The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence OBryan

  “You pay me for finding this one,” he said.

  I looked back at the man beside me. He was staring at Sean’s picture.

  “I see him. They put him in special ambulance. I never see again.”

  Something inside me broke open. A rush of emotion filled my chest. I pressed my lips tight as relief poured through, as if water had been handed to me after weeks in the desert.

  But I had to careful. I had to be sure.

  “How did he look?”

  “Bad.” He looked at me, a sadness deep in his eyes.

  “How bad?” A new fear rose inside me. What if I was too late? What if he’d been brought here to Cairo, but he’d died?

  The man shook his head, slowly. “Bad,” he said again.

  Another wave of emotion passed up my body. This one made my eyes blink tears away.

  “Where was he going?”

  He looked at the driver. The driver was staring at him, his eyes wide, as if warning him.

  The man reached for the door handle. As he got out he said one thing.

  “I saw the bird.” Then he slammed the door behind him.

  The taxi driver put his hand out towards me. He grinned. I felt a shadow at the window. One of his friends was leaning against my door, his body stopping any chance of me getting out.

  Then the other man was at the other door. Leaning at it. I was trapped. But I knew what they wanted.

  22

  Henry Mowlam stared at the report on the smallest of the two screens on his desk. The larger screen showed live images from Tahrir Square. The square had been closed for most of the day as workmen cleaned up blood and mended holes in the concrete from the night before. Cars were passing through it again and a semblance of normality was returning.

  The only notable thing was the flowers passersby were dropping in front of the steel barricade, which the army was manning in front of the Egyptian government buildings.

  Henry’s gaze flicked occasionally to the larger screen, then back. The report had been written by a member of the British Embassy Cairo staff. It was about Ahmed Yacoub. He peered closer as he took in what he was reading.

  Yacoub Holdings research and development division have been building capability over the past decade in the pharmaceutical sector. They have recruited scientists from Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The focus of the research has been to prove the effectiveness of a variety of traditional Egyptian medical treatments.

  Dealings with United Kingdom Universities have mainly been through the Yacoub Foundation, a registered grant bestowing charity. Grants have been allocated to almost all the main United Kingdom Universities with leading edge pharmaceutical laboratories.

  The only other research grant the Yacoub Foundation has given out is to a Dr. Susan Hunter, Head of the Ancient Text Translation department at Cambridge University Archaeological Museum. That grant has been renewed each year. Dr. Hunter has visited Cairo on a number of occasions and has met with Embassy staff. Our understanding is that she has helped researchers at the Yacoub Foundation to translate various Egyptian, Greek and Byzantine texts discovered in Egypt and beyond.

  Henry looked away. Dr. Susan Hunter. She was the researcher who had translated an ancient manuscript Sean and Isabel Ryan had found in Istanbul. It had proved to be a most interesting find. Parts of it were written on human skin, with invocations of devils and demons. Other parts were about making people well again, if they were close to death. Another section appeared to be a record of the trial of Jesus in Jerusalem.

  The bound manuscript, with its sections sewn together with animal gut, had been assessed as being part of the Imperial treasury of the Byzantine Empire. It contained some of the most valuable documents from a thousand-year Empire that began at the time of the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, in the early fourth century.

  Henry looked at the large screen. Crowds were passing by in Tahrir Square. Most of them were dropping single white flowers he noticed now. A carpet of white flowers was growing across the square.

  He looked at the list of live video feeds coming in from Egypt that glowed down the side of the screen. One showed the exterior of the Great Pyramid. It was tagged Yacoub Holdings Press Conference. He clicked on it. His main screen blinked, then showed a milling crowd in front of the Great Pyramid. An elevated speaking platform had been set up under the entrance to the pyramid. It had Egyptian flags in a row behind it. In front of it there was a scrum of what looked like private security officers.

  They had a distinctive black uniform. He clicked on the zoom option. Two men were walking towards the speaking platform. One of them he recognized. It was Ahmed Yacoub.

  23

  I leaned forward, pointed at the taxi driver. “I’ll give you half, that’s all. Your friend was due half the money, and he doesn’t want it.”

  The driver raised his hands. “We made a deal. I expect you to keep it.”

  “Even if the nurse doesn’t want the money?”

  The driver leaned towards me. “Maybe his family will want it.”

  “You know his family?” It sounded unlikely.

  “No, but if something happens, I will.”

  “What do you mean, if something happens?” He was leaning so close, I could smell his breath, a mixture of tobacco and something spicy. I leaned back.

  “If he dies, madam.” He spoke softly, raised his eyebrows.

  I thought about that for a few seconds. Was this all a trick? The main road was near enough to walk to. But it would definitely be better to get him to drop me back at the hotel, or take me back to see what was going on at the pyramid.

  “You think he might die, because of what he told me?”

  The driver shrugged. “It is possible. The bird he spoke about is the symbol of some people who are very powerful.” He lowered his voice, as if some of these powerful people might hear him if he spoke too loud.

  “What people?”

  “The Brotherhood.”

  “You mean the Muslim Brotherhood?”

  “They will kill us all if anything we say makes trouble for them.” He drew a finger across his throat. “I do not want my family to end up on the street, because I help you.”

  I was torn. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was enough to have confirmation that someone had seen Sean. Maybe I should seek out the Muslim Brotherhood myself, see if they knew anything. And maybe there were other things this driver could do for me, if he thought he could make more money from me.

  I reached towards my bag.

  “Will you drive me the Great Pyramid if I pay you?”

  He nodded. “Yes. You want to go now?” He smiled. His teeth were yellow and there was a gap on one side.

  “I need the money before I take you.” He pointed at the man on the right side of the taxi. “My cousin will keep it safe, just in case.”

  I was starting to believe he was afraid of something, or someone. I took the envelope with the cash the hotel had given me and passed it to him. It was an investment. I didn’t have many contacts here who spoke English and Arabic.

  “Where do I find the Brotherhood?” I asked, as I passed him the envelope.

  “Do not contact them, please, madam. This will be trouble for you.” He paused, shook his head. “You do not know them. They will not help you.” He glanced down my body, as if implying that because I was a woman, dressed in un-Islamic clothes, my chance of getting help was close to zero.

  He opened his door, passed the envelope with the money to a hand that reached inside. I still wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision, but the benefits of paying him seemed to outweigh the risks.

  “We go now,” he said. He started the engine.

  “Yes. But there is one more thing you can do.”

  “What is that?” He turned, looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Do you know the Brotherhood?”

  “They are everywhere.”

  “Can you find out if they know anything about my husband?”

&
nbsp; He pulled the car out into the traffic, heading back to the main road.

  “This is a dangerous thing you ask. These people will do anything for their faith. Any stupid thing.”

  “I understand, but I will pay you. The same as you got today, if anyone knows where Sean is.”

  He shook his head. “I will want more. Double what you paid today. This is a big risk.”

  I thought for a minute, mainly to give him the sense that I was hesitating to pay his price. Actually, I would have paid ten or twenty times what he asked to find Sean. No, I would pay a hundred times what he asked and every last penny in every account I could lay my hands on.

  When he stopped at the traffic lights he took the picture of Sean out of his pocket.

  “Is this picture recent?”

  I looked at it, then looked away. “Yes.”

  There was a group of men walking across the road. One of them turned to stare at me. He looked a bit like Sean. I couldn’t look at him. I closed my eyes. Every time I saw a face like Sean’s pain gripped me, as if my heart was being crushed from all sides. Images of him smiling at me swirled in my mind. Each one brought the same pain, a wound that wouldn’t heal, that left me longing to see him.

  The taxi lurched forward. I opened my eyes, mainly to stop Sean’s face appearing all the time, haunting me. This goose chase had to be my last. I would follow these trails in Cairo to the very end, and then accept the truth, whatever happened. If I’d been ripped off, so be it. If there was nothing here for me, but for my desperation to be taken advantage off, so be it. And when it was all done, I would go home. Alek needed me.

  “A checkpoint, madam. You have your passport?” He slowed as we approached the military traffic check, which I had been held up at earlier.

  “Yes.”

  But they weren’t stopping traffic going out of the city. They were stopping it going in and the line of cars waiting to be checked was double what it had been a few hours before. As I watched the cars waiting to be checked I wondered when the city would get back to normal.

  Then I saw a car near the end of the line bump onto the thin grass strip that separated the lanes of traffic going each way. As we sped by, I saw three men in the car, all dressed in black. I looked out the back window. They had swung onto our side of the road. Behind them I could see the barrel of one of the tanks turning to face us.

  24

  Ahmed Yacoub bathed in the applause. In front of him sat a row of foam covered microphones with CNN, RT, BBC, AN, TN, 10 and a dozen other sets of initials and symbols.

  The elevated speaking platform had Egyptian flags behind it and an emblem in front of it, the black bird on a white background symbol of Yacoub Holdings. In the invited audience, on ten rows of ten black metal chairs, sat a collection of well-dressed journalists, hand-picked Egyptian celebrities, and senior state employees, from the Ministry of Antiquities, the Tourism Ministry, and the Office of the President. Around the whole area was a red rope, beyond which security guards patrolled in pairs. A drone hovered at the back of the group. It was sending a live TV feed to Yacoub Holdings YouTube channel.

  “What I have described for you is the biggest breakthrough in ancient Egyptian studies, of significance not only for all of us here in Egypt, but for the whole world too. And I am not just talking about tourism.” He shook his head. Two senior executives of Yacoub Holdings hotel group were looking pleased at the back of the audience.

  “The translation of an ancient manuscript found in Istanbul a few years ago, and translated at Cambridge University, shows that when the Byzantines ruled Egypt they investigated our Great Pyramid and made a number of discoveries, which they described in letters to the Emperor in Constantinople.”

  The audience looked up, as a helicopter with a bird symbol on it came over the top of the pyramid behind Ahmed Yacoub. It headed in their direction. Ahmed Yacoub didn’t stop talking.

  “The greatest of all their discoveries, is, without doubt the section in the manuscript which describes Egyptian medicines and treatments, all the secret things that were lost in the centuries between then and now.” He raised his voice. “These exact medical treatments have been tested by our laboratories at Yacoub Holdings.” He paused, raised his hands in triumph.

  “And they have been found to be effective. But not only that, we have the exact compounds, which caused the effects and increase their efficiency!”

  A female reporter, in a red dress, in the front row raised a hand, waved it.

  Ahmed Yacoub smiled, pointed at her.

  “What medical conditions do these treatments work for, Mr. Yacoub?” She smiled back at him.

  “The most important treatment we have found works on one of the oldest ailments known to man or woman.”

  “What is that?” Another reporter shouted.

  “Old age.” Yacoub pointed at himself. “I have been taking this treatment for the past few weeks. Not only is my hair growing in a shade I have not seen in thirty years but I also have experienced an amazing flush of energy in other important departments.” He looked down, as if embarrassed.

  A buzz of conversation and laughter broke out in the audience.

  An older man in the front row put his hand up. Yacoub pointed to him.

  “Has this ancient manuscript been dated?”

  Yacoub stared at him for a few seconds, then a grin spread across his face. “This is the very best part, ladies and gentlemen. Carbon dating of the papyri sewn into the manuscript shows a date of about five hundred and eighty in the common era, when the Byzantines still ruled in Egypt.” He leaned forward. “And the opening section says that the report, about ancient Egyptian medical treatments, was copied from older documents from the time we call the New Kingdom, the period of Tutankhamun.” He raised his hands wide.

  “There are only a few papyri in existence anywhere from that period. This is the only one any of our experts are aware of that speaks about the fountain of youth.”

  The old man in the front row had his hand up again.

  “The fountain of youth is a myth, is it not?”

  Yacoub shook his head. “Yes, the Crusader stories, and the stories from Alexander the Great about a pool you could bath in and become young again, are myths. But they were based on facts. The defeat of aging was one of the secrets of ancient Egypt. Were we not the founders of all medicine? Were we not the people who produced tombs, and mummification processes, which kept bodies from turning to dust for thousands of years?”

  A woman had her hand up. She was blonde, looked like an American.

  Yacoub pointed to her.

  “When will we see the evidence for all this?” she asked.

  “I will let Professor Bayford answer this.”

  Yacoub sat. Mike Bayford stood up.

  “Our scientific evidence is first of all in the manuscript and secondly in the double-blind tests that Yacoub Pharmaceuticals have carried out on the medical treatments described in it. In addition, we expect we will also discover other items to prove these treatments in the chamber we will open up in the Great Pyramid today.”

  A forest of hands rose.

  “Who will be entering the chamber?” a voice shouted from the back.

  “Both I and Mr. Yacoub will be the first to enter. We will be donning special suits to avoid contaminating anything inside.”

  “How do you know what is inside the chamber?” a woman’s voice called out.

  “We have sent two robots inside and from what we have seen, this is the eye of the pyramid, which archaeologists have long predicted would be found.”

  “What has been seen so far?” The old man was leaning forward in his seat.

  “Our robots were unable to reach far into the chamber, but they have seen carvings of Imhotep, one of the Egyptian gods of healing and,” he took a deep breath, “symbols for the dispelling of Ukhedu, poison, all carved on the passage walls.”

  An excited buzz rose up, as if a swarm of bees was passing through the crowd.

 
Yacoub stood. “That is all. You will find out more later today.”

  He shook hands with Mike Bayford as flashbulbs went off.

  Someone shouted. “Has a hall been discovered or just a passage?”

  Many of the crowd already had phones clamped to their ears.

  25

  My eyes were fixed on the tank, expecting at any moment to see a flash and a puff of smoke, then the car that had slipped away to our side of the road explode in a puff of smoke.

  But nothing happened.

  This wasn’t Mosul. This wasn’t a suicide attack. And soon the car and the tank had disappeared behind us. As we came closer to the Great Pyramid a helicopter flew over us. It had a bird emblem on its side. It flew towards the city, then circled back.

  My driver slowed, pulled in. Up ahead was the entrance to the pyramids. A sign in Arabic above a high metal gate separated the walled area of the pyramids from the streets of shops and houses, the outskirts of Cairo, which lapped around the pyramids. A crowd of maybe fifty people was waiting at the gate. They were mostly Egyptian men in long galabeyas, but a few were dressed in suits and could have been from any country.

  The taxi driver turned to me. “I will call you if I find out anything. And next time, when I ask for the money you owe me, will you give me a problem again?”

  “No. No problem. Find out where Sean is and you will get your money quickly.” I got out of the car. The heat hit me. I’d been in the air conditioned taxi for almost an hour. Sweat broke out under my arms and down my back. The taxi driver gave me a thumbs up and pointed at the crowd at the gate. It looked as if none of them were getting into the pyramid compound.

  I waited away from the crowd to see what was happening. Then the gate opened a little and two soldiers came out. They had long black batons in their hands. The crowd moved back and slowly the gate opened fully. Two black Mercedes came out. Both had darkened windows. The gate remained open. Beyond it stood a row of soldiers. The crowd pushed forward, heading to one side of where the soldiers stood. A man in a black uniform started checking what looked like ID cards, which the men were holding up.