Firebird

by Michael Asher

  I got up cursing, stepped into the kitchen and lifted the receiver. It wasn’t Hammoudi. It was my ghaffir on the front entrance — the one I’d have sworn didn’t know my name. Only he did know it. ‘Mr Rashid,’ he said tensely,

  ‘I think you ought to know, Your Presence, that four men just asked the number of your apartment and are coming up in the lift now. And I can tell you, sir, I didn’t like the look of them at all.’

  I slammed the phone down. ‘Daisy!’ I bawled, grabbing my Beretta and its shoulder rig from the back of a chair. Daisy ran into the kitchen looking shaken.

  ‘They’re on the way now!’ I snapped. ‘You got anything more kosher than that ear blaster in your baggage?’ We went back into the sitting room and she groped in her rucksack, coming out with her big S I G 9mm and several clips. I switched off the light. There was a whuff of percussion from outside and the door disintegrated, sending splinters of wood across the room. A dark figure in a black ankle length Barbour coat, with dark glasses for eyes and his head bound in a tight shamagh, was lurking outside. He held two small submachine pistols in his hands, and if he’d been quick enough he could have taken us both out there and then. But black smoke from the charge he’d put on the door was rolling into the room in wafts, and as he inched forward slightly to escape it there was a fraction of a second’s hiatus. In that instant Daisy shot him in the guts.

  We didn’t wait to see the guy fall or to watch if more came in. We retreated into the kitchen, closed and locked the door and pulled a table and chairs across it. Not that I kidded myself this would stop anyone: I was just hoping it would slow them down for a few seconds. We rushed out through my rear exit, and I whispered a silent prayer of thanks that I’d had the gumption to choose an apartment with a bolthole. We dashed down the stairs to the cellar door, and this time I didn’t bother with my wedge. My safe house had been blown. I knew I wouldn’t be coming back, and I was glad I’d never got attached to the place. Something — an intuition — told me that I’d served my time, that one way or another the old double life was over.

  We burst out through the street door almost colliding with two shadows in shamaghs and long black coats, armed with automatic rifles. We weren’t expected, I could tell. One of them got a round off and Daisy grunted and fell, rolling over on the stone steps. I ducked as bullets blammed over my head and let the first guy have it in the groin at almost hard contact range. He screeched as his balls blew apart and dropped his rifle. I lunged at the other guy, getting his neck in the crook of one elbow and strangling him with his own weapon. He was taller than me, but not much heavier, and I dragged his head down and kneed him in the face. He folded, gurgling, and I kicked him in the balls and rammed his head against the stonework. As he reeled I jerked the weapon from his grip. He stretched out a clawed hand and locked it round my neck, but I grabbed the wrist with my left and snapped backwards. There was a crunch as the bones parted company and the guy screamed and clutched at his wrist, not quite quick enough to cover up a small icon that was tattooed there. A beam of light from a window caught it, and I realized that it was a hieroglyph, punched into the skin like a brand — so hard that the flesh was raised. I only saw it for a moment but I would have sworn it was the hieroglyph for the goddess of devastation, Sekhmet — the incarnation of the Eye of Ra.

  Suddenly the street door banged open and I glimpsed three or four more black coated, muffled figures beyond. I was about to fire when rounds whizzed past my ear and the first guy flew back and slammed into the others. I jumped backwards to see Daisy already on her feet, blasting away with her S I G , clutching a bloody shoulder with her left hand. ‘I’m OK,’ she shouted in an unsteady voice, ‘it’s cool.’

  ‘Come on!’ I yelled, grabbing her hand.

  We ran for the nearest intersecting alley that twisted and turned around a maze of blocks, curving back eventually to the perimeter road. Before we’d gone ten metres, though, there were bursts of submachine gun fire and rounds whined around our feet and pitched over our heads. We sprinted away like greyhounds, weaving left and right, zigzagging, turning sharply, dipping along the walls, dodging behind clumps of trash cans and iron skips. Cats and dogs fled from us yelping, and women in long housecoats and head scarves peered at us over balconies, mystified, then squealed as bullets pinged off the walls in showers of brick dust. We took shelter in a deep doorway, and pressed ourselves against the uneven wall, panting. I probed Daisy’s shoulder delicately with my fingers. She winced.

  ‘Thank the Divine Spirit,’ I said. ‘Must have missed the bone by a quarter of an inch.’ She gave me a hard glance, then forced a grin, took a deep breath, and slapped another mag into her SIG. I said, ‘if we get separated — if anything happens — I’ll be at the Badestan coffee house in Khan al-Khalili at sunrise tomorrow.’

  She nodded tensely and cocked her weapon. Booted feet pattered along the alley close by and we leaped out, fired a frenzied broadside at the dark cowled figures racing towards us, and steamed off into the shadows. I had no plan, no idea where we should go or what we should do. I didn’t know who these guys were: Militants, hired killers — even a death squad from my own government. My only ally was Hammoudi, and I hadn’t a clue where he was right now. We headed for the main road, and just as we reached the junction a big black Mercedes came drifting straight towards us out of the night, transfixing us in its blinding headlights. I turned my pistol towards the car instinctively and was about to put a round through each of the lamps, when a door opened. ‘Get in!’ someone growled, and I thought I recognized Hammoudi’s voice. I took a last look at the phalanx of shadows coming at us down the alley, still firing, and I pushed Daisy into the car, and jumped in myself. An invisible hand pulled the door closed, and the car went into a racing start with a screech of tyres. There was a last burst of gunshots over our heads, and then the alley was far behind us. There were four dark suited men in the car, but it was only as the light from the streetlamps along the shore flashed in through the windows that I saw the one sitting next to us wasn’t Hammoudi at all. It was Jan Van Helsing.

  29

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ Van Helsing said, holding up his SIG, ‘just lay your hardware down nice and gentle.’

  ‘This is kidnapping,’ I said. I dropped my Beretta on the floor of the car.

  ‘Shut up,’ he snapped, ‘I just saved your goddamned sorry hides. You should both be down on your knees kissing my ass.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Mr Van Helsing,’ Daisy said. She laid her S I G down on the floor, grimaced and held on to her shoulder where the bullet had grazed it. Van Helsing eyed her truculently as the streetlights pulsed across her body.

  ‘God bless America,’ he said, ‘the super brat speaks. I warned you what would happen if you got out of line, miss, and tonight you just took the booby prize.’ He leaned over, grabbed the hand that covered the wound and squeezed until fresh blood welled between Daisy’s fingers.

  ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ she yelped. ‘Fuck you!’

  A bolt of blind rage surged through me and I lunged at Van Helsing, but before I got anywhere near him something very cold and very hard smashed down on my scalp and I found myself scrabbling through oblivion.

  When I came round I was sitting on a chair in a cell-like office with a linoleum floor, a desk, two chairs, a coffee machine, and a signed photo of the US president on the wall. I sat there for a few minutes listening to my heart beat. I felt exhausted, shattered after the running gun battle, my head pounding from the blow Van Helsing’s thug had given me, my eardrums throbbing. I was taking several deep breaths to calm myself, when the door banged open and Van Helsing stalked in on his spindly, bow-shaped shanks. He was dressed in a funereal suit with polished black shoes and a white silk handkerchief flowing from his top pocket. Despite the elegance he still did a fair impersonation of an overdressed baboon, I thought. He leered at me with his tadpole face, and I saw narrow eyes, pockmarks and sharp little teeth.

  ‘Where’s Daisy?’ I said.

/>   Van Helsing made a retching laugh. ‘Oh how touching,’ he said, ‘how chivalrous! The bitch is in the medical facility. Where else do you suppose she’d be with a gunshot wound in the shoulder?’

  ‘If you’re lying —’ I never finished the sentence because he took a bound over to me and slapped me hard round the face with an open hand, jerking my head back.

  ‘Who do you think you’re talking to, asshole,’ he said. ‘I’m the CIA Resident in Egypt, so just watch your lip.

  It was only when I tried to put my hand up to feel my face that I realized I was handcuffed to the chair. ‘So,’ I said, ‘now you’ve kidnapped a foreign police officer in his own country, Mr Van Helsing. For a CIA man, you don’t have much respect for the law.’

  Another dry, retching laugh like crinkling paper came from Van Helsing’s direction. ‘The law stinks,’ he said, ‘we make up our own law. In case you hadn’t noticed, buddy boy, there’s a lot of animals out there on the streets. Guys who think nothing of whacking out women and children. The only way to fight them is to play it by their rules. I’m CIA Resident and I am the law here. If I was to have you thrown into the Nile in a concrete necklace right now, nobody’d shed a tear, not even Miss Dickless Tracy there whom you show so much concern about. She doesn’t give two shakes of a monkey’s ass about you, Rashid. She dumped on you real good tonight.’

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

  Van Helsing drew up a chair opposite me and leaned his elbows on the desk, sneering. ‘The cops were waiting for you when you bugged out of the archives,’ he said. ‘Who do you think snitched, Santa Claus?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘You’ve been out cold nearly half an hour. Time for me to have a little talk with the FBI bitch. She told me she snitched on you to the cops, which is how come they were ready for you.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Van Helsing laughed and stood up again. ‘I feel sorry for you, Rashid,’ he said, ‘you really are a sucker. You don’t know kids like Brooke, but I do. I’ve had my bellyful of super brats brought up to believe they’re princes or princesses and everyone else is there to wipe their butts. There’s plenty like her in the States. Daddy’s a big noise politician with a big mouth and a fat bank roll, and she never had to fight or struggle for it — not like the rest of us. Just walked into everything — private school, Berkeley, the FBI — with a flick of the fingers. I hate those cruds. How do you think she felt about having a fourth rate rag head cop like you steal her thunder? You don’t give a bitch like that a hard time, you’ll find her frying your sorry ass. I think she just fried yours.’

  I angled my head away from him and stared at the floor. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.

  He snorted. ‘Denial,’ he said slowly, ‘that’s a predictable reaction. Now let’s try a little rationality, shall we? Tell me, who else but you and Brooke knew about the break-in job tonight?’

  I didn’t answer. Only two people other than myself had known we planned to do a job on the old British embassy — Daisy and Hammoudi — and Hammoudi would have guarded the secret with his life.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘plead the Fifth if you want, but you can’t plead it to yourself. Whose idea was the break-in job anyway, yours or hers?’

  I stayed silent, but I felt a lump swelling in my throat. I remembered how Daisy had handled herself tonight and how she’d rallied despite taking a graze in the shoulder. I remembered the way she’d kissed me. I could still feel the taste of her in my mouth. ‘Look,’ I said at last, ‘Daisy came as near to getting slotted tonight as I did. Why would anyone whack their own snitch?’

  Van Helsing shrugged — a curious jelly-like movement of the shoulders. ‘Accidents happen all the time,’ he said, ‘specially in Egypt. Maybe they wanted her for another reason — I hear tell there’s elements in the police who are highly sympathetic to the Militants. Things aren’t always what they seem.’

  That was just what Sanusi had said, I thought. ‘You saying those slimebags who hit my place tonight are my own people?’ I demanded.

  ‘Maybe,’ Van Helsing said, ‘maybe cops with Militant tendencies who don’t like you investigating the Sanusiya Brotherhood.’

  I opened my eyes wide and Van Helsing guffawed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘I know all about your trip to Sanusi,’ he said, ‘and he lied to you. The Brotherhood has been revived, and he damn well knew it. Word is a bunch of its new members are serving in the police and army. It was the Sanusiya who stiffed Ibram, and probably the same guys who came gunning for you and Little Miss Muffet tonight. We’d been tracking that active service unit for two days when they turned up on Roda, and I assume that was your place they bumped. It was lucky for you we were trailing them, or you’d both have been dogmeat by now.

  ‘Maybe. But if it was Militants who stiffed Ibram, why didn’t they claim it as a victory? Terrorism’s a publicity game.’

  Van Helsing got up. He moved towards me menacingly and I wondered if he would hit me again. I’d have given a lot to have had my hands free. He put his face so near to mine that I could smell the edge of sourness on his breath. ‘It wasn’t a political killing,’ he said. ‘The Militants wouldn’t have gained jack from claiming it because Ibram was a national hero.’

  ‘OK, then why murder him?’

  ‘Because among other things he was supplying information to the U S government about the activities of Militant groups.’

  ‘You mean Ibram was spying for the US?’

  Van Helsing smirked. ‘I can’t tell you the details,’ he said, ‘it’s classified. Puts a different spin on it though, doesn’t it? See, Rashid, you and Miss Dickless are completely out of your depth. Brooke is off the case officially as from now. She should never have been assigned to it from the start. It’s a bureaucratic screw up and Brooke’s a smartass who doesn’t know shit from shinola.’

  ‘If it’s spying we’re talking about, I’ll have to report it.’

  Van Helsing let a smile play round his uneven lips. ‘Hail the conquering hero!’ he sneered. ‘And who’ll you report it to? That superannuated refugee from Rent-a-Thug, Colonel Hammoudi? I think not, old fellow. The Colonel got his marching orders tonight, and I don’t see the top brass exactly doing a jig when they get a report from a dirty cop who was already on the run and to cap it all just broke into foreign archives.’ He turned and stared me in the face, his eyes gloating. ‘There’s a general alert out for you,’ he said. ‘Seems to me you’re in deep shit. You got yourself elected to the Militants’ hit list and you’re wanted for questioning by your own team. One phone call from me, and you’ll be in your own slammer before sunup. Not a nice prospect for you, eh Rashid? Not with all those Shadowmen guys you and Hammoudi put in there.’

  I didn’t say anything, but he must have read the surprise in my eyes. He lowered his face close to my ear and spoke almost tenderly. ‘I hear they’re pretty sore with you and Hammoudi,’ he whispered. ‘He’s a mean customer when he gets going, right? I hear tales of cattle prods and electrodes. You can say you were just following orders, but that won’t mean jack to them when you’re on the inside. There are things worse than being slotted, eh? I mean, they could force you to give them blowjobs and take it up the ass for the rest of your time. A living death for a guy like you, Rashid.’

  I felt anger and resentment rushing through me, but I quelled it quickly. Van Helsing was trying to confuse and disorient me. ‘You’re not going to do it, though, are you?’ I said.

  For a moment he looked crestfallen. Then his eyes narrowed like a predator’s and I knew he was coming in for the kill. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said, ‘I’m giving you a fighting chance. I’m letting you go.’

  I almost smiled. It was the same deal I’d given Monod the other night. ‘OK,’ I said evenly, ‘and how do you know I won’t go straight to the Commissioner of Police? I broke into the archives in the process of busting the case. So it was illegal, so what? Spying is on
e hell of a lot more serious.’

  Van Helsing smiled the crooked smile again. ‘Try it,’ he said. ‘Who do you think put out the general alert for you? The Commissioner of Police, Mahmud Siyudi, happens to be a good friend of mine. Let’s say he has fingers in a lot of pies, and let’s say I keep my eyes and ears open. I know things he wouldn’t like broadcast on Voice of America. Funny how you never found the big boys behind the Shadowmen, eh?’

  I looked into his eyes and for a moment I really was disoriented. Van Helsing was a professional liar and as polished as they came, and I couldn’t navigate my way through his pastiche of lies, truths and half-truths. Suddenly, though, I smelt the salt dust of the desert, and for a moment I shut my eyes. I was no longer in the room, but in a tiny cave in the middle of the emptiness they called al-Ghul. It was the Old Man who had brought me here — just the two of us, alone on camels. He hadn’t told me the purpose of the trip, and I remembered how the desert had seemed full of foreboding, alive with malicious spirits. It was night and beyond the mouth of the cave stars winked across an endless expanse of sand and grit. We were sitting cross-legged next to a smoky fire of gorse we had brought with us, and the Old Man was mixing an orange-coloured liquid in a gourd. I watched, fascinated, with a heavy feeling of fear in my belly. ‘You have the Shining power,’ the Old Man was saying, ‘but it is not strong in you. You will never be a great amnir, Sammy. That is not your destiny. But if the Divine Spirit wills, you will one day use what power you have for the good of the tribe.’ He held up the gourd. ‘Drink!’ he said. ‘This is the Divine Waters of the Shining. Let it teach you. Let it show you your strength.’ This was my first experience of the Divine Waters, and I could still taste it — thick and sour like native beer. After I’d drunk he’d handed me a stick. ‘Hold it,’ he said, ‘never let it go, no matter how it changes.’

  I held on to that stick desperately for hours — at least it seemed that way — while it writhed and trembled and quivered in my hands. Once it was a giant green snake with red eyes that tried to coil itself round my neck and suffocate me, and another time it was a huge jade coloured scorpion whose vicious darting sting I had to duck and dodge. I held on grimly, though, sweating and quaking, screaming inwardly, until my hands went numb and my muscles seized up. The stick was alive, twisting and jerking, going through transformation after transformation, each one of them more powerful, until I was on the verge of letting go. At the very moment I felt I couldn’t stand it any more, though, the potion had burned itself out suddenly, and I was left grasping what was only a very ordinary stick. The Old Man looked at me and laughed. ‘The Divine Spirit be praised,’ he said, ‘the stick is truth. No matter how it twists and turns, you must always hold on to it. Then nothing can harm you. Hold on to yourself and watch carefully. Observe. Always there will be a sign that will show you the way.’