The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  The driver looked me in the eye. “You will find out soon.”

  It was even colder now, not freezing, but in comparison to the heat of the day, the drop in temperature was noticeable. I was glad I had my jacket on. I buttoned it up, stood near the taxi.

  After a few minutes the driver walked away, further on up the road, as if he was expecting someone to come from that direction. No one had appeared from any of the houses. The village felt abandoned, but I was sure there were people in the houses and that some of them were watching us.

  A sudden, and intense loneliness came over me. If ever there was an idiot searching too far and too wide for her husband, I was it. I’d come from London all this way, to the edge of the wilderness, hoping all the time that everything would work out, that Sean would be found. It struck me now that I had to be fooling myself. That I had to be among the most stupid people on the planet.

  Everyone; my family, work colleagues, Henry, they had all told me I was following a wishful fantasy. And they were probably right.

  Headlights approached from the direction the driver had walked. I felt exposed. Anyone could stop and rob us, or worse. I turned away, pulled the thin scarf from my bag, which I’d imagined I’d never need, and wrapped it around my head, pulling it over my hair.

  My sister had given it to me when she’d taken Alek. “Just in case,” she’d said. I was glad she had.

  I was expecting the headlights to sweep past us, but they didn’t. A white, dust covered jeep pulled up beside the taxi and two men got out. They were young, dressed in long dirty galabeyas and with small white turbans on their heads.

  The taxi driver approached them, began talking fast in Arabic. One of them pointed at me. The driver waved at me, dismissively, then launched into another long Arabic tirade.

  “Madam, come. These men will take us.” The driver waved me forward.

  I didn’t want to go with them. I might be able to defend myself against the driver, but I had no chance against three of them. I put my hand on the door of the taxi. I was thinking about getting my phone. I tried the door. It was locked.

  One of the men walked towards me. He pulled the turban off his head and bowed. When he spoke, to my surprise, it was with a south London accent. I let out a stifled gasp.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was brought up in Peckham. My name is Asim. I am here to protect you.” He smiled, broadly. His eyes were electric blue.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked, tilting my head to appear friendly.

  “I moved back to Egypt to be with my family last year.” He pointed at the driver. “I must tell you that you’re better off with me than with this rogue. Has he given you any crap?”

  The driver let out a stream of Arabic.

  “No, not really. He just wants money for everything.” I bit my lip. Tiredness was making me say more than I intended.

  “Don’t concern yourself with money now. This man would ask death for a commission, before bringing him into your house.” He waved his hand towards the jeep he’d arrived in. “You will come with me.”

  I glanced at the others.

  “Just you and me, Mrs. Ryan. The others will follow with your friend.”

  He opened the passenger door of the jeep. I hesitated. The words, never get in a car with a stranger, echoed in my mind. When I was doing my Foreign Office training we were sent to Hanslope, north of London, for security training. Much of that was about learning what to do in a variety of threatening situations, as well as the psychology of getting on with people when under stress. Following your mother’s advice about not getting in cars with strangers was one of the security lessons, which made us new recruits smile.

  I wasn’t smiling now, as I put my hand on the door and looked back at my driver. He did not look happy. The two other men were standing around him. One of them was leaning towards him, speaking softly. Asim bowed as I got in his car. But his eyes were still on me.

  Between the Devil and Asim’s deep blue eyes. I wasn’t sure if the Devil might have been a better choice.

  47

  Henry Mowlam pressed his finger onto the touchpad. His screen beeped. The office was almost empty, only the skeleton weekend night shift crew, who occupied the far corner of the main control room were doing anything.

  He had waved at them when he came back from the pub.

  “Looking for another promotion, Henry?” one of them had said when he’d passed them.

  “I just need to check on something,” he’d replied.

  “Keep us in the loop, Henry,” shouted the night shift supervisor, from a few desks away. He nodded as he went to his desk.

  After he sat down, he clicked on the tracking service link on his main screen, and then on Isabel Ryan’s name in the list on the left. The satellite service was tracking her signal all right, but the map location it gave was deep in a village south west of Cairo, not in the city itself. Had her phone been stolen?

  He brought up the location on the global security mapping system, zoomed down. The image on the screen, from the last satellite pass, showed the roof tops and dusty streets of a typical, abandoned looking, Arab village. The resolution was clear enough to show faces, but not many people looked up when a satellite passed overhead.

  And there was no sign of any vehicle at the spot where the tracking system had the phone at.

  He hunched over the screen. Where the hell was Isabel?

  48

  Asim gunned the engine as if we were in the middle of the desert. Then he spun the car around in a hail of dust and sand. He was showing off for me. I sat back, checked my shirt buttons were done up, then kept my eyes on the road ahead, looking for landmarks.

  “Your husband is here in Cairo.”

  It didn’t sound like a question.

  “Have you seen him?” My throat felt tight. Was he playing some stupid game with me?

  Asim looked in the rear view mirror, then turned and winked at me.

  “Yes, but I am talking about your future husband.” He reached across and tried to pat my thigh.

  I moved my leg away from him. His fingers missed me. What a bastard. To play games with me when he knew what I was doing here.

  “I’ll scratch your eyes out if you touch me again.” I kept my voice low, but steady. I could injure him, for sure, but we’d both end up in a hospital or a morgue, if I did it at the speed he was driving.

  “But I like you, Mrs. Ryan.” The car jumped forward in the darkness. The road ahead was empty. A tube of light from our headlights showed only faded tarmac and sand coming in from either side.

  I opened my window. I could see a little more, as the road rushed by; drifts of sand, stars up above and a dark ridge ahead in the distance, which ran all the way to the horizon.

  After a few minutes Asim turned the radio on. Fast Arabic music filled the car. A woman was crooning, as if her lover had been denied her, and all the time he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, keeping time.

  He turned to me. “You like music?” He stared at me so long I ended up pointing ahead, in case we ended up in a sand dune together.

  In my hand I had the steel pen Henry had given me. It was strong enough to break bones, he’d assured me, but I’d never had to do more than threaten with it. But I could feel the moment it might actually be used coming on. This was not how I’d imagined this mission ending. Driving deep into the desert in the middle of the night with a young Arab man who might well be a rapist.

  I knew that rape was rarely reported in Egypt, as women who did so might be accused of bringing dishonor on their family. I also knew many men here knew the chance of being punished for rape was slight.

  I could feel my muscles tightening all over my body. The question I had to face was, how hard should I fight back? If I put the steel into the asshole’s eye and killed him, I might never make it back to my hotel given that his friends were in the vehicle behind, whose headlights were the only thing visible to our r
ear. Would this the end of my search, buried in some desert grave, which no one would ever find?

  Asim tapped on as the song changed. This time the music was softer, and a man was singing. I didn’t have to understand the words to know this song was also about lost love. The road became straighter, with fewer sand drifts in front of us. Asim sped faster on into the darkness.

  I looked behind. The taxi was still there, keeping up with us. The only reassuring thought I had was that Asim might not want to rape me in front of so many others. And he had to be working for someone, taking me somewhere.

  If all they’d met me for was to rape me, surely they didn’t need to drive on and on into the desert for that?

  In the distance a speck of light grew larger. At first I thought it was a star on the horizon, but finally I saw that it was a single lamp under a tent canopy. The tent walls were open and there was a group of men sitting on the ground in a circle under the light.

  One man stood as we approached. He stared in our direction. There were cars pulled up near the tent. They became visible only as we got nearer and the light from our headlights glinted off them. We slowed and pulled up beside the other cars.

  “We are here, Mrs. Ryan. Now you meet my brothers.”

  I didn’t like the look of this. I stared out of the car window. Five men were sitting on a red patterned carpet. Each of them had a beard, one longer than the next. The man in the middle’s was gray and his head was bald. The other men had black hair. All looked as if they’d just come in out of the desert.

  Asim got out, went around, opened my door. He leaned in.

  “Don’t worry. They won’t bite, not like me.” He made a snarling noise, showing the teeth on one side of his mouth, then laughed and opened the door wider. The men were all staring at me, as if they’d never seen a woman before. I adjusted my scarf, pulled it down further towards my eyes, to ensure my hair was fully covered. This crowd might appreciate such a gesture.

  I followed Asim to the tent. A cool breeze hit me, then the taste of sand was in my mouth. I licked my lips. There was sand there too.

  In front of the men there was a battered teapot on a small iron stand. Red cups sat in front of each of the men and a shisha pipe sat to one side. A finger of smoke rose from it, as if it had recently been used. The man in the center pointed to one of the men near him, said something to him.

  The man stood and pulled some carpet covered cushions from behind him and put them near to him, patting on them. The rest of the men stayed sitting as we approached.

  Asim stopped, bowed deeply. He spoke fast in Arabic. I heard my name mentioned, twice. I stood to his side, waited, trying to look as unafraid as I could.

  Eventually he stopped talking and stepped to the side.

  The gray haired man raised his hand to me. “Welcome to our tent and our country,” he said. His hesitant delivery made it clear he wasn’t fluent in English. He put his hand in front of him, as if holding something, then nodded.

  “Please, sit,” said Asim.

  I sat to the right, next to a lightly bearded man who was staring hard at the carpet in front of him. So far, so good. But what they wanted with me, and what they might do next was what I was concerned about.

  The taxi driver approached. He bowed deeply. The gray haired man waved him to sit down. He sat near me.

  The gray haired man slapped his hands together. The man beside me reached in front, took a spare cup, poured tea from the pot and handed it to me. The same was done for the taxi driver and Asim, who was sitting on my other side. All the men raised their cups. I raised mine. We all drank.

  The tea was bitter. Tiny flakes of leaf caught in my throat. I coughed.

  “You need sugar?” said Asim.

  He passed me a red bowl with cubes of white sugar. I put one in my tea.

  The gray haired man raised a hand. Silence descended. The wind came in from the desert with a faint whistle. He smiled at me. His teeth were yellow. He leaned forward, his hand still up in front of him.

  “So you are the spy looking for her husband.”

  49

  Xena breathed slowly. There was no way out. The two star shafts leading up to the outside of the pyramid were big enough for a rat, perhaps a desert lynx, but she had no chance that way.

  She turned on her torch again.

  But now it flickered again before she’d counted to ten. She turned it off to let the batteries recover for a longer period. The darkness rushed in, like an animal enveloping her. She was used to darkness, but now it felt like death itself smothering her.

  An urge to scream, to hope that someone might come and rescue her, she suppressed. She had this one chance. She had to find the fabled other tunnels and halls, which connected to this room.

  She was thirsty now, and her mouth was as dry as sand. She unscrewed the back of the torch, pulled down her loose trousers and peed into the cup like plastic receptacle, which the battery cover for the torch was like. Urine was drinkable. It would taste bitter, but it would stop any panicking at the dryness in her throat.

  But how long would it be before all solutions were played out? Forty-eight hours? After that she would be curled on the floor, panting for water.

  And how long would it be before they broke through into the chamber?

  Even if they moved fast, the process of approving and pulling together such a project in Egypt was no easy task. Ahmed Yacoub might press to speed it up, but he wouldn’t want to be connected too closely with what had happened, in case he was implicated in damaging the pyramid, one of Egypt’s greatest tourist draws.

  She’d known what type of man he was for a long time. What he wanted was the most important thing to him. It had been for all the years she’d worked for him. When she’d slit the throat of that Imam in Cairo, years before, at his direction, she had been paid well, and why it needed to be done had been explained to her, but it had suited Yacoub Holdings and he’d kept his distance afterwards then too.

  She flicked the torch on briefly, then walked to the wall at the end of the chamber. She traced her fingers around the edges of the blocks in the darkness. The blocks here were big, but as tightly fitted together as all the other ones. How it had all been done was clearly the work of a secret skill humans had long forgotten.

  She traced the outline of more blocks, looking for anything that would give her hope. She reached as high as she could along the wall, then flicked on the torch, looked up to the roof. It was twice her height and the roof blocks were stained black in places, perhaps from torches thousands of years ago.

  Her lip was trembling now. She didn’t want to admit to herself that hope was dying, but she knew she’d have to make a decision soon. She could rest, conserve her energy or work on the stone that had filled the exit shaft and hope it might give way after hours of scratching.

  Which was it to be? She waited, let her breathing calm, then flicked on the torch, went to the floor block they had managed to move, if only for a few inches, and started jumping up and down, pushing as hard as she could on the block.

  Nothing. She was wasting her time.

  She sat in the dark, held her arms tight around her.

  The darkness was like a presence around her.

  And that was when she heard it. A soft whisper, as if something was in the chamber with her.

  50

  I heard myself inhale. I forced my voice to flatline as I replied, “I am not a spy. I worked for the British Consulate in Istanbul a few years ago. I am not working for any government agency.”

  “But you work for Infofreed, the people who say they want to tell the world every secret, but what they really want is to find out who are the people who will leak secrets, yes.” He waved his hand at me, angrily.

  I looked down at my tea. I wanted to stand up and leave.

  “We want the people in power to hear the truth about the things that are broken. We want wrong doing exposed. We want to stop corruption. These are all
good things.” My voice rose as I spoke. I sometimes surprised myself with how much I believed in what we were doing at Infofreed.

  “Yes, yes, but you still all work for the British security services.”

  I could feel my face redden. Fear told me not to reply. Anger pushed me to say something.

  “That’s a lie.” I leaned forward, stared at him. His eyes hadn’t left my face since he started the interrogation.

  The gray haired man said something fast in Arabic. The men around me hissed, clucked. The mood in the room had changed. I looked at the taxi driver. Would he take me away from here? Could he?

  The taxi driver stared back at me, an angry look on his face.

  When I looked back at the gray haired man my heart did a double beat. He had a black pistol in his hand. It was a heavy looking Heckler and Koch, like what you see on a German police officer’s belt. He cradled the pistol in both hands, as if praying to it.

  It was the first time I’d seen a gun at a tea party. A ripple of fear passed right through me, into my gut. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. We’d been trained in how to use guns, how to react when one is drawn, including wonderful tips such as, make no sudden movements, but every time I saw one the questions were the same.

  When would it go off? And in whose direction?

  And I had no idea what the man holding the gun would do. Radical Islamists have different cultural beliefs. Liberty, equality and women’s liberation are far-fetched concepts, to be openly mocked.

  I glanced around. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to gray hair, except Asim, who nudged me, and when I turned to him, made a motion for me to stay quiet, a single finger pressed to his lips.

  I looked back at gray hair. He was holding the gun steady now with two hands, pointing it at the ground in front of him.

  His eyes found mine. “I do not want to kill another spy,” he said. He sounded wistful.