I kept staring at him, my heart double beating. He could kill me, I knew it. The seconds crawled as I watched his face. The men around us had gone quiet. The wind whistled against the tent poles. The canvas creaked.
“But someone must die tonight.” He sighted along the barrel and pulled the trigger.
The noise was almost deafening. My mouth opened in shock. It wasn’t me he’d shot. It was the taxi driver.
I gasped, feeling slow witted, and put a hand out beside me, grasping at a ruffle in the carpet. The taxi driver, the man who had helped me find these people, had fallen backwards. Blood was pouring from a huge wound in his forehead. It was flowing into the sand. He hadn’t even had time to say anything. His hands must have gone up in front of him. They were still raised in the air. As I watched they fell to his side.
A whiff of cordite reached my nostrils. The men around me hesitated for a moment, then whooped and raised fists high, as if death was a good thing.
Asim leaned towards me. “Your friend made a mistake helping you. We do not blame you for working for your country. But we despise traitors who help our enemy.”
I was beyond angry now. “This is not right. You cannot just kill someone, because they helped me.”
He shook his head. “No, you are wrong. We are obliged to do this. It seems you do not understand who you are dealing with.”
“So, what will happen to me?” I glanced towards the other men.
“You will be questioned. And our leader will decide what to do with you.”
Two men were already dealing with the taxi driver. They took him under each arm, dragged his body, still bleeding, into the sand towards a dune. The whooping was finished now. The gray haired man put his gun away. He addressed me when I looked at him.
“Traitors must die, Mrs. Ryan. That is our law. Do you not have a similar law?”
I just stared at him. I’d been trained in what to do if kidnapped. Disagreeing and getting into arguments was definitely not recommended, no matter how you felt about any subject. Kidnappers might just be looking for an emotional reason to justify violence.
“You do know that followers of Islam will be the largest religion in the world by 2030, and more than half the world will submit to us by the end of this century.”
“Is that right?” I tried to sound mildly puzzled, but not doubting him.
“Yes, it is right. Your culture, your Western civilization, will be the minority soon and then…” He put the gun down, made an explosive gesture with his hands. “Poof, it will be gone. Your stupid ideas about equality and women’s liberation have undone you. We won’t have to fight one war to take control of Europe, and then America will be next. Your birthrate is declining. Your women are not even marrying anymore. They have no need for a man. They stand on their own two feet.”
He shook his head in bafflement. “You know that I am right. We breed better than you. Your men are soft, and weak. And we are hard and strong.” He raised his fist. The men around us raised theirs too. They shouted something together in Arabic.
I didn’t like where this was heading. My skin prickled and a sick feeling in my stomach made me clench it tight.
“You are all doomed, Mrs. Ryan. I feel sorry for you, never to have the joy of submission. It’s the path all women need to take. The path to belief. To faith. Our women believe. Our men believe. We all have faith.” He thumped his chest. “And we will gladly die for our faith. And this is why we will win. And when we do win, we will eradicate all your temples to your false gods, your Vatican, your St. Paul’s, and here, we will flatten the pyramids, take their stones one by one and use them for new mosques, until there is nothing there but sand.”
“You know what you want.”
“We do, Mrs. Ryan, and we want something from you, too. Something you will give us tonight.”
I looked him in the eye, to show I wouldn’t give in easy. I still had options. I could stab the first man who touched me, right through his neck until my steel pen came out the other side.
I’d be lucky to survive the night if I did that, but I wasn’t going to lie back and let them all take me. If I showed them I was weak, the devil only knew what they would do to me.
He started laughing. The men beside him followed his cue. Soon all the men were laughing. I kept my face as still as I could. Fuck them all.
“Mrs. Ryan, we are not going to rape you. We are not going to take you tonight. I am sorry to disappoint you.” He suppressed his laughter. “You will help us with a job we have to do.” He leaned towards me.
“I am told you have been in Ahmed Yacoub’s villa.”
I stared into his eyes. They were dark pools. What the hell did he want?
51
Henry Mowlam looked at the email he was about to send. It was addressed to the duty officer at the Almaza Egyptian air force base, north east of Cairo. The 533 helicopter brigade of the Egyptian Air Force had at least two of their new Russian KA-52 with their new radar systems on permanent standby, as well as at least six older Apache helicopters.
A KA-52 would be ideal for a search and rescue mission, should the drone looking for Isabel Ryan find its target. The Egyptian unmanned military drone, a Scheibel Camcopter, released from a routine mission searching for Islamist infiltrators on the border with Libya, was already in the air above the last location of Isabel’s phone. It was following the most likely roads she had traveled on leaving the village where the phone was located.
It would then circle each possible location at a height that was high enough not to be seen or heard.
Isabel’s disappearance complicated things. The worldwide reaction to the deaths of civilians in Cairo was beyond what everyone had expected. The United Nations had called an emergency security council session, though the United States had not given its position on the French resolution calling on the Egyptian government to offer free elections as soon as possible.
The French, as usual, were talking the talk about democracy, when they knew all that would lead to would be an Islamic state with Sharia Law for all. That would leave a country of eighty-five million in a precarious situation. And they were adding a million a year in a population growth rate double that of Germany.
Islamist faction fighting and then a decline in the Egyptian economy could see millions heading to Europe across the Mediterranean again. And Europe had given up accepting massive Muslim migrations. Ensuring Egypt had a stable government, which could offer hope, jobs and entertainment to its citizens was the goal now.
And not just for the short term.
And if that meant a few hundred people had to die, so be it. Even a few thousand. The end justified the means. Tens of thousands would die trying to get into Europe, and in factional fighting, if Egypt descended into chaos.
Always think of the greater good. Finch had drummed that into him.
But for now, he had to make sure every agent they had in Egypt was protected. They each had a mission to achieve. Without them the whole country could disintegrate.
52
I looked down. Many Arab men did not like women who weren’t submissive. I was not going to annoy this asshole, even if that meant conforming to his idea of what was right, until I got the hell out of this place.
“You will return to Cairo this evening. You will be with one of our younger brothers. You will ask the security guard to let you in, because you left something behind when you visited, your car keys perhaps, and you need them before you fly back to Europe.” He stopped. I stared at him.
“Do you understand?”
“I understand.” This was good. They would take me back to Cairo.
“So, let us go.” He stood, started barking in Arabic to the men around us. They sprang up, began rolling the carpet, packing things away into large straw bags. Asim took me by the arm.
“You will come back with me.” His grip tightened. “If you do anything to alert the guards at Yacoub’s about what is going on, I have pe
rmission to kill you.” His grip tightened again. “You will be shot three times in the belly. That way you are sure to die, but it will not come quickly. Usually it takes an hour of great torment that way.” He pushed me towards his vehicle.
I stumbled, then straightened myself. I wasn’t going to react to the asshole, to any of these assholes. I had to get back to Cairo. I had to tell Henry what they were planning.
Three of us got into Asim’s vehicle. I was in the front with Asim. A boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen, beggar thin and with an innocent face, was in the back.
As we drove away from the tent I looked behind. The tent poles were coming down and the only light now was from the stars and the headlights of two other vehicles, which crossed over the sand where the tent had been.
I wondered where they’d buried the taxi driver.
“The jackals will eat your taxi driver. Even if we buried him deep they would dig him up out here, and feast on him.”
I looked out the side window. A shudder passed through me. What a horrible way to go. I pressed my jaw together, shook my head in disgust.
“You do not like that way to leave the world? Perhaps you will remember that you are lucky it is not you getting eaten. Malak al-maut, the angel of death, is not picky as to who he receives.” He reached towards my thigh.
I moved it quickly, crossed my legs. His fingertips slipped off the cotton of my trousers.
“But perhaps he would have enjoyed pulling your soul from your body.”
“I came to find out about my husband. Perhaps you can tell me what I was promised now.”
The car bumped on the road. Asim slowed. There was a lot of sand on the road, almost obscuring it. Our wheels spun, headlights tracing an arc across the desert. Asim wrenched the car back in a straight line. There was a smell in the car now. The stink of dried sweat.
I glanced at the boy in the back. He had a six inch long knife in his hand. It had a white bone handle and a dangerous looking blade. The boy was rubbing a smooth white stone along its edge, slowly.
He was also muttering to himself.
His off white tunic was stained in irregular patterns. It looked as if it had never been washed.
I knew where the smell was coming from.
“I am the one who knows about your husband, Isabel. Cooperate and I will tell you what you want to know.”
He reached again for my thigh. This time I swatted at his hand, connected, and brushed it away, hard. We swerved again. The boy in the back grunted.
“I am not your whore,” I said.
“But surely all Western women are whores?” He swerved the car around a hump of sand in the road. I couldn’t help myself leaning towards him.
“No, be careful, we can be devils, who are not afraid to push your eyes out to punish you for daring to touch us.” I stared straight ahead. “Would you like to see if this is true?”
Asim kept his hands on the wheel. “I simply thought you would be willing to be a little friendly, to find out what happened to your husband.”
I didn’t reply. What a sleazebag, trying to blackmail me to get what he wanted.
“He doesn’t mean that much to you, does he?”
“If you know where he is, why don’t you just tell me. Is this what you have to do to get a woman?” I looked out the window.
We drove on. The boy in the back was still rubbing at his knife. Asim turned the music up. It was Arabic pop, lots of emotional crooning.
We passed through the village where my taxi driver had stopped, then turned onto the main road back to Cairo.
Asim spoke again a minute later. It seemed he had been thinking about what I’d said.
“I don’t need anything from you, Mrs. Ryan.” He scratched his neck, pulling at his wiry beard. “I thought you might need comforting, especially after what I will tell you about your husband.”
I took in a deep breath. Did he really know something, or was he playing games with me?
“Just tell me what you know.”
“You will need to be strong, Mrs. Ryan.”
“I am.” But I didn’t feel that strong. Conflicting emotions were bubbling up inside me. I pictured Sean, his smiling face, and felt a longing deep inside me to see him, to hold him. And a stark, physical sense of foreboding tugged at me as well.
He didn’t look at me when he replied. “Your husband’s body has been used for experiments by Yacoub Pharmaceuticals.”
53
Xena was moving around the King’s Chamber on her hands and knees. The torch was out. After hearing the noises, she’d turned it on briefly to see if there was something in the room with her, but she’d seen nothing.
But she’d definitely heard something. She wasn’t going mad. The angel of darkness had not taken her yet. Something in this chamber had made a noise and touch might help her find out if anything was different, if anything had moved. She thought back to the last time she’d walked around the room with the light on, half an hour before. Every stone had been smoothly fitted to the one beside it.
So why was it that they all seemed to have cracks between them now?
Had something been disturbed in the relieving stones, which took the weight of the pyramid above and sent it to the sides of the chamber? Or was there something else going on? Was the chamber about to collapse? If it was, she would end up a smear of blood and shattered bones under the thousands of tons of rock above.
She stopped at a corner, decided to find her way back to the place on the floor where the stone had descended a few inches. She turned the torch on.
And that was when she knew something had definitely happened to the chamber. It was a little longer than she’d remembered. She walked to the far end. The floor was marked in a line about two inches wide. She bent down. The stone floor slab sections that had been revealed were paler. She touched the new strip of stone, which had been revealed, put her fingers to her lips.
A dusty taste filled her mouth. She ran her fingers all the way to the far wall. It was the same all the way along. She looked at the ceiling. That had extended too. Was this something the makers had designed? Was there more movement to come?
She went fast to the other end of the room. Nothing had changed there. She turned the torch off, walked around the room, her hands on the walls. There were definitely small cracks between some of the wall slabs. But they didn’t feel intentional, as the extended section of the room did. They were not consistent. But were there more now than before?
She stood in the darkness beside the section of floor that had moved down. Suddenly, her feet shifted a little under her, and she rocked sideways and back, fear tightening at her.
She went down on her haunches, then reached for the slab in the floor in front of her, pressed at it. It moved, angled down, as if hinged in the center.
54
I stared straight ahead. Was he telling me the truth, or did he just want to upset me, and provide more reasons for me not to cause trouble when we got to Yacoub’s villa?
“Yacoub is a real danger to the world, not just to people in Egypt.” Asim spoke as if he was revealing some secret.
“How do you know my husband was taken by Yacoub Pharmaceuticals?”
“We watch all the players in Egypt, anyone positioning himself for power in our beloved country. We watch Yacoub because he is a player. He might well end up as president of Egypt. If nobody stops him. So, we have spies inside his villa.” He looked at me, then shrugged. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I want to help you understand the type of man you are dealing with.” He made a spitting noise. “You are dealing with a devil.”
“What sort of tests are you talking about?” Dread was pulling at me. Could all this be true? Had something terrible, something irreversible, happened to Sean? Memories of him smiling came to me. A rush of images passed through my mind. A heavy weight, like a hand, gripped my chest, my throat.
Acid filled my windpipe. My stomach had turned.
I wanted to throw up.
“All I know is that someone matching your husband’s description was seen in one of the testing rooms at Yacoub’s villa.”
“That’s where he’s testing people?”
“Yes, in the basement levels.”
I remembered the basement levels I’d seen at Yacoub’s. It was possible he was conducting experiments there. A man in his position was unlikely to be questioned about such tests. Anyone enquiring about human tests could be dismissed as someone trying to stop the progress of a key part of Egypt’s pharmaceutical industry.
Had Sean been there when I was there? Had I passed within feet of him? I shook my head. I wasn’t going to let that thought get to me. This Asim character could also be lying.
We sat in silence as we headed up the highway back to Cairo. The clock on the dashboard said it was a quarter before midnight. The traffic was sparse, mostly trucks, some of them lit up like Christmas trees, some were new Japanese imports and the cars were older, mostly dust covered Mercedes and Renaults.
It was another hour before we were parked down the road from Yacoub’s.
Asim pointed at the entrance, then pushed his finger towards my face. I didn’t flinch. “You will get the front gate open, and this boy will deal with the two security guards. As soon as they are on their way to their promised land, you will open the side gate and wait. We will find your husband, Mrs. Ryan. Trust me.”
I stared him straight in the eye. I wouldn’t trust him to tell me what day it was, but what choice did I have?
“And cheer up, Mrs. Ryan. You are about to rescue your husband.”
Asim grinned, reached across me and pushed the door of the car open. Then he closed it again. A car had come racing around the corner beyond the villa. It was a police car.
I stared at it as it raced towards us.
55
Xena went down on her knees, turned the torch off, and began to feel all around the block, moving on her hands and knees.
The Cairo Puzzle Page 15
