Firebird

by Michael Asher

  Daisy was patiently treading water and I hauled her out, holding her tighter than politeness permitted. If she minded she didn’t say anything, and her body felt taut and hard under the wetsuit. ‘Jesus Christ!’ she panted as she pulled the mask off. ‘You try treading water with two full tanks and a weighted belt. What the hell was that about, anyway?’

  ‘Police,’ I said, ‘on the lookout for drug smugglers. At least, that was what they said.’

  She slipped off her hood and shook out her wet hair, which caught the light and sparkled exotically. She sat down on one of the plank seats. ‘You think they were on to you?’ she enquired.

  ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Bit of a coincidence picking on us like that. For a moment I knew how a hare feels when you get it in your headlights. Anyway, if they come back, I’m prepared.’ I showed her the oilskin bag in which I’d sealed my Beretta.

  She felt the metal through the waxy material. ‘You mean you’re ready to take on your own people?’ she asked. There was wonder in her voice.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I said, ‘but there’s a general alert out for your favourite SID lieutenant, and tonight we’re on the wrong side of the law. Let’s say if the moment comes I’m going to have to think very carefully about whether I want to be taken in.’

  There were a few seconds of silence, and I could feel rather than see Daisy’s eyes boring into me. She was wondering if it was bravado, and if not what kind of cop it was who was ready to shoot it out with his own team. She was concluding that it could either be a cop who was secretly on the make, or one who was working to some higher agenda. Which of those was Sammy Rashid, she must have thought.

  ‘I’m a bit awed that you’re willing to go to such extremes for me,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know I’m charming and all, but I didn’t realize it was as powerful as that!’

  I smirked, catching the irony in her tone. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s drop the mutual admiration society meeting, shall we? What did you find down there?’

  She must have grinned, but I only got a flash of silver-white teeth. ‘That’s the good news,’ she said. ‘The masonry’s sandstone, and it’s been eaten away by the water. The grille’s come loose at the bottom and I pulled it almost all the way out, so we can go through the drain like a dose of salts.’

  26

  The water was cold even in the wetsuit. I carried my oilskin bag slung from a weighted belt, and drew in lungfuls of canned air in great huffs. I towed the oxyacetylene gear behind me, not out of chivalry, but so Daisy could light the way in front with her sub aqua torch. In its powerful beam I saw things I’d rather not have seen, dead rats, birds, human faeces — and, just in front of the grating the torch picked out the bloated cadaver of a huge black dog, staring right at us with its diseased yellow eyes. I shivered, thinking of the dog-headed god Anubis, protector of the secret passages.

  We passed under the grille and into the pitch darkness beyond where there was no sound but the slop of water on old masonry and the constant eruption of bubbles from our mouthpieces. The only light was the starburst around Daisy’s head, from which I could see her body in silhouette, sleek and undulating, as streamlined as a seal. In the spotlight the water looked smooth and creamy, but the drain zigzagged left and right, occasionally leaving me in total oblivion. It was frighteningly claustrophobic, and I wondered whether it would be like this at the bottom of the deepest ocean. In those dark moments I thought I saw shadows flitting by, floating beings with hieroglyph faces — falcon-headed men, lion-headed women, creatures with the heads of men and the bodies of dogs or lions, many-headed hydras, sharp-taloned ghouls. I thought of Ra’s battle with demons in the waterways of the night, and then I realized that these images were products of my own imagination — projections of my unconscious mind on the emptiness.

  Suddenly Daisy stopped. The drain seemed lower and narrower here, and she was standing, crouching with her flippers on the bottom, shining the spotlight upwards and pointing emphatically. She cut the light and immediately there was a faint, greenish answering glow from the surface. I touched bottom with my feet, feeling the slime under my flippers. I stood upright and found my head in an air pocket between the arch of the tunnel roof and the water surface. The water was up to my shoulders, and immediately above my head, almost touching it, was a grille about half a metre square, riveted into the masonry by four brackets, its iron bars covered in some kind of steel gauze. I switched off my oxygen, and pulled away my mouthpiece, sucking in dank air. A moment later Daisy surfaced, pushed her mask up and her mouthpiece down, and coughed. The water was almost up to her chin when she stood upright.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘it’s going to be tricky cutting iron in this depth of water.’

  I handed her the cutting rig and grasped the iron bars, pulling down with all my weight. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘It’s firm.’

  The greenish glow from behind the grating was obviously a security light left on in the corridor. It was dim, but enough to work in. ‘Better get started,’ Daisy said. She had just handed the cylinder back to me and pulled her mask down ready to submerge again, when I heard the distinct sound of a key snicking in a lock and a door creaking open. I made a frantic gesture and we stood stock still, hearing footfalls above, muffled but distinct on the heavy stonework. A moment later a shadow passed over us, and then a second, smaller one. The footfalls grew softer and disappeared, and Daisy was about to duck under water when I grabbed her shoulder urgently. The footsteps were coming back towards us again and a moment later the large shadow tramped across the grille quickly. The smaller one lingered, though, and suddenly I became aware of a snuffling noise, followed by a deep throated growl. An elongated snout pressed itself against the gauze, foreshortened by my peculiar angle of view. ‘Allah,’ a man’s voice said, ‘it’s only rats. Come on, boy!’ Suddenly the dog barked, and the sound made my skin prickle. I realized that there were glaring red eyes behind the snout, and that they were looking straight into mine. I made a hand signal to Daisy and we both took a breath and slid silently under the water. When we emerged cautiously a couple of minutes later the shadows had gone.

  ‘That’s the extent of the interior patrol,’ Daisy said, ‘but how do we know how often they look in? Maybe once a night, maybe once an hour, maybe completely random.’

  ‘We can’t wait all night to find out,’ I said. ‘We either bug out now or we go in and take the chance.’

  Daisy nodded. One after the other we stripped off our tanks and laid them gently on the slimy floor of the drain beneath us. Then Daisy dipped under again with the oxyacetylene torch and there was a fizz of chemicals as she fired it. A moment later she emerged with what looked like a giant sparkler on a stick, grasping the handle with both hands as if scared it might get away from her. The roar of the fire was sickening and the blue-orange flame was so hot I had to back away. I hoped to hell Daisy knew what she was doing — one slip of the feet and either of us could have been fried. She wielded the sizzling thing like a sword, shakily applying the nozzle to the first bracket on the grille. In minutes the old pig-iron had turned brilliant lava-red, and the burner began to slice through it like cheese. It was nauseating work though, cradling the heavy cylinder, gasping, sweating and spluttering in the fumes and the heat, and wondering any minute whether the door would open and the guard come in. By the time the first bracket was severed Daisy’s arms were trembling with effort.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘I never thought I’d have to do it like this. When you’re fully submerged the water does the work.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘we’d have been better off with a good old fashioned hacksaw.’ She lowered the gear for a moment to rest. ‘Let me have a turn,’ I said, passing the cylinder to her, ‘I’m taller than you.’

  She nodded reluctantly and handed me the burner, showing me how to squeeze the trigger that released the gases. I turned the flame on the second bracket and clung to the trigger doggedly until sweat was dripping from my face into the water and my shoulders
screamed with pain. One bracket at a time was all we could manage, and we took turns to cut the remaining two. ‘It’s about to go,’ Daisy told me urgently, as I worked on the last one. ‘Don’t let it fall.’ The thing was already buckling under its own weight, and I knew there was no way we could stop it crashing down on us. When the last fragment parted we both leapt aside frantically as the heavy mass of iron toppled and fell, hitting the water with a splash, missing us by inches. ‘Cut the torch,’ Daisy yelled.

  I cut it, and laid the oxyacetylene cylinder down on the tunnel floor. We got rid of excess baggage, then I made my hands into a foothold and gave her a leg up through the opening into the green lit tunnel above. I watched her for a moment as she poised there on one knee, then grasped the edge of the hole and levered myself up from a standing position by working my legs. Daisy helped me up the last couple of feet, and we both crouched in the half light, breathing heavily, listening for movement. The corridor was built of solid limestone blocks, some of them stained with a patina of green lichen, and others damp and dripping with moisture. The atmosphere was clammy and the air thick and fetid — hardly the kind of place, I thought, to put archives. I had a feeling that this basement complex was old — much older than the embassy buildings above: judging by the precision with which the blocks had been fitted it might have been here since ancient Egyptian times.

  I unsealed my oilskin bag, brought out my Beretta and cocked it. The noise of the mechanism sliding back seemed to echo round the tunnel, and Daisy stared at me in irritation. The place was low and the ceiling seemed to bulge down at us as if it was slightly warped, curving away very gently out of sight. At one end there was a flight of stone steps leading up to an iron door — presumably the one the guard had come through. About ten metres in the other direction stood another metal door with a brass padlock, which had to be the entrance to the archives. What worried me was that if the guard came visiting while we were inside our escape route would be entirely cut off. That meant that strong arm tactics would be necessary and despite packing my piece I didn’t relish the idea of popping a security guard. For a moment I played with the idea of one of us standing watch, but rejected it. Just finding the file was going to need us both.

  Daisy pointed down the tunnel silently. I stuffed the pistol into my bag and followed her to the archive door. ‘A bloody whopper!’ she whispered, eyeing the enormous padlock. ‘The only way to get through that thing is to shoot it off or cut it with the oxyacetylene.’

  ‘Nall!’ I whispered back. ‘Like you said, there’s more ways than one of skinning a cat. The harder they come the harder they fall.’

  I took my homemade wire burglar’s tool from my bag, and inserted it in the eye of the lock, then held the heavy brass close to my ear, probing for the right pressure. It was a tricky job and it took time. Daisy shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, glancing behind her occasionally. Five minutes passed then ten.

  ‘That damn guard’s going to be back in a minute,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake let’s blast it off!’

  Just at that moment there was a satisfying click and the lock sprang open. Daisy let out a hiss of relief. ‘About time,’ she whispered.

  ‘The skills of a misspent youth!’ I said.

  The door opened outwards, and as we entered the musty smell of old documents hit us full in the face. The room was big, lined with row upon row of steel shelves that stretched almost from floor to ceiling. Like the corridor, the archives were lit with green night lights. Daisy tiptoed around with her torch, examining the index lists on the end of each set of shelves, while I closed the door gently behind us, then had second thoughts and opened it again. ‘Find anything?’ I asked.

  ‘The files are organized according to the old British system,’ she whispered. ‘That is, no one knows how they’re organized but the archivist. It was a cunning tactic archivists developed to keep themselves in a job.’

  I was impressed that she was cool enough to joke in a situation like this. ‘Look under “S” for Sanusiya,’ I told her.

  We found the bay marked ‘S’ and worked our way down dozens and dozens of files, many so dusty that we had to smack the dust off to read them. The odd thing was that the files appeared to be in reverse alphabetical order, so that we had to work back from ‘Sy’ to ‘Sa’, which we found on the topmost shelf of the last section, far out of reach. ‘How the hell did they get up there?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Either they could fly, or they had a ladder,’ I said. ‘I’d put money on the ladder.’ A few seconds later I found a wheeled ladder and pushed it along to the first section, its wheels squeaking excruciatingly as it moved. To our sensitized ears, the thing sounded as loud as a farm cart. I held the ladder still while Daisy shimmied up with her spotlight. Now it was my turn to wait impatiently. The minutes seemed to pass by with grinding slowness. ‘Anything?’ I whispered urgently.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she answered.

  Thirty seconds later she almost slid down the ladder, grasping a battered envelope-type file tied with ribbon, smiling with anticipation. The file was marked ‘Sanusiya 1916’.

  ‘Yes!’ I said.

  She untied the string with shaky fingers while I held the torch. Halaby had described it as a fat file, and it probably had been once, but now it contained only a slim sheaf of typed papers. Daisy laid the papers on a step of the ladder, picked up her utility bag and brought out a tiny document camera sealed in heavy duty polythene. She unsealed the bag and clicked the camera’s priming mechanism. ‘Hold the flashlight!’ she ordered. I shone it on the first page, and Daisy focused the camera. When she pressed the shutter, though, there was a dry click. She pressed again and again, producing nothing but more dry clicks, then threw the camera into her bag angrily. ‘Damn water’s got in!’ she said. She picked up the file and motioned me to hold the spotlight close while she read, concentrating hard, moving her finger swiftly down the page. ‘This is incredible!’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s an essay on Cambyses’ army by T. E. Lawrence.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cambyses’ army.’

  ‘That’s ancient history — a Persian invasion force that attempted to attack Siwa Oasis in 525 BC and was lost in the desert. What’s that got to do with the Sanusiya?’

  She shook her head frantically, and I could tell the pressure was getting to her at last. ‘It’s not here,’ she said, almost sobbing, ‘looks like it’s all been torn out. We stuck our heads in the fire for nothing!’ She slapped the sheaf of papers closed and suddenly I noticed something that sent me almost rigid with anticipation. I drew in my breath sharply and Daisy stared at me.

  ‘Look!’ I said, pointing. The title on the outside of the file had been ‘Sanusiya 1916’, but the name on the title page clearly read Operation Firebird. Daisy gasped, and at that moment precisely there came heavy, rapid footsteps from the tunnel outside.

  27

  Daisy cut the light and we stood like statues, squeezed up in the shadows of the great galleries of the shelves. An instant later a figure stood framed in the doorway carrying a security flashlight in one hand and a revolver in the other. Thankfully there was no sign of the dog. He paused there, probably unaware that his silhouette made a perfect target, traversing the avenues between the shelves methodically with his beam. He took a step forward into the room, and I eased my Beretta out silently. I turned to glance at Daisy, and I suddenly realized that she’d vanished — just disappeared into thin air. I cast about desperately, hardly believing my eyes, and at almost the same time the security guard advanced cautiously weaving the flashlight from side to side. I pressed further into the shadow and lifted the Beretta slowly. I didn’t want to shoot, but it was starting to look as if I’d have no choice. The guard passed a gap in the rows of shelves and halted, shining his torch right into my face. ‘OK ,’ he growled, ‘I’ve got you cold. Drop that thing and put your hands where I can see them.’

  For an instant mister-nice-guy got
the better of me and I let the Beretta waver. Right then a hand flashed out of the shadows with the force of a sledgehammer, and smacked into the big guy’s neck. He stiffened and collapsed, and both torch and revolver skittered across the stone floor. Daisy stepped out of the gap, kicked the fallen revolver under the shelves and skipped lightly over the inert body. For a second I stared in amazement. I realized she must have moved away from me and sneaked behind the shelves with the silence of a phantom. She’d poleaxed a guard twice her weight with a blow so sure and powerful that most men couldn’t have delivered it.

  ‘Come on!’ she whispered, and a moment later we were both dashing for the door. We got into the tunnel just in time to see a big Dobermann hurtling straight towards us from the direction of the outside entrance at the other end. Daisy paused to grope in her holdall, and I gripped my Beretta in both hands. I was about to squeeze the trigger when she yelled, ‘Cover your ears!’ from behind, and there was an ear-splitting boom as a great gash of orange flame shot out, almost touching the running dog. The shock of the noise was so shattering that I had to hold on to the wall with one hand, feeling nausea welling up in my guts.