by Paul Sussman
'Rumours,' he muttered eventually. 'Hints. A word here, a word there.'
'Saying?'
Suleiman's voice dropped to a whisper. 'That they've found a tomb.'
'And?'
'And there's something extraordinary in it. Something priceless.'
Khalifa swirled the tea dregs around the bottom of his glass. 'Any idea where?'
Suleiman nodded towards the hills. 'Out there somewhere.'
'Out there is a very big area. Anything more specific?'
A shake of the head.
'Sure?'
'Sure.'
A long pause. The tarmac of the car park undulated in the heat. From somewhere behind them came the braying of a donkey. Nearby a European couple were haggling with a taxi driver over the fare down to the river.
'Why's everyone so frightened, Suleiman?' asked Khalifa gently. 'Who's got to them?'
Silence.
'Who am I dealing with here?'
Suleiman came to his feet, picking up the two empty glasses. He seemed not to have heard the question.
'Suleiman? Who are these people?'
The attendant began making his way back towards the toilet trailer. When he spoke he didn't turn his head.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' he said. 'It is Sayf al-Tha'r they are afraid of. I'm sorry, Inspector, I have work to do. It was good of you to come.'
He clambered up the trailer steps and disappeared inside, closing the door behind him.
Khalifa lit a cigarette and leaned back against the wall. 'Sayf al-Tha'r,' he whispered. 'Why did I know it would be you?'
ABU SIMBEL
The young Egyptian mingled with the crowd, his baseball cap pulled low about his eyes. He looked no different from the other tourists milling around the feet of the four giant statues, except that he seemed to be muttering to himself and to take little interest in the huge seated figures rearing overhead. Rather, his attention was focused on the three white-uniformed guards sitting on a bench nearby. He glanced at his watch, swung his knapsack off his shoulder and began undoing the straps.
It was mid-morning. Two coaches of American tourists had just arrived, disgorging a stream of passengers onto the tarmac, all of them wearing yellow T-shirts. Postcard sellers and trinket hawkers swarmed around them.
The young man now had his knapsack open. He dropped to one knee and fiddled inside it. To his left a group of Japanese tourists were grouped around their guide, who was holding a fly whisk in the air so they could see where she was.
'The great temple was built by the Pharaoh Ramesses II in the thirteenth century BC,' she shouted, 'and was dedicated to the gods Re-Harakhty, Amun and Ptah . . .'
One of the three guards was looking at the muttering figure. His two companions were smoking and talking together.
'The four seated statues represent the King-God Ramesses. Each is over twenty metres high . . .'
The American tourists had started to arrive, laughing and chattering. One of them had a video camera and was issuing instructions to his wife, telling her to go forward, move to the left, look up, smile. The young Egyptian stood again, one arm still inside the rucksack. The guard continued to stare at him, then nudged his companions, who ceased their conversation and looked towards him too.
'The smaller statues between the legs of Ramesses represent the king's mother, Muttuya, his favourite wife, Nefertari, and some of his children . . .'
The young man's voice suddenly grew louder. Several people turned to look at him. He closed his eyes briefly and then, smiling broadly, withdrew his arm from the bag, a Heckler and Koch submachine gun clutched in his hand. In the same movement he swept his cap from his head, revealing a deep vertical scar running between his eyebrows.
'Sayf al-Tha'r!' he cried and, pointing the gun into the crowd, pulled the trigger. There was a click, but no gunfire.
The three policemen leaped to their feet, grappling with their rifles. Everyone else just stood where they were, horrified, rooted to the spot. For a moment everything was still while the gunman clawed frantically at his weapon, then he snatched at the trigger again and this time the Heckler and Koch fired. There was a furious cracking sound and bullets scythed into the crowd, tearing flesh, snapping bone, spattering the sand with blood. People began running madly, some away from the gunman, others, confused, directly towards him, screams of pain and terror filling the air. The man with the video crumpled; the three guards were thrown backwards and down. Above the roar of his gun and cries of distress the young man could be heard singing and laughing.
The barrage continued for perhaps ten seconds, enough to leave a field of bodies at the feet of the great statues. Then the Heckler and Koch jammed again and the air was curiously silent. The gunman fought with his weapon for a moment, and then, throwing it aside, fled into the desert.
He didn't get far. Five of the trinket sellers chased after him and, dragging him to the ground, began kicking him with their bare feet, his head jerking back and forth like a ball.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' he cried, laughing, blood bursting from his nose and mouth. 'Sayf al-Tha'r!'
16
CAIRO
Tara woke with a start. She sat up groggily and looked around, realizing she was in bed in Daniel's hotel room. For a horrified moment she thought perhaps . . . Then she saw she was still fully clothed and at the same time noticed the sheets lying on the sofa opposite, where presumably he had slept. She looked at her watch. It was almost midday.
'Bollocks,' she muttered, staggering to her feet, head throbbing.
There was a bottle of mineral water beside the bed and, unscrewing the cap, she took a long swig. Noise drifted up from the street outside. There was no sign of Daniel. No note.
Something inside her felt inexplicably soiled by the previous night's encounter, as if by coming here she had somehow let herself down. She wanted to get out quickly before he came back and, finishing the water, she scribbled a note apologizing for having fallen asleep, picked up her knapsack and left. She didn't tell him where she was staying.
Back on the street she headed towards the huge stone gateway they'd passed through the night before. Then, fearful suddenly of bumping into Daniel, she swung round and set off in the opposite direction, following the narrow street deeper into the old Islamic quarter.
It was hot and dusty, and a swell of people jostled all around her – women carrying baskets of newly baked bread on their heads, merchants hawking their wares, children juddering along on the backs of donkeys. In other circumstances she might have enjoyed the scene: the alien sounds and smells, the colourful stalls with their baskets of dates and dried hibiscus petals, the cages crammed with rabbits and ducks and chickens.
As it was, she felt tired and confused. Sudden harsh noises assaulted her ears – the clanging of hammers, the blare of a moped horn, a burst of music from a radio – drilling into her head and disorientating her. The smell of refuse and spices made her faintly nauseous, while there was something claustrophobic about the way the crowd pressed in from all sides, clasping her in a stranglehold of moving bodies. She passed a group of boys unloading sheets of brass from the back of a lorry, a girl standing on top of a pile of jute sacks, two old men playing dominoes at the roadside, and all of them seemed to be staring at her. A man on a wooden scaffold shouted something, but she ignored him and pushed on through the throng, bumping into people, struggling for breath, wishing she was back in her hotel room, cool and quiet and safe.
After about ten minutes she came upon a butcher killing chickens at the side of the road. One by one he pulled the birds from a cage, nudging back their beaks with his thumb and slitting their throats before dropping them into a blue plastic barrel, their wings still flapping feebly. A semi-circle of onlookers had gathered to watch and Tara joined them, sickened by the scene but curiously compelled by it too.
She didn't notice the men at first, so mesmerized was she by the sight of the butcher's knife slicing across the soft pink-white flesh of the chickens' throats. It was
only after she'd been watching for a couple of minutes that she happened to glance up and see them standing across from her, two of them, bearded, with black djellabas and 'immas bound low about their heads. Both were gazing directly at her.
She held their look for a moment, then returned her attention to the butcher. Two more birds were slaughtered and then she glanced up again. They were still staring at her, their expressions hard, unflinching. There was something unsettling about them and, detaching herself from the group, she moved off down the street. The men waited a few seconds, then followed.
After fifty metres she stopped in front of a shop selling backgammon boards. The black-robed figures stopped as well, making no effort to disguise the fact they were watching her. She moved on again and the men moved as well, keeping about thirty metres behind, their eyes never leaving her. She quickened her step and turned right into another street. Ten paces, fifteen, twenty, and there they were behind her again. Her heart started to pound. This street was even narrower than the one before and seemed to get narrower still the further she went along it, the buildings to either side inching together like the jaws of a vice, the crowds becoming ever more compressed. She could sense her pursuers getting closer. Another street opened up ahead and to the right and, pushing her way through the crowd, she ducked down it.
This one was deserted and for a moment she felt relieved, glad to have got out of the crowd. Then she began to wonder if she had made a mistake. Here she was exposed; there was no-one she could call to for help. The emptiness seemed suddenly threatening. She spun round, intending to burrow her way back into the throng, but the men had come up more quickly than she had expected and were now just ten metres away. For a moment she stood staring at them, frozen, then turned and started to run. Five seconds and then behind her the thud of pursuing feet.
'Someone help me!' she cried, her voice sounding muffled and weak, as though she was shouting through a cloth.
Fifty metres along she swerved left into another street, then right, then left again, no longer caring where she was going, just wanting to get away. Heavy wooden doors flashed past to either side, and at one point she stopped and hammered on one, but there was no response and after a few seconds she ran on again, terrified that if she waited any longer she would be caught. The sound of her pursuers' feet seemed to echo all around, magnified and distorted by the narrow streets, so that it seemed as if they were coming from in front as well as behind. She had lost all sense of direction. Her head throbbed. She felt sick with fear. She continued running for what felt like an age, zigzagging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of back streets before eventually emerging into a small, sun-filled square with other streets leading off it in different directions. There was a stunted palm tree at its centre, with an old man sitting in the shade beneath it. She ran over to him.
'Please,' she pleaded. 'Please. Can you help me?'
The man looked up. Both eyes were milky white. He held out his hand.
'Baksheesh,' he said. 'Baksheesh.'
'No,' she hissed, desperate, 'no baksheesh. Help me!'
'Baksheesh,' he repeated, grabbing her sleeve. 'Give baksheesh.'
She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let go, his fingers clutching her shirt like a claw.
'Baksheesh! Baksheesh!'
There was a shout and the sound of running feet. She looked up wildly. Four streets led into the square, including the one she had entered by. She swung her eyes from one to the other, trying to work out where the sound was coming from, the whole square throbbing with the pounding of feet, as though someone was playing a drum. For a moment she remained motionless, unable to decide which direction she should take. Then, her terror giving her an unexpected strength, she ripped her arm away from the blind man and ran full tilt towards the street opposite the one she had first come down. Even as she approached it she saw two bearded figures turn a corner up ahead and charge straight towards her. She swerved and made for one of the other streets, but then, prompted by some instinct she couldn't fully explain, swerved again and ran towards the street she had entered by.
She stopped at its mouth and turned, gasping for breath. The two black-robed men were entering the square. They spotted her and slowed, glancing to their right, towards the street she'd almost gone down but had then shied away from. There was a pause and then a huge figure emerged, the same figure she had seen at Saqqara and outside her hotel. His suit was crumpled and his piebald face beaded with sweat. For a moment he stood staring at her, breathing heavily, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small builder's trowel.
'Where is it?' he snarled, moving towards her. 'Where is the piece?'
'I don't know what you mean,' gasped Tara. 'You've got the wrong person.'
'Where is it?' he repeated. 'The missing piece. The hieroglyphs. Where are they?'
He was halfway across the square now, almost at the palm tree.
'Baksheesh!' wailed the blind man, grabbing at the giant's linen jacket, clasping a handful of material. 'Baksheesh.'
The giant tried to brush him off but couldn't. He cursed and, raising the handle of his trowel, smashed it down into the blind man's nose. There was a loud cracking sound, like twigs, and a deafening scream of pain. Tara didn't wait to see any more. She turned and fled. From behind came the thunder of pursuing feet.
She ran and ran, blood pounding in her ears, swinging left beneath an arch into a sort of tunnel which led into a courtyard full of women washing clothes. She rushed past them and out through a gate into a street. There were more people here. She wheeled right into another street and suddenly there were people everywhere, and shops and stalls. She slowed momentarily, heaving for air, and then pushed on. Almost immediately, however, strong hands seized her and spun her round.
'No!' she cried. 'No! Let me go.'
She fought, punching out with her fists.
'Tara!'
'Let me go!'
'Tara!'
It was Daniel. Rearing over him, its twin minarets piercing the pale afternoon sky, was the stone gateway near the hotel. She had come full circle.
'They're trying to kill me,' she gasped. 'They're trying to kill me and I think they killed Dad too.'
'Who? Who's trying to kill you?'
'Them.'
She turned and pointed. The street, however, was so jammed with people that even if her pursuers had been among them it would have been impossible to spot them. She searched for a moment and then, turning back to Daniel, buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him.
LUXOR
As Khalifa walked away from the Temple of Hatshepsut, mulling over what Suleiman had told him, he passed a couple of young boys coming up from Dra Abu el-Naga on camelback. They were laughing together, flicking at the camels with their sticks, urging the ungainly beasts forward with the traditional camel driver's cries of 'Yalla besara!' and 'Yalla nimsheh!' ('Hurry up! Let's go!'). He turned to watch them and suddenly the present seemed to evaporate and he was a child himself again, back at the camel stables in Giza with his brother Ali, in the old days before everything fell apart.
Khalifa had never been sure when Ali had first gone over to Sayf al-Tha'r. It hadn't been a sudden association. Rather, a gradual assimilation; a slow ripple effect that had carried his brother inexorably away from his friends and family and into the arms of violence. Khalifa had often thought that if only he had noticed earlier how Ali was changing, hardening, perhaps he could have done something. But he hadn't noticed. Or at least he'd tried to persuade himself that things weren't as bad as they seemed. And because of that Ali had died. Because of him.
Islam had always been a part of their lives and as with any other great faith there was an element of anger in it. Khalifa remembered how the imam at their local mosque, in his Friday khutbar, would rail against the Zionists and the Americans and the Egyptian government, warning how the Kufr were trying to destroy the ummah, the Moslem community. No doubt his words had planted seeds in Ali's mind
.
