Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  They handled the bugs with cold fury. Colin did not know them well. Senior traders occupied a universe all their own. They were blooded gunslingers with countless notches in their belts, carrying life and death and corporate profit in both fists. Over twenty-eight billion dollars in daily limits were represented here. A total personal net worth of forty, maybe fifty million dollars. But as they inspected the bugs, Colin saw just five men and one woman in rumpled sweat-smeared clothes, strung out from another day in the electronic trenches.

  The lone woman was a recent import from New York. “This is a normal part of the Florida game plan?”

  “Not on my turf.” Alex bore two white spots over the bones beside each eye. “I’ve done some checking. Any of you catch the guy this morning wearing a rose bush in his hair?”

  “Hard to miss,” the woman replied.

  “Nice touch, by the way,” the senior bonds trader offered Colin. “Your work?”

  “It was a ficus tree,” Colin replied. “But yes, thanks.”

  “Whatever.” Alex’s hands trembled slightly, perhaps from anger, perhaps mere tremors from too many days balanced on the razor’s edge. “His name is Brant Anker. Formerly of San Francisco. B of A. Number two Forex spots desk. He was shed when they closed the SF trading ops. Him and a hundred and sixty others.”

  The news silenced the room. The bond trader demanded, “So how many landed here?”

  “Far as I can tell,” Alex replied, “something like two dozen.”

  “You mind telling me why Hayek would graft on an independent Forex arm?”

  “Only two reasons that I can come up with, both of them bad. One, he’s going to let me and my team go.”

  “That’s a no-brainer.” This from the head of their derivatives arm. “You’re outperforming the entire floor.”

  “I’ve got no time for the Unabomber. Maybe Hayek wants somebody who’s more of a team player.” Alex’s eyes were bleak. Ancient fatigue gripped his face and pulled it back until the edges rippled with the strain.

  “So what’s the other option?”

  “He’s setting them up to move a big parcel of new money.”

  “Using restricted data?”

  “That’s my worst-case.”

  The woman’s face was lined by an overdose of reality. “Looks like it’s time to dust off the old résumé.”

  “I don’t buy in.” This from the head of the corporate desk. “Why plant these guys right under our nose if they’re using confidential info? Why not stick them where we’d never know? Hayek’s got no reason not to put another arm in Luxembourg, hide it from all but the elves.”

  “This afternoon Hayek came in from Miami, stayed maybe five minutes, and took off again.” Alex went on, “My thinking is, tomorrow morning we hit Hayek all together. The module, the Gucci warrior sneaking around, the goons in gray, the new traders dancing on our heads, the lack of answers, everything.”

  The new woman rose wearily to her feet. “Here I was thinking my kids would get to know a world of schools without guns and chain-link fences and guard dogs. I should have known it was too good to last.”

  “An hour before the opening bell,” Alex told the group. To Colin, “You with us?”

  27

  Wednesday

  WYNN’S FLIGHT FROM Rome to Cairo took less than three hours. Everything about the airport and the highway into town was newer than his memories. Yet even when the new gave way to the old, when street corners became filled with men in djellabas smoking and talking, when the horns blared and the potholes bounced his taxi, still he remained untouched. Which was very good.

  Sybel had booked them into the Inter-Continental, one of the new downtown hotels. The balcony of his ninth-floor suite held sweeping views of Cairo and the Nile. Traffic flowed along the Corniche, the road fronting the riverbank. The Nile flickered green and cool. As he stood on his balcony and watched the river cruisers, the first recollection struck. It came neither with sight nor sound, but smell. Wynn tasted a fragrance of river water, woodsmoke, spices, and diesel fumes. In the distance, beyond the Nile and the dusty day, he thought he heard a boy’s laughter. It was enough to press him back inside.

  Wynn swept the curtains shut, closing out the hated place. He stretched out on the bed but did not sleep. He had dozed the entire flight down, and now was trapped in his own wakeful lair. He was still awake when the muezzin called the faithful to late-morning prayers. The cry rose from everywhere, including Wynn’s own mind.

  Their houseboy, Ali, had taught him to mimic the muezzin’s call and the intonations, then laughed delightedly when his piping voice had imitated the long-drawn-out syllables. Wynn had practiced with Ali for days. His debut performance had been at his parents’ weekly Saturday dinner, a gathering for as many as thirty guests. On those nights the table stretched through the parlor’s double doors and extended onto the apartment balcony. Wynn had stood there and done his chant and made many of the guests laugh. All of them applauded afterward, all save his parents.

  The next day his father had shown him a book, the most beautiful book Wynn had ever seen. Each page was illustrated with designs of gold and violet and blue. “This is the most valuable thing I own,” his father told him. “Your mother gave it to me for our first anniversary in Cairo. We keep it in the ebony box your mother has ordered you never to touch. It is more than three hundred years old.”

  Wynn’s finger had reached out to trace a line midway down the right-hand page, one set aside from the other writing by thin gold lines. The writing itself was gold as well, and shone ruddy and yellow in the daylight.

  “This entire book was written by hand. This first line, what you now touch, is the same for each chapter, or Sura. It is part of the muezzin’s prayer, what you chanted. You see how this last word is drawn out long, just like the muezzin’s call? The scribe writes this prayer, and then draws this word so very long, you see? Why? Because this is the word Allah. Just as the muezzin draws out the word until his mind is focused, the scribe does this as a prayer. He asks help to clear his mind. He is about to copy a chapter of what for him is the holy book. His mind must be clear and silent and thinking of nothing save Allah.”

  Wynn’s own voice had piped up then. “But we are Christian and this is Muslim. And when I learned the chant it made Ali laugh.”

  “Ali is not a believer. That is his choice. We believe in the Lord Jesus. That is our choice. For the man who wrote this, for the muezzin who calls out to Allah, this is a vital part of his life. I would like all the world to know the message of Christ’s salvation. But to those who do not, still I can offer respect. Jesus calls us to love everyone. How better to begin than through respect?” When Wynn did not respond, his father had continued, “So when you next sing the muezzin’s prayer, I want you to do it with a heart full of respect. For the muezzin, and for all believers everywhere.”

  Now Wynn tossed back the rumpled covers and padded to the bathroom. Angry at having lost himself in what was so far gone.

  He remembered all right. He remembered everything.

  WHEN WYNN RETURNED from the bathroom, he knew his sister was there. He was alerted to her presence by the shifting of the wind, a faint trailing edge of scent. All his senses were heightened by the threat of approaching memories. He stepped onto the balcony and found her watching as heat and dust gathered with the daylight. Late spring was the season of khamsin, the desert winds that could blow so strong they stripped clothes and skin from bone. But today was mild for Egypt, balmy and almost pleasant. Even the cacophony of traffic noise rising from below held a contented air.

  Wynn said, “This conference is so important you’d bend heaven and earth to get me here?”

  She turned reluctantly from the riverside scene. “I wanted you to come before Grant offered you the position. Remember?”

  “I never expected such subterfuge from you. My mistake.”

  “You were the one who said you’d give me anything I wanted. You never asked my reasons before.�
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  Sybel’s dark hair was silhouetted against the shimmering light. She seemed to belong here, even with her vibrant features smudged by fatigue and strain. Her hair was tied back as tight as ever, with a few tendrils slicked down over her forehead. Her eyes remained brilliant and deep and always caring. Wynn said, “So you got me here. How about telling me what you really want.”

  “My sweet sad Wynnie. Do you remember the name I had for you here?”

  “Answer the question, Sybel.”

  “Pooh. My dearest little Pooh-bear.” Her eyes gripped him tightly. “Do you remember anything at all of that time?”

  “I was five when we left.”

  “You had just turned six, and who is avoiding the question now?”

  “No. I don’t remember.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?” When he did not respond, she went on, “I want you to be happy.”

  “So you bring me back to the place that wrecked my life?”

  “Sometimes the only way to discover a wrong turn is to go back to the beginning and look closely. Is that so much to ask?”

  “You know how much I hate this place.”

  “You don’t hate Cairo. You hate how life was taken out of your hands here.” When he tried to leave the balcony, she gripped him hard and wrenched him back to the railing. “Ever since Dianne died and you sold your company you’ve been absolutely miserable.”

  “It takes time—”

  “Not this much. Not for you. You’re down because all the things you’ve managed to hide from yourself have finally caught up with you. And the only way you’re ever going to rise from this tragic pyre is to face those things and deal with them.”

  He hid behind sarcasm. “So this Jubilee thing and the conference, all this has nothing to do with why I’m here?”

  She released his arm then. A gesture of defeat. Wynn started to go inside but stopped at the balcony door to say, “Grant and his pals really don’t want this to happen.”

  “Grant isn’t here.” Her voice was flat and dry as the desert air. “The conference doesn’t start until this evening. Will you at least go around with me before then and see some of the old places?”

  SYBEL STARTED HIM off slowly, ordering the driver to take them on a meandering tour. She passed him little bits of information, too excited to do her job well. They began by driving past the apartment house in Zamalik where they had lived, then ambling by the Gazirah Sporting Club where Sybel claimed they had spent countless afternoons. They drove across the Kubri al Tahrir bridge and through Tahrir Square, then down the lengths of Kasr El Nil and Shiek Ashah Streets. The streets were packed with shoppers and dozens of stores selling shoes and jewelry, since even the most conservative women could show off feet and ankles, neck and wrist. Then they took a slow drive past the Royal Automobile Club, where they always came for Sunday lunch. Wynn sat and listened to her recount how he had loved to watch them roll back the restaurant’s retractable roof, and how their parents let him have all the ice cream he wanted. His mouth shaped the words, vanilla or strawberry or chocolate, only one flavor made each week and done fresh that morning. But he remained quiet.

  They halted before the Gamaliya, where Hussein, the grandson of Muhammed, was buried. The Fatimid Mosque and the surrounding Hussein Plaza were fronted by shops catering to pilgrims who came from all over North Africa. As they alighted she pointed out a sibeel, a fountain alcove carved into a former palace wall, where the poor could stop to drink and wash themselves. Overhead were carved the Arabic words “And Allah gave them a pure water to drink.” Sybel claimed their mother had often brought them to the neighboring coffee shop. Today the corner table was occupied by three women in bangled bedouin garb, drinking mint tea and smoking the shisha, or hubble-bubble. The windless lane alongside their table was packed with people and smoke and memories.

  Together they walked the alleys of El Fustad, built in the eleventh century by the first Muslim rulers as the center of Qahira, the name from which later English rulers derived Cairo. Wynn passed grit-encrusted buildings whose ornate stonework rose like geometric lace. He spotted the iwan, recessed alcoves where people could sit and rest, gifts to pilgrims from those who formerly owned the buildings, now often as not filled with stalls selling leather, amber, brass, or inlaid boxes. He raised his gaze and spotted arabesque shutters and doors and wished there were some way to shut his mind to the torrent of images.

  Sybel strolled him through the antiques market, passing on other bits of memories. Wynn listened grudgingly, for he heard not his sister but rather his mother’s voice. This was his mother’s love, shopping the alleys, arguing with the Egyptian and Syrian and Persian and Sephardic shopkeepers, learning the city’s lore. They passed through the Serah, the jewelry area, then crossed the Gauhar El Kata Street where the original Fatamid Gates still stood. Beyond El Mouez El Din, the Street of Scales, they entered the pungent rainbow world of the spice market. Wynn waited while Sybel haggled over a jar of saffron, gold and rich as sun-laced oil. He remembered his mother doing the very same thing, and recalled how he had loved the way the tiniest touch of the spice would color everything—the rice, the floor, the woodwork, his clothes and hands. Sybel kept glancing his way, waiting for him to speak, to admit that he remembered and was there with her. But it took all the strength he had just to stand and find a breath of air.

  They returned to the car and drove to the Misr Al Qadimah, the old Christian quarter. The memories came faster now, unbidden, unwelcome.

  The car halted before a wall. Just a wall. The city possessed millions of them. But something about this place drew him up short.

  “Mother loved to come here,” Sybel prompted. When he said nothing, she reached over, squeezed his hand, said, “Let’s go see why.”

  Sandstone walls the color of desert turned the corner with them and began to close in, tighter and tighter, until the lanes grew so narrow they were ever in the shade. The air was tainted by dust and heat and the deposits of horse-drawn carts. The only life Wynn saw was an old woman in black, sunken into her doorway until she seemed only partially drawn from the shadows.

  Sybel halted before a door from another era, when stout oak was bonded by great leaves of metal to repel barbarians and swords and metal-tipped staves. Overhead protruded a mashrabiya, the harem balcony whose wooden slats were woven too tightly to permit passers-by any glimpse within. The muezzin’s cry rose then, at home in this harsh and empty realm.

  Beyond the portal, a garden bloomed. Impossible colors. Hundreds of flowers, their beauty almost obscene after the dry arid nothingness without. “We’re in the forecourt of St. Mark’s church, one of the oldest in Cairo. Momma loved it here,” she said. “Do you remember any of this?”

  “Nothing,” he lied.

  “She brought me when I was very good. And you, once or twice. Usually you waited out in the plaza with Daddy. For me these visits were more than a reward. It was Momma’s way of welcoming me into the secrets she would only share with another adult.” They descended stairs made slick by centuries of feet, left their shoes at a second, grander set of doors, and entered the cool chamber. “This place spoke to her of faith’s primitive beginnings.”

  Benches ringed the grand hall, as tall as it was long and beamed by smoke-blackened planks thick as five men. The reed mats were soft and gave gently beneath his feet. The art was so ancient as to appear alien, done by another race of souls entirely. A supplicant chanted over prayer beads. A trio of women sat at the far wall and chatted softly with a black-robed priest. Four couples prayed in a side alcove, one wearing the white shawl of coming marriage.

  “Momma called this a comforting place, yet one that offers no false hopes.” Sybel’s voice was soft enough to rise swiftly and be enveloped by the incense and the centuries of echoes. “The first time we came here, I will never forget, a woman entered wearing a black, tassled prayer shawl. I watched her kneel where we are standing now, crawl toward the altar, then prostrate herself. She covered her head and
lay as one dead. Momma pointed out to me how her feet were blackened and callused, her heels and ankles tattooed in a tribal pattern. All the stories hidden beneath that black shawl, all the sorrows in those immobile feet. She just lay there, using her prayer mantle as a shroud, giving herself over to the grief of hopeless prayer. Asking not for answers. Only peace. Immeasurable, beyond understanding. Peace now and forever.”

  Wynn turned and walked back into the sunlight. He slipped on his shoes, crossed the garden, passed through the outer portal, and walked back down the cobblestone lane. Cairo was filled with the crumbling relics of many empires. Four thousand years of invaders had left many prizes and exacted heavy tolls. Hyssops, Romans, Vandals, Ottomans . . . The list was endless. Their legacies were everywhere, from the fading glory found upon almost every street, to the stoic tragedy on virtually every face. Wynn stopped by the car and waited for Sybel to join him. Leaning against just another wall.

  She rounded the corner with shoulders hunched, her expression lost behind sunglasses. Just the tightly compressed lips were visible. Wynn pushed himself from the wall and demanded, “What possible good did you expect to come from all this?”

  “What possible good are you accomplishing now? What joy have I deprived you of by bringing you here?” The words sprayed like hot pellets. “Wynn, we need you. Graham’s illness has left a gaping void at the heart of our cause.”

  “So I’m expected—”

  “No. Not at all. Nothing is expected. Nobody would dream of expecting you to do anything except exactly what pleases you at the moment.”

  He surveyed Sybel’s stance, hands cocked on her hips like dual triggers, chin jutting as she readied herself for whatever objection he levied. “Nobody can tell you anything, can they. You know what’s best, and no matter what anybody else thinks, you’re going to push and prod until they do what you say they should be doing.”

  She flushed the color of taut fury. “For years people have been pressing Congress and other governments to do something about third-world debt. So they pass laws, then let the forces ruling the financial trade come in and strip away everything but the words. Most politicians don’t care about what’s happening in another country. Those foreigners can’t vote. If it’s so important to the banking lobby to keep milking this third-world cow, fine. Then Graham comes along. He’s on fire over another scandal within the financial world. Same war, different battle. Graham is desperate for allies. We meet, I put him in contact with Sant’Egidio. Graham fits right in. He’s not after glory. He’s not after the next fun thing. He wants to serve his people and his God. He views this battle as having a divine purpose—”