A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  “Sinan?” Her voice was almost lost in the sounds of the traffic around her.

  “It’s me, Nia.”

  “I’ve never seen the Nile before. Last night, when we arrived, I didn’t get to see it.”

  “Nia, what’s going on?”

  Her answer was lost in the sounds around her, coming into his ear.

  “I didn’t hear you, Nia, please, say it again.”

  “I said you should see it. You should come down and see it, close by.”

  “I’ve seen it before. When I was here before.”

  “Oh, yes. When you were a student.”

  “That’s right,” Sinan said. “Nia, what are you doing?”

  “There are guards, Sinan. They’re outside, something’s happening. I can’t get close.”

  Sinan panned the binoculars, trying to get a glimpse of the British Embassy through the gaps in the buildings below him. The Shepheard’s Hotel had been chosen because it had the best vantage point for their purpose, but even so, construction in the Garden City of Cairo had thrown up buildings of irregular height, all of them with rooftops covered with aerials, advertisements, and other signs of life.

  It wasn’t any good, he couldn’t see.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Matteen asked.

  Sinan moved the binoculars back to Nia, or to where Nia had been, but she was no longer standing there, and feeling rising panic, he began panning his view around, trying to spot her.

  “Nia?” He tried to keep his voice calm. “Nia, where are you?”

  There was no answer and again Sinan was assailed by the sounds of traffic.

  “—to the north side of the block, then around that way.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to go around the block and try to come down Sharia Amerika al-Latineya.”

  “Hold on,” Sinan said. “Stay on the phone, don’t hang up.”

  “I won’t hang up. I like hearing your voice.”

  “I like hearing your voice, too.” He turned the binoculars on the tripod, trying to find Nia in the traffic walking below, but the angle was too steep from the room and he couldn’t see her. He pulled back from the tripod, glancing at the phone long enough to make certain he was pressing the mute button, then looked to Matteen.

  “What is she doing?” Matteen demanded.

  “She says there are guards, that she can’t get close to the embassy. She’s heading north to circle around. I think she’s going for the secondary target, the American Embassy.”

  “You think?”

  “I can’t find her. She’s heading in the wrong direction, our angle’s no good.”

  Matteen swore, turned away, swiping the remote from the desk as he headed for the door.

  “Wait!” Sinan said.

  “She’s shahid, Sinan!” Matteen barked at him. “Our job is to ensure she remains that.”

  Then he was out the door, and after a moment, Sinan was scrambling after him, out into the hall, running to catch him at the elevator. Matteen was already inside, glaring at him angrily, one foot holding the doors open, and he yanked it clear as soon as Sinan was in with him.

  “Keep talking to her,” Matteen said. “Find out where she is.”

  Sinan put the phone back to his head, heard Nia saying his name, but dropping out, the signal suddenly weaker in the elevator.

  “—Sinan? Are you—ere, I cou—oice ight now.”

  “I’m still here, Nia,” he said. “I’m still here.”

  “—inking about—ared—inan, it’s not right.”

  He realized the mute was still on, switched it off as the elevator reached the lobby and Matteen rushed out, heading for the street. Sinan raced after him, trying to keep himself from shouting into the phone.

  “Nia? Nia, can you hear me?”

  “When did Allah tell Muhammad that there were six pillars, Sinan?” Nia asked. “You’ve studied, you’re smart. I looked all through my Qu’ran, and I couldn’t find where the Prophet says it is the Sixth Pillar.”

  “It’s not in the Qu’ran, not like that.” They were out on the street now, Sinan chasing after Matteen’s wake as he threaded through the crowds on the sidewalk, heading north.

  “But that’s what I mean, Sinan. It’s not there, that’s what I’m saying. The Prophet told us to love and to honor and to respect. He told us to live in peace, even with those not like us. He told us to pray, to be pious, to be charitable, to honor Allah, the One God. He told us to make the Hajj, that we might see the world as he saw the world, and to fast during the days of Ramadan. But he never told us that jihad was the Sixth Pillar, Sinan. He never spoke those words.”

  They’d reached the corner, turned east, heading toward the Midan Simon Bolivar, with its monument and roundabout. Matteen was still ahead of him but slowing, scanning both sides of the street, straining to find her through the traffic.

  “Nia, think about what you’re saying,” Sinan urged. “The Prophet was a great man, he taught us many things, but to raise him, to elevate him too far, that’s idolatry, that’s mushrikun.”

  “Why was it so frowned upon in the camp to speak of Muhammad, Sinan? When did acknowledging the Prophet become a sin?” Her voice was clearer now, her words spoken with more volume, with more certainty, and Sinan could hear her thoughts crystallizing.

  “The Prophet was a servant, Nia, just as we are servants. Glory is to Allah, praise Him, not His servants.”

  “I don’t think Allah is so hard-hearted, Sinan. I don’t think Allah who taught Muhammad the True Religion thinks so poorly of His creation, of His children. Even the children who do not share the Truth, even them, we are taught to respect the People of the Book, to honor Jews and Christians, not to kill them.”

  “The Jews were turned to apes and swine, Nia, because they turned away from the Truth. The Christians forsook the One God and now worship many, their money, their possessions—”

  “But they aren’t, Sinan! They aren’t pigs or apes, they’re not animals! They don’t worship their money, they only have money!”

  Matteen, ahead of Sinan, turned south, now heading down Sharia Amerika al-Latineya. Sinan tried to spot her, looking about frantically, and he saw the grounds to the American Embassy down the block, the guards and barricades, and he slowed as he reached Matteen, trying to conceal his anxiety, lowering his voice again.

  “Nia, listen to me,” Sinan said. “You trust me, right?”

  “Of course I do, Sinan.”

  “You had a friend, you told me about him. You loved him. Think about him, Nia, think about what happened to him, and what he would want from you.”

  There was silence, and Sinan thought that maybe he’d reached her.

  Then Nia said, “He wanted peace, Sinan. More than anything, he wanted peace. As all Muslims want peace.”

  Matteen had stopped, looking at him with anxious curiosity. The remote was still in his hand.

  “Where are you, Nia?” Sinan asked.

  “I’m on the corner.”

  “Which corner?”

  “Sharia Maglis Ash-Shaab.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “I know.” Nia’s voice quavered. “I can’t do it, Sinan. It’s wrong. I’m sorry, but if I am going to go to Paradise, I want to earn it through good works and good words, not like this. Not as a martyr. I’m sorry, Sinan.”

  “As am I,” he said, and he reached out to the remote in Matteen’s hand, and he pressed the two buttons in quick succession, the right, then the left.

  They heard the explosion, and then the screams, and Matteen stared at Sinan, dumbstruck, as Sinan lowered the phone, turning it off. He felt his eyes beginning to burn with tears, saw frantic people running past him, crying and yelling, heading both toward and away from the site of the explosion.

  “What did you do?” Matteen asked him hoarsely.

  “I saved her,” Sinan answered, and started down the block again, to see who Nia had claimed on her way to Paradise.

  42
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  Egypt—Cairo, Islamic Quarter, Sharia Muski

  20 September 1018 Local (GMT+3.00)

  There’d been a bombing in the Garden City, near the American Embassy, and, ironically, that was what allowed Chace to kill Muhriz el-Sayd.

  She’d arrived in Cairo late the night before, taking a room at the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel, known for its opulence in catering to Westerners and its hopping casinos. She was still running on the DuLac identity, and it made her nervous, because she didn’t know how much longer it would last. Box would have gotten the passenger list for the Eurostar train she and Wallace had caught, would have gone over every name with a microscope, then put out a watch, seeing if any of those travelers appeared anywhere else. If they suspected she had headed to Israel, it wouldn’t take them long to find Monique DuLac on an Air France passenger list.

  So she was quite possibly running blown.

  After waking early, Chace bought two city guides from the hotel gift shop and a copy of the Cairo Times, an English-language weekly, more an oversized magazine than a newspaper. She spent her breakfast poring over the guidebooks, ignoring the paper for the time being. Borovsky had given her three possible locations to look for el-Sayd, places he was rumored to frequent, all of them in the Islamic Quarter, cafés and restaurants where he hid among sympathetic owners and employees, shielded from the Cairo police. None of the locations appeared on her map, and with a resigned sigh, Chace resolved to check each by foot.

  Finishing her meal, she went to the desk and checked out of the hotel, then tossed one of the guidebooks in the trash on her way out—the weaker of the two—sliding the other into her hip pocket.

  The newspaper she rolled loosely and tucked inside her jacket.

  •

  It wasn’t yet nine in the morning, and Cairo was already accelerating to full bustle. She threaded through the thickening pedestrian traffic to the nearest Metro station, then took the subway into the Islamic Quarter. When she came aboveground again, it was just past eight-thirty, and the streets were much quieter than in downtown. She took in the medieval architecture, orienting herself to the Mosque of Mohammad Ali, its silver domes shining in the morning light, atop the Citadel, then made her way on foot toward the Khan al-Khalili, the commercial heart of the quarter.

  Vendors were already laying out wares, beginning to line the streets and alleyways, selling everything from spices to souvenirs. Chace passed a stand of beautifully crafted glass bottles, another of handcrafted waterpipes, a third of children’s toys, cheap plastic robots with flashing red eyes and mechanical shouts that urged her to halt. It was growing noisier, voices raised to be heard over the traffic.

  Chace stopped on the east side of the market, opposite the Mosque of Sayyidna al-Hussein, checked her guidebook. A passerby stopped, a man in his late forties, asking her in French if she was lost, if she required any assistance. She answered him in English, and he surprised her by asking the question again, also in English.

  “The carpet bazaar,” Chace said. “Which way is it?”

  The man smiled, pointed back toward the west and south. She thanked him and wished him a good day.

  “Inshallah,” the man said with a smile, and continued on his way.

  Chace started in the indicated direction, heading for the Al-Ghouri Complex, the combination mausoleum-and-madrassa with its red-striped minaret. Across the street from it, on Sharia Azhar, she found the first of the possible locations Borovsky had proposed, a narrow café, just opening for the day. She stepped inside and ordered herself some tea, sitting at a narrow table on an even narrower bench to drink it, while taking in the location.

  There was no sign of el-Sayd, but she hadn’t expected there to be. She had serious doubts about her ability to find the man at all. Cairo was one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and even with her choice of three possible locations, the chances of el-Sayd being in one at the same time as she was seemed ludicrous at best. Worse, he could be present, in the back or on a floor above, and she would never know it. Asking the staff if they had seen the man wasn’t likely to be of much help, either.

  She finished her tea, then checked her watch, saw it was only half-past nine. She headed back out onto the street, up to Sikket al-Badestan, heading west, stopping occasionally to peer at the items on display in windows and at stalls. If she’d exposed herself by stopping for tea, there was a chance she’d acquired a watcher, especially if Borovsky’s intel was to be trusted, and the locations were hot spots for the EIJ.

  But Chace saw no one who alarmed her.

  The next stop was an Internet café, surprisingly busy, eighteen terminals in two rows of nine, all of them occupied by young men gulping down coffee, tea, soda, snacking on chocolates and nuts and fruit. Every last one of them seemed to be doing two or three things at once, chasing hyperlinks as they carried on conversations with their neighbors, tapping away at e-mails as they listened to the pop music playing from the radio behind the cashier’s counter. Chace chose a seat near the door, ostensibly to wait for an opening at one of the computers, took out her copy of the Cairo Times, pretending to read.

  There was no sign of him here, either.

  Chace tried to keep her thoughts productive, tried to formulate a plan, but the sad truth of the matter was that this was the plan, and she didn’t think it was a very good one. There was a reason el-Sayd had managed to survive for twelve years on the Mossad’s hit list, and it wasn’t by accident. If Borovsky had truly known where the man was, Landau would have sent one of his Metsada boys after him long ago. That they hadn’t, meant that what Borovsky had given Chace was their best guess, but for all any of them knew, el-Sayd could have been holed up at Heliopolis or Giza or somewhere else entirely, perhaps even out of the country.

  These were her thoughts and they infected her mood, and she was beginning to brood when she realized that the music had stopped and a man’s voice was now speaking somberly on the radio. At every workstation, hands became idle, heads turned to better hear the sound. One of the young men present called out to the man behind the counter, and Chace’s weak Arabic couldn’t keep up, but she guessed he’d asked that the radio be turned up, because that was what happened next.

  She leaned forward to the nearest person, a man no older than eighteen, trying to sport a mustache. “Min fadlak, law samahti. Hal tatakalam engleezee?”

  He turned from the direction of the radio, reluctant, still listening. “English? Naam, a little.”

  “Has something happened?”

  The teen frowned, shook his head. “They are saying a, what is it? A bomb? A bomb has gone off near the American Embassy.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, convincingly horrified. “That’s awful.”

  “Yes, the police, they are looking for the ones who did it.”

  “Good, that’s good.”

  Chace sat back in her seat, taking in the room with new eyes. The reactions seemed to be much along the lines of the young man she’d just spoken with, but not all of them, and it struck her that if, in fact, el-Sayd had connections to the owner or employees here, the news might force them to move. Not the bombing itself, but perhaps the threat of the police. Cairo thrived on tourism, and the EIJ attacks on the tourists at Luxor in 1996 had hurt.

  The police would respond quickly, trying to keep that financial disaster from happening again.

  But none of the men at the workstations seemed to be looking to leave. If anything, they were at the computers with renewed enthusiasm, trying to glean news from the Internet. Chace looked past them, saw that the man behind the counter was speaking on the telephone. Beyond him there was a door, presumably to a back room, and Chace wondered if there was a back door as well.

  She got up and stepped outside, crossing the street and buying a pair of very cheap but surprisingly good-looking sunglasses from a vendor, all the while keeping one eye on the café door. One of the young men from inside emerged as she was haggling on the price and headed west along the street. C
hace handed over an Egyptian five-pound note and started off in pursuit, taking her time, sticking to her side of the street.

  Her initial uncertainty vanished when she realized she was having to almost jog to keep up. The man was clearly in a hurry to get someplace, and although he didn’t seem to be even remotely concerned with possible tails, his haste and the traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, were enough that Chace twice lost sight of him altogether, before he veered south off the street into a narrow alley crammed with stalls.

  She lost sight of him for a third time around a bend that made her think back to the dogleg in Lambeth, where she’d tried to flush Box. She stopped abruptly, turned, feigning vague interest in a collection of bootleg CDs offered at the nearest stall, counting the seconds in her head.

  He didn’t come back.

  Chace continued around the bend, hoping she hadn’t lost too much time, hadn’t lost him, and nearly cursed when she couldn’t immediately find him. The alley dumped out onto Sharia Muski, heavy with traffic.

  She couldn’t see him and swore aloud.

  Then she heard sirens, turned to look up the street, seeing three police cars, blue lights flashing, attempting to make their way in her direction through the clutter on the road. Chace looked back to the storefronts, seeing shops, restaurants, cafés, stall after stall, and people were looking at the oncoming cars, staring and wondering, and among them she saw her man, his reaction giving him away, moving while others stood still, ducking through the narrow door of a tattered shop.

  Chace hurried forward to follow, feeling the pain in her knee return with a gentle thrum, as if cautioning her. As she had done with every other warning she’d received in recent memory, she ignored it.

  The café was easily the most cramped and smoke-filled establishment she had ever been inside in her life. Perhaps a foot of clearance ran between the tables on the one side and the wall along the other, and with patrons seated, the room to move was halved again. Two sets of doors stood at the rear of the room, one on the far right wall, the other directly ahead of her.