“What does it look like topside?”
Costas kicked off the feet of his E-suit, took out the Glock from its holster, checked it, and gave Jack a grim look. “You know those medieval images of hell? They always have it underground. Well, they got it wrong. Prepare yourself for just about the worst thing you’ve ever seen.”
CHAPTER 24
Jack stared in horror at the western horizon. The Pyramid of Menkaure was engulfed in flames, lighting up the Giza plateau like a vision of hell. Those who had been threatening it had finally gotten their way, picking up where the son of Saladin had left off in the twelfth century, only with powers of destruction that no medieval caliph could ever have envisaged. Jack felt the anger well up inside him, a rage against those who had orchestrated this. They claimed to be acting in the name of the one god, but in truth they represented no god. He looked down at the form that had followed him out of the tunnel entrance. He and Costas had just carried out one of the most extraordinary dives of their lives, and had uncovered the greatest treasure that any civilization could offer. He glanced at the flames again, this time feeling only a cold determination. He would not let the forces of darkness destroy the truth of history. He turned back and helped Costas to his feet. “This place is about to implode. If we don’t get out of here, nobody will ever know what we’ve found. Let’s move.”
A little over an hour later, they crouched behind a wall just outside Fustat, the Old City of Cairo, a stone’s throw from the Ben Ezra synagogue. After leaving the tunnel they had jogged in the darkness along a dusty track toward the lights of the city, both of them soon drenched in sweat in the humid air of the night. The smell of burning had been all around them, an acrid, cloying smell that became worse as they entered the outer sprawl of the city, making them cough and slow down. Partway along they had found an abandoned car with the key still in the ignition and had sped along a highway toward the Nile. They left the car once they had found a motorboat, which they used to cross the river to the eastern shore beside Fustat. The journey had been an eerie one, with hardly any other cars on the roads and only a few people to be seen, the rest probably cowering in their houses or caught up in what was going on in the city center. As they had come closer, the noise had become louder—chanting and wailing, shrieks and screams, long bursts of gunfire, and above it a constant call from the minarets around the city, their recordings sounding as through they had been put on a continuous loop by the extremist junta, who by now must have swept aside the last residues of legitimate government in Egypt.
Jack tried to ignore the noise as he stared along the alleyway ahead toward the entrance into Fustat, watching for gunmen and gauging the best time to enter. He took out his Beretta from the holster beneath his jacket, pulled back the slider partway to confirm that a round was chambered, and put the gun back in its holster. With the two extra magazines, he had forty-five rounds, hardly enough to put a pinprick in the side of the coup but giving him the option of self-defense if it came to it. He watched Costas check his Glock and then pull out the second transmitter beacon and place it behind the wall where it would be concealed from view but the satellite signal would be unimpeded. “Okay,” he said quietly. “It’s activated. That means Sea Venture will know we’re here.”
“Mohammed won’t be able to get his felucca this far south,” Jack said. “You can see that the river ahead of us is jammed with burning feluccas, and chances are the gunmen have gotten hold of the police patrol vessels and are raking any boat they see. We’ll have to rely on Aysha to get us out through the city to a rendezvous point farther to the north.”
“That could be like walking through the fires of hell,” Costas said.
“We haven’t got any choice.” Jack checked his watch. “It’s three fifteen. There’s about two hours of night left. We’re going to be far better off trying to do this under cover of darkness than waiting for the day, and we need to get to the rendezvous point at the synagogue. Let’s move.”
They got up and walked quickly to the entrance through the medieval wall into Fustat, and then ducked inside and came within sight of the synagogue precinct. There were more people now in the streets, clustered fearfully in doorways and dark alleys, and the gunshots were close enough in the still air to sound like sharp hammer blows, but still there were no gunmen to be seen. Jack stared at the synagogue and pursed his lips. “Aysha should have had our first beacon signal relayed to her by now, but I don’t see her there. It was always going to be a gamble, and maybe we just ran out of luck. All I can see is that Sufi sitting in front of the wall.”
A truck filled with jeering gunmen suddenly lurched into view on the cobbled street, roared past them in low gear and disappeared down another dark alley. Jack had flattened himself against the wall, and he felt his heart pounding. They had been in full view of the gunmen but had been ignored. “I think they’ve got other fish to fry,” he said, standing forward again and looking around. “Most of the noise is coming from the direction they were heading, where the alley opens out in front of a big mosque.”
“My God,” Costas whispered, his eyes glued on the synagogue. “The Sufi. It’s Lanowski. Only we would recognize him. I mean, instantly recognize him. He’s in double disguise, disguised as Corporal Jones disguised as a mystic. Genius, or mad.”
“I told him to stay with the felucca,” Jack muttered. “Something must have happened.” He turned to Costas, straightened his shirt and patted his hair. “We’re going to have to walk in the open now. We’ve got no choice, and we need to be confident about it. There are still going to be reporters and die-hards of the expat community here, and we need to look like them, as if we know what we’re doing.”
Jack felt himself beginning to sweat again in the tepid air. He took out the hydration pack that he had kept from his E-suit and offered it to Costas, who shook his head. “Still got some in my own,” he said. They both drank the remainder of the water pouches and discarded them. Jack peered at Costas. “Still got the camera microchips?”
“They’re zipped into my side pocket.”
Jack looked down, forcing himself to accept reality. “If it comes to it, you have to promise me that you’ll destroy them, right? If the bad guys get hold of those images and work out where we came from, then the world really will never know what we found. Maurice was right. There are going to be terrible scenes of destruction across Egypt, not only what we’ve already seen happening at Giza but also at Luxor, at the Valley of the Kings, scenes to make even the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas pale by comparison. The world had better get ready to weep.”
Costas straightened his jacket. “Let’s do it.”
They stepped out into the street and walked toward the mystic, stopping close enough to be heard. “Jacob,” Costas said quietly. “We see you.”
“Walk toward the alley where that truck went,” Lanowski replied, without moving or looking at them. “It might attract attention for me to join you, a Sufi with two Westerners, so I’ll be shadowing you. I had to come here to warn you that Aysha’s been delayed, but she will find us if we head slowly west. You’re conspicuous enough for her to see, Jack, because of your height.”
“Be careful, Jacob,” Jack said. “We’ll be going into a death zone.”
“I’ve seen it, Jack. I had to walk through it when Mohammed let me off from the felucca. Prepare yourselves for the worst. Now get moving. With any luck we’ll meet again at the felucca within the hour, and be out of here.”
Jack glanced left and right, and then hurried ahead as Lanowski had instructed. He led Costas through a dark cobbled alley about two hundred meters long and out into another square. This one was packed full of people, large milling groups with black-hooded gunmen sauntering among them, occasionally raising their Kalashnikovs into the air and firing a deafening blast. Jack held Costas back, unsure what to do. Ahead of them a cluster of women dressed in burkhas stood on the pavement, swaying and ululating, their heads covered except for a slit for their eyes. One of
the women was frantically stripping off her tights beneath her burkha, the others closing in around her protectively. A gunman spotted her and rushed in, pulled her out screaming and sobbing, and dragged her toward an open area where three other women in Western dress lay sprawled in the dust surrounded by men with Kalashnikovs. Beside them an acacia tree in the middle of a small garden had been hacked down to a man-sized stump, and a few yards in front of it boys with wheelbarrows were dumping building debris brought from a structure that Jack could hear being demolished somewhere beyond. One of the men slung his rifle, picked up a brick, and hurled it with huge force at the stump. Jack stared at the scene, feeling a cold dread. “My God,” he said hoarsely. “It’s a stoning ground. They’re going to force those other women to stone those three to death.”
Another woman in a burkha came alongside them. “Don’t do anything, for God’s sake,” she said in a low voice. “If you try to intervene, you will be shot and I will be the next one to be put against that post.”
Jack stared at her. “Aysha.”
She said nothing, but steered them around a corner into another dark alley, quickly looking around. “Follow me,” she said urgently. “We haven’t got much time.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, hurrying after her.
“You’ve been incredibly lucky. About an hour ago the junta issued a fatwa against all Westerners except accredited journalists. Evidently the news hadn’t quite reached the gunmen who’ve seen you so far. Apparently it still matters to the junta for the world to see what they’re doing, though that won’t last long. Here, take these.” She steered them down the passageway and handed them each a ziplock bag. “Passports, press documentation. Take out the cards and hang them around your necks. You’re CNN journalists. The Cairo bureau chief is an old friend of mine, and he’s issued bogus accreditation to help some friends get out. These are the last two cards he had.”
“They’ll rumble that soon enough if Cairo is suddenly swarming with CNN journalists.”
“Hopefully we’ll be out of here by then. When I came to Cairo two days ago, I had to ditch the institute’s Land Rover in the northern suburbs, as it was too dangerous for me to be seen in it. The way to Alexandria is clogged with people fleeing the city. I’ll be coming out with you by river from a rendezvous point I agreed upon with my uncle about half a mile north of here.”
“Mobile phone networks? WiFi?”
“Everything’s down. The only contact with the outside world is by satellite phone, and I couldn’t risk being caught with one. They’re searching everyone. I was lucky to get here with those documents.”
“What’s the situation with Sahirah?” Jack said.
Aysha looked grim. “She’s still being held in the Ministry of Culture. They cleared out all the remaining staff yesterday. There have been mass trials and convictions of government people through the night. A lot of good people are going to die, Jack, a lot of good friends. Once they’ve dealt with that, they’ll turn their attention to Sahirah and any other prisoners still alive in the interrogation rooms.”
“Your cousin Ahmed, the ex–special forces man and his team?”
Aysha nodded. “It’s out of our hands now, Jack. If they can spring her, they’ll do it. If not, they’ll die trying.”
“What about Lanowski?” Costas said, jerking his head to the shuffling mystic following them a discreet distance behind.
“He volunteered to be your point of contact at the synagogue after I’d heard about the impending crackdown and knew I was going to be delayed getting those documents. I could only get two CNN passes. But he’s the least of my worries; he blends in just fine.”
“You won’t believe what we found,” Costas said.
“Don’t tell me. I don’t what to hear anything, just in case I’m interrogated.”
They came to the end of the alley and peered into another, much larger square with a columned structure in the center. The square seemed a maelstrom of activity, with eruptions of fire, the sound of falling masonry and bursts of automatic gunfire, and lines of black-clad men with Kalashnikovs encircling the perimeter.
“That’s the mosque of Amr ibn al-As,” Aysha said. “It’s the oldest mosque in Cairo, founded in AD 642. The extremists have taken it over as their spiritual focus. The original mosque where Abn al-As pitched his tent was made of palm trunks and leaves, and they’re planning to re-create that. The present mosque is made of reused columns and blocks from ancient Egyptian sites that they regard as non-Islamic. And beyond that they’ve created an execution ground. The gunmen have already begun dragging people there from the government buildings, the Ministry of Culture first. They seem to have the greatest contempt for the Antiquities Service.”
“It’s a cold calculation,” Jack said. “They’ve used the moderate regime as a stepping-stone over the last months, sweet-talking men like our beloved antiquities director and promising him big rewards, but now that the coup has happened it’s a different story. They want moderates to see that only a strict regime is possible and that any who fail to follow them will pay the price.”
Aysha peered out at the square. “You’re going to see some terrible sights, but you must keep your cool. Do not, I repeat, do not try to intervene.”
“You mean we’re going through that?” Costas said, sounding horrified.
“You’re reporters, right? Reporters don’t slink around in back alleys. They go to where the action is. You’re going to walk right past that crowd and then on toward Salah Salem Street beyond. I’ll make my own way and rendezvous with you there.”
“Won’t you be safer sticking with us?” Costas said.
She shook her head, replacing her head veil so that her face was concealed except the slit for her eyes. “From now on any Egyptian seen helping reporters is going to be targeted, especially a woman. They’ll assume I’m using you as a means of escape.”
An ear-piercing shriek rent the air behind them, followed by the sound of wailing. There was another shriek, cut short by a burst of gunfire. Jack remembered the face of the young woman he had seen sprawled on the ground. That girl had a father and a mother somewhere; she could have been Rebecca, anyone. Aysha saw him staring, and touched his arm. “I call on all Muslims in Egypt and all other faiths to defeat this evil and bring an end to it,” she said. “In Egypt the people will prevail.”
“Amen to that,” Costas said.
A call to prayer suddenly filled the air, crackling out from loudspeakers mounted on a pickup truck that was slowly circling the square.
“Okay,” Aysha whispered. “Walk out now. Don’t even look at me as I leave.”
She was gone, and without thinking Jack did as she instructed, Costas following close behind. Lanowski was nowhere to be seen, but Jack could not afford to track him now. Everyone in the square was kneeling toward the east and praying, following the instructions of the recording from the vehicle. Two of the gunmen saw them and jumped upright, but backed off when Jack walked brazenly forward and thrust the press ID at them. About fifty yards farther on they passed the place where the façade of the mosque was being hacked down and the boys had been picking up rubble to take to the stoning ground. Abruptly the prayer ended and the vehicle sped off, and everyone jumped to their feet. Jack kept pressing on, veering sideways to avoid a crowd of people and the gaze of more gunmen whose eyes were following them.
He reached the northwest corner of the perimeter wall around the mosque, about halfway to the street exit that Aysha had indicated. He took a deep breath as he and Costas rounded the corner into an open space about fifty yards across surrounded on three sides by dense throngs of men and on the other by the perimeter wall of the mosque. By skirting the wall they had walked straight into the gaze of the onlookers, but they were not the main focus of attention. In the center he caught sight of a line of kneeling men, and then saw the flash of a sword. He forced himself to look forward, to focus on getting through. He remembered the image of the burning pyramid; he had thou
ght that was as bad as it could get, but now he realized that it was merely a grim portent. Already another line of men were being led out, kicked and rifle-butted by the gunmen as the swordsman walked back to his starting point, his blade dripping with blood.
Jack reached the onlookers and forced an opening, with Costas following close behind. From his height he could see above the throng to where a further group was being escorted from a street into the square, providing the executioner with a continuous line of victims, the women among them forcibly separated and led in a separate group toward the stoning ground. Many of the men were well dressed but already dishevelled and bloody, some of them pleading and praying as soon as they began to realize what was about to happen to them.
Jack suddenly remembered what Aysha had said: the Ministry of Culture. That was who these people were. Then his heart lurched. The Ministry of Culture included the Antiquities Department. He pressed through the throng, staring at them. He was sure that he recognized some of the faces, inspectors and dirt archaeologists who had been the mainstay of Egyptian archaeology for years, friends and colleagues who had worked alongside Hiebermeyer at the mummy necropolis, at their excavation of the Roman port on the Red Sea, at the crocodile temple site beside the Nile in Sudan. Jack was suddenly conscious of his own visibility, hoping that none of them would see him. He felt as if he were betraying them, but there was nothing he could do. To be recognized now for who he was would be the death knell for him and for Costas. He forced himself to think of what they were doing, taking away a last hope for Egyptology and the achievements of those people, something that might just give the world a legacy of Egypt other than the images of medieval horror they were witnessing now.
They were nearly through the area, but the swaying momentum of the crowd was forcing them close to the line of prisoners. Jack pressed against the crowd to push away from them, but to no avail. There was another eruption of yelling and chants from behind them, and the line of prisoners shuffled forward. He held his Press ID forward and tried to keep his head down, focusing his mind solely on the open street ahead, moving toward the line of gunmen who formed a cordon around the outer perimeter of the crowd.
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