Eagle of Darkness

by Christopher Wright

  "They would dismiss you?"

  "No, Mr. Bolt, they would not dismiss me. They would shoot me. For treason."

  Again the adrenaline. Sam felt his stomach lurch, yet the Dornier was staying level. "And your woman friend is following them by car?"

  "My clerk drives a desk, Mr. Bolt, but she will be receiving updates from our guard posts along the way. So far she has learned that Endermann has turned to the north, and is heading for the mountains in a bright blue Mitsubishi off-roader. And the pilot from the Râs Banâs base is still on board."

  "Eagles normally nest in the mountains."

  A momentary smile from Abadi. "Rather appropriate when you come to think of it."

  "I can't land this plane on sand," protested Sam. "We'll have to go on to Râs Banâs."

  "I have already told you, Mr. Bolt, I do not want anyone there to know about this flight."

  "You can't seriously expect me to land on sand. We'd never get off again."

  With a rapid movement Abadi drew a pistol from his briefcase, a handgun similar to a heavy-duty Beretta. He tapped the end of the barrel on Sam's shoulder. The Dornier tipped forward just as a massive mound of sand filled the windscreen. The bottom of the fuselage caught the top of the dune with a heavy thump that shook the plane, and then they were clear.

  Sam felt his hands tremble. They had so nearly ended up as a pile of mangled wreckage in the Eastern Desert.

  Colonel Ben Abadi held the pistol close to his head. "Twenty more miles, and we should see our landing spot."

  Sam shook his head. "You're not going to shoot me. You don't want to die with me."

  Abadi put his hands on the copilot's controls. "Do you think I cannot fly this plane on my own?"

  It seemed unlikely that the Colonel could fly, but Sam wasn't about to put the bluff to the test. "I'll have a look at the site," he conceded grudgingly. "But the decision about landing is up to me."

  Ahead he noticed a steep sided valley and what looked like a small sandstorm being whipped up on a flat area between the high hills. Abadi gripped his arm. "The helicopter is waiting for us," he said.

  "You bastard," said Sam. "You've planned this all along. We were never going to land at Râs Banâs."

  Abadi pointed ahead at the ground. "Take the plane down on that that area of sand."

  Sam was working out whether it would be possible to turn if he overshot the landing area, but he was already flying into a deep valley. The height of the surrounding hills would make turning dangerous if not impossible. At the head of the valley, beyond the level patch of sand, a vertical cliff face filled the windscreen. If he went any lower, he could only attempt the landing once.

  "You're too high. Take it down now," ordered the Colonel, waving his handgun.

  "I'm going round once," protested Sam. "I have to dump fuel."

  "Take it down now," repeated Abadi, pressing the tip of the barrel into Sam's side.

  Sam hadn't even decided whether to try a landing using the undercarriage, or make a pancake landing. He pushed the throttle levers forwards to ensure sufficient speed to stay airborne, and applied full flaps as he lowered the undercarriage. The Dornier felt as though it had run into a brick wall as the airspeed dropped abruptly, throwing him forward in his safety harness. The plane was now only a few feet off the ground.

  With the stall alarm filling the cockpit he pulled the yolk back and cut the engines, attempting to drop the plane flat onto the small patch of sand. Then he realized that the landing area sloped upwards, and they were plowing into it as he leveled out. The sudden silence was followed by a deep thud as the underneath of the nose hit the soft sand with a jolt that knocked the wind from his body.

  Sand and debris streamed over the cockpit windscreen as Sam shouted at Abadi to get ready to exit the plane. Surely the fuel tanks would be ruptured.

  In the intense stillness that followed Abadi undid his harness and jumped to his feet. "You have done well, Mr. Bolt."

  Sam pulled the quick release lever for the side window escape. There was no time to lower the door. Anyway, the aircraft was too deep in the sand for the steps to unfold. He and Abadi squeezed through the open cockpit window and dropped onto the desert floor.

  "Can you really fly a jet?" Sam asked as he brushed himself down.

  Abadi shrugged. "A good player does not reveal all his cards."

  "I take it you can't" said Sam, and Abadi just grinned.

  The first thing Sam noticed was the chill of evening. It would be dark soon, and he never liked flying in helicopters, even in broad daylight. The pilot of the Jet Ranger waved across to Abadi.

  Abadi pulled Sam by the arm. "Hurry up," he ordered.

  Sam took one look back at the Vatican Dornier as the dust settled around it. The plane would never fly again. Sticking into the sand at a slight angle, the wrinkled fuselage had taken a pounding but had not broken up, testimony to the strength of the executive jet, but an indictment on Abadi's stupid plans.

  The pilot in the Jet Ranger a hundred yards away waved them forward. Sam was pleased to note that he reached it slightly before Abadi. As soon as they were on board the Colonel put himself directly behind the pilot, leaving Sam to sit alongside him in the rear.

  Abadi pulled out his pistol again. "We are going to the mountains," he told the pilot, pressing the gun against the man's neck, making a red mark in the skin around the end of the barrel. "No radio contact. Understand?"

  The pilot nodded immediately. "Absolutely, Colonel."

  "Find the road to Waqib through the mountains. We're looking for a bright blue Mitsubishi. A big four-wheel drive job. As fast as you can, and keep even lower than you dare."

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "Faster." Abadi waved the gun. "And lower."

  The craft plunged to within six feet of the speeding sand dunes. Any moment the skids would become entangled with the occasional straggling shrub.

  Sam closed his eves.

  Chapter 65

  Old Cairo, Egypt

  "WELCOME to Misrel-Qadimah, Panya." Cardinal Fitz waved the driver away as the man tried to help him from the car. "It's kind of you, I'm sure, but I'm not in my dotage yet."

  "Very good, Excellency."

  Panya winked at the Arab who had brought them from the airport in a police car. "Some people just can't be helped," she explained to him gently.

  Cardinal Fitz heard and smiled broadly, his teeth white and even. "The good Lord has given me two legs, and I intend to use them for his work a while longer."

  Panya looked at the high walls of the ancient fort, similar to the old city of Mdina in Malta. One day she'd go back to Malta, with Sam. "Where's the church?"

  "Churches, mosques, synagogues: they're all here, Panya. Misr el-Qadimah is hard for an elderly priest to be saying, so let's be calling it by a name I can pronounce. Old Cairo. This is an ancient fort built by the Romans. Trajan I seem to think it was. The Christians and the Jews found enough in common, once, to be building their places of worship inside these walls."

  Panya noticed a few tourists coming and going through the gateway into the early fortifications. Fear of a second nuclear blast had not deterred all visitors to the sights of Cairo. "These churches all look so old," she said.

  "And to be sure they are. They've been tampered with over the centuries by well-meaning folk, but within this enclosure are some of the oldest Christian buildings in the world."

  "And the Church of Saint Sergius is here?"

  "Just around this corner, Panya. It was built around the year five hundred, to mark the spot where the blessed Mary and Josef stayed when they had to flee to Egypt to escape from the wicked King Herod."

  "I hadn't realized..."

  "Not a lot of folk give the matter a second thought. Saint Luke tells us the Holy Family fled to Egypt with the infant Jesus, but doesn't inform us where they might have been staying."

  Panya moved ahead, walking past rundown houses in the narrow alleyway. She stopped in front of a building of fadi
ng sandstone, its roof tiles red and uneven, a Coptic cross high above the doorway. If tradition was correct, the Savior had been to this very spot, perhaps even playing here as a small child. "And is this where the service is going to be tonight?"

  "Indeed it is. This old church has been little more than a museum for the past hundred years, but tonight the marble pillars and ancient stones will be ringing out with praises."

  "As long as there are no explosives."

  "Ah yes. I was after forgetting the reason for this change of venue. The police are already down in the crypt and the sewers searching for explosives."

  "Is it all right to go in?" Panya hesitated at the sight of an armed guard standing just inside the doorway in heavy shadow.

  "Don't you be taking too much notice of him now." Michael Fitz walked across and spoke to the man. "This young lady is being mindful of my welfare, so be kind to her."

  Panya followed Michael Fitz closely into the cool, almost cold, building. A choir was practicing at the front, to the accompaniment of a small orchestra. "How well do you know Colonel Abadi?" she asked.

  "The big man has been a constant source of assistance to me since I came to Cairo. Nothing has been too much trouble for him. A real man of God is our Colonel -- even if he isn't after worshipping as we do."

  "And you're sure the police have done a thorough search of the building?"

  "As thorough as men can be. Sit down, Panya, listen to the music and do a little praying while I go down into the crypt and see a man about the lights. A powerful lot of electricity is going to be used in this building tonight. As you can see, everything is set up ready to go, so don't be touching anything."

  Panya ran her hands over a smooth pillar, one of twelve each dedicated to Jesus Christ's apostles. She wanted to feel a closeness to Christianity's ancient past. The setting sun penetrated the dark glass of the high window in horizontal rays, casting colored patches on the far wall. Within three hours the church of Saint Sergius would be full to capacity.

  In here would be Christians, Jews and Muslims, not wanting to compromise their separate faiths, but all trying to find some common ground for understanding and peace. It was an ideal opportunity for a terrorist attack. This attempt at tolerance and affinity would be destroyed if militants seized the initiative.

  Sam should be here. Sam was ... well, Sam was not the sort of man she'd ever been attracted to before. James had been a tender man with a calling to do God's work, and Sam was a man who showed no signs of such a calling. But he had helped her at the Institute, and thanks to Sam she had got to Cairo in time to warn Cardinal Fitz.

  "Sam, where are you now?" She sat on one of the closely packed chairs and thought back to her life in England, investigating Dr. Wynne and his prophecies.

  The establishment will tremble from the sky to the abyss, and the followers of the One God will be confounded and their enemies will mock their destruction in the fallen house. The people of the Hebrews will be held accountable and destroyed. The new prophecy was little different from the earlier ones. To use Sam's words, it was typical Aten-speak.

  The prophecy for the al-Sûfiya mosque had been slightly different. The establishment will tremble from the depths. And it had, right from the foundations. But it had failed to kill the religious leaders, had failed to start the holy war that would tear religion and state apart. It had also failed to upset the precarious peace in the Middle East. And suddenly there had been this new prophecy that Dr. Wynne had said was not right.

  The establishment will tremble from the heavens to the abyss. The choir finished their rehearsal and filed out of the church. Panya sat with her eyes closed, beneath the ceiling that had been darkened with soot from candles lit over the centuries by Egypt's Christian community, perhaps right on the spot where Jesus had learned to speak his first words.

  Then she opened her eyes and looked at the rows of massive television floodlights that almost touched the roof, freestanding on huge gantries so as not to damage the ancient fabric of the church. The painted ceiling was like looking into heaven, spoiled by man's intrusion.

  The establishment will tremble from the heavens to the abyss.

  She got to her feet and made her way to the lighting technician's ladder. From the top to the bottom." Were they going to blow the roof? She wouldn't say anything yet to the police. They'd only laugh at a woman. From the sky to the abyss. It would surely be worth a quick look up there.

  THEY CALLED him el-Quraid, the Little Monkey. His family used no other name for the boy. At the age of nine el-Quraid would gladly have outgrown the tag, but it had become as permanent as his familiar grin and cheeky eyes. El-Quraid had something to smile about this afternoon. He had found a one hundred Egyptian pound banknote blowing between the tall railings outside the Jews' synagogue. Such a lot of money he had never seen before. He thought of Uncle Hassan, the policeman, who was always saying Insha' Allah when things went wrong. "It is the will of God." His uncle never said it when things went right, but perhaps things never did go right for Uncle Hassan. It seemed that for Uncle Hassan the will of God was that nothing would be satisfactory, nothing would ever be a matter for thanks.

  And now the will of God for el-Quraid was a one hundred Egyptian pound banknote.

  Uncle Hassan would be jealous if he found out. One hundred Egyptian pounds would buy him a very good meal. Uncle Hassan wasn't outside the church, but he was on duty somewhere close today.

  The little Monkey had no intention of Uncle Hassan finding out.

  To get to his apartment he had to pass some of the Christian churches his aunts were always warning him to avoid. At nine years old he was too sensible to get caught up in foolish arguments. These arguments, which he heard all day from his family, could never be insha' Allah. Not in a million years. He felt for the money in the left-hand pocket of his shorts: the pocket that had no hole. His mother would be out of Aunty Meryl's house soon, coming this way to look for him. Tomorrow at the market he would buy a surprise present for his mother, and some sweets for himself.

  His play friend Kasim, a Copt, had told him that there was a ladder and lighting stands in the church, like the floodlights at the football ground. The guard at the door was talking to a policeman in the narrow street. A plan of sudden daring came to him. The Little Monkey would live up to his name. He would find the ladder and use it to climb up right onto the roof. It would be exciting to see Aunty Meryl's house from so high up.

  He slipped past and stared into the scary darkness. This wasn't the first time he'd been into a church. Kasim was a Christian, and always claiming that, as a Copt, he was descended directly from the pharaohs. Occasionally, just occasionally, he'd let Kasim take him into the nearby church of Saint George. Never for a religious service, just to hunt around the strange-smelling interior for anything exciting in the way of lost treasure.

  El-Quraid gasped as he saw the large lights suspended from two big frameworks. When the lights went on, surely the people in the church would melt, like candles set too close to the fire.

  Where was the ladder to get up to the roof? Then he saw it. He darted forward and started to climb. Looking up he realized a woman was coming down. The woman had a long black skirt which suddenly caught on the back of one of the huge lights. Her skirt rode up, showing a pair of thin legs, and at the top of the legs ... a pair of pink panties. Quickly he averted his eyes to preserve the woman's modesty. The body of a woman was private, except to her husband. Every Muslim knew that.

  "Could you help me?" the woman called. She sounded anxious. Her Arabic was good, but she wasn't from Cairo.

  El-Quraid looked down to see who she was calling to, but the church was empty. His heart racing and his face beginning to glow red, he put his hand to his eyes and peeped upwards between his fingers. "Are you calling me, lady?"

  "My skirt," she said. "It's caught on this spotlight, and I don't want to tear it. It's the only one I've got."

  This was a job for women, not for men. He shook his head wit
hout looking up. "No way, lady. You wait there. I get you some help."

  The woman sounded scared. "Please hurry. I can't hold on much longer."

  He climbed up two rungs of the ladder and then stopped. He shouldn't even be in this building, and certainly shouldn't be looking at a woman's legs. Supposing he accidentally touched them. Well, it would be a good story to tell Kasim. He bet Kasim had never seen a woman's legs, let alone managed to touch them.

  Rapidly he made his way up, past the woman's feet, before reaching out cautiously to where the black skirt was caught around the back of the large light.

  "I'll be quick," he said, not daring to look at the legs. He just hoped that Kasim would never find out how, when presented with such a wonderful opportunity, he had failed so miserably to make bodily contact with an unknown woman.

  "If you could just..."

  El-Quraid pulled cautiously, but the skirt would rip if he pulled any harder. The light was circular, about a meter across. Then he realized that it was the large knob that held the back closed, that was trapping the hem of the skirt. Nimbly he turned the knob and pulled the back of the floodlight open.

  Inside the light he could see something wrapped with bright wires. It looked like an alarm clock, the sort with numbers not hands. On top of it was a red light that suddenly began to flash rapidly. "What is it?" he asked, pointing to the bundle.

  "Go back down," the woman shouted. "Go back down quickly! It's a bomb!"

  He knew what bombs looked like, and they didn't look like alarm clocks. The woman kept telling at him to go away, and a policeman started to climb the ladder. He looked like Uncle Hassan.

  So, there was treasure to be discovered in Christian churches after all. He leaned forward, determined to have the alarm clock with a flashing red light as a present for his father, to help him get to work on time. The woman tore her skirt free and tried to push him away. He would reach in and be quick. He caught hold of it just as Uncle Hassan grabbed his ankles and tugged him free. The clock stayed where it was.

  "El-Quraid, what are you doing here?"

  Trust his uncle to be in the church, showing him up in front of adults. "There's a clock here, Uncle. It's..."

  The explosion didn't come from the clock. It shook the two lighting gantries from above. He watched as stones and pieces of wood flew through the air, followed by a tornado of black smoke. Still clinging to the metal framework, the woman and the gantries disappeared into the black smoke, leaving him on the ladder fixed to the wall, with Uncle Hassan still holding onto his ankles.