The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  “Do you read our Arabic language?”

  “No.”

  “There are many McDonalds here, madam. Each one says what district it is in on its sign. I have a better idea. Take a taxi to the Dar al'amal hospital. Wait for me in the car park.”

  It took me fifteen minutes to find a taxi driver who would stop for me and who understood me. It was like being in a nightmare, trying to get somewhere and the world conspiring to stop me.

  Eventually, I was moving. And the driver was turning, grinning at me, as if he thought he had found a new girlfriend. I kept my bag close to my side, felt in it for my steel pen. He was going to regret it if he pulled down an alley and tried something.

  I took my phone out and rammed it to my ear. It was dark outside now, just before seven and the city was bustling with Saturday evening shoppers.

  “Where the hell were you?” It was Henry’s voice, reassuring, but he was angry, which wasn’t what I needed.

  “Just tell me why you messaged me, Henry.”

  “The whole of Egypt is blowing up, Isabel. We have incidents in every city. And.” He paused. “The Great Pyramid complex has been taken over by the Egyptian army. They are not allowing anyone in or out. There are stories going around that something has been discovered in inside it.”

  I finished his point. “And there’s expected to be an earthquake happening here too, and they’ve been expecting a sandstorm since the day I arrived. This is nothing new, Henry. This seems to be what Cairo has always been like; chaotic.”

  “What have you found out?” His words hung in the air as the taxi driver took a sharp turn. We were in a smaller side street, but it wasn’t an alley, yet.

  I told him about being at the pyramid and being taken to Yacoub’s house and meeting his brother.

  “Yacoub has a brother? That’s not mentioned in any of our reports. Hold on.” I heard him tapping at a keyboard. It wouldn’t be the first time our wonderful security systems had missed something basic about someone.

  “Isabel, you said he was talking about the book you and Sean found in Istanbul.” He sighed, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was about to ask me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, have you seen it? Did he say where it is?”

  “You’ve lost it?”

  “Not me personally, but yes, it’s gone missing.”

  “So if he has it, it’s stolen.”

  “Maybe, you see it really belongs to the Turkish government and they could have done a deal with him. You do know what thirty pieces of silver can buy, don’t you?”

  The taxi driver braked. I fell forward.

  “We here, lady.”

  “I’ll call you back, Henry.”

  43

  Xena took her cigarette lighter out of her pocket. She lit it. The flame was low, but enough. She was right. It bent a little. Not much, but enough to tell her there was a breeze coming from somewhere. She pulled the pack of Cleopatra, Egyptian cigarettes, from the pocket of her black jeans.

  She lit a cigarette, began crawling around the King’s Chamber. There wasn’t much time. If someone had taken over the pyramid compound they could send people in overnight. The most likely thing was that people would start arriving at dawn. It was a Saturday night. To get anyone to head into the Great Pyramid in the middle of the night would not be easy. To get a team to assemble at dawn was what would happen.

  She flicked the lighter on again. Dawn would be at five-thirty. She had about ten hours. Was it enough time?

  She held the cigarette over the indentation in the floor caused by Professor Bayford putting pressure on the floor slabs. The flame leaned to the left. Fresh air.

  She lit the lighter again, looked around at the tools that had been left in the chamber.

  Could she set the weight up again to press down on a floor slab? She walked across to the stack of osmium plates at the far end of the chamber. She could use the tray to get the osmium over the indentation. And she could use the winch on the tripod to lift it.

  She tested the weight of the top plate of osmium. It was thin, but it felt like lifting gold bars. But she smiled. She could do this. She didn’t need Mustafa, or Yacoub.

  She might even have found hidden passages inside the Great Pyramid.

  44

  I paid the driver. There was a line of taxis outside the hospital. There were so many of them they almost blocked the road. People were milling around. It was way busier than it had been the day before. Presumably because of the attack in Tahrir Square.

  The taxi driver had turned to me as we’d been stuck at traffic lights and said out of nowhere, after listening to what sounded like the news in Arabic on the radio, “This government must go. Too many dead.”

  I didn’t answer.

  All I wanted was to find Sean. Everything else was just getting in the way. Frustration rose inside me as I took in the scene in front of the hospital. Some of the taxis were yellow, like the one I was looking for, others were black and white, more run down, while others had a blue stripe. Presumably it all meant something.

  There was a group of yellow taxis on the right, stretching from the front of the hospital all the way back to a furniture shop, with chairs hanging above the shop window. I walked along the line, looking for my taxi. I sensed someone behind, turned, just in time to feel a slap into my thigh. I made a fist, shook my head in anger as I stared into the face of the man who’d slapped me. He grinned, displayed some nicotine slicked teeth and walked on. He was in his twenties, I guessed. I stepped between two of the taxis, a sudden feeling of vulnerability rising up inside me. I didn’t like it.

  But I had to be careful. Young men here didn’t have the same respect for women on their own as young men in the world I came from. Here they saw Western women, in particular, as sexually easy, not the tightly controlled commodity women were in Muslim countries. Feminism definitely hadn’t arrived here.

  I walked fast towards the entrance to the hospital car park, went down the stairs, found the place where the taxi driver had waited for me the last time I was here. This had to be where he meant. Not wanting to just stand there, I started walking purposely on downwards, as if I was heading for a car. After I’d walked down onto another floor, I walked back up again, past where we’d parked and up further.

  My breathing slowed as I walked. Did it mean anything, what Henry had said about the book we’d found going missing? And how the hell had Yacoub got hold of a translation? Was his interest in the book any clue into what had happened to Sean?

  I kept walking. It made me feel better. The knot in my stomach, which had tightened hard after what had happened outside the hospital, was easing. The waves from two Egyptian women who were heading for their cars also helped. One even wished me a good night, in English.

  I was heading back down for the fourth time when I spotted the yellow cab. It was pulled up, blocking the space we had parked in before.

  My driver rolled down the window as I approached, leaned his head out. A cigarette was dangling from his lip. It looked as if he hadn’t shaved since I’d last seen him, possibly hadn’t gone home at all.

  “Get in, madam.” He looked me up and down.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  He shook his head. “I have news for you. You want my help or not?”

  I stood there, crossed my arms. He wasn’t going to find me an easy person to lead around, as if I had a ring in my nose.

  “Tell me, here, now. We’re not going anywhere until you do.”

  He threw his hands into the air, exclaimed something in Arabic, which I took to be an insult, and got out of the taxi. I stood back. He pointed at me.

  “Madam, you are much trouble. I bring you news and all you want to do is argue.” He raised his hands, palms towards me. “But I understand, you must be careful.” He looked around, as if expecting that we were being observed.

  “But we all must be careful, madam. The people I have been as
king about your husband are not soft people.” He made a cutting motion across his throat.

  “If you want to find your husband you will come with me. One of the men I spoke to has news. Important news. He is from another group, not the Brotherhood. They also use a bird symbol.”

  “What news and how much will it cost?”

  “If I knew what he will tell you I would sell this to you myself.”

  “How much will I have to pay?”

  “Ten thousand Egyptian pounds.”

  I shook my head. “How much of that is for you?”

  He looked wounded. “I ask only for something to help pay for the time I am losing driving around trying to help you, madam. I ask a small part of this.”

  “What part?”

  “Half. And this will not even cover what I have lost these last few days, never mind what I will lose if these people think I have betrayed them.”

  “I will give you your five thousand, but only after you bring me back here, safely.”

  He shrugged. “Agreed.”

  “How far are we going?” I asked, as I got into the back of the taxi.

  “Into the desert, not far. It’s a village, a little south of here.”

  “Stop at an ATM machine on the way.”

  The traffic was terrible outside the hospital, but as we headed out of the city it eased.

  He stopped at a petrol station. It was a Total station and had employees in red uniforms filling up the cars. They had female employees too. They were serving women drivers. The taxi driver pointed at an ATM machine on the wall of the station.

  I went to it, stood in line. As I waited I called Henry. When he answered I heard the sounds of a London pub behind him.

  “You do know it’s half ten on a Saturday night in London, don’t you?” he said.

  “I’m surprised you’re not working, Henry.”

  “I am. This is just my break. What happened?” A buzz of voices continued behind him.

  I missed being back in London, the sense of security, of knowing what was going on around you. And I missed our home. Our easy Saturday nights watching a movie on TV or having friends over for dinner. I didn’t want to be here on the outskirts of Cairo, looking for Sean. A wave of emotion threatened. I pushed it away, pressed my hand into my stomach.

  “The taxi driver who’s been feeding me information is taking me to meet someone.”

  “Where?”

  “In a village outside Cairo.”

  “Don’t go, Isabel. It’s not worth the risk. Women disappear in Egypt. They won’t have any problems raping you and cutting your throat. You’re an unbeliever and a Western woman. You’re not protected in their culture.”

  It was my turn at the ATM. I put my card in. There were a couple of men behind me. I heard two of them muttering. One laughed. I was sure it was about me.

  I pressed the buttons on the machine. “Henry, I have to do this. Can you get someone to track my phone?”

  Henry sighed. “We’re doing that already. You’re making a mistake, Isabel. You’re on a wild goose chase. Stop now, for the sake of your son.”

  I cut him off, took the notes that spewed out of the machine. I put a second card in. The maximum withdrawal limit was five thousand Egyptian pounds on each card.

  I pushed the bundle of notes into my trouser pockets, felt the eyes of the men on me as I went back to the taxi.

  As soon as I got in the driver turned to me and said, “Please, give me your phone.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I cannot take you if you don’t. You will get out here.” He pointed at the road.

  I looked out the window. I wasn’t sure what to do. The two men who were whispering behind me at the ATM were standing near it now, looking at us.

  The knots in my stomach were heading up my throat. My jaw felt stiff and my hands trembled slightly at what I suddenly knew I had to do next. I reached into to my bag. My hand gripped the steel pen I kept there.

  “I will give you my phone.” I slipped my hand out of my bag and leaned forward. I put one hand around his throat and held the pen in the other at the side of his neck. His stubble rubbed like a wire brush against my fingers. He let out a squawking noise, like a chicken, then tried to pull my hand away from his throat. I pressed the tip of the pen harder into his throat.

  “I am not one of your vulnerable little girls, who you can fuck with.” Perspiration was thickening on my brow. My heart was thumping fast.

  “I will cut your throat and leave you bleeding into the dirt if you’re lying to me.”

  “Madam, please, believe me.” He gasped for air. His voice cracked with emotion as he continued, “I must take your phone before I bring you to them. I am only trying to help.”

  I looked out the window. The two men were walking toward the taxi.

  45

  Xena flicked the torch on. Its light was steadier now. Turning it on for ten seconds at a time had allowed her to do what she wanted to do, and extend the life of the torch. And now she was ready. She released the tripod’s main lever. It was the easiest way to get the stack of osmium to drop on the block.

  The thud, when the osmium hit, sent a faint tremor through the floor. But the stone block Xena was hoping would move didn’t shift. Was it sitting on another block?

  Xena sat on the stone floor and listened. The King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid had acoustic qualities, she knew, from her reading before she came here, but did that mean the noise she was making was likely to reach any new guards stationed outside?

  She waited, listened. Nothing. No one was coming.

  She went back to the stack of osmium at the top of the room. She would put more on the tripod at the other end of the room and raise it again. She would keep doing so until she had exhausted the pile. If weight alone could pressure a way through, she would succeed.

  As she used the trolley to move the remaining blocks of osmium Xena noticed that the trolley’s wheels were bending outwards. The axles were unable to bear the weight.

  It took another ten minutes of sweaty maneuvering, in darkness and in light to get the osmium onto the tripod and to raise it, using the handle, turning it slowly with the torch off, and with difficulty, until the larger stack of osmium plates was a few inches above the stone slab again.

  With a mouthed prayer to the Queen of Darkness, she turned the torch on, pressed the button to release the osmium and took a step back. It dropped with a resounding thud.

  She turned the torch off. Again nothing had happened.

  But then a thud echoed from the other end of the chamber. She moved slowly towards the exit tunnel, where the sound had come from. But the exit passage wasn’t there. There was no exit from the chamber. A slab had slid into place to block it.

  Her heart pounded. No one knew she was here. And it could be weeks before the Egyptians organized a drilling machine to break through the slab that had fallen to block the entry passage. By then all they would find of her would be rotting flesh. She shivered.

  Was this how she would die?

  46

  I released the driver. “Let’s go then.” I took my phone out of my pocket and dropped it on the passenger seat beside him. As long as the phone was with us I could be tracked.

  We headed out of Cairo on a dual lane highway heading south. Slowly my heart stopped pounding and my hand stopped shaking.

  Palm trees lined the road in places. We passed a long line of industrial buildings with Arabic signs and then a military camp. There was a tank at the front gate and a few soldiers milling around. Eventually the buildings gave way to flat desert on both sides and darkness.

  I looked through the back window. Cairo glowed orange and yellow behind us.

  “How long will it take to get there?” I asked.

  “We will be there soon, madam,” he replied.

  Again and again he stared at me in the rear view mirror.

  “You are a dangerous l
ady, yes.” He grinned at me.

  “If I have to be.”

  He laughed, as if he knew something I didn’t.

  What the hell was I letting myself in for?

  “Can you turn the heater on?” It was getting cold.

  He reached to the dashboard. Warm air, with an oily smell, spluttered through the taxi.

  Ten minutes later the lights of a village appeared on the horizon. Low roofed houses with dim street lights and a few shops came into view. He slowed as we approached. There wasn’t much traffic now, just the occasional car or truck. A group of camels were sitting by the side of the road. A boy, he must have been no more than ten, was sitting on a white plastic bucket near them.

  “Is this the village?”

  “No, not this one.”

  We passed through the village and turned off, heading along a side road deep into the desert. The road was obscured by sand in places and thorn bushes appeared on both sides.

  The next village had no street lights. I made it out only as we came close and the small collection of buildings blocked out the horizon ahead. As we came into the village the driver slowed.

  “This is it, madam.”

  “What’s this village called?” I peered out into the darkness. Every one of the shops and houses was closed tight to the outside world. The village looked deserted.

  He said something in Arabic. I didn’t ask him to repeat it. Henry would be tracking me. He’d find me on Google maps in seconds.

  The driver pulled the taxi up in the center of the village, opposite a house with a sign in Arabic above the door. He killed the engine and turned off the lights. We sat there. My eyes began to adjust. As they did an array of stars, like a dusting of diamonds, appeared in the sky.

  “What now?”

  The driver raised a finger. In his other hand he had his phone. He jabbed at the phone, then put it to his ear. I could hear it ringing. Someone answered. They had a two word conversation. The driver closed the call.

  “Where are going?” I looked at the houses around us. I felt that odd feeling, a shiver across your back, when you know you’re being observed. Was this whole village under these people’s control?