Firebird

by Michael Asher

  The rear windscreen shattered, sending a spray of glass over Daisy, but in a trice she was up with her S I G in her hand. ‘There’s two guys on motorcycles coming after us!’ she shouted.

  I was in third now, still with my foot jammed hard down, but I could see the MP motorcyclists in the mirror and they were gaining. I changed to fourth but they were almost up to us — within thirty metres, I reckoned — at any rate I could see their white helmets with ‘MP’ stencilled on them, and their dark glasses. I began to weave from side to side deliberately in case they started shooting, but Daisy squealed, ‘No! Keep her still!’ There were two pops from the S I G and I saw the leading motorcyclist swerve to the right with the bike leaning dangerously on a flat tyre. Suddenly it slid over sideways right into the path of the other motorcyclist, who braked so suddenly that his bike turned somersault and hurled him into the road. The last thing I saw in the mirror was a miniature mushroom cloud as one of the tanks detonated.

  ‘Bloody good shooting,’ I told Daisy. ‘That was really hot!’

  I put the Daihatsu in top and we raced towards the vanishing point on the horizon, where the asphalt glittered like water in the high sun. To the west, the limestone desert undulated on to infinity, its shale and feldspar beaches lost in an iridescent sheen. Near the road the desert was made ugly by pylons and rubbish dumps, but beyond this flotsam of industrial society, I knew, it stretched on clean and unbroken for thousands of miles as far as the Atlantic coast. I put twenty kilometres between us and the guard post before I turned off the asphalt road and headed directly west into the desert.

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ Daisy demanded again.

  ‘Just relax,’ I told her. ‘If we stay on the road we’re dead meat. There are other VCPs ahead and they’re in radio contact.’

  ‘But they can follow our tracks.’

  ‘They won’t know where we turned off the road. There are millions of car tracks here and it’s going to take them hours to find good trackers. Even if they do find out, they’ll think twice before they follow us into the desert. It’s Cairene mentality. They’re big mouths on their home ground but you take them out into the Red Land and they’re chicken shit.’

  ‘Sammy, they don’t have to use trackers. There are such things as choppers and even lands at images now.’

  ‘This is Egypt. You forgotten we had to use an FBI chopper just to get to the Fayoum? It will take them for ever to get it jacked up, and by then we’ll be long gone.’

  Daisy climbed back into the front seat and looked around in bewilderment. The road had already disappeared and the skyline was a uniform distance from us in each direction. The car was a silver insect lost in a landscape so vast it skewed the mind — an undulating plain of black limestone relieved only by a patina of white where mineral salts had been leached out of it, or by chains of amber coloured barchans and strings of flat topped hills far in the distance. The car crunched over sand beaches littered with stones like the remnants of some ancient inferno —limestone blocks shaped like giant sponges, conch shells, hollow rolls and petrified octopi. Here and there were grooves in the rock and angular groynes where a few salt bushes or desert succulents grew, and there would be tracks of spiders, beetles and snakes. Everywhere else, though, the desert seemed lifeless as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Shit,’ Daisy said, ‘no wonder the ancient Gyps were scared of this place. I mean there’s nothing to get a fix on. I wish I’d kept my GPS.’

  ‘Nah,’ I said, ‘I don’t need one. See the sun — old Father Ra up there? He’s my GPS. I can drive in a straight line using the shadows on the stones.’

  Daisy stared at me in open disbelief and gripped the side handle.

  ‘At first this limestone desert appears all the same,’ I said, ‘but look harder. You’ll see that it actually changes quite quickly, but the changes are small and you don’t notice them unless you concentrate. I like to think of it as passing through a whole series of giant rooms. In one room there are marine fossils, in another nodules of chert and oxidized iron, in another small pebbles or silica balls. Real desert Bedouin can find their way blindfold simply by feeling the changing texture of the surface. What outsiders don’t understand is that the desert has a kind of grammar — a geological syntax of its own.’

  ‘Sammy. Where are we going? Do you know, or are we just heading off into the blue?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  By three o’clock it was already cooler. The sun was listing to the west, still fiery but softening by the minute — the time when the furnace Ra of midday became the milder Atum of evening. The silica glittered like glass in places where the sun caught it, and there were sudden shimmers of intense light, opening and closing like winking eyes. In places tiny spools of dust unravelled, spinning across the stones like corkscrews. An hour later I spotted what I was looking for — a huge cairn of boulders which the Bedouin called Mahatt al-Mezraq — the Javelin Cast. I stopped the car by the mound and we got out and stretched. The silence was almost unearthly, broken only by the sudden rasp of sand on rock and the occasional high pitched whistling the Hawazim called ‘the Voices of the Jinns’. I sniffed the wind and took in the faint traces of flint and chalk. After four years of the sounds and smells of Cairo at last I felt at home. I showed Daisy the mass of graffiti carved on the cairn’s larger boulders — mostly the camel brands of passing tribes, some so old that the tribes themselves had long ago disappeared into history. I sought out the lizard brand of the Hawazim among them.

  ‘This place has been a meeting point for the tribes for generations,’ I told Daisy. ‘It gets its name from an event that occurred here hundreds of years ago. An old man and a girl of the Hawazim were travelling under the protection of two companions from the Awlad ‘Ali tribe. In Bedouin law, the office of rafiq or “Way Companion” is sacred once you have eaten bread and salt together. Well, when they got here, the two Awlad ‘Ali tried to rob them. That’s a big no-no in Bedouin law. But they’d also underestimated the Hawazim. The old guy was carrying two javelins and he gave one to the girl. They skewered both the double crossers right here. Their bodies are buried under the cairn and it exists as a reminder about the absolute sanctity of the rafiq.’

  Daisy was watching me carefully. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘and is this pile of rocks what we came for?’

  ‘No,’ I said, pointing to a huddle of stone buildings hidden so cleverly in a dip behind us that she hadn’t noticed them. ‘That’s our destination.’

  Her mouth fell open in surprise. ‘That?’ she said incredulously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s called al-Manakh,’ I said. ‘That means the Kneeling Place — or the place where camels kneel. A desert holy man or faqi — one of Sanusi’s relatives, probably — tried to set up a lodge here, but it soon died out for lack of water. Only the buildings remain.’

  We got back into the car and a few minutes later we were cruising slowly in amongst the stone huts. They were arranged in a crude oblong around a yard, the gaps filled in with a dry stone wall that had fallen down in many places. I stopped the engine and we got out. Nothing moved in the place but the wind sifting grains of dust, and bits of tumbleweed drifting through the yard snagging on stones and boulders. I took in another lungful of air, and felt a sudden sense of peace. I knew a long, lonely phase of my life was over and whatever happened, I would never go back to living in a city again. With the tranquillity, though, came an intense weariness. The bennies had disguised it, but now they’d worn off and my body suddenly realized it had gone a whole night without sleep. I yawned.

  Daisy stared about her warily. The stone buildings were large — one or two of them as big as barns — and they looked as if no one had been near them for years. In the yard, though, there were signs of recent inhabitants — three stone fireplaces with odd stubs of firewood and flattened tin cans, bits of leather from dried out drippers, broken camel hobbles, shards of old pots. In places there were shallow pits where camels had dug themselves in, surrounded b
y piles of their date-like droppings. I picked a piece of camel turd up and squeezed. It was brittle and bone dry — months old — and it contained grains of undigested sorghum.

  ‘The last visitors here came from the Sudan,’ I said, ‘probably in May or June.’

  Daisy sniffed suspiciously. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.

  ‘By the dryness of the dung, and by the sorghum in it. Only the Sudanese Bedouin feed their camels sorghum.’

  There was a jerry can of water in the car, and Daisy opened the back door, murmuring to herself as she examined the bullet holes punched cleanly through the metal. She poured us both water in Styrofoam cups, handed one to me and looked me in the eyes. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what do we do now?’

  ‘We wait.’

  The sun was low on the western skyline, sinking into a wing of ashlar cloud and painting it molten gold and liquid orange. Daisy moved a step nearer, dropped her cup and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Wait for whom?’ she asked softly. She opened her mouth and brushed my lips with hers, rounding them into a sensual pout. I kissed her lightly and was about to put my arms round her when her hand suddenly shot under my jacket and hooked out my Beretta. She leapt backwards and before I could react I was looking down the barrel of her SIG for the second time in a week.

  ‘God dammit!’ I said. ‘I should have been wise to that move.’

  ‘Don’t try going for the stinger,’ Daisy said, ‘you know I’m fast, and I never miss. And like I told you, the cowboy won, so just ease it out carefully.’

  I knew I wasn’t going to try anything. She was about the fastest operator I’d ever seen, and she had too many questions to answer, anyway. I slipped out my stiletto and dropped it into the sand. Her blue eyes were cold and hard.

  ‘Sanusi was right about you, Sammy,’ she said, ‘if that’s really your name. You aren’t a cop, I knew that from the beginning. You have a pierce mark on your upper right ear, just where the Hawazim wear their famous fidwa, and you wear the Hawazim dagger — the notorious khanjar.’

  She was going to find out soon enough, anyway, but I decided to play the innocent just to see how far she would go. ‘I told you,’ I said, keeping my hands raised, ‘it was a street gang.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Ever heard of a study called Street Life of Aswan by Howard Johnson? There was a copy in the US embassy resources section. It lists all the street gangs of Aswan over the past twenty years with their little eccentricities, and guess what? An earring in the upper right ear fold, and a dagger on the wrist aren’t featured at all. Sanusi put me on to you and I’ve done my homework, Sammy. You heard of a book called Ghosts of the Desert — The Hawazim of Egypt, by a Doctor Calvin Ross? It’s all in there. You said yourself that the Nile Valley people are scared shitless of the desert, yet you seem to feel mighty comfortable here. You know your eyes were actually shining when you showed me that pile of rocks out there?’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s probably the beanies I dropped.’

  ‘Bullshit! You know all about the law of companionship, sandstorms and camel turds, don’t you? Of course, you’re a pretty smart guy — you might have learned it somehow, but you’ve got Hawazim whip scars all the way down your back, and that’s not the kind of thing you get on a crash course in desert anthropology.’

  ‘I had an accident,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, you had an accident all right. When we were being chased down the alley on Roda, you used that phrase about the “Divine Spirit”. Only the Hawazim use that term, and you don’t pick that up from a weekend seminar either. You’re Hawazim, Sammy, and the Hawazim are regarded as a bunch of cupcakes by everyone, even the other Bedouin. They’re despised but feared as a tribe of wizards with hocus pocus powers. The question I’ve been asking myself is the same one Sanusi asked: how in the name of hell did a member of that tribe get into the SID? The Hawazim under Omar James Ross — the son of the guy who wrote the book, as I’m sure you know —virtually rose in rebellion against the government four years ago. Funny — that’s about the same time you’ve been a cop.’

  I looked at her and grinned, and it seemed to infuriate her. ‘Start talking, Sammy,’ she said, ‘or God help me, I’ll put you down.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But first what about you, Special Agent? Sanusi was right about you, too, wasn’t he? You’re a faceless woman. Sure you’re fast. You’re faster than anyone I ever knew, and you can move more silently than a cat. You never miss a shot, never miss a trick, but last night I had a long and interesting talk with our Mr Van Helsing. He told me you ratted on me. Says you blew the whole thing to the cops, who conveniently happened to be there when we came out of the archives. Says you set me up deliberately because you couldn’t stand a “raghead” stealing your thunder, and when I think about it only you and Hammoudi knew about the archives job, and I’d bet my life Hammoudi didn’t snitch. Now, the question I’m asking myself is, are you really FBI, or a mole for someone else? Mossad? Even the Militants? Or maybe you’ve been in with Van Helsing since the beginning and those charming scenes at the Mena and in the car last night were an act. You do a very good act, miss...whatever your name is. It isn’t Daisy Brooke, that’s for sure.’ I eased the black and white photo Hammoudi had given me out of my inside pocket and held it up between my forefinger and thumb. ‘This is Daisy Brooke — a homely brunette…’

  Daisy’s eyes flickered slightly as she tried to focus on the photograph, and in that moment I threw it into her face and made a grab for the SIG, knocking the muzzle away and falling heavily on her. She landed under me with an ‘Ooof!’ and dropped the weapon, her nails raking viciously at my eyes as we rolled over in the sand. Just then there was a gunshot crack that sounded deafening in the silence, and a bullet thumped off the stones and ricocheted with a vibrating whizz. Daisy hesitated and I broke her hold, monkey crawled away from her and turned to see a host of camel riders loping in through the gaps in the wall — men in ochre coloured jibbas with plumes of hair and gargoyle faces.

  The first rider was mounted on a magnificent off white she camel. He wore a ragged shamagh across his face and carried a bolt—action sniper’s rifle with telescopic sights — a rifle I recognized immediately. He made a kkhyaakhyaaaa sound and yanked his headrope, so that the camel raised her head disdainfully and settled into the sand with perfect grace. The rider slid out of the saddle and walked up to Daisy, slipping away his shamagh to reveal a lean, bearded, bespectacled face. He whipped off his glasses, wiped them ceremoniously on the sleeve of his jibba, then replaced them carefully.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said in English. ‘My name is Omar James Ross.’

  36

  Daisy came up with her hard blue eyes flaming, and her full lips drawn back from bared teeth. Her headscarf had fallen off in the tussle and her blonde hair streaked out wildly in the desert breeze. To me she looked like a big, beautiful, dangerous pantheress about to spring. She was going for the SIG but Ross was quicker. He moved with the speed of a cobra, clawing it out of the sand and stuffing into his belt. Daisy panted and wiped dust off her lips with her cuff.

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘That’s mine!’

  Ross peered at her over the top of his glasses. ‘That depends on whether you’re with us or against us,’ he said. ‘If you’re against us, then by Hawazim custom this weapon is rightly mine. If you’re with us, you can have it back. Now which is it?’

  Daisy rocked back on the balls of her feet, still breathing heavily, and her full lips pouted first at Ross, then at me. There was a commotion as the rest of the tribesmen — twelve or thirteen of them — couched their camels amid a cacophony of snorts, bellows, grunts and shouts. They looked as if they had sprung out of the bowels of the earth, I thought, with their flint coloured eyes and almond shaped faces covered in thick beards, their bodies small, lean and robust. They wore their shocks of hair uncut and greased with fat or in plaits bleached with camel urine. Their jibbas were stained russet red from the dye of the desert plant abal, though s
everal of them were barechested, wearing only a loose pair of pantaloons and a coarse shawl passing round the back with the ends thrown over both shoulders. They wore cartridge belts at their waists and carried their rifles as if they were extensions of their arms: each of them wore a tiny silver earring — the fidwa — in the upper fold of the right ear, and a stiletto blade strapped just above the left wrist. They were mostly barefooted, their feet wide splayed and calloused from walking on sand and grit, and they moved with the precision and economy of trained acrobats. They gathered silently shoulder to shoulder, holding their rifles and swinging their slender camel sticks, sensing the tension, watching keenly for their leader’s next move.

  Ross turned to me and slung the sniper’s rifle. He clapped both hands on my shoulders, then clasped my right hand in both of his and looked me in the eyes, unblinking. ‘Thank the Divine Spirit for your safe return, Nawayr,’ he said. ‘By God, you have left us in the wilderness. By the will of the Divine Spirit, no evil?’

  ‘No evil, thank the Divine Spirit.’

  ‘May the Divine Spirit grant you long life!’

  ‘Praise be to God! The Divine Spirit grant long life to you and yours.’

  ‘Welcome back.’ He gave me the triple nose kiss of the Hawazim, then suddenly threw his arms round me and embraced me hard. When he pulled away I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘We owe you, Sammy,’ he said. ‘No other Hazmi could have put in four years in the city.’

  I knew this was literally true — to anyone brought up in the desert, four years in Cairo would have been a living death. Most Hawazim couldn’t stand a single night under a solid roof. But then I had a natural advantage: unlike them I’d spent my first ten years in a town. I studied Ross and noted how his body had grown leaner and harder since I’d last seen him. He was a half breed like me, but he looked more Arab than I did, with coffee coloured skin, jet black hair and the flint coloured eyes of his mother’s people. I was a Hazmi by adoption, but Ross had been reared in the desert and knew its ways from birth. It was only after his mother had died that his father had taken him away from the tribe and sent him to school in Britain, and as the Old Man used to say, ‘a thing learned when young is a thing carven in rock’. Ross had returned to the tribe four years ago, bringing with him a beautiful half Greek, half Egyptian girl called Elena, who was now his wife and the mother of his son. They’d gone looking for the legendary lost oasis of Zerzura in the most desolate reaches of the Western Desert, and Ross had returned changed. I never knew what he’d found out there — I suspected Hammoudi did, but he’d kept his mouth shut. All I knew was that it had to have been something pretty important, because afterwards he and Elena had been picked up by the police.