It took her a few minutes to recover from the shock. She checked every limb and her chest and head for the tell-tale wetness of blood or the pain of something broken. She’d been lucky. Her bones and muscles ached, but there was no serious damage.
Then she pressed a hand into the sand underneath her. It was deep as she pressed. She looked up. She couldn’t see where she’d come from, but the fall hadn’t been as long as she’d expected.
Was that deliberate?
Was the well a test of people’s faith?
If the walls inched together over a few dozen feet, it would look as if the well was much deeper than it was. Her relief was tinged though with the thought that she still didn’t know how to get out of this hole. She felt for the walls.
She was hoping one of them had a tunnel leading to a way out, but as her hands ran along the final wall her heart almost stopped beating. The wall was stone. Each wall was stone. There was no way out. She was trapped, and worse than how she’d been in the chamber up above. All she could take was one step in each direction here and she was met with stone slabs.
She looked up again. Could she climb out?
Where was the torch she’d let drop? And where was that breeze coming from?
If she could only see how far it was to the top and if there were any hand holds, she had a chance. She went down on her knees, felt all around. She couldn’t find the torch. She ran her fingers through the sand. Had she fallen on top of it? Had she moved it in the last few minutes?
She stopped, took some deep breaths, and started pushing through the sand in a more methodical way, starting in one corner.
And then she felt it. Just the edge, deep in the sand. She must have pushed the sand on top of it when she was looking the first time. As she reached for the switch to turn it on she said a prayer.
61
Henry tapped at the screen on his left. It responded by zooming in on the satellite image he had brought up. It was an image of the streets around Ahmed Yacoub’s Cairo villa.
Though villa was probably the wrong word for the complex Yacoub had built on the western shore of the Nile, directly between the pyramids and the river. It was a complex, and the records showed that a lot of work had been done underground.
Whether that was because Yacoub wanted to hide what he was up to from people in Egypt or from competitors around the world was hard to know. Henry’s satellite image flickered, then cleared. It showed a replay of what had occurred forty-six minutes before.
Two people had gone to the front entrance. One was younger, smaller. The other could well have been Isabel Ryan. And a few minutes later a group of four men had followed into Yacoub’s villa.
It was very late at night, after midnight now in Cairo, for Yacoub to be having visitors. Henry tapped at a red camera icon further down the street. That would give him ground level images on whoever had gone into the villa.
The screen changed. He was watching the front of the building now. He pressed at the rewind icon. It didn’t work. He tapped it again, his frustrating rising. Finally it started speeding through the feed. Cars went backwards down the street. People walked backwards from where they were now to where they had come from. He pressed the icon again for it to speed faster.
It did.
And he almost missed them. But a jolt shot through him and he tapped the stop button, just in time to see Isabel Ryan crossing the road, heading towards Yacoub’s with a boy by her side, probably Egyptian.
He turned to another screen. The red EEAR – Embassy Emergency Assistance Request – box was open on the screen. He put in his ID number, name and details of his request. It would be up to the military attaché at the British Embassy in Cairo to determine if Egyptian special forces would be requested, or if U.S. or British Embassy operatives would be called on.
It all depended on who would be quickest to get to Yacoub’s. It was clear Isabel had been kidnapped, and her life was in danger.
Rescuing her had to be the priority. And all he could do now was wait until he was informed who would deal with this in Egypt, hopefully in the next few minutes.
He flicked through the links in a secure email he’d received ten minutes before from the Cairo Embassy. One showed a headline that would be appearing on the front page of the largest daily newspaper in Cairo the following morning. He didn’t read Arabic, but he knew Yacoub’s picture and the Embassy had helpfully translated the headline and sub headline.
“I will make Egypt great again. Ahmed Yacoub Stakes His Claim to the Presidency.”
62
I stepped back. Asim had his gun in his hand. We’d heard voices on the other side of the door.
Asim pointed his gun at the lock, motioned with his head for us to go back further. His stance, knees bent, arms tight to his side, made me think he’d been trained in the Egyptian army. Could he be a double agent, or someone sent to provoke the Brotherhood, so they could be arrested and imprisoned?
The gun went off. Splinters of the door around the handle flew in all directions. I’d covered my eyes with both hands, but I only felt something hitting my trousers.
Asim shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” then pushed the door with his shoulder and went through into the viewing room.
Two of his men followed. The last one gripped my elbow and pushed me after him. The screens in the room were turned on. They were showing a news channel with a demonstration in Tahrir Square and Egyptian commentators talking over it. They sounded excited.
There was no one else in the room. Asim started shouting and the men fanned out, checking the screens, the walls, the kitchen area. They were looking for something.
I walked up to Asim. “I advise you to give yourselves up. I expect Egyptian special forces are up above us already. If you play your cards right I will speak for you. You don’t need to all die down here.”
“We won’t die down here. And we have you, Mrs. Ryan, our bargaining chip. That is why you are here.”
I stuck my chin forward. “They won’t care about me if it comes to a firefight. We will all die.” I said the last words slowly.
He pointed his finger at me. “Then so be it.” He said it softly.
Then he shouted in Arabic again and the men replied. I walked towards the screens. Was this a live feed from Tahrir Square? The square was full. Black flags predominated. Was the Brotherhood about to take over again? I peered closer at the screen. Yes, I could the damage caused by the helicopters on Friday. This was live.
A shout came from behind me. One of the men had found something. He pointed at the wall. We crowded around. I didn’t see anything until I peered close. Then I saw it. There was a hole in the wall, about the shape of a keyhole. Asim was tracing an almost imperceptible crack running up the wall near it. He was muttering to himself in Arabic, too. I could imagine what he was saying.
One of the men shouted. He was pointing back at the door we’d come through. Asim shouted back at him. Asim shot twice at the crack in the wall, where it appeared there was a lock. The noise echoed in the room, like a banging from the gates of hell.
Dust filled the air. I coughed. A soft hissing noise could be heard.
I crouched. My heart was banging high up in my chest, almost in my neck. My legs felt shaky. I touched the ground to steady myself. Asim had opened the hidden door. He was pointing his gun at me, waving me forward. I ran, half crouching into the passageway beyond. It led straight on through a gloomy, darkened section to a distant light, which illuminated a long corridor with rough walls and a curved ceiling. It looked like one of those escape tunnels you see in World War Two movies, but this one was tall enough that you wouldn’t have to bend down to get through it.
Asim was shouting at the men we’d left behind in the room. Gunfire erupted. A scream echoed. I peered back towards the room. One of Asim’s men was down, clutching at his stomach, but he was still firing. Two of the other men were in the corridor with me. Asim was talking in the ear of one of them.
I walked fast down the corri
dor. They were unlikely to shoot me. If I could get away from them now, while they were distracted, I should. I didn’t look back. I was almost running, adrenaline kicking in, my heart pumping as if I’d run a marathon and my sweat, which had broken out on my brow, cooling fast as I headed down the tunnel. The light up ahead was growing in front of me. I could make out a gray door.
The noise of running feet behind me reminded me not to look back.
Suddenly, a boom shook the air. It blew me forward and I tripped. A concussion wave passed through me, making my ears pop and my bones shake, as if I was made of jelly.
63
Xena looked around, turning her neck one way, then the other. Each wall was solid rock. The only exit was a rat sized hole in one corner, which must have been used to drain water. She rubbed her hand in the sand beneath her. She’d felt lumps beneath there. What were they?
She pushed the sand away from one lump and flicked the torch on. Her mouth opened wide as she saw what the lump was.
It was the top of a skull. She felt all around it. There were other skulls buried in the sand, some upright, some on their side. And there were larger bones too. She peered down at the sand. It wasn’t like the sand outside the pyramid. She held a handful up to her face. It was bone white.
A gurgling noise emanated from the rat sized hole. It sounded as if a bath was being emptied somewhere far off.
And then the noise was getting louder.
She raised the torch, looked up, wondering if there was any way she could climb back out. That was when she saw the square opening in one of the stone walls. It was about ten feet up. Far enough that anyone down here was unlikely to reach it. But near enough that it gave hope.
She looked at the walls around her. They were within touching distance if she held her arms out. And there were small cracks between the stone blocks that made up the walls. They hadn’t been constructed with the same precision as the walls in the chamber up above. She could pull herself slowly upwards using the cracks. A shiver ran through her. She looked at the cracks again. The thought that they had been deliberately placed there came to her.
But that was impossible. Wasn’t it? She placed her fingers as high as she could, found a crack. Her arms were trembling. She flexed her muscles, found the crack again.
Now her legs were trembling. Her feet were sinking slowly into the bone white sand. If she didn’t move fast she would drown in the bone dust.
She turned her torch off, pushed it into the pocket of her black cotton trousers. She put both feet up into a half crack in the wall and slowly began to move upwards. It was dark, but she would feel the cracks with her fingers and toes. And she would feel the opening above her head in a few minutes and push her way into it. Even if she fell back down again, she knew how to get up here.
A gushing noise sounded, far off. The smaller hole below had to be a pipe leading to a water source.
She kept going up. Her shoulders were aching now and her fingers were numb, from pushing, inching her way up the ice cold stone.
Then another noise joined in. A sniffing.
The sniffing of a water rat, that had pushed through a tunnel and found itself in a well of bones, with little chance of any food.
The sniffing was joined by another. There were more of them.
Xena moved up the wall faster. She had to get out of this hole.
She paused, looked down.
Red eyes moving this way and that looked back up at her. She could not fall.
64
Dust filled my mouth. I coughed, bent forward. Someone banged my back.
“Come, there is a way out,” said Asim. He was shouting, but my ears were filled with buzzing from the echoes of the explosion behind us.
I turned, there was just him and one of the other men in the corridor behind me. They were both covered in dust. I looked at my arms. They were gray with dust. Where we’d come from there was a mass of rubble. A noise sounded from the roof above us. It was time to move.
Asim reached for my elbow. I shrugged him away, started walking. The corridor was lit by fluorescent tubes about fifty feet apart. The fact that they were still on meant, to me, that they were powered from the end of the corridor we were heading towards. That meant there had to be a way out.
I remembered a scream echoing in the corridor as the explosion Asim had set off hit me. How many lives had been taken by Asim’s actions? My heart fell, as I thought of all the families waiting for a father or a son or a daughter to come home.
What the hell right did Asim have to cause such suffering? I walked fast, anger bubbling up inside me. If I had a chance, he would get the punishment he deserved. I know an eye for an eye will leave the world blind, but for some people, death is a just reward. Bastards like Asim deserved to suffer.
I felt something cold in my back, high up.
“Make no mistakes, lady.”
The gun pressed harder. I stumbled. I used the stumble to reach for the wall and crouch, looking up at him. There had to be a way to get this bastard.
“Keep moving!” he shouted.
“Fuck you!” I raised a fist towards his face.
He laughed. I walked on.
There was a red door up ahead. It looked to be made of steel. I reached it first, tried the shiny steel handle. It was cold, and when I pressed at it the door didn’t open.
Asim shouldered me aside. He pointed his gun at the lock. I turned sideways to him. A bullet could ricochet anywhere down here.
He fired. The thunk of the bullet filled the corridor. It was followed by another thunk as the bullet hit a wall. Asim and his henchman had just stood by, as if bullets couldn’t harm them.
Asim laughed, as if the devil was inside him. He kicked at the door and waved the other man through ahead of him.
I went through next. We were in what looked like a garage for the villa. There were three cars, a white Mercedes limousine, a red jeep and a blue Renault. At the far end of the room there was s steel shutter. Beside it was a large red button.
Asim walked straight to it and pressed the button. He shouted something in Arabic. The doors ground open slowly. Beyond was the sodium light of the street. It looked empty.
Too empty.
65
Xena closed her eyes, inched her legs up some more. She couldn’t fall back. There were who knew how many rats down there. The water table under the pyramids of Giza was renowned for its channels and its rats.
Some of the slum dwellers, living in the Giza area, even ate them, when times got tough.
She wasn’t going to let these rats turn her into their lunch.
She inched up again. Then she felt it. Her hand touched the lip of the opening. She’d have to pull herself into the hole. But she’d done it.
She pushed over the stone lip. Her shoulder muscles felt as if a hot knife was burning into them.
That was when she felt it. Something nibbling at her neck.
66
I looked both ways along the street as I walked out. We were just outside the villa’s perimeter, further down the street.
I stood still. Nobody was walking on the street. This could have been because it was nearly one in the morning, but my experience of Cairo had been that every street had people on it, no matter what the hour was.
Asim and the other man had both picked up on the uneasy silence. They were walking in a circle around me, their weapons high, sighting along their gun barrels. Asim was talking in Arabic. His colleague reached towards me, grabbed my arm. Then he was pointing his gun at my head. I saw the black pit of death in the barrel in front of my face.
“Do not run, Mrs. Ryan. Do not do anything unless I tell you. Do you understand?” He screamed the last word.
“I’m not going to…” My words were cut off by a spray of red and a splatter of bone fragments, wet brains and blood on my face. I closed my eyes, wiped my lips with my forearm. God only knew what sort infections this poor bastard had.
“I will kill her!” Asim shouted.<
br />
He had his gun pointed at me. The other man was lying face up a few feet away. A pool of blood was collecting around his head. There was a neat exit hole where his third eye might have been. Someone was a very good shot.
A stream of Arabic from an unseen loud hailer washed over us.
Asim spun around, trying to work out where the voice was coming from. He shouted something back in Arabic, then came up beside me, grabbed me close to him and pressed the gun to my temple.
I was standing as still as possible, exactly the way I’d been taught on the surviving a kidnap course I’d gone on, before I was posted to the British Consulate in Istanbul.
The idea was that you were supposed to comply, and take up as little attention as possible from your kidnappers, so their vigilance might flag, and an opportunity present itself to run and escape.
There didn’t seem much opportunity right now. And whoever was shooting might easily kill me in the process if I moved. A cold shiver ran through me. Was this where it would all end?
67
Henry Mowlam looked at his screen. It was 3:20 A.M. in London. The night shift he had agreed to take was due to end at six. It was the classic Saturday night watch. Not only did he have to assess international incidents, and decide if any of them required senior security services staff to be wakened. He also had to decide on the allocation of tight resources, and be ready to justify his decisions the following week.
The situation in Cairo was tense. Isabel Ryan was on the point of being rescued, but the team involved was not British or American. He would have to watch carefully to make sure they carried out their task swiftly and release her to the British Embassy as soon as possible.
The Cairo Puzzle Page 17
