The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  2

  DRISKILL

  I flew New York/Paris/Cairo popping pain pills and drinking champagne and losing track of time, closing my eyes and seeing that nightmare with the silver hair and the gleaming blade in his hand and so much for sleep. I was counting not in terms of hours but in days, and it had been nine days since my sister’s funeral. I’d been in the hospital getting a hundred stitches sewn into my back and side and somehow it seemed, fast forward, the next thing I knew I was in the airport in Cairo waiting to connect to the Egyptair shuttle to Alexandria. It was hot and crowded and the jostling didn’t do my back any good. Then, a pain pill and a sliver of bad dream later, I was dropping out of a clear sky toward Alexandria’s undersized airport which they’d had to rebuild after the altercation with Israel in 1973. On one side of the aircraft I’d seen the desert stretching away into an infinity of burning sand, on the other the flat blue Mediterranean, and now the desert was sliding away out of sight and I saw the long thin string of the city, narrow, greenish, arcing around the curves of the two huge harbors on the north and Lake Maryut on the south.

  I took one of the busy little red and black taxis which squirmed its way through the traffic on the Delta Road. Four hours on that same road in the other direction lay Cairo. Four hours past Alexandria to the west lay El Alamein, then Matruh, then Libya and Tobruk, the ghost of World War II. The sense of timelessness—not simply history, but the utter timelessness of the shifting dunes and rolling surface of sea, so impervious to man and his cities and empires and momentary cultural blips—was overwhelming, even in the throbbing traffic and the comparative newness of the city of four million people.

  My driver swung onto Suez Canal Street, then onto the scenic Corniche circling the Eastern Harbor, the old harbor, where the cooling breeze kept the city temperate and relieved the light-headedness I was feeling. He dropped me at Sa’d Zaghlul Square before the Cecil Hotel. Across the street, by a patch of green grass in the glaring sunshine, the Cairo-bound bus was loading up. Emerging from the cab, I was again revived by the gentle sea breeze. The hotel faced the Eastern Harbor across the gently curving sweep of the wide Corniche. Beyond that the Mediterranean sparkled. Just then, for a few moments, suspended between what had already happened and what was going to happen, it seemed like heaven.

  Alexander the Great had taken Egypt from the Persians three and a half centuries before the birth of Christ. Having enjoyed a tumultuous reception at Memphis, he was proceeding along the coast toward the Siwa oasis to visit the Oracle of Amun. He had the notion that the oracle might inform him that he was the son of the god Wiwa. He stopped for rest at a charming fishing village with an exquisite natural harbor. As he did on many such occasions in his brief lifetime, he ordered a city to be built around the harbor. As was his habit, he ordered the city named for himself. Leaving a team of architects behind, he went on to chat up the oracle. He never saw the new city of Alexandria.

  He died nine years later. His body, according to his last wishes, was on its way to Siwa for burial when his great general Ptolemy waylaid the procession and instead, with fantastic ceremony, buried the great man’s remains at the new city’s main square. Now, of course, all of Ptolemy’s work is obliterated, buried somewhere beneath the modern Alexandria, beneath all those scurrying red and black taxis.

  Euclid invented geometry in Alexandria. Ptolemy built the nearly unimaginable Lighthouse of Paros Island, four hundred feet high, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Later the Romans couldn’t resist the lure of what had become the economic center of the East and along came Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Marc Antony, and Octavian, who became Augustus Caesar. And later still St. Mark brought Christianity to Egypt and founded what eventually became the Coptic Church. And later still the Persians returned as conquerors. And then the Arabs. It was a long, long story and in the twentieth century the Brits with Lawrence Durrell and E. M. Forster had their say, and then the Egyptians themselves …

  And then my sister had come to Alexandria. I had to find out why.

  The floor of my room was polished hardwood, gleaming dully as if it had been endlessly massaged with beeswax. The furniture was old, slightly shabby in the genteel, aristocratic manner. A balcony jutted out with a view of the Corniche and the harbor. Breezes filled the room, cooling my burning, jet-lagged eyes. There was a telephone but I wasn’t ready for that yet. There was a television, but I couldn’t cope with the idea of Dallas or, more likely, an ancient Wagon Train in Arabic. And there was a refrigerator with a plentiful supply of ice. I ordered a bottle of gin and several bottles of tonic and limes from the bar. I got the prescription bottle of Tylenol and codeine out of my briefcase. I was loaded with painkillers and aspirin. My doctor in Princeton had told me not to count on finding aspirin in Egypt.

  I went to the bathroom and peeled off my shirt. Gingerly I checked the dressing on my wound. It was hopeless, so I gritted my teeth, pulled it off, and built a fresh one. Damned awkward. I hated looking at the wound. The same doctor told me it reminded him of an old-fashioned kidney-removal incision. The flesh puckered along the two flaps that were sewn together. He told me I was crazy, asking for trouble, setting off on so long a voyage with it so fresh. He was probably right. One of the problems was that it always felt as if it were leaking buckets of blood, spilling blood down my back. It was an illusion, but it was disconcerting.

  I made a gin and tonic that was mostly tonic and carefully lay down on the bed, my head propped against two hugely puffy pillows. I could see the pale blue pane of sea stretching away to the milky horizon. It looked as if a stone thrown from my balcony might crack it. I was terribly, awesomely tired. It occurred to me that I was a very long way from home.

  The ice on my face had kept me from going all the way out.

  Sandanato hadn’t known what the hell to do. At first he hadn’t realized what had happened, then he saw blood seeping out of me like motor oil from an old clunker. I could barely hear him muttering, partly to himself, partly to me, should he leave me there and go to the house and call for help, or should he start yelling and hope Sam Turner’s cop on guard heard him, or should he try to get me up and help me back. Then I must have said something and he knelt down and I grabbed him and began pulling myself to my feet. I wasn’t in much pain but I was losing a fair amount of blood. I was edging into shock but I knew for sure I didn’t want to pass out on the ice, in the cold.

  Finally, with my arm over his shoulder, he helped me up and we staggered the hundred yards to the house which seemed to take hours. Turner’s man on duty helped get the skates off; it just went on and on and on. He called the hospital and Sandanato sat on the floor beside where I lay on the couch and kept talking, which was the last thing I remembered until the late afternoon of the following day.

  The next several days produced a good deal of pain and passed in a kind of blur, mainly a blur of people telling me I had to put the idea of going to Egypt entirely out of my mind. It was amazing to me how they’d missed the point.

  The silver-haired priest who’d been killing people, who had murdered my sister while she prayed, had come out of nowhere, out of the dark and cold, and tried to kill me. He’d gotten a lot of knife into me and another inch or two would have finished the job. The doctors kept telling me how lucky I was. Luck, I supposed, was a relative thing.

  Peaches came to see me every day. His face always wore the same expression of puzzled innocence, as if each succeeding disaster struck him with greater force. His faith was being tested. The attack on me seemed to convince him that we were deep in the twilight zone without a map, with only God for a friend. When I was up and around he shook his head as if expecting me to come apart. He said that for himself he was doing everything he could to stay busy, anything to avoid dwelling on what had happened to Val and me. He wanted me to stick around once I got out of the hospital. He was for the first time since arriving at St. Mary’s in New Pru beginning to go through the contents of the parish house attic and storage rooms, sifting th
rough the accumulated junk of fifty or sixty years. He thought I could come watch, talk, keep him company. But I told him I couldn’t do it.

  Father Dunn stopped in at the hospital several times. The last time he was on his way to the airport. He was going to Los Angeles to meet with a producer who was making a film from one of his novels. “I make Klammer nervous as a cat,” he said. “He’s glad to get me out of his hair. As for you, Driskill, what can I say?” He tried a spoonful of my luncheon tapioca. “I suggest you take it easy. It’s a miracle you’re alive. Take that as a warning. You’re not a supercop. You’re neither James Bond nor Superman. You are lacking what you need most … a stunt double. Go to Antigua or St. Thomas or Hobe Sound, where you will frolic with others rich as yourself; they will teach you the blessed joys of indolence. You will not be murdered … you’re a fool to pursue this, a fool to give your life. And you surely will if you persist. Do you understand, Driskill? Something horrible is going on, far worse than anything in my books … you must let the authorities do what they can. And the Church is bound to look into it. Try to understand—this is a Church matter.” His pale eyes had gathered fire, like frozen jewels with heat at the center. “Stay out of it, Ben. You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead. And you can’t bring Val back to life.”

  I smiled at him. “I’m going to make someone pay. They can’t do this, to me, to my family. It’s simple, really.”

  “You are growing very tiresome, Ben. You are not a hero. Believe me.”

  “Ah, Artie, remember Driskill’s Law. Desperate times make heroes of desperate men.”

  Father Dunn was not impressed. “You’re wrong to pursue this. Monsignor Sandanato agrees with me—”

  “And Sister Elizabeth, don’t leave her out. Can you imagine where I rank the warnings of two priests and a nun?”

  He laughed aloud. “Well, since I can’t dissuade you, I’ll wish you well.” As he was leaving my room he turned back and gave me one of his leprechaun looks. “Incidentally, I’ve been stopping to see your father these past few days. He’s had a rough time, Ben. He won’t last forever—”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he’ll do.”

  “I’ve dropped off a couple of my books and dared him to read them. They’ll get his adrenaline going.” Then he told me to think twice about my plans and put on his hat, gave a salute, and left.

  Sandanato pleaded with me to remove myself from the whole ungodly mess. “You saw what they can do, they can strike at you from nowhere.” His dark eyes were sunk deep in the purple sockets and he smoked incessantly. “You’ve given a sister—”

  “Nobody gave her. Somebody took her—”

  “Your father’s on the critical list and you’ve been laid open like a rabbit—basta! It’s not your battle. You’re not even a Catholic!” Finally he left for Paris, where Curtis Lockhardt was being buried because of some family connection. He was so burdened by the outbreak of murder and the attack on me that he seemed much closer to breaking than I. But I’d seen his type before. They could take an almost infinite amount of stress. They fed on it. As it was, he told me at least to wait until he found out what Rome was doing about the killings. I told him I didn’t care what Rome was doing. Rome was the problem.

  My father was something of a surprise. He wasn’t bouncing back the way I’d expected him to. The doctors told me he took a turn for the worse when he got the news of my misfortune, as if it had been the last straw. They said it seemed to draw the incentive to recover right out of him.

  His reaction puzzled me: it would have been different had he gone under with the grief of Val’s death weighting him down. But me? And anyway, I was still alive.…

  But when I saw him I knew the doctors were right. He was parchment-pale, quiet, and Father Dunn’s novels stood untouched on the table by his bed. When I got him to talking I wished I hadn’t. “Sometimes I think I’m going to die after all, Ben. I feel lonely all of a sudden, out of step—”

  “Dad, that’s ridiculous and you know it. Besides the army of friends waiting for your call, you’ve got faith—remember? Isn’t now the sort of time when faith is supposed to do the job?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. “You’re wrong. Loneliness isn’t a matter of people. They don’t matter … I’m tired, I don’t have control of things the way I used to, I don’t understand what’s going on—oh, I don’t really know what I mean. I’m trying to convey something intangible but so damned real. I’ve never felt this way before.” He didn’t say a word about faith. Maybe he didn’t want to discuss it with his son the infidel.

  “Look, you’ve had some rough shocks. You can’t just expect to sail through.”

  “Well, Ben, I hope you’re right, I hope I make it. I’ll be mighty glad to have you around. We can recuperate together. I’d like to have you stay out at the house for a while, just hang around, welcome me home. The firm can give you a leave of absence for six months … maybe we could take a cruise or go to London and settle in for a bit once I’m fit again …” Just talking about it perked him up. The rest of the conversation didn’t go so well.

  He didn’t want me to go after Val’s killer, he didn’t want to know what Val had been doing, why she’d been killed. He said I was a reckless fool, that I was not only wasting my time but risking my neck. Didn’t I have enough sense to know I’d been warned? Didn’t I know how lucky I was not to have been killed? Didn’t I realize I was turning my back on him when he needed me?

  I’d never heard my father ask me a favor, let alone beg. I felt as if I’d never met this man before. That made it easier to walk out on him. Not easy. Just easier. I was my father’s son: I had learned how to turn my back. I saw a tear squeezed out of his closed eye. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve got to go. But I’ll be back—maybe then we can—”

  “You’re obsessed, Benjamin. You’re one step from madness and you don’t even know it. You won’t be back, Ben.” He swallowed hard, looked away. “You won’t be back,” he said again.

  The tears were running down his gray cheeks. Who was he crying for? Himself? Or Val? Maybe even for his black-sheep son? But no, that was impossible. I’d given in to sentiment for just an instant.

  In the welter of religions you find in Egypt, the Muslims, naturally, are vastly predominant, and of course the Copts are the main Christian denomination. But, as everywhere, there was in Alexandria a Roman presence. There were the Jesuits and the Order, priests and nuns, caring for a small but determined enclave of Catholics.

  After a sixteen-hour sleep interrupted by two plaintive calls to Muslim prayer, sounds audible in every corner of the city as well as strong enough to seep into my benumbed brain, I telephoned the Order’s office, which turned out to be a school they operated. I was referred to a Sister Lorraine, the mother superior, who quickly acknowledged that she’d seen Sister Valentine during her visit to Alexandria. Indeed, my sister had stayed at the Order’s guesthouse. There was a quick competence as well as a smile in Sister Lorraine’s French-accented English, and she said she’d be glad to see me as soon as I could get to her.

  I grabbed a cab outside the hotel and fifteen minutes later I was shown into her office. Through her windows there was a view across a playing field swarming with uniformed children whose cries and laughter floated upward, happy accompaniment to her day. The playing field was ringed with palm trees.

  Sister Lorraine was a small, dark-haired woman, fiftyish, petite, with huge eyes and beaky French nose. She wore a blue suit with a boxy open jacket like those Chanel made famous and a cream silk blouse with a bow at the neck. On the way in I had noticed some nuns wearing the traditional habit. The boss, however, was clearly a modern administrator. Like all the Frenchwomen I’d ever known, she was attractive by some kind of alchemical reaction, an instinct. The whole was so much more appealing than the individual features.

  She had read about Val’s murder and been particularly shocked because of their recent meeting. She leaned across the desk, toying with a gold pen, and listened wh
ile I told her that I was simply trying to reconstruct my sister’s last weeks.

  She nodded her small, dark head knowingly, before I was finished. “Yes, yes, I understand. I only wish I could tell you everything that was in her mind but, alas, one can never know that, is it not so? But I was drawn to your sister, I admired the work she’d done, I was very sympathetic. She, this dear sister of yours, was obviously preoccupied when I met her. She was tense, wary … there is a phrase I’ve heard—she was watching her back. Do you understand my meaning? Watching her back?”

  “She was afraid?”

  “Oui. She had a … specific fear. Of something, or someone. Understand, please, this is my observation. Your sister did not speak of fear. I observed, I thought to myself, yes, she is watching her back. As if she expected to turn and see a follower. My curiosity was piqued, you know?”

  “What did she want from you? Only a place to stay?”

  “Ah, more than a bed. She had come here to find a man named Klaus Richter. She gave me no reason beyond mentioning some research she was doing. For a book. Finding Herr Richter was no problem. I know the man myself. A good German Catholic, a regular churchgoer.” She allowed a mocking smile to wrap itself around the description of the German. “He owns an import-export firm, a large warehouse down on the western harbor front—very different from your harbor at the Cecil. He’s a well-known businessman, well liked from what I’ve heard. An avid golfer, getting his picture in the press. And of course he’s très, très German, a slap on the back, a foaming stein, all that. He’s quite prominent in the German Old Guard—veterans of the Afrika Korps who came back to live in Egypt. They visit the cemeteries out in the desert, lay wreaths on the graves of both their fallen comrades and their brave enemies. Richter is much admired by the Egyptian government going all the way back to Nasser. I believe Richter was helpful to him as a go-between in some armament deals years and years ago.”