My God, what if you are right, Claymore, about Eugène? Am I deluding myself?
I have been going through the Kemetic’s diary, the one that you took from his apartment. I have decided never to tell you about what happened that day. Even though you may suspect something, you have not asked me about it. If you ever do, I will reveal nothing. What you already know is enough.
Much of what is written in the diary is in hieroglyphs, or in demotic – a simplified ancient Egyptian script. This material is impenetrable. But he also used a shorthand of his own devising, which I am starting to understand. There are also many passages in plain Arabic, which are relatively complete. In one, he writes:
We had a big argument tonight with H. He is very angry, and has been for several days now, ever since Y declared himself. My heart aches for my poor friend, trapped in a physical body that desires love from men, as mine craves the love of women. We are both miserable creatures, but we believe we are fighting a just cause. Perhaps it will absolve us both in the eyes of Allah. The Consortium is a cancer, eating away at our society from within. H has begun to express sympathy with the extremists. Tonight he said he agrees with GI, and that there is no other way to defeat and remove the Consortium. Fatimah has begun to influence him. She is beguiling and beautiful, and I do not trust her. It is wrong to invoke the name of our God in such a mission.
I reread the words, ensuring I have not made an error. If this can be believed – and why would I not believe it? – the Kemetic was a Muslim. The ancient religion must have been a hobby, or an affectation, or perhaps camouflage. It also corroborates what Yusuf told you – that Hamid rejected his advances, and that this led to a breakdown in the professional relationship. Hamid never expressed to me, in the time we were married, any revulsion towards homosexuals. He was always very liberal about such matters whenever we discussed them, very modern. He reminded me so much of my father.
I looked for a date for the entry, but could not find one. Looking at the other entries, it was probably written sometime between July and September of this year, well before the acquittal. It is clear, now, that Fatimah knew my husband for some time before then. Did she lure him in, use sex to get close, disguise her real intentions?
This is another passage I was able to decipher, a more recent entry:
The lady who calls herself Veronique came to see me today. Y sent her to me. She is seeking information about H, about the case. She seems to know a lot already. I want to help her, but I am afraid of myself. She is beautiful. Uncommonly so. I promised myself, after the last time, that it would be the end of it. I swore, made a promise to God.
After the last time! Those photographs. He had done it before. Perhaps with Fatimah? My God! That there are such depraved people in this world. And yet, I can see that he was a good man, fighting a terrible injustice as best he could, with grace and perseverance. We are all flawed, all suspect, hiding our secrets, struggling against our baser selves.
22:15 hrs
Claymore, you just knocked on my door. We spoke only briefly.
The distance between us opened up like a cold sea. After our conversation with Parveen, I know that you do not love me. This is clear to me now. You act only from some deep sense of loyalty. Perhaps, God help you, it is simply that you have no one else. Your ignorance is shocking. I pity you. You know nothing.
You came to tell me that you had just spoken to Atef on the telephone. The girls are fine. Yusuf was found yesterday in an industrial landfill site outside Suez. He had been shot in the head.
Strength
When Mahmoud woke him, it was still dark.
Whatever nightmare Clay had been inhabiting faded as the urgency in his friend’s voice doubled his heart rate. Clay pulled on his shirt, checked his weapon, secured his ammunition and grenades in his waist pouch, and then threw on the jelabia.
‘My father-in-law just called,’ whispered Mahmoud. ‘They think they have found her. A neighbour from Al Alqalta came to him late last night. She told him that a strange woman – a foreigner – arrived a week ago. At first, she paid it no attention. Then, over the next few days, she began to notice other men, also strangers, arriving and staying in the same flat. It is not far from here, on the west bank. The foreign woman goes to the nearby mosque every morning for the fajr, the dawn prayer, and again in the evening.’
‘That’s it?’ said Clay.
Mahmoud nodded.
‘Not much to go on.’
‘My father-in-law showed the neighbour Rania’s passport photo. She said it was her.’
‘Jesus.’
‘We must hurry.’
Rania was waiting by the car with Parveen. They embraced and Rania sat in the back. Mahmoud drove. Soon they were speeding south along the dark canal road towards Al Alqalta.
‘This is why it took us some time to find her,’ said Parveen. ‘We started in the town, the big places.’
Mahmoud slowed the car and turned right onto a small, unpaved road. Dawn was still an hour or so away, just a hint on the eastern horizon. After a few hundred metres he switched off the lights and rolled the car to a stop under a giant sycamore.
‘There,’ whispered Parveen. ‘At the end of the street, on the left. She is in the second-floor apartment facing the road. Where the balcony is.’
The place was dark, shuttered. Clay pulled out his binoculars, scanned the front.
Minutes passed.
‘Maybe she has already left for the mosque,’ whispered Rania.
‘It is still early. The mosque is very close. Walking distance.’ Parveen pointed. ‘Over there.’
A single minaret poked above the scattered buildings, bathed in a wan green light.
‘I am going to look,’ said Rania. And before anyone could respond she was out and moving away in the darkness.
‘Shit,’ said Clay. They’d just made their first mistake.
A light came on in the flat, then another. Clay and Mahmoud sat motionless. A minute or so later, the lights were extinguished. Clay checked his watch: just before five o’clock, the sky greying now in the east. A dark figure emerged from a side alley, got into a small van parked nearby, started the engine and drove it around to the front of the building. The front door opened. A man stepped out, looked both ways, walked to the van, opened the sliding door and got in.
‘Look,’ said Mahmoud.
Five more men filed out of the building and jumped into the van. Each carried a duffel bag. The door closed and the van moved away.
‘What should we do?’ said Mahmoud. ‘Follow?’
‘No, wait,’ said Clay.
A dark figure emerged from the same alley and hurried across the narrow street. A woman in a black burqa. She was carrying a small backpack. She turned left, in the direction of the mosque, and disappeared down a side street.
‘Follow her,’ said Clay.
Mahmoud waited a few seconds, started the engine and backed the car away, keeping the lights off. At the end of the street he turned left. The call to prayer echoed out across the sleeping town. They trundled along the rutted, potholed road for a minute or so then Mahmoud stopped the car.
The mosque was perhaps fifty metres away. From where they sat they could clearly see the entrance, a house built close to its walls on the left, and to the right, the fields and palms of the flood plain. People began straggling into the mosque in ones and twos – men mostly, wrapped against the morning chill. There was no sign of the woman or Rania.
‘We must wait,’ said Parveen. ‘The woman we spoke to says she leaves after fajr.’
Clay scanned the street and the adjacent buildings. Rania wasn’t thinking straight. This woman – if it was her – was dangerous. Rania was unarmed, and they had no way of staying in contact. They should have established a rendezvous point. He had to hope that if they became separated, she would find her way back to Mahmoud’s. More mistakes.
Five minutes passed, ten. Clay and Mahmoud and Parveen sat in the car and watched the sky lighten. Wors
hippers began leaving the mosque, the same people they’d seen going in, the men hunched, wrapped against the chill, matrons in their dark burqas, neither the woman nor Rania among them.
Minutes passed. They waited.
A quarter of an hour later the lights on the minaret flickered out. ‘Jesus,’ said Clay. ‘They’re gone, both of them.’
Mahmoud pressed his fingertips together. Patience. But this was a commodity that Clay had long since husked away to the slimmest of cores. Any moment now, the call might be going out to the AB, the evidence perhaps already on its way, and then the window would open, at least for him. Whatever grace Tall had promised was already gone. They needed to go, now, not be scurrying around the backstreets of some shithole town in rural Egypt. And yet her strength beguiled him. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to her, all those days and months ago. But this seemingly blind, sometimes ugly stubbornness also frightened him, so beyond their control did it seem. He reached for the door handle.
‘Wait,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Look, there.’
A woman was leaving the mosque. Her face was veiled. She carried a small backpack on one shoulder and in the other arm, slung on her hip, a child.
Clay held his breath.
‘Is it her?’ said Mahmoud.
‘I can’t tell.’ Clay raised his binoculars and tried to focus on the child, but its face was turned towards the woman.
She stepped out onto the road, looked to her left. A car emerged from the darkness, rolled towards her. The car stopped, a bearded man behind the wheel. She opened the front door, got in. The car moved off in the direction of the canal road. Seconds later, it was out of sight.
Mahmoud made to follow.
‘There,’ said Clay.
Another woman was leaving the mosque. She stopped, looked both ways, flung off her headscarf. It was Rania.
Mahmoud gunned the engine. They pulled up in front of her moments later.
Rania jumped in the back. ‘Did you see?’ she said, breathless.
‘Was it her?’ said Parveen.
‘Yes. And she has my son.’
Echo and Die
‘There they are,’ said Mahmoud, turning the car onto the canal road.
The early-morning traffic had started to build. Cars with headlights still burning, a few long-haul trucks trundling along the two-lane trunk road. Up ahead, the car they’d seen the woman leave the mosque in, a white Nissan sedan, ubiquitous here, kept a steady pace, heading north.
‘Where are they going?’ said Rania, desperation in her voice.
Mahmoud was keeping well back, behind a big lorry, occasionally inching out as if thinking of passing. ‘Perhaps the Western Desert Road.’
Clay told Rania about the men they’d seen getting into the van. ‘Do you think they’re together?’
‘If the Directorate’s information is correct, yes.’
Soon they were approaching West Luxor. Hatshepsut’s temple glowed on the hillside, bathed in the sun’s first blush. Cut into the mountain rock, it looked, even from this distance, impossibly huge. The car containing Eugène and the woman approached the turnoff for the temple, then kept going north towards the highway.
‘Not a sightseeing trip, then,’ said Clay.
Rania shot him a stare. ‘Perhaps they are going back to Cairo.’
As she said it, the car made a sharp turn to the left and started along an unpaved road that led away west into the hills, trailing a cloud of sun-shot dust.
Mahmoud slowed and pulled to the side of the paved road. ‘Not Cairo.’
‘Where does this road go?’ said Clay.
‘Into the desert,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It follows the valley into the hills and eventually to the plateau and then into the desert.’ He pointed further north. ‘Up there, over that ridge, is the Valley of the Kings. But here, there is nothing. Some old quarries. A few archaeological sites, but nothing of importance.’
‘We must follow them,’ said Rania.
Mahmoud eased the car onto the gravel and started up the valley. The road was poorly maintained and the car groaned through potholes and rattled over the washboard as it wound its way up into the hills. Mahmoud was very careful, backing off at corners, using the other car’s dust trail as a gauge of separation. After about ten minutes, Mahmoud slowed the car and rolled it to a stop.
‘Look at the dust,’ he said. ‘They have stopped, around this next bend.’
Clay jumped out of the car and started up the hill on foot. Rania followed. He crouched as he approached the lip of a crumbled ridge of weathered sandstone. From here he could see up along the length of the next bend in the valley. The rear of the white Nissan was just visible, tucked into a notch in the rock on the south side of the road. He went prone, pulled out his binoculars.
‘What are they doing?’ whispered Rania. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck.
‘He’s opening the boot,’ said Clay. ‘Jesus.’
‘What?’
‘He’s got an AK.’ Clay watched the man heft a pack onto his back, sling the weapon, then throw a cloak over his shoulders, covering it over. The woman strapped the child across her chest and the pair started off into the hills, moving south, back towards the temple. He handed Rania the glasses. She followed the pair until they disappeared over a ridge.
‘Looks like they’re planning to be out here a while,’ said Clay. ‘That’s a big pack he’s carrying.’
‘Come on,’ said Rania, starting down the hill towards the car.
‘Wait,’ said Clay. ‘We have to tell Mahmoud and Parveen.’
‘You go.’
Clay grabbed her by the elbow. ‘No Rania, wait. Whatever they are doing out here, it isn’t good.’
Rania said nothing, stood staring in the direction of her son.
Clay started pulling her back to where Mahmoud was waiting. Rania tried to wrench herself away, but could not break his grip. ‘Let me go,’ she hissed. ‘You wanted to leave him.’
Clay released her arm. ‘Please, Rania. I’m sorry. You were right.’
She glared at him.
‘Please, wait here. I’ll only be a minute.’
Rania said nothing, stood staring towards the hills.
Clay breathed in and started scrambling back down the hill. When he reached the car, Mahmoud was waiting for him, standing by the open driver’s-side door. Clay looked back. Rania was gone.
‘Go, Mahmoud,’ said Clay. ‘As fast as you can. Call the police. Tell them about those men in the van. Do you have a pen?’
Mahmoud fumbled in the glove box, produced an old pencil and the owner’s manual. Clay thought back, visualised the van’s registration plate, the Arabic characters. Mahmoud scribbled as Clay recited the numbers.
‘They need to find that van. Tell the police you think they might be terrorists. Tourists will be the target.’
Mahmoud nodded and clasped Clay’s hand. ‘God be with you, my friend. I will return and wait for you here.’
Clay clapped Mahmoud on the shoulder. ‘But please, my friend. No police here. We must handle this ourselves.’
‘I understand.’
Clay started back up the hill at a sprint. When he reached the lip, he could see that Rania had reached the car and was already starting up into the hills, tracking her son’s captors. Clay set off, loping down the hill. When he reached the road he doubled his pace, aware that if they were spotted, they would be easy pickings for a good shot. The AK’s effective range meant that his handgun would be useless unless they could get close.
Rania was moving fast, matching the pair’s pace. By the time he caught up, she was almost at the top of a second ridge. He crouched beside her, breathing hard.
‘Look,’ she said.
The pair had stopped and installed themselves in a hollow near the top of the next ridge. They were at least two hundred metres away, maybe more, and appeared to be arranging themselves to look down into the next valley. Were they overlooking Djesr-djeseru – the templ
e of Hatshepsut? Was that the plan? To fire down at targets below? If so, why bring the woman and the child? He’d seen only one weapon. It made no sense. Unless, of course, he was carrying something else in the pack.
‘Come on,’ said Rania, up and moving again.
Clay followed, keeping low as they skirted the edge of a saddle. They emerged another seventy-five metres closer, looking up at the pair now from directly behind their position. Clay checked his watch. Eight-forty in the morning. Half an hour since they’d left Mahmoud. Hopefully, he’d alerted the police by now, and they would be looking for the van.
‘Eugène was living there,’ whispered Rania. ‘In the mosque.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard her speaking to someone. He’d been there for some time.’
‘Did she see you?’
‘Yes. But I was veiled. She did not recognise me.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘What are they doing?’ said Rania.
Clay focused the glasses. The man was staring intently down into the next valley. His elbows were raised to shoulder level. ‘He’s got binoculars. He’s scanning whatever is over that ridge.’
A pair of shots, closely spaced but distant, cut the stillness, echoed back across the hills, became four, then eight. The distinctive crack of a Kalashnikov. Something crawled up Clay’s neck, fluttered its wings inside his feet and hands, that old chill.
The man stood, his own AK still slung over his shoulder, focused his binoculars.
Absolution Page 29
