The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

by Sean McLachlan

  Faisal flew sideways. By the time he was halfway into the alley, an instant before his head slammed against the wall and all he saw was stars, he knew Hassan had finally caught him.

  Hassan didn’t kill him outright. In fact, besides a few slaps, he didn’t hurt him at all. That worried Faisal. It meant Hassan had something worse in store for him. Hassan gripped him by the hair and led him down a series of alleys to a grubby little courtyard half filled with rubble from one of the adjoining buildings that had fallen down a few years before.

  Hassan’s two cousins were waiting for them. They were older, with broad shoulders and arms as thick as cannons. They looked at Faisal like a pair of crocodiles that had cornered a kitten. Qamar had done five years hard labor in the Sinai for beating a man so badly he’d never walk again. Zaki had killed a man in front of one of Faisal’s friends late one night. The boy had fled Cairo rather than risk being silenced forever.

  Both of them moved forward, studying the boy.

  “I’ve heard you’re a good climber. Is that true?” Qamar asked.

  Faisal tried to answer, but his throat was so dry he only managed a croak. He nodded instead.

  Zaki drew a knife and tested its edge with his calloused thumb. He bent down and started rubbing the edge quickly against a piece of masonry. The screeching of the knife grated on Faisal’s ears.

  “You know what I’m doing?” Zaki asked.

  Faisal shook his head.

  “I’m dulling it. You know why?”

  Faisal tried to run. Hassan’s hand shot out as fast as a cobra striking, lifted him off his feet, and tossed him down in front of his cousins.

  Zaki stood up, testing the knife again.

  “Nice and dull now, but not so dull it won’t cut through you. It will just take some time. A long time because I won’t put much effort into it. It might take all night for me to remove your fingers and toes one by one. Then your ears and nose and eyes. You want me to do that?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then you’re getting us into the Englishman’s house tonight.”

  ***

  Augustus was stumped. He had no idea what “the Temple of the Eternal Dawn” or “the church in the mosque” meant. He’d been puzzling over those phrases since he had gotten home. Moustafa was equally mystified. Augustus had called Zehra and Heinrich, and they didn’t know either. He had failed to mention to his friend the state of his motorcar.

  At least the radiator was getting fixed. For an exorbitant sum, he had tracked down an English mechanic, a cockney lad who had spent the war fixing lorries and had enough pluck to cross the city during a riot to fix a fellow veteran’s motorcar. Augustus decided not to tell him the vehicle was owned by a German. No need to complicate matters any more than they already were.

  Now the fellow lay under the motorcar in front of Augustus’s house, watched by a circle of idlers, mostly old men with nothing better to do and young boys whose parents were too poor to send them to school. Augustus was surprised not to see Faisal among them.

  Augustus and Moustafa stood watching by the front door. Moustafa wore the formal jellaba he kept at the house to receive important clients. Augustus had not asked about the bloodstains on the other one. He hoped his silence might teach his assistant the virtues of honoring another’s privacy.

  “Sorry for almost shooting you,” Augustus said.

  “I shouldn’t have charged into the antiquities shop like that.”

  “I’m easily startled in those situations.”

  “Any man would be, Mr. Wall.”

  “I wasn’t seeing things!” Augustus snapped. He hated being talked down to.

  “I didn’t say you were, Mr. Wall,” Moustafa said in a soothing voice. That annoyed Augustus even more. He hated being placated. “Have you tried calling the police again?”

  “Yes. Still busy. All their telephone lines are flooded. You can’t even report a murder with all these rioters about.”

  “Protestors.”

  Augustus grunted. “Seem like rioters to me.”

  Moustafa didn’t respond. After a while, Augustus spoke again.

  “I think it would be best if you stay here tonight in case we get any more clues. We might have to move at a moment’s notice.”

  “I already sent a message to my wife so she wouldn’t worry.”

  Augustus turned in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t know you were married. Do you have children?”

  “Five, Mr. Wall.” His voice came out a bit strained, and Augustus wondered why. A moment later he realized Moustafa had mentioned his family several times. No matter. He had more important things to think about.

  “I don’t know what our next move should be. We’re stymied. I’m sure after our little visit the Germans will have abandoned their hideout. If we only knew where they were meeting tonight!”

  Moustafa shook his head. “I don’t know what we should do, Mr. Wall.”

  The mechanic crawled out from under the vehicle.

  “I’ve patched the radiator, sir. It should hold for a time, but what you really need is a new one. That would require a visit to the shop.”

  “And all the shops are closed thanks to the riots,” Augustus said.

  “The police will knock their fuzzy heads into shape quick enough, sir. In the meantime, just don’t drive over any rough roads or go at high speed.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Augustus paid the man and he left. By now the sun was setting. Within a few hours, the Germans would meet somewhere and he would miss it. Augustus cursed his luck. He hated being helpless like this. Shrugging his shoulders in defeat, he and Moustafa went back inside, locked and bolted the door, and ate a quick meal.

  “Get some sleep,” he told his employee. “You’re dead on your feet. I’ll puzzle through this notebook for a time and see if I can come up with some more ideas.”

  As Moustafa made himself comfortable on a sofa in the upstairs reading room, Augustus went to the study and looked at the notebook that the member of the Thule Society had dropped after killing Cavell Martin. Augustus felt dead tired. The stress of that firefight had wearied him more than he cared to admit. He’d had some bad episodes before, but this had been one of the worst. To take his mind off it, he stared at the esoteric symbols and the fragments of translated hieroglyphs over and over, trying to tease some more meaning out of them. He read until they swam in front of his eyes. Slowly his head sank to his chest, the notebook slipped from his hands, and the weight of the last few days pressed him into sleep as the sun sank below the horizon outside his shuttered window.

  ***

  As soon as it was dark, Hassan and his cousins led Faisal to the alley behind the Englishman’s house. As Qamar kept watch at the entrance to the alley, Hassan and Zaki dragged him over the heaps of trash until they got to the spot where he had climbed up before. Zaki had a bag over his shoulder. He opened it and took out a coil of thin but strong rope. He tied one end around Faisal’s waist and played out the rope.

  “Start climbing,” Zaki ordered. “If you try to raise the alarm or remove the rope, I’ll pull you right off the wall. If the fall doesn’t kill you, I will. Once you get near the top, stand on the top of that window frame and loop the rope around the edge of the roof and through that drainage hole and tie it. Then and only then can you untie yourself from the rope.”

  “I’ll need both hands to do that! How am I supposed to keep my balance?”

  Hassan cuffed him on the back of the head. “That’s your problem, you son of a whore. Now get climbing.”

  “It’s early. The Englishman will still be awake,” Faisal said.

  “I can take care of the Englishman,” Zaki scoffed, tapping his pocket where he kept a knife. Unlike the one he’d threatened Faisal with, this one was razor sharp. Zaki had shown it to him.

  “Where’s the rest of your gang?” Faisal asked.

  “Why share? We don’t need them. Now stop delaying and get up there,” Hassan said.

  Fai
sal started to climb, wrapping his hands and bare feet around the drainpipe on the back wall and clambering up to a ledge where he could edge along to a window whose bars and jutting stone windowsill allowed him a more stable hold than the drainpipe. He clambered up to the top of the windowsill so he could grip another ledge farther up.

  Sweat beaded his brow and his limbs trembled. A long day of fear had exhausted him. Knowing he’d need his strength for the climb, Hassan had given him food and water, but in his terror Faisal had thrown the meal up. Hassan and his cousins had laughed.

  What should have been an easy climb grew harder and harder. He already felt tired, and the increasing weight of the rope that Zaki played out behind him pulled at his waist.

  He hauled himself up to the next ledge and was just about to straighten and reach for the bottom of the next windowsill when the rope tugged at him.

  Faisal jerked, wobbled for a sickening moment, and steadied himself. The two thieves below snorted and chuckled. He looked down at them, terrified. Although the alley lay swathed in shadow, Faisal’s sharp eyes spotted Zaki grinning up at him. The bully gave the rope another tug. Faisal gripped the ledge in terror. Hassan, laughing, put a retraining hand on his cousin’s, then motioned for Faisal to continue.

  It took a moment for Faisal to regain the strength and courage to stand up on the edge, and then he went on with the longest climb of his life.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Faisal was under no illusions. Once Zaki got to the Englishman’s roof, he’d be killed. They had no intention of letting him go. No one who crossed Hassan and his cousins ever got away with it. Within a minute, Zaki would be up here with him, his knife would slice across Faisal’s throat in one swift motion, and that would be the end of it. No one could save him. Tonight he would die.

  He stood on top of the second-floor windowsill, one hand gripping a tiny crack in the masonry as the other pulled up the slack of the rope that Zaki, far below, was giving him.

  Faisal tossed the slack over the parapet and reached his free arm through the drainage hole over the pipe. His fingertips barely brushed the rope where it lay on the rooftop. He was soaked in sweat now, worn out from the long day and lack of food and the frightening climb. The hand that gripped the crack in the masonry trembled, and one of his legs kept shaking up and down like the needle in one of those modern sewing machines.

  He strained to reach the rope, standing on tiptoe and extending his body as far as he could. His searching hand wrapped around the rope.

  Just then, his hand gripping the wall slipped. With a gasp, Faisal fell backward, his feet slipping from the ledge.

  Frantically he grasped the rope with both hands as it whipped out from the drainage hole. He plunged several feet before the friction of the rope around the parapet slowed him and he finally jerked to a stop, practically yanking his arms from their sockets. Zaki had seen him fall and had braced himself.

  Faisal swung back and forth, his feet desperately seeking purchase as his tormentors guffawed below. Finally he managed to wrap the toes of one foot around the bars of a window, steady himself, and get a proper foothold with the other. He wrapped his arms and legs through the bars and rested for a moment.

  Not long enough. A low whistle from below commanded him to continue.

  He studied his situation. The rope was now looped over the parapet and through the hole, but if he hadn’t gripped the end coming through the hole, the loop would have whipped out of the hole and over the parapet, and his being tied to the rope would have meant nothing because the rope would no longer have had contact with the wall. Good thing he had kept his head. He climbed hand over hand up the rope until he got to the hole again and got himself into a better position.

  Zaki played out the rope. Once Faisal got more rope looped through the hole, he tied it, looping the rope around itself and securing it. Then he wearily climbed onto the parapet and lay there close to the edge, panting.

  A creak of the rope told Faisal that Zaki was already climbing up. Faisal had only a minute or two left to live.

  He had to get out of here! His fingers clawed at the knot securing the rope around his waist, but they were numb with fatigue, and the knot had tightened when Zaki had playfully tugged the rope to scare him.

  The creaking of the rope as Zaki steadily climbed made Faisal desperate. Scraping the skin off his fingers, he finally managed to jam a fingertip inside the knot and tugged at the rope, loosening it.

  Within another minute, he was free. He looked over the precipice and saw Zaki had made it more than halfway up.

  Faisal had only a few moments. He looked around the moonlit rooftop. Could he hide? No, Zaki would find him. Get through the window into the sitting room? It was a tight fit, and Zaki would catch him before he got through. Call out to the Englishman? Before the Englishman heard him, Zaki would kill him.

  He looked at the rope. Could he untie it? No, the rope was knotted beyond his reach.

  Then he saw an old ceramic flowerpot sitting nearby, filled with cracked and dried earth, whatever plant it had once held long since dried up and blown away. Faisal hurried over, picked up the flowerpot, and smashed it against the floor. He grabbed the biggest fragment and hurried over to the rope.

  Faisal glanced down. Zaki was about two-thirds of the way up now. Wow, he sure was a slow climber! Maybe he wasn’t so tough after all. Faisal started sawing at the rope with the edge of the potsherd where the rope lay flush against the edge.

  While the fragment of pottery was sharp, the rope was tough and Faisal made slow progress. With strength born of desperation, Faisal sawed away at it. The potsherd snapped in his hand and he rushed to get another.

  As he returned and started sawing at it again, Hassan gave out a warning cry. Zaki looked up, his eyes going wide as he saw what Faisal was doing. He stopped, uncertain. Faisal kept sawing. He’d cut halfway through.

  Zaki started descending, almost losing his grip in his haste. Faisal cut more and more strands of the rope until it was thinner than his little finger. He took a breath and steadied himself for one final effort.

  Then the rope snapped. Zaki fell from halfway up the wall to hit the ground with a sickening thud.

  Faisal’s heart went cold. He ducked behind the parapet and curled in on himself, shaking. Had he killed him?

  Finally he plucked up the courage to look over. Zaki lay there, his leg bent at an unnatural angle, Hassan crouched next to him.

  Zaki groaned and moved a little. Faisal felt a flush of relief wash through him, followed quickly by confusion. Why should he be relieved? Didn’t Zaki deserve to die?

  Maybe, but Faisal didn’t want to be a killer like so many street boys grew up to be. He didn’t even want to kill someone like Zaki.

  Hassan looked up. Their eyes met, and Faisal trembled as he saw the fate in store for him. If he had been dead before, he was ten times as dead now.

  He ducked back behind the parapet, heart pounding.

  What could he do now? They couldn’t get up, but he couldn’t get down. He was trapped on the rooftop unless he went inside the house, but once the Englishman caught him in there, what could he tell him? He supposed he could tell the truth, but what if he didn’t believe him and kicked him out? Then he’d be dead.

  Plus Faisal was already thinking of the future. Now that he wasn’t going to die in the next two minutes, he was already allowing himself the possibility of being alive next week. If he was alive next week, he sure didn’t want the Englishman to know he could get onto his roof so easily. No, he had to find another way.

  He went over to the windows that provided ventilation for the sitting room and peered down into the unlit interior. He could just make out Moustafa’s bulk stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep. Faisal studied every corner of the room as well as he could but did not see the Englishman. Perhaps he was asleep in his bedroom. Good. If he handled this right, he could get away from Hassan and still keep the Englishman’s home as his personal playground. How else was he g
oing to get all that food he had earned?

  With care, he squeezed through the open window and glanced down. Moustafa lay on the sofa just a few feet away. In total silence, Faisal climbed down the wall, using the cracks in the old masonry as fingerholds and toeholds.

  At last he was on the floor. He thumbed his nose at the sleeping Nubian and moved into the hallway.

  To his surprise, all the lights were off and he heard no sounds of life. Was the Englishman even here? Or maybe he was asleep too? It seemed early to be asleep. Faisal tiptoed down to the second floor and found the Englishman’s bedroom empty. He continued to the ground floor and found him asleep in a chair in a room filled with books.

  Faisal’s eyes strayed in the direction of the pantry. No, he was too nervous to eat right now. He’d eat once this was all over.

  As with most Cairene houses, there were no windows on the ground floor except for a tiny ventilation window in the kitchen that even he couldn’t fit through, so he went back up to the first floor, opened the latch on some shutters, and peeked out.

  He could see out over the alley leading from Ibn al-Nafis Street around to the back of the house. Qamar was no longer at his post at the head of the alley. Hassan must have called him to help with Zaki. Faisal got up on the windowsill and started squeezing through the bars. He wished he could go out the front door, but someone was bound to see him. He’d be beaten for breaking into the house and probably thrown in prison, where he knew he wouldn’t survive a night and a day.

  After getting out through the bars that were supposed to keep the house safe from prowlers, he hung from them and prepared to drop.

  Just as he let go, he saw Hassan and Qamar come around the corner, carrying their injured relative.

  As soon as Faisal hit the ground, he rolled to absorb the impact, sprang to his feet, and bolted for the street, Hassan’s and Qamar’s footsteps right behind him.