“And you thought you’d toddle down here after all that’s happened and just ask me if I knew anything about it?”
The old man had stood up from the table and now approached Cloutard. A silence had suddenly fallen over the room. Every eye was riveted on the Welshman, who glared unflinchingly at Cloutard.
Seconds passed before the old man’s stern gaze transformed into amicable warmth. The Welshman threw his arms around Cloutard for a moment, then asked him to sit and join them. “It’s good to see you again, old friend,” the Welshman said, and he patted Cloutard’s hand. “And I have heard a thing or two, as it happens. Someone’s signing up diggers and grave robbers as if they’ve found a new Tutankhamun’s tomb. Every man in Egypt with a pick or shovel’s been hired, though nobody even knows yet where the dig is supposed to be. Now, I can’t say whether this is tied to your particular problem or not, but if you ask me, AF is behind it. They’re looking for something really big. As for the kidnapping of your friend, we’ll ask around and find out what we can.”
The Welshman looked around at the others at the table. They nodded.
“I’ll know more in a few hours. Cairo is a big city. But for us, it’s a village.”
Cloutard thanked him and exchanged a few more friendly words with the old man before saying a warm goodbye. The Welshman waited until Cloutard had left.
“Call Farid. He’ll be happy to hear that his search for Cloutard is over,” he said to the shaven-headed man beside him at the poker table. “Send one of our men to follow him. I don’t want him getting away.”
20
Streets of Cairo, close to the Saraya Gallery Restaurant
Cloutard had been doing the rounds for several hours, checking every bar and café he could think of. None of his old cronies had been able to help him directly, and in some places he’d been promptly brushed off. He decided to put his trust in the Welshman and wait a little. In the meantime, he would treat himself to an early dinner before he met with Tom again. Cloutard was looking forward to their evening operation. It had been a few years, but he was a professional. Nothing about that had changed.
“Do you have a reservation?” asked the man at the entrance to the Saraya Gallery, one of Cairo’s top restaurants, but after a moment’s hesitation he recognized Cloutard. “Excusez-moi, Monsieur Cloutard, of course we have a table for you.”
The man led him through the restaurant, and Cloutard took his place at his usual table. At least this hasn’t changed, he thought.
As the first course was served—Escalope de Foie Gras de Canard a la Mangue—and Cloutard let the duck melt on his tongue, he was in seventh heaven. Several months had passed since his downfall, and he had missed this. He raised his glass in a toast to himself and solemnly promised himself that he would take his old life back. He had to seize the reins again and lead the life that destiny had ordained for him. But to do that, he needed the necessary capital—and a lot of it. It was not yet clear to him how he would get it, but he would not be François Cloutard if he could not come up with something. He had been letting himself down for too long, and that annoyed him.
“Stuffing your face with duck in a place like this? You should spend your money on more important things.”
Cloutard froze and looked up from his table, straight into the eyes of Farid Shaham, Karim Shaham’s son. In recent years, Karim had been responsible for the finances of Cloutard’s smuggling imperium, and he had been murdered on the job.
Farid sat at the table and leaned across to Cloutard.
“You have my father’s blood on your hands. You lost your power through your own incompetence, and my father was murdered for the same reason. You will pay for that.”
Farid opened his caftan and Cloutard saw a pistol underneath.
“Money will not bring my father back to life, but it will save my daughter. Half a million dollars is a fair price to pay to ease your conscience and save the life of a young girl. You have 72 hours. Deliver, or you will be keeping my little angel company.”
Cloutard looked at Farid in disbelief. He tried to say something, but Farid cut him off.
“You have seen how fast I can find you, and I will find you wherever you go.” He stood up. As he left, he said: “If you do not pay, you’re a dead man.”
21
Egyptian Museum, Cairo
They had to park the car in a nearby side street; behind the museum there was only an enormous interchange, where the masses of traffic rolled slowly on multi-lane roads through the capital of the former kingdom of the pharaohs. Egypt, the pinnacle of ancient culture, was today a morass of poverty, overpopulation and smog. Hellen and Arno, on foot, squeezed between the columns of cars slowly creeping through the city along Meret Basha. It was late in the evening, but the run-down, stinking city was as bustling as ever. Just across from the rear entrance of the museum, they waited for the next opportunity to cross a major intersection. When it came, then ran across the street and hammered at the big gate at the back of the museum. A few moments later a small, bearded man with a hearty, gap-toothed smile opened the gate, looked around furtively and hastily waved them in, then led them across the small, dusty courtyard.
They had no way of knowing, of course, that they were being observed from across the street, from the balcony of the Hotel Tahrir Plaza Suites.
“I am already waiting, Sidi. Come, come,” said the elderly man with a heavy accent, inviting them inside. He wore grey trousers, a grubby button-down shirt and worn-out black shoes. “You are lucky, today is no one here, everyone is gone home.” He held the door open for them and Hellen and Arno slipped inside the museum building.
Another world revealed itself when they entered the security center of the 120-year-old museum. The antiquated security system and the handful of black-and-white screens made it clear that the new museum near Giza could not be completed soon enough. The unimaginably valuable treasures housed in the world’s largest museum of Egyptian art urgently needed a safer, more modern home.
Almost casually, Arno placed an envelope on the man’s desk. The man saw it out of the corner of his eye and smiled. The money inside would be more than welcome for his family; he could finally bring a little joy to his children and his wife.
The night watchman went over to a wall, hung with plans of each floor of the museum, and began to explain. “We are here.” He tapped his finger on his office in the northeast corner of the building. “You go here, here, here, then down—not there, never there—then this way, then here.”
Hellen and Arno did their best to remember the man’s instructions. Hellen took her phone out of the pocket of her cargo pants and photographed the wall. Better safe than sorry, she thought.
The night watchman tapped excitedly on a room in the basement.
“Here. Here is amphoras from Anfushi. First bring today.” He pressed a worn, old keycard into Arno’s hand. “For open door. You have one hour. Bring card back after.”
Suddenly, all three heard a loud, metallic pounding. It was coming from the rear gate.
“Alarm is off one hour. Don’t forget, one hour! Go, go!” The man shooed Hellen and Arno out of his office with his cheerful, mostly toothless smile. He waited until they had disappeared around the corner. The metallic hammering came again, and he ran outside to see who it was.
Hellen turned back and watched the night watchman doubtfully for a moment. Could they really trust the old man, charming as he was? Or had the police already arrived to arrest them, and he and the cops would share the money Arno had left behind on the table?
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go! The clock is ticking,” said Arno, tugging Hellen along by her arm. She hesitated for a moment, then followed after him. They followed the guard’s instructions to the letter, careful to follow the path he had shown them on the map. Hellen had already visited the museum several times; places like this enchanted her. The smell always made her feel good, and it was doubly exciting to walk through the immense halls at night and all alone. The museum’s
most famous artifact appeared in her mind’s eye: the golden death mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, dead for 3343 years. It was among the most famous works of art in the world, up there with Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” although Tutankhamen’s only real claim to fame, in fact, was that his tomb had been discovered almost intact by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings. As a pharaoh, he hadn’t been anything special, but the contents of his tomb were among the most spectacular archaeological finds ever made. If such riches had been found in the small tomb of a relatively insignificant king, what treasures must have been lost over the millennia, plundered by grave robbers? Hellen thought of Cloutard and wondered whether any of it had ended up in his hands.
But there were also more illustrious personalities within this museum’s walls. For instance Rameses II, once the most powerful pharaoh and one of the longest-reigning heads of state in recorded history, had now found his final resting place in a refrigerator at the Cairo Museum. Hellen remembered how her father had once taken her there as a child, and how she had had the honor of actually seeing the mummy of Rameses II for herself. They were in luck: an American film crew had been making a documentary, and the mummy had been taken out of its climate-controlled vault. That was one of Hellen’s fondest memories of her father.
Finally, she and Arno reached the basement. She stood at the door for which the night watchman had given them the keycard, let out a little squeal of glee and inserted the card into the card reader. The door buzzed, clicked and opened. They passed through into the cool laboratory and Hellen turned on the light. In the center of the lab was a large steel table, upon which rested a dark wooden box. Hellen and Arno looked at each other, wide-eyed with eagerness.
Hellen kissed Arno on the cheek. “Thank you for doing this for me,” she said.
She found a small pry bar on a rack beneath the table, cracked open the lid and set it aside. And there they were, lying on a bed of wood shavings: the two amphorae. The clay vessels were each about eighteen inches long, and were in almost perfect condition. Being exposed to seawater for the two minutes it took Hellen and Arno to swum back to the surface seemed to have done them little harm. The cavity from which Hellen had taken them must have been completely airtight, which would explain the air that had escaped when they pulled the stone block out of the wall, and also why they hadn’t been able to press the trigger stones at first: whoever put them in the hidden compartment had sealed it well. Hellen lifted an amphora from the box, admiring the texture of the simple vessel. But what interested her the most was the symbol pressed into the clay. Hellen lifted out the second amphora and began her examination.
22
Tahrir Plaza Suites Hotel, Cairo
Cloutard sat on the small, covered balcony, sipping a glass of cognac—Hennessy Louis XIII. The Tahrir Plaza Suites was a three-star hotel; he was used to better, but he was pleasantly surprised that they at least kept a supply of his favorite cognac. For now, however, location mattered more than luxury. The balcony had an excellent view over the entire area, and every now and then he peered through binoculars, looking at the back entrance to the building and the people hustling through the crowded streets. He watched until the sun began to set, and the staff had all left the complex. Now, the only one left was the elderly night watchman, whom he had been watching for a couple of hours—but for the moment, he was enjoying the last gleams of the sunset over the Egyptian metropolis. He sipped with relish at his expensive cognac. He wanted nothing more than to banish the surprising and disagreeable encounter with Farid—and the unexpected threat—from his mind. But he knew he would have to find time for it later.
Cloutard glanced at his watch. His friend was due any time. It was already very late: apparently his official duties were taking longer than expected. But this situation was important, too; it was literally a matter of life and death. Finally, he heard a knock at the door. He got up and walked across the small but clean and pleasantly lit room. He opened the door to an athletically built and exhausted looking man in a dark gray suit and loose tie: Tom Wagner. The two embraced warmly and Tom said, “Thank you, François, for doing this. For Noah and me.”
“That goes without saying, my friend. Come in, come in,” Cloutard said. He closed the door behind Tom and both men went out onto the balcony. “Drink?”
“No thanks. I have to keep a clear head,“ Tom replied. He picked up the binoculars that lay on the tiny table next to Cloutard’s glass of Louis XIII.
“The security center is at the northeast corner. There is only a night watchman on duty,” Cloutard explained. Tom swung the binoculars to the left and saw the watchman’s window. “I cannot believe we are forced to work for that woman,” Cloutard said angrily, as he slumped onto the chair beside the table. “It is gutless to target a man in a wheelchair, but Ossana will stoop to anything. She has no criminal’s code of honor.”
“But the file she gave me has been a big help. This ought to be a walk in the park.” Tom looked around a little with the field glasses until he had the binoculars trained on the iron gate at the back of the complex. “I see someone,” he said, but he was looking at the newcomers from behind and could not make out who it was. There were two, a man and a woman, and when the gate opened, the woman glanced back over her shoulder for a moment. Tom recognized her instantly.
“Hellen?” What was Hellen doing in Egypt? And what was she doing here, now?
“The Hellen? Your ex-girlfriend?” Cloutard was as bewildered as Tom.
Tom’s brain was already in high gear. Could this really be a coincidence? She was an archaeologist, after all, and the building below was a museum. But why in the world was she sneaking in at the back gate in the middle of the night? No way was this a fluke. They had to be here for the same thing. What could interest both Hellen and Ossana—desperately enough that she would kidnap Noah to get it?
“Grab your things, let’s go. We’re doing this now!” Tom snapped at Cloutard, who jumped up from his chair and drained the last drops of his cognac.
Minutes later, they left the hotel at a run and dodged across the road, still jammed with traffic, to the museum’s back entrance. Tom pounded on the iron gate.
“Tom, we had a detailed plan. What are we doing?” Cloutard asked.
“Improvising,” Tom said. He hammered against the gate a second time and drew his pistol.
“Merde,” Cloutard muttered. “This is not good. When it comes to this woman, your judgment is still, shall we say, impaired. Tom, please, we should—”
Just then, the gate opened a crack and the cheerful smile of the night watchman appeared.
“Nem min fadlik?” he asked. Then he saw the gun that Tom was casually pointing at him at waist level. “What you want?” he said in broken English, startled. He retreated as Tom and Cloutard pushed into the yard.
All three quickly entered the museum. “Take us to your office,” Tom ordered the fearful man. When they reached the security center, Tom ordered him to sit down. “You let two people in here five minutes ago. Why? What are they doing here?”
The man could not help himself as his eyes drifted to the envelope on his desk. “I no understand,” he said. But Tom had followed the man’s gaze. He snatched up the envelope and opened it. Inside was five thousand dollars. The man looked at Tom in despair.
“Ah. A private after-dark tour, something like that?” He put the envelope back on the table. The man’s relief was palpable.
“Madha yurid alrajul walmar’at hna? What do the man and woman want here?” Cloutard asked.
To Tom, it sounded like the purest high Arabic, and he nodded at François, impressed. “Not bad,” he said.
“Excuse me?” the man said tentatively. He pointed to the map on the wall and indicated that he wanted to stand up. Tom nodded. The man went to the map and tapped on the room in the basement.
“Amphora from Anfushi here. Here going man and woman.”
“Thank you. Sit down again,” said Tom, and he pointed at the chai
r.
“Shukraan. Waljuluws,” Cloutard translated, and the guard returned to his chair.
Tom began rummaging through drawers and cupboards. “What are you looking for?” Cloutard asked.
But Tom had already found a roll of electrical tape in a cupboard. “Sorry,” he said to the man, as he bound him to the chair. He taped his mouth closed, too.
“Eadhar, eadhar,” Cloutard said. “Alibi.”
Tom picked up the envelope of cash and laid it demonstratively in a drawer. “So that no one steals it when they find you.”
The man nodded gratefully. Tom left the office, and Cloutard followed a few seconds later. Before he left, however, he removed the envelope from the drawer, shrugged apologetically at the night watchman, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
23
Café Central, Vienna, Austria
The American stepped inside Vienna’s most famous café, located in the former stock market. To call the Café Central stylish was a gross understatement: the columned hall, with its Tuscan neo-renaissance design, was peerless.
Many years earlier, the American had read a description of the venerable Viennese institution that he had found particularly apt:
The Central is not a coffeehouse like other coffeehouses, but a way of life. Its denizens are, for the most part, people whose loathing of their fellow humans is as intense as their desire for companionship with people who want to be alone, but who need company to do so. The guests of the Central know, love and scorn one another. There are creative types for whom nothing comes to mind only in the Central, and far less anywhere else.
As soon as he entered, the American spotted Ruben Steinberg. He was seated far in the back of the café, and the American wound his way through the usual crowds that frequented the café every day. He pushed past the tuxedoed waiters, referred to as “Ober” in Vienna—as in the Emperor’s day, the staff of the Central still considered the tuxedo to be the only conceivable and proper uniform of a waiter—and sat down opposite Steinberg.
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