pulsed through me. I’d made it.

  6

  “The fountain of youth, that is what we are pursuing,” said Ahmed Yacoub. He turned, pointing at the pyramids beyond the sloped glass windows. Behind the pyramids a wall of yellow dust stretched from horizon to horizon.

  The bank of TV cameras and smartphones on tripods were a blaze of red recording lights in front of the wide ebony table in the top floor reception area of the Yacoub Holdings skyscraper near the Nile in the upmarket central Cairo suburb of Garden City.

  The thirty-two floor building was the second highest in Cairo. Its square column design with a pyramid of glass on top replicated the column from the Hall of Records at Karnak from 1400 B.C. At night it was lit with blue light. In the middle of the day you could still see blue lights inside the apex of the glass and steel pyramid above you, when you were in the open plan reception area under the glass pyramid.

  “What about grave robbers, Mr. Yacoub? Isn’t it likely that anything our ancestors left inside the Pyramid of Khufu was robbed thousands of years ago?”

  Yacoub leaned forward. “The thermal scanning in 2016 revealed the existence of a passage from the Queen’s Chamber. We have now assessed the King’s Chamber, too. Our results are better than I could have hoped. Some of the floor stones are warmer than the others. This means there is air behind them. And there is no damage to these stones, which means they have not been moved since the Great Pyramid was built four and a half thousand years ago.”

  He pointed behind him at the Great Pyramid. “The room we are searching for is the Hall of Records.” He paused. “A hall, which holds ancient books of healing and magic. Books from which Moses learned how to part the Red Sea but, more importantly, the books which explain how each of us can become young again. And all the ancient treatments that were lost long ago. Cures that have been hidden from us. Until now.” He smiled, waved at the man on his right. “The Director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities will be with me when we break through into the room in the next forty-eight hours. And a few of you lucky media people will accompany us.”

  His gaze swept across the assembled journalists. It met the blue eyes of the CNN reporter whose smile always caught his attention. He smiled back at her, breathed in deeply, puffing his chest out.

  “Those selected will be informed later today.” He stood, shook hands with the Director, who stood beside him grinning like a happy schoolboy. Camera flashes illuminated the glass pyramid above his head. They could be seen from the streets below, like fireflies in a glass bowl.

  7

  The corridor was short and had two doors, one on each side, and a nurse’s desk at the end, where a female nurse in white was leaning over and writing something. She looked up as I approached. I smiled.

  The nurse smiled back. She was pale skinned and had blonde hair. As I came near another nurse came out of the door on my left. I glimpsed three beds and a window with palm trees fronds brushing against it and blue sky beyond.

  One of the beds was occupied, but all I could see were feet under a white sheet and electronic monitoring equipment blinking beyond the bed. Pressure built in my chest. My mouth was dry. Could that be Sean?

  “I am looking for my husband, Sean Ryan,” I said as I reached the nurse. I was tempted to just barge into the room and see if it was him, but I restrained myself. I didn’t want to get thrown out before I’d even started.

  The nurse looked me in the eye and without even checking she said, in perfect English, with only a faint accent which I couldn’t place, possibly Irish, “We have no patient here by that name. I am sorry.”

  “Perhaps in the other wards for foreigners?” The pressure in my chest grew. Was my quest over?

  “I know all the foreign patients by name, Mrs. Ryan. We have no one here by that name.”

  I reached for my handbag, found the pictures of Sean, pulled one out, passed it to her.

  “You haven’t seen this man in the past few weeks?”

  The nurse studied the picture, passed it back.

  “No. I am sorry, I haven’t.” Her eyebrows went up and an is-there-anything-else look came onto her face.

  “Are you sure?” I could sense a needy element creeping into my voice. I raised my volume, as I continued, “A man was brought here from Germany by plane a month ago. I think that was my husband. Please, look again.” I put the picture in front of her on the white plastic covered counter.

  She didn’t even look at it.

  “I am sorry, I have not seen your husband. I can’t help you. Have you tried the other hospitals in Cairo?”

  I let the wave of pressure building up inside me out.

  “But who was the person you flew in here? It has to have been my husband?”

  Her expression hardened. “No patient has been brought in here from Germany in the last year, since I started at this hospital. Mrs. Ryan, I don’t want to call security. Your husband is not here. He hasn’t been here. There is nothing more I can say.” Her eyes narrowed. Her hand went towards a green phone sitting on the desk beside her.

  “Ok, I’m going.” I raised my hands in a defeated gesture, turned, walked back along the corridor. As I passed the door where I’d seen the patient in a bed, I went through the door.

  “Mrs. Ryan! I am calling security!”

  That meant I had some time. A minute. Maybe two. Enough. I walked towards the bed. The person in it had clean white bandages around his head. He could easily be Sean. He was the same height and build. My legs moved faster. The man appeared to be sleeping. I reached out for the hand lying on the bed beside him. Something caught in my throat. What the hell?

  8

  In Whitehall, in central London, in a War Office building transferred to MI5, the Assistant Head of Counterterrorism Investigations, Henry Mowlam, was sitting in a glass walled corner office with three flat screen monitors in front of him.

  His recent elevation in status was not entirely to his liking. It was the first time an Assistant Head had moved his desk screens to his office and several of the staff in his unit, who had been on the same grade as him until recently, had started using nicknames for him. Henry the IT, was the kindest of them.

  There were twelve Assistant Heads of Counterterrorism. The twelve apostles. But three of them were o
n sick leave and two others were near retirement, and still writing reports in long hand for their assistants to type up.

  Henry was watching the larger screen on his desk intently. The window high on the wall, showed clouds racing across London’s sky. On his screen was the square in front of the El Morsy Mosque, which opened onto the port road in Alexandria, Egypt. The crowd filling the square had already grown to block the road. Friday afternoon prayers were over and the faithful were not heading home. The imminent arrival of the U.S.S. Mount Whitney, the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, for a two day official visit, had stoked a suddenly volatile situation in Alexandria.

  Henry’s concern was not only for the lives of the 325 servicemen and women on board the Mount Whitney, he was also concerned that the attack on the Basilica of St. Theresa in Cairo earlier that day was the signal for a general popular uprising against the Egyptian military dictatorship.

  Crowds were also gathering in Port Said and Aswan. No British lives were directly at threat, yet, but the possibility of a coup attempt had to be considered.

  The current general in charge in Egypt was a friend of the west, but there were known groups in the Egyptian military who would prefer an alignment with Syria. Anything could happen if that occurred; outright support for Hamas, to prove the new leader’s anti-Israel credentials, rejection or appropriation of western investments in Egypt, a further collapse in the Egyptian economy, leading to another great wave of Muslim immigrants floating across the Mediterranean, upsetting the balance of power in Europe.

  His second screen showed the Basilica of St. Theresa in Cairo. The damage from the attack was still visible. An improvised explosive device had been used. It had the hallmarks of the work of returning combatants from Syria.

  As he watched, two policemen moved extra barriers to the side of the smoke blackened church. Then a red warning box opened with another video playing on Henry’s screen. He clicked on the box, held the edge of his desk.

  The screen showed the entrance to the Egyptian Navy Officers beach club just outside Port Said. The metal barrier was up and two white uniformed bodies could be seen beyond it. The camera was facing up the laneway that led to the club. A black Toyota Landcruiser was sitting with its lights on in the laneway. Beyond it there was another car. It was reversing. In the windscreen of the Landcruiser he could see a reflection of the entrance to the beach club. Sparks flew across the screen.

  There was a firefight going on.

  He clicked at the screen, looking for controls over the camera. There were none. Why the hell hadn’t the Egyptians upgraded their security cameras!

  He picked up the headset on the table in front of him and clicked on the audio and video connection to the British Embassy in Cairo. His fingers tapped at the screen. He could send a secure email to his CIA counterpart, the U.S. naval intelligence counterpart, and various British military and civilian Foreign Office employees in a few seconds, but first he had to make sure that the Ambassador and staff in Cairo would go into lockdown.

  9

  I stood beside the patient, leaning over his bandage swathed face, my heart hammering. Footsteps were pounding behind me.

  “Mrs. Ryan,” came a shout.

  I looked at the man’s neck and in a second I knew two things. This was not Sean, I knew every inch of him. The lumps on this man’s neck were wrong, and this man had been tortured. The bandage around his chest had lifted where his neck fell away and at the edge I could see a weeping weal, which stretched up under the bandage.

  My stomach turned. A hand gripped my arm.

  “Mrs. Ryan, come.” I looked at the man holding me. He wore a black uniform with a peaked cap with a bird emblem on it.

  I didn’t resist. My eyes swept the room as I turned. Sean wasn’t here. It felt as if a hole was opening inside me. This was it. All chance of finding him was gone. I looked around as I walked away. At the foot of the patient’s bed was a white dressing gown. A Macy’s label at the neck caught my eye.

  I didn’t say a word, just walked fast out of the ward, almost pulling the security guard holding my arm. When we reached the main exit the guard released me.

  “You must leave,” he said. He pointed at the exit door.

  I raised both hands, palms towards him. “I’m going.” I looked back as I went through the door. The guard was watching me.

  The taxi driver was smoking, leaning against a wall in the car park near a no smoking sign. I walked up to him, smiled.

  “Did you find your husband?” He dropped his cigarette, stood on it.

  “Not yet.” I rummaged in my bag. “Can you find any ambulance drivers here and ask them if they saw my husband?”

  He looked at me, shook his head. “I am not a detective, madam.”

  I smiled. “Will an extra hundred Egyptian pounds help?”

  “Two hundred.”

  I nodded. He reached for the photo of Sean.

  “Can I have a cigarette,” I said. I hadn’t smoked in ten years, but an urge to smoke had come over me. I needed something to take the edge off the numbness creeping over me.

  He passed me one, lit it for me. His smile lingered as he stared at me. I looked away, took only a little smoke into my lungs, then blew smoke down to the ground.

  “I’ll pay you when we get back to the hotel. Ask every driver you can find.”

  He was gone for at least thirty minutes. I paced up and down the car park, near where his taxi was parked.

  He held the photo up as he came back.

  “Sorry, madam. I found two drivers and none of them saw your husband. There are two other drivers. They will be on duty later, if you want me to come back.” He shrugged. “Another hundred for that.” He paused, smiled. “I can come to your hotel later.”

  “Yes, do that.” I thought about giving him my number, but I wanted to see his face when he told me what he had found. I didn’t want to hear stories over the telephone.

  We were back at the hotel twenty minutes later. A black mini bus was parked outside. An older man with thick gray hair and a bushy beard with streaks of white through it stepped out of it as we pulled up. He was carrying a white plastic box under his arm.

  “Make sure you go back to the hospital,” I said, as I paid the driver.

  He smiled at me. “For you, madam. I will do whatever you want.” His smile was a little too friendly. I felt uneasy. I had to be very careful about what I did next.

  I looked around, quickly. “I will be with my friend, so just call my room or leave a message for me at reception,” I said, as I pointed at the bearded American.

  “You know him?” said the driver.

  “Yes,” I lied. The thought that I had picked the wrong person to lie about loomed suddenly inside me. “Why?”

  “He will bring shame on us all.”

  10

  Ahmed Yacoub stared through the latticework window of his villa. In the distance, the Great Pyramid was lit with blue lights. Behind it the wall of the sandstorm, which had been brewing to the west, over the Sahara, waited. It had been moving south, so the weather forecasters claimed, but with a change in the wind expected over the weekend, it could engulf Cairo.

  At the other end of the room an ebony table had a large screen laptop computer on it. It was showing live video from a Facebook page, set up only in the last few days.

  Victory for The People, was the name of the page. The live video showed flickering images from the Navy Officers Club at Port Said. A second video, stopped, but waiting to be restarted, showed a confrontation at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Army tanks and a mass of protesters faced each other. Men had been streaming into Tahrir Square from mosques all around Cairo for hours, and they were still coming.

  A shout went up from the crowd. Yacoub walked quickly to the laptop to see if the moment of victory had come. The view on the screen was changing, as the man holding the smartphone panned across the quickly darkening sky. A rattling noise grew. Then he saw it. The
blades of a helicopter rising fast into the sky.

  He knew what that meant. The general in charge at the Navy Officers Club at Port Said had given up the fight and was heading away as fast as he could.

  Yacoub picked up his smartphone, pressed at the call encryption app and then at a contact name icon. A male voice came on the line. His Arabic was guttural, from peasant stock Yacoub’s family had long elevated itself from.

  “Do you know where he is going?” said Yacoub.

  “'Inna afeal, I do,” came the reply.

  “What time will he leave Egyptian airspace?”

  “In twenty minutes, no more.”

  Yacoub cut the line. He clicked a different contact icon. Another male voice answered.

  “One general has departed by helicopter. Tell your people the revolution can be won this time.”

  He scrolled down the Facebook page, started the audio on the live video feed from Tahrir Square. The mob was chanting. A minute later a hush descended. A lone voice rang out from a loudspeaker.

  He could barely hear what was being said. But he heard the words waqad tashghil alkalb - the dogs are running.

  A cheer rang out from the crowd. It grew in waves as it passed out along El Tahrir Avenue towards Kasr Al Nile Bridge. The head of the crowd surged towards the tanks guarding the government offices. A burst of gunfire rang out, like a string of fire crackers being let off.

  Whether the soldiers were firing over the heads of the crowd or at them was hard to tell. The crowd hesitated, split. Many were now running, pushing at anyone in their way, their heads down.

  Yacoub smiled. It had started. It would be a long night.

  He stood, went to a solid ivory side table, hit the brass gong on it with the small bronze hammer in the shape of a bird. A few seconds later the door at the side of the room opened. The two young women who came through it were dressed all in black, though their faces were uncovered. Each had a smile on their thin, pockmarked faces.