Shooting the Sphinx

by Avram Noble Ludwig

  “I’m still here.” Ari trained the webcam back on himself.

  “Alone,” said Beth.

  “Certainly.” Samir put the permits back into his desk drawer, got up, and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  “Ari, did we pick the right guy?” She spoke softly, but it wasn’t a question.

  “Come on.” Ari rolled his eyes.

  “I’m just asking.” Beth was annoyed. “Does Samir have enough juice to handle this? Or is he too small?”

  “What are you suggesting? Dump Samir?” If only she knew Samir almost quit, he thought.

  “Tell Frank that we can’t get the shot legally and that he has to write something else easier to shoot.”

  “Absolutely not!” Now Ari erupted. After taking the punch, he still had a pent-up fury. “I always get the shot. Always. And whatever you tell Frank, he’s not going to believe it unless I say it, too.”

  They both stared at each other for a moment. Something had snapped between them. They were now in open conflict. “Then good luck tomorrow,” said Beth.

  “Thank you,” said Ari, meaning something else.

  “You’re welcome,” said Beth, meaning anything but, and hung up on him.

  “Good…,” said Ari to the blank screen, “… night.”

  Chapter 23

  Ari sat holding his forms, waiting on a bench in another dark corridor in the bowels of the airport. He didn’t know how long he’d been waiting. He didn’t care. Samir paced, unable to sit. After a long time, a customs private came to fetch them.

  They walked along the dim corridor under each naked light bulb to the end. They entered an outer office, passed several clerks in uniform sitting at their desks, and stopped outside a closed door. The customs private knocked three times. An order to enter came from within. The private opened the door.

  Ari and Samir walked into a dark office with windows onto the black void. Behind a big desk, dressed in uniform, sat General Moussa, the head of customs. Slightly chubby, he sported a Saddam-style moustache. A TV was on, playing some sort of Egyptian soap opera.

  The private ushered them to take seats by the edge of the desk. The general nodded to them in an amiable way, but said not a word. They were furnished with cups of tea by the private. Samir took the sugar cube and stuck it between his teeth as he drank. Ari copied him.

  The general went about his business reading papers, making phone calls, not once looking at the TV, looking over at Ari cheerfully every so often, but with never an invitation to speak, not even an introduction. What is he waiting for? wondered Ari. A bribe? Yet Samir sat on in perfect stillness, waiting.

  The soap opera ended. They all had sat there saying nothing for half an hour. An Arabic news program came on with footage of American troops fighting in some war. The private returned and took their glasses.

  “Shukran,” said Ari, realizing he had spoken the word for “thank you.”

  The general looked up from his work at Ari.

  “La sukr, aala wajib,” said the private which, by this time, Ari knew meant: Don’t thank me. It’s my duty.

  An old photo of George W. Bush came on the TV. The general looked at the television for the first time, then at Samir. “Leave us.” The general pointed at the door. Slightly humiliated, Samir stood up and walked out.

  “Do you like George Bush?” General Moussa asked Ari in halting, heavily accented English.

  Ari shifted in his seat. He looked at the empty chair where Samir had been a moment before as if for some sort of clue as to what to say. The chair was vacant. Ari searched his mind for the right answer. Does he want me to praise or to censure? wondered Ari. Probably not praise, but to call an American president a liar, a fool, a puppet of his vice president, seemed unwise, especially to a general in a military dictatorship.

  On the wall above the general’s head was the omnipresent portrait of President Mubarak staring directly down at Ari as if to say: “This general facing you between us speaks for me. He is me and I am him.” Such is the implication of all such pictures. Wouldn’t insulting Bush be insulting myself to such a man? wondered Ari.

  There has to be a perfect answer to this question, thought Ari as he fixed upon the man’s Saddam moustache.

  “I … think that … Bush made a big … mistake going into Iraq.” Ari had chosen his words very carefully.

  The moustache came alive like two black caterpillars. The general’s smile of approval expressed admiration for Ari’s chess move.

  “You are good man. I give you your camera,” said the general in his broken English. He added, “Saddam was great man! No?”

  Ari nodded, thinking he could not have imagined himself ever hearing such a question. Let alone answering it, “Yes.”

  Ari and Samir went back out through the portal into Terminal One, past the customs desk and over to the sixteen SpaceCam cases stacked against the wall. Ari felt unclean. He picked up the closest case. A sergeant ran out of the customs room to stop him.

  Ari looked around for help. “Samir?”

  Samir had left him. Ari was furious. “You call General Moussa. He gave me my camera! General Moussa, you call him.” Ari kept repeating the general’s name, but the sergeant wouldn’t let go of the case. Ari wanted to lash out, punch the sergeant in the face. Ari had reached his breaking point. He had praised Saddam. What else was left to do?

  “Call the general!” Ari yanked hard on the case.

  The sergeant grew still. Having seen something over Ari’s shoulder, he let go of the heavy black case. It thumped against Ari’s legs. Ari turned around to follow the sergeant’s mesmerized stare.

  Across the terminal, a tall man with a loping stride emerged from the hundreds of travelers. He was such a distinct figure. Very thin, very hip, with a close-cropped gray beard—a cool jazz musician, Ari guessed. The man carried only a newspaper, no luggage. He walked straight toward them, winked at the sergeant with a knowing confidence, and went inside the customs storage room. The sergeant followed him in.

  Here was the bag-man, thought Ari, the man who makes all the payoffs at the airport. Without saying a word, the man handed the sergeant his newspaper. The sergeant looked inside, saw something, presumably money, and took the newspaper. The man walked out.

  Ari picked up a case, and before he knew it, a team of smiling porters who had been watching everything and knew their cue, wheeled a large wagon underneath the case for him to set it down upon.

  “No, mister! We do it,” said the porters as they competed with the sergeant over who could stack up the most cases on the wagon.

  Ari was elated. He had his cases back. He actually had them. Within a minute, the SpaceCam was rolling out through the terminal. The porters leaned forward pulling the yoke while shooing people out of their path. My own little pyramid crew, thought Ari.

  Outside on the curb, Samir stood by a banged-up white five-ton truck.

  Ari reached out to shake Samir’s hand, but Samir held back. Ari patted him on the back instead. “Well, that’s half the battle.”

  “Not at all,” said Samir as the porters started heaving the heaviest cases up onto the back of the truck. Dejected, he turned to go.

  “Why so sad? We got our camera! Is everything okay?” asked Ari concerned. “Where are you off to?”

  “The Ministry of…,” said Samir over his shoulder without looking back, “… Defense.”

  Chapter 24

  Back from the airport, Ari walked into the Mena House and over to the front desk in the lobby.

  “Anything come for me? Basher, Room 101,” asked Ari, expecting nothing.

  “Yes, Mr. Basher.” The clerk handed over a pink message slip.

  I await you in the lobby—Omar el Mansoor, read the paper, written in a florid hand.

  Ari looked around. On an easy chair beneath the chandelier sat a large Egyptian man in his late fifties. Dressed in bell-bottomed jeans, a puffy silk shirt, a black velvet vest, and cowboy boots, he had shoulder-length hair, a Van
Dyke beard, and a seventies vibe—a chic Egyptian hippie with expensive clothes.

  Both men slowly crossed the lobby for that first tentative handshake.

  “Mr. Basher?” asked the man with a flawless American accent.

  “Yes?” Ari sensed something familiar about this person.

  “I’m Omar el Mansoor of Studio Giza.”

  “Right.” Ari remembered the name.

  “You called me about working on your movie.”

  “I know. But we … uh … hired somebody else.” Ari looked around. He didn’t want Hamed to walk in and spot him talking to Samir’s biggest competitor.

  “Whom did you hire? If you don’t mind my asking.” Omar had a courtly sensitive politesse, but it seemed to veil some deeper inner power.

  “Pan Egypt Films,” said Ari. “Samir Aziz is our fixer.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Omar, nonplussed.

  Ari wondered if he was telling the truth. “Well, if you hadn’t taken two weeks to call me back…” Ari looked at the hotel entrance for any sign of Hamed. “Excuse me, Mr. el…”

  “Please call me Omar.”

  “I have a very urgent call I need to make.”

  Omar was surprised. “But we have a meeting now.”

  “We do?”

  “Elizabeth Vronsky sent an e-mail to both of us.”

  “Beth did…?” In all the excitement over liberating the SpaceCam, he hadn’t bothered to check his e-mail.

  Omar continued. “I am about to leave the country in a few hours and this is the only chance I have to meet with you.” He pointed to the bar. “May I buy you a drink?”

  “Uh … someone’s coming to drive me over to the university to scout. Do you mind if we go up to my room instead? It’s a suite.”

  “Not at all.” Omar followed Ari’s glance at the front entrance. “There are no secrets in Cairo.”

  Upstairs, Ari opened the door and let Omar in.

  “Très élégant!” Omar admired the view. “You can even see your target, the Sphinx.”

  “Research,” joked Ari. “I had to check out this suite for our star. It was cheaper by the month.”

  “But of course.”

  There was something very smooth, very pleasant, very worldly about Omar. College or film school in the States, guessed Ari, and before that he must have gone to some posh boarding school in France or Switzerland.

  Ari opened his computer and dialed.

  “Hey, Beth.” Her face popped up on screen. She was in her office working late. Ari shared his big news: “We got the camera out of customs!”

  “Great,” she said, unimpressed. “How about permission to use it?”

  Deflated by her lack of enthusiasm, he said, “Samir’s working on that.”

  “So I’m paying Don and Charley a thousand dollars a day to sit around on vacation?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to take another pay cut.” Ari changed the subject. “Omar’s here.”

  “Did you like him?” Beth perked up.

  “He’s still with me. In my room. I just bumped into him in the lobby.” Ari trained the computer on Omar.

  “Oh. Hi, Omar.”

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  “Should I start?” asked Beth.

  Start what? Ari wondered. “Sure,” he said.

  “Omar,” said Beth, “what do you think of Samir Aziz?”

  “Who?” asked Omar.

  A little annoyed by what he took to be feigned ignorance, Ari said, “Pan Egypt Productions. I mentioned him to you in the lobby.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Really?” Ari decided that he didn’t believe Omar on this point.

  “He’s a nobody,” Omar went on. “How has your experience been with him?”

  “So far so good,” said Ari. “We just got our camera out of customs.”

  “Yes. And your budget?”

  Beth replied before Ari could. “He says he’s going over.”

  “Uhmmm. Not exactly the right thing to do.” Omar frowned.

  “It’s complicated.” Ari defended Samir.

  “It always is.”

  Ari figured he’d better nip off this kind of talk. “Well, Omar, we’re committed to Samir. We have a contract with him. So—”

  Just then the phone rang. Ari answered.

  “Hello…?”

  “Mr. Basher, your car is here,” said the desk clerk.

  “Thank you, I’ll be right down.” Ari hung up.

  “That’s my ride. So sorry. This meeting was a total surprise to me. Is there anything else?”

  “I want to offer my services, free of charge, as a consultant,” said Omar.

  “That’s very generous.” Ari could smell a Trojan horse. “For what purpose?”

  “To make sure everything works well for you. That you hire the best crew and you do not get cheated.”

  “A very, very kind offer.” Ari knew it was anything but that. “We’ll think it over.”

  Omar pointed to a spreadsheet on the desk. “Is that Samir’s budget?”

  “His initial bid. Yes,” confirmed Ari.

  “Do you mind if I look it over?”

  Ari could feel the dynamic of control shifting around him. “Beth?” What would she say?

  “I have no problem with that.”

  Ari picked up the papers, about to hand them over, but he stopped. “Oh, I need this copy.”

  “Really?”

  “It has my notes in it.” Ari hadn’t written a thing on the pages. “I want to review this on my way to the scout.”

  “Very well,” said Omar cheerfully. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  He’s very charismatic, thought Ari, but underneath lies something reptilian. I like him, but I don’t trust him, Ari decided.

  Omar stopped with his hand on the antique doorknob. “A suggestion, if I may? Your permission to fly around the Sphinx must be signed by the defense minister himself.”

  “Tantawi,” acknowledged Ari.

  “Did you know that the defense ministers of Egypt and Israel talk every week?”

  “So?”

  “Your production company in Hollywood is owned by one of the richest men in Israel, a former arms dealer on the highest level.”

  “True,” admitted Ari.

  “Just a word from one defense minister to another would solve your problem.” Omar’s idea to pull strings at the top was undeniably a good one. The sort of thing that only a connected member of the elite would conceive of. “Here is my card. If you need anything…,” Omar continued with earnest obsequiousness. “Any complication. Any delay. Anything. Call me anytime. This is my personal cell phone.”

  “Thank you, Omar.” Ari slid the business card into his pocket.

  “Good-bye, Beth.” Omar waved at her on the laptop. “I’ll see you in New York.”

  “You’ll see her in New York?” Ari tried to cover his surprise.

  Omar was casually dismissive. “I’m just passing through on my way to the Sundance Film Festival. I go every year. My plane leaves in three hours. So I must say good-bye.”

  Ari opened the door, relieved to let Omar out.

  “Thank you for taking the time to come all the way to Giza to meet me.”

  “It is nothing.” In the doorway, Omar made a polite little bow. “I wanted to shake the hand of the man who will shoot the Sphinx.”

  Chapter 25

  Ari followed the location scout, a talkative, energetic Egyptian with good English, up the stairs of the Geology building of Cairo University. They walked across a marble floor in the large entry hall, their footfalls the only sound. When he stopped to shoot pictures, the snap of his camera echoed in the silence. Ari realized that they were alone in this grand hall. The students must all be in class, he thought. He saw a set of double doors finished in dull green leather with glass portholes in them.

  Ari pushed through the swinging doors into a large empty academic theater. He snapped a panorama of the three or f
our hundred wooden seats with those little half desks for note taking. The huge room had ceiling fans on each suspended light fixture. One was missing a blade and spun around in a wobble out of phase with the others. On the stage was a black slate slab counter with a sink and gas jets. A selection of beakers and test tubes sat in a rack on the counter. On the back wall hung a double row of blackboards, which could slide up or down. The place was a perfect time capsule. Nothing had changed since the 1930s.

  “Class is canceled?”

  “No, Mr. Ari,” said the location scout.

  Ari wandered down to the lectern and took some pictures of the empty seats from the stage. He faced the empty chairs.

  He had an old college memory of sitting in a large academic theater like this one, as a venerated historian and former national security advisor gave a guest lecture to his Comparative Civilization class.

  “In war do you not become your enemy?” the great man asked them. “When one civilization seeks to destroy another, does the victor not consume the vanquished, digest it, assimilate it? Do we not become the very thing we seek to kill?”

  Ari walked off the stage. He wandered back out of the lecture hall and up a grand staircase to the second floor. At the top, the landing turned into a square cloistered balcony that looked down on a large courtyard below. Was the style of architecture Spanish? Moorish? Southern Californian? Turkish? Or did all those styles spring from one fountainhead, the assimilation of war?

  Ari stopped by a bulletin board laden with notices: APPLY FOR THE HALIBURTON FELLOWSHIP IN GEOLOGY TODAY! FULL TUITION AND STIPEND.

  A poster showed young Arab students in hard hats out in the desert with a friendly American engineer, a series of seismic charges blowing up in the background. CONCENTRATIONS IN SEISMOLOGY AND FLUID DYNAMICS WELCOME.

  Ari turned around. “Where is everybody?”

  “Another student strike,” explained the location scout.

  They walked along the corridor, which overlooked a courtyard on one side and a row of seminar rooms on the other. Ari peeked in their open doors as he passed them by.

  “Do you want to go in?”

  “No,” said Ari. “We don’t need a classroom. Just a lecture hall and an office.”