Firebird

by Michael Asher

  I sat down and looked out of the window into the quadrangle where a moisture haze rose from the mass of irrigated plants. I could feel the greatness of Ibram’s dream. No wonder he had been obsessed by it.

  ‘Would you say Ibram was an ambitious man?’ Daisy asked.

  Andropov frowned as if it was a difficult question. ‘If you mean, was he ambitious for power and material wealth,’ he said, ‘I’d say no. Oh, he wanted the things his parents had been deprived of in Egypt, of course — a comfortable house, a car, enough to eat. He was happy with his American wife and two children and never played around. But that was as far as it went. I think he had a real social conscience. He won the NASA Medal for distinguished public service, did you know that? He was just so taken with his dream of greening the desert that he lost touch with reality — that’s my view.’

  ‘Do you happen to know what Doctor Ibram was working on just before he died?’ I asked.

  He shrugged again as if it was a stupid question. ‘He always had a lot of irons in the fire,’ he said, ‘but I think his main interest recently was the Millennium Committee.’

  ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘In one way, yes. It didn’t fit in with his obsession with the desert. But in another way it wasn’t entirely new, because for a couple of years he’d been passionately interested in the Giza Plateau. Passion was part of him, naturally, I mean no one could have mastered all the subjects he did without it. Whenever he got interested in anything he rushed in full tilt — never rested until he knew it inside out. Anyway, about eighteen months ago I heard he’d managed to get funding for a project inside the Great Pyramid looking for some hidden chamber or other. If I remember rightly it was called the Chamber of Thoth. The pyramid was even shut down for a while. Personally I thought the whole idea was crazy — it was a measure of how far Adam had strayed from the orthodox scientific community. Of course he wasn’t known for his work in that field and he had the sense to keep his name out of the press. A guy called Monod — Christian Monod — ran the programme. He’s a talented Swiss engineer who’s been working on pyramid projects for years, and has written God knows how many papers on it. He was meant to be on the Millennium Committee too, but then, a couple of months ago he suddenly disappeared. One potential member vanished and another murdered — that was enough for me. I quit. That’s why I’m here.’

  He sat back and folded his hands as if the interview was concluded. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, and I realized that I wasn’t satisfied. Everything he’d said seemed to make sense, but it was all too glib somehow. It was as if he’d prepared a statement and learned it parrot-fashion. He seemed too distant, his manner too cold and clinical for someone whose old post-grad buddy had been mown down in cold blood. Academics can be the worst backstabbers alive, I knew, but I doubted if his lack of concern was motivated simply by a difference of opinion. What then, I wondered? Jealousy? Had Andropov resented his old colleague’s success? I pondered for a moment and suddenly remembered the graveyard outside.

  ‘Water harvesting isn’t the only thing you practise here is it, Professor?’ I said. ‘You also do medical work.’

  If I’d hoped to faze him the strategy died a death. He turned a vulturine gaze on me and smiled. ‘I trained as a medical doctor before I took up Earth Sciences,’ he said, ‘and I’ve had some experience. They’ve never been able to afford a doctor here at St Samuel’s, so whenever I’m here I help out.’

  ‘And you were here four years ago, when a young Bedouin boy had an accident in the desert?’

  He was about to answer when there was a buzz from Daisy’s mobile. She took it out and pressed the little green telephone signal that I now knew meant ‘answer’. A voice grated and crackled for a moment and she lifted it to her ear, stood up and walked around the room looking annoyed. ‘You’re very weak,’ she said, ‘the signal’s poor.’ Finally she pressed the little red telephone button which meant ‘stop’ and put the mobile back into her handbag, looking worried. ‘Come outside,’ she said.

  I excused myself and followed her through the heavy door into the passage. ‘That was Hammoudi,’ she said. ‘He was speaking from the medical facility in Garden City. Seems Fawzi was taken very ill early this morning, and had a coronary. Our only witness to the Ibram killing just pegged out.’

  17

  Hammoudi was waiting for us in the reception area of the medical facility, poised with an unlit Cleopatra between his fingers under a vast ‘No Smoking’ sign. Two big marines stood over him as if daring him to light the cigarette. They were wearing white helmets, I noticed, and carried spotless M16 rifles, looking as though they were ready for action. On the way from the landing strip I’d spotted the Mukhabaraat Special Ops Squad under Major Rufi on standby only a block away, so perhaps US intelligence was better than I thought.

  ‘Where’s Marvin?’ Daisy demanded. ‘He should be here.’

  ‘He was,’ Hammoudi said, ‘but he had to go and brief your ambassador.’

  As soon as we had shown our ID s and signed on, Hammoudi rushed Daisy and me through the connecting door and up the corridor towards Fawzi’s room with the two marines following. The closed circuit TV cameras seemed to nod at us in recognition as we moved.

  ‘How’d it happen?’ I asked. ‘I mean when we spoke to Fawzi he seemed fine. He was off the critical list, talking — joking even. Once the bleeding’s stopped gunshot wounds in the thighs aren’t supposed to be a big deal.’

  ‘He was all right till this morning,’ Hammoudi growled, ‘he started puking a lot, then went into a coma and just croaked.’

  Another marine guard in a white helmet was on sentry duty outside Fawzi’s room, and the male nurse we’d met before was sitting in the observation area. Through the window I could see that the monitors and life support systems were switched off. There was a mausoleum air to the place. Fawzi’s body lay under a starched white sheet that now covered him from head to foot, and the area around his plump midriff was raised like a tent.

  ‘Marvin wanted to put him in a body bag,’ Hammoudi said, ‘but I insisted they left him there till you both arrived. Not that you can tell much by looking.’

  I said hello to the male nurse who stood up and scowled at me as though he had something to get off his chest. Hammoudi must have guessed what it was because he cut him off abruptly, and pushed open the swing door in front of us. It was Daisy who lifted the sheet. Fawzi’s face had looked bad enough last time I’d seen it, but in death it was horrific — a balloon of purplish-white flesh with bloodless lips curled back in agony, and the pupils under the acres of bruise tissue contracted to black spots.

  Daisy pulled the sheet back hastily. ‘One day the guy’s sitting up and talking,’ she said, ‘the next he’s out like a light. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It makes perfect sense,’ a voice rasped, and we all looked up to see a figure shambling through the swing door — a man in a dark suit with a tadpole head and arms too long for his body. It was Jan Van Helsing.

  ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ I asked Hammoudi. ‘Fawzi wasn’t an American citizen. This case isn’t within his jurisdiction.’

  Van Helsing halted in front of us, and fixed me with his deep, narrow eyes. I felt my hackles rise instinctively. I couldn’t explain it. Van Helsing didn’t have to do anything or say anything to get me angry. His mere presence was enough to spark off my aggression. I wanted to let him have it with a baseball bat right between those narrow eyes, and rip that birdlike fringe out with my bare hands. I stepped back a pace, bristling, taking deep breaths to control my racing pulse, but Van Helsing seemed to engulf me with his long limbs like a spider so that everywhere I turned he was there. ‘First mistake,’ he said, with the oddly cadenced tone I remembered, ‘is that you are on foreign soil. This facility is holy ground — a little bit of the USA — and the diplomatic shield covers it. That makes me the boss here, Lieutenant.’

  I stared at him, wanting to ram the barrel o
f my Beretta down his throat. ‘This is supposed to be an FBI case,’ Hammoudi cut in suddenly, ‘I’ve had no brief from the U S Ambassador about the CIA . You already broke protocol by sequestering police evidence. This facility might be a diplomatic area, but who gave the US embassy the right to bring Fawzi here in the first place? I signed nothing, neither did my minister. What’s happened is that you’ve illegally abducted an Egyptian citizen — and you must answer for his death.’

  Van Helsing turned his gaze to Hammoudi and for a second I was certain he would lash out with those whipcord arms. His eyes were poison. ‘Back off, Hammoudi,’ he said, ‘I know all about you and your reputation doesn’t impress me.’

  Whereas my instinct was always to move back, Hammoudi’s was to move forward slightly, as if to get in range for one of his gunshot punches. He seemed unfazed, but there was a telltale pinkness about his ears, and a silence about him that was both familiar and ominous. For a split second they stared at one another, then Van Helsing looked away, and pointed a long bony finger at me.

  ‘Here’s the one responsible for Fawzi’s death,’ he spat, ‘Mister Big-Detective Rashid of the SID .’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I demanded.

  Van Helsing suddenly reached out his uncannily long arm and jerked the sheet off Fawzi’s face. ‘Look at him!’ he rasped. ‘And remember. You did this. You killed him.’

  ‘Like hell.’

  ‘Ask the nurse. Wheel him in here. He’ll tell you.’ He beckoned to the nurse through the observation window, and a moment later the man in the white labcoat presented himself in front of us. He had that same accusing look in his eye, and I realized my earlier intuition had been right. He had something to say to me and it wasn’t congratulations on my haircut. ‘OK,’ Van Helsing said, ‘tell him what you told me.’

  The male nurse looked me coldly in the eyes. ‘Fawzi was doing fine,’ he said. ‘We were about to move him out of intensive care. Then, about eight-fifteen this morning —I’d just come on duty and was dressing — the security man sounded the alarm. I ran up here but the patient was already vomiting severely. Appeared to be suffering from some kind of food poisoning. I got the stomach pump on the double, but it was too late. The stuff was already in his system.’

  ‘What stuff?’ Daisy enquired.

  ‘I’ll come to that. As I said, it was too late. He died shortly afterwards from a massive coronary infarction. I rang the security room and asked the duty officer why he’d sounded the alarm. He said that he’d seen Fawzi eating something on the TV monitor. Close up, he said, it looked like cubes of hash. I remembered the five deals we found on him when he was admitted. I showed them to Agent Brooke, but last time I saw them they were in the possession of the Lieutenant here.’ His eyes were glaring at me angrily now. ‘You must have given them back to him. That was a negligent act. I never had a patient die before — not on my watch.’

  I felt myself flushing. Daisy and Hammoudi were both staring at me. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I stammered. ‘Why would Fawzi eat dope?’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but that’s not the point. The point is that they cut Red Lebanese with things like strychnine and arsenic. It can be lethal.’

  Van Helsing looked satisfied now. ‘Nice going, Rashid,’ he said, ‘real nice. You signed the death warrant of your only witness in the Ibram case, and I’ll tell you — you’re lucky Fawzi was an Egyptian. If he’d been a U S citizen I’d have had you run in for manslaughter.’

  I swallowed hard. Giving Fawzi back the deals had seemed a decent gesture at the time. How did I know the guy would be stupid enough to eat it? People eat grass all the time, of course, but mostly cooked. Fawzi had just been incredibly unlucky, that’s all. Still, I knew I’d been a fool — there’d been no real reason to give him the stuff back — and Van Helsing was right. Fawzi’s death was my fault and there was no getting away from it. I looked at Hammoudi. He had remained impassive, weighing up the pros and cons. It was at times like this that I appreciated his professionalism.

  ‘Did Fawzi have any visitors this morning?’ he asked the nurse. ‘Anyone at all.’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ the nurse said, ‘but the wards are monitored constantly and any visitor would show up on the screen.’

  ‘The security staff reported no visitors,’ Van Helsing cut in.

  ‘Are the TV monitors taped?’ Hammoudi enquired.

  ‘Sure they are,’ Van Helsing said, ‘no point if they weren’t. But the video tapes are U S property and they’re classified.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Hammoudi said. ‘So apart from the nurse’s testimony there’s no proof of your accusation, Mr Van Helsing.’

  The CIA man grinned, showing sharply chiselled teeth. ‘There can’t be any doubt. The security supervisor swears he saw Fawzi eating the dope.’

  ‘OK,’ Hammoudi said, ‘but even if Fawzi did eat the stuff, the security man can’t swear that was the cause of death. I mean he’s not a pathologist. It could have been something else.’

  ‘Our pathologist is already standing by,’ Van Helsing said.

  Hammoudi allowed himself a flicker of a smile. ‘I don’t think this is the proper place for the autopsy. Fawzi should never have been brought here at all, but I accepted it as it had already been done. Technically Fawzi was abducted by foreign agents. An Egyptian police pathologist on Egyptian territory will carry out the autopsy. If the result shows that his death was linked with culpable negligence on the part of Lieutenant Rashid, then disciplinary action will be taken. By me, that is, not by the CIA.’

  Van Helsing had been listening with mounting amusement obvious on his face. He nodded towards the three big marines who were now on guard in the observation area. ‘What I see,’ he said, ‘is that the stiff’s here. It’d be quite a headache getting it past all the cameras and those boys.’

  Hammoudi shrugged, brought a cell phone from his pocket and punched in a number. After a second or two there came an answering voice. ‘Captain Rufi?’ Hammoudi said. ‘Cordon off the entrance to the facility, and bring the ambulance. If I’m not out in exactly five minutes, you have my permission to move in with force if necessary.’ He put the phone away. ‘I took the liberty of having our Special Ops Squad put on standby,’ he told Van Helsing. ‘They are two hundred strong and at this moment they’re only a block away. You stand in my way, and they’ll be in here like jackals.’

  Van Helsing scoffed. ‘Jackals,’ he spat. ‘I’ve seen those boys. A bunch of nancies.’

  ‘They may not be as well trained as your marines,’ Hammoudi said, ‘but believe me, they can make one hell of a mess.’

  Van Helsing leered again. ‘You’ll cause an international incident,’ he said.

  Hammoudi remained completely unruffled. ‘No, you will,’ he said. ‘You’re not getting away with abducting an Egyptian, not even a dead one.’

  Van Helsing smiled suddenly, a smile so suggestive it was infinitely worse than his scowl. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘take the stiff. But it won’t do you any good.’

  As we pushed Fawzi’s body down the corridor on the trolley I couldn’t look Daisy in the eye. OK, Hammoudi had got me off the hook for now, but whatever the autopsy proved, I knew I’d screwed up.

  18

  After Hammoudi had left in the ambulance I walked down the Corniche and across the Manial Bridge to Roda Island, into the honeycomb of streets behind my apartment block. It was after sundown and the last spurt of crimson lit up the eastern sky, throwing blood-coloured slashes high up on the faceless walls of the buildings. Sidewalks were deserted and traffic had vanished. It was the third day of Ramadan — the holy fasting month — and the population had beaten a hasty retreat from shops and offices to enjoy a meal after twelve hours without eating or drinking. Muezzins were chiming in from the minarets of mosques all over Cairo, each call out of kilter, so that the city seemed dominated by a strange communion of dissonant voices echoing and re-echoing across the night. I knew these backstreets like
the palm of my hand, yet tonight they seemed distorted and so unfamiliar that I scarcely recognized them. Pillars of blackness seemed to fall across my path at surreal angles, and the very shape and texture of the place seemed somehow wrong. Knots of light lingered in odd corners and there were occasional islands of brilliance where streetlamps had been installed. As I passed them my shadow flopped out in front of me like an elongated squeeze of darkness.

  The muezzins’ calls died out, leaving an eerie vacuum. I shivered. The night chill had already seeped into the alleys, and I zipped up my jacket and rubbed my hands, straining my ears instinctively for sounds, hearing only the soft fall of my trainers on the flagstones. I’d been brought up in backstreets like this and the dark didn’t usually worry me. Tonight, though, there was a feeling in the air — a kind of heaviness — that set my teeth on edge. It had been on a night like this — only two weeks ago —that I’d found the tailor’s boy dead in Khan al-Khalili, his body ripped and torn to bloody slivers. I’d glimpsed the creature then — the ghoul or whatever you wanted to call it — a slinking, evil presence, side winding down the alley like the shadow of some enormous human crab. One thing was certain — the beast’s attacks were becoming more frequent. It occurred to me suddenly how precisely the ghoul’s presence seemed to counterpoint the Ibram investigation. Ibram himself had been interested in ghouls; Fawzi had mentioned them; Sanusi was a full blown expert.