The Exodus Quest

by Will Adams

‘Are you going to let us go?’ asked the girl. ‘Please. We’re begging you.’

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ scowled Abdullah. ‘I’ll shine down the torch. You do … you know.’

  ‘How about I shine down the torch and you do it?’ retorted Faisal. He peered over the edge, as though that would somehow resolve the issue. Gaille lit a match from a book they must have left down there, the sudden bright flare illuminating her face in the darkness, staring pleadingly up at them.

  ‘I wish we had one of the captain’s grenades,’ muttered Abdullah. ‘So much easier.’

  ‘For us, you mean?’

  Down below, the second woman started sobbing piteously. Faisal struggled to block her cries and wails from his head.

  ‘We’ll do it together,’ said Abdullah finally. ‘Then we’ll check with the torch. Agreed?’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Faisal.

  ‘You think I do?’ scowled Abdullah. ‘But it’s this or explain to Khaled.’

  Faisal breathed deep. He’d slaughtered livestock on his farm ever since he could remember. That was all this was. Livestock ready for slaughter. ‘Okay,’ he said. He readied his gun; the shrieking started down below.

  ‘On the count of three,’ said Abdullah.

  ‘On the count of three,’ agreed Faisal.

  ‘One …’ said Abdullah. ‘Two …’

  THIRTY-ONE

  I

  Augustin arrived home weary and apprehensive. Farooq had treated him with such contempt since he’d decked him with his right hand that the spirit had gone completely out of him. He’d asked to visit Knox at the police station. Farooq had laughed in his face. He was normally an ebullient man, Augustin, but not tonight. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this low.

  A madwoman leaned over the banisters to bark at him about his rapist house guests. He lacked the energy even to yell back.

  He half filled a tumbler with ice, opened a new bottle of single malt, took both glass and bottle through to his bedroom, set them down on his bedside table. Then he opened his wardrobe and lifted his stack of T-shirts. The folder had moved. No question. No surprise, either. Knox hadn’t said anything on the phone earlier; of course he hadn’t, he was a man; men discuss such things, thank Christ. But Augustin had heard that slight hesitation in his voice. At the time, he’d put it down to his predicament. Only later had he realized that Knox would have needed a clean shirt, that of course he’d have seen the folder. It was the way fate worked. It gave you the punishments you deserved.

  He drew out the photographs; spread them on his duvet. His favourite was the first, not least because Gaille had given it to him herself. It showed the three of them out in the desert late one afternoon, arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning happily, against a backdrop of red-gold dunes, lengthening shadows, low slivers of mauve and orange cloud in a blue-wash sky. A grizzled Bedouin had taken it; they’d happened across him trudging the sands between nowhere and nowhere with the gloomiest-looking camel he’d ever seen. Augustin, Gaille, Knox. Something had happened to him that day. When Gaille had given him the photograph, he’d found it impossible to put away. He’d added to it, photos of her and Knox; others just of her.

  His tumbler had somehow emptied. He refilled it.

  Why have one woman when you could have twenty? In his heart, he’d always scorned fidelity. Every man would behave like he did if only they could. Monogamy was for losers. Maybe he was just getting old, but evenings with Knox and Gaille had made him aware of the shabbiness of this life. He’d found it increasingly hard to pick up women. He’d lost his nerve, or perhaps his hunger. He’d developed a different hankering. He couldn’t say what for, just that it was there, that it kept growing more severe, that it wouldn’t be sated by his usual conquests. One morning, a couple of months back, he’d woken up effervescent with purpose, had leapt out of bed and had torn down a great strip of wallpaper, satisfying as a gigantic scab. He’d called in the builders that same day, had had his apartment gutted and redecorated.

  The nesting instinct! Good grief! How had it come to this?

  And yet it didn’t feel like love. That was what Knox wouldn’t understand. He was fond of Gaille, sure, but he didn’t covet her or plot ways to win her. It didn’t stab him in the heart when she looked at Knox in that way she had. Because it wasn’t Gaille who’d got beneath his skin. It was the two of them together, the thing that had happened between them without them even knowing.

  One of the unexpected hazards of archaeology was how you were constantly reproached by the lives of others. Ancient Alexandrians had had a life expectancy of some thirty-five years, less time on earth than he’d already spent. Yet so many of them had achieved so much. And he’d achieved so little.

  His life was shit. He’d started buying whisky by the crate.

  He lay back on his bed, his hands clasped beneath his head. He stared up at his freshly whitewashed ceiling, aware it was going to be a long night.

  II

  ‘I can’t do this,’ muttered Faisal, taking a step back from the edge of the sump. ‘I can’t. I won’t.’

  ‘Fine,’ scowled Abdullah. ‘Then I’ll do it. But I won’t have you pointing the finger at me later if it all goes to shit.’

  ‘No,’ said Faisal. ‘Neither of us are doing it. It’s wrong. It’s just wrong. You know it is.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell Captain Khaled that, are you?’ snorted Abdullah.

  Faisal grimaced. Abdullah had a point. He’d suffered only one of that man’s proper beatings, but it had put him in hospital for a week. He didn’t fancy a repeat. ‘What were his orders, exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘Like I told you. To silence them.’

  ‘To silence them!’ snorted Faisal. ‘And why did he use that particular word, do you think? So that if all this is found out, he can blame us for misinterpreting his orders. We’ll be hung while he’ll be let off with a slap on his wrist.’

  ‘You think he’d do that?’

  ‘Of course he would,’ said Faisal. ‘Do you honestly believe everything we’ve found here has been worthless, like he’s been telling us? Bullshit. He’s just keeping it all for himself. It’s only ever him, him, him.’

  Abdullah grunted. It was a suspicion they all shared. ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  ‘We do precisely as he told you. We silence them.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘These two planks. We put one either side of the shaft. Then we stretch out the sheets and blankets between them, pin them down with rocks. That’ll muffle any sound, especially once we’ve sealed the mouth up.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Abdullah gave a shudder. ‘If he finds out …’

  ‘How’s he going to do that? I’m not going to tell him. Are you?’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘So you’d rather kill them, would you?’

  Abdullah glanced down, considered the options then grimaced. ‘Very well,’ he nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’

  III

  Knox ached from head to toe as he struggled to sleep. Bone-weary, they called it, and they knew what they were talking about. His cell was cold, his bench hard, his companions noisy sleepers, taking it in shifts to snore. The television was still on in the recreation room, volume cranked up high. It didn’t seem to bother Egyptians at all – they were born with mute buttons in their heads – but it was an aspect of life here that Knox had never quite got used to.

  It was the small hours before he finally drifted off, if not to sleep exactly, then to a state of inertia near enough to it. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been dozing that way when he heard a familiar voice. Gaille’s voice. At first he thought he was dreaming; it made him smile. But then he realized it wasn’t a dream. He realized it because of her choice of words, the strain in her tone. A jolt ran through him. He sat up, hurried to the cell door. Through the viewing window, he could just make out on the television screen the nightmare iconography of modern terrorism, Gaille and two others on the floor,
two masked paramilitaries standing behind them, weapons across their chests.

  ‘Gaille!’ he muttered, disbelieving. He pounded his fist against the door. ‘Gaille!’

  ‘Quiet, damn you,’ grunted one of his cell-mates.

  ‘Gaille!’ he yelled. ‘Gaille!’

  ‘I said be quiet!’

  ‘Gaille!’

  A door banged, footsteps approached, a bleary-eyed policeman peered in. He glowered at Knox, kicked the door. Knox barely even noticed, squinting past him at the TV screen. It was Gaille for sure. He called out her name again, feeling utterly helpless, bewildered. The policeman unlocked and opened the cell door, tapped his cane menacingly against his thigh. But Knox simply barged past him, out into the recreation room, staring numbly upwards, listening to her words.

  The policeman grabbed his shoulder. ‘Back in your cell,’ he warned. ‘Or I’ll have to—’

  ‘She’s my friend,’ snarled Knox. ‘Let me watch.’

  The policeman took a step back; Knox focused once more on the TV. The footage finished. The scene changed. A soberly dressed man and a woman in a news studio. No one had heard of the Assiut Islamic Brotherhood, but the authorities were confident of resolving this crisis peacefully. An inset screen appeared playing the hostage footage. Knox stared transfixed as Gaille adjusted her position, raised her right hand for emphasis. His skin prickled, though he wasn’t sure why.

  A door clanged behind him. He glanced around. Two more policemen were approaching, faces scrunched and mean. ‘My friend,’ he explained, gesturing at the screen. ‘She’s been taken hostage. Please. I need to—’

  The first blow caught him on his thigh. He hadn’t seen it coming at all, hadn’t had time to brace himself. Pain spiked up his hip; he slumped onto one knee. The second blow glanced off his shoulder blade onto the back of his scalp, stars and amoebae dancing in front of his eyes as his face rushed at the floor. A sudden shudder of memory, driving the Jeep, Omar beside him, laughing together at some joke. The sharp tang of diesel. Then his hair was grabbed and someone muttered in his ear, though there was such a ringing in his ears he couldn’t make out the words. His head was dropped again, his cheek banged cold stone. They dragged him by his legs across the rough floor back to his cell.

  IV

  Naguib went yawning into the kitchen, mouth dry, eyes gluey, eager for his first glass of morning chai. His wife didn’t even look around, she was so riveted by her TV.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Some Westerners were kidnapped in Assiut last night. Television people. They say they were filming in Amarna yesterday. Did you see them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Apparently this woman is the one who helped find Alexander’s tomb. Remember that press conference with the secretary general and that other man?’

  ‘The one you thought so handsome?’

  Yasmine blushed. ‘I only said he looked nice.’

  ‘What have they been saying?’

  ‘Just that their car was found burned out in Assiut, that some poor half-blind man was paid to take this DVD into the television station. They’ve been playing it non-stop. Apparently the kidnappers are demanding the release of those people arrested for the rape and murder of those two girls.’

  Naguib frowned. ‘Terrorists want rapists and murderers released?’

  ‘They say they’re not guilty.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘That poor young woman!’ said Yasmine. ‘How is she holding herself together?’

  Naguib put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. The video was playing in a loop, screen-in-screen, so he could see the hostages’ terrible anxiety, the freely bleeding cut on the man’s cheek, the uplighting making strange shadows from their features, while the commentators took turns to deplore the ignominy this brought upon their nation, debating the steps their government would take. He too found it difficult to look away, despite his need to get to the office, clear his paperwork, buy himself some time to go see the local ghaffirs. But unlike his wife, it wasn’t fellow feeling that kept him riveted. It was something else. His policeman’s instincts were quivering deep inside. He just couldn’t work out why.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I

  Knox’s mouth was sore and sticky. He wiped it with the back of his hand. It came back smeared red. He sat up on the hard bench, suffered a dizzying rush of blood to his head; had to give himself a few seconds to adjust. But that was nothing compared to the visual memory that came next.

  Gaille, kneeling, terrified, hostage of terrorists.

  He leaned forward, fearful he was going to be sick, but somehow held it in. He stood, walked woozily to the door, peered through the glass. The television was still tuned to the news, though someone had finally turned down the volume. There she was, reading out her statement, the words already imprinted on his mind. The Assiut Islamic Brotherhood. Treating us well. Unless efforts are made to find us. Released unharmed when the men are released. If not released within fourteen days …

  That look on her face. Her shaking hands. She was fighting dread, terrified of something imminent, not fourteen days away. He wasn’t a parent, Knox, but he felt then how a parent must feel, that desperation to help, that powerlessness. A savage sensation. Unbearable, except that he had no option but to bear it.

  ‘Your friend is one of the hostages?’

  Knox blinked and looked around. The man in the rumpled white suit was talking to him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your friend is one of the hostages?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘The red-headed girl or the dark-headed girl?’

  ‘The dark-headed girl.’ A sudden flicker of memory. Talking to two men, one in a dog collar, the other portly like this.

  ‘She looks nice.’

  ‘She is nice.’

  ‘Your girlfriend, is she?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘I just work with her.’

  ‘Sure,’ smiled the man. ‘That’s how I react when my colleagues get into trouble. I go crazy and pick fights with policemen.’

  ‘She’s a friend too.’

  He nodded. ‘Anyway. I wanted to say how sorry I am that countrymen of mine could do this to her. If there’s anything I can do …’

  ‘Thank you.’ He looked back at the screen. Something about the footage was whispering to him.

  ‘I’m not a good man. I wouldn’t be here if I was. But I can’t understand how men who claim to be of Allah could think that Allah would approve of that.’

  ‘Please,’ said Knox, begging for silence.

  He focused back on the screen. The footage started over. Gaille kneeling on the floor, then adopting the lotus position, raising her right hand for extra emphasis. He’d seen that posture somewhere else recently. But where? He dug fingernails into his palm in an effort to force his mind to focus. Then he had it. That mosaic. The figure in the centre of the seven-pointed star.

  Yes. His skin prickled.

  Gaille was sending him a message.

  II

  The phone was ringing. It wouldn’t bloody stop. Augustin did his best to ignore it until finally it went away again. But the damage had been done. He was awake. His mouth was dry and glued; a demolition crew was at work inside his skull. Morning, then. He turned onto his side, protected his eyes from the slanted sunlight, checked his bedside clock with a groan. Hangovers weren’t the fun they’d once been. He pushed himself up, unnameable things sloshing and lurching inside. Not for the first time, he resolved to change his habits. But perhaps for the first, a little flutter of panic accompanied the thought, the teenager on the lilo who suddenly realizes how far out he’s drifted.

  He staggered to the loo, relieved himself in an unending dark-yellow stream. Ants had congregated around the porcelain bowl, a trail of them leading across the floor up the wall and out through the half-open window. Christ! Maybe he had diabetes. That was one of the signs, wasn’t it? Sweetness in your ur
ine? Maybe that was why he felt so tired all the time. Or maybe the little bastards had just developed a taste for the hard stuff. They certainly seemed to be veering all over the place. The phone rang again, allowing him to put the unwelcome thought from his mind. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘Have you seen?’ demanded Mansoor.

  ‘Seen what?’

  ‘Gaille. On the news.’ Augustin’s chest tightened as he turned on his TV. He knew it would be bad, but he still wasn’t prepared. He sat numbly in his armchair until he heard Mansoor shouting his name. ‘Augustin? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Knox. He’s not at his hotel. He’s not answering his mobile.’

  ‘I know where he is.’

  ‘Someone needs to tell him. It should be a friend.’

  ‘Leave it to me.’

  ‘Thanks. And let me know when you’ve spoken to him. Let me know what I can do.’ The phone clicked dead. Augustin replaced it in its cradle, stunned and nauseous, yet now at least with a purpose. He splashed water on his face and body, threw on some fresh clothes, hurried downstairs to his bike.

  III

  ‘We’re going to die down here,’ sobbed Lily. ‘We are, aren’t we?’

  ‘People will find us,’ said Gaille.

  ‘No one will find us.’

  ‘Yes, they will.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  Gaille hesitated. She hadn’t mentioned Knox yet, the message she’d tried to send him. It was such a long shot, it seemed unfair to place the burden of expectation on his shoulders. Yet Lily was on the verge of breakdown; she needed hope. ‘I have a friend,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you have a friend!’ scoffed Lily. ‘We’re going to be saved because you have a friend!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gaille.

  Something in her calmness seemed to soothe Lily, but she wasn’t about to let herself be comforted so easily, not while she sensed she could get more. ‘And just how is this friend of yours going to help?’ she asked. ‘Is he psychic or something?’