Perhaps the doctors were right. She should not stand in their way any longer.
But then suddenly, Gigi sensed a slight change in the movement of the air, accompanied by the slightest scent of lilies. Her remaining senses were suddenly alert to the presence of someone in the room.
“Hello, you must be Gigi,” a male voice said in French.
Gigi knew the voice.
Harmonious in the bass with a slight pause at the end of the sentences. Austere intonation despite its youth, as if sharing a solemn secret. A southern accent with angular shades. All wrapped in the refined perfume of oriental flowers, with an aftertaste of earth and rain and some other note that hinted at something toxic. Was it gasoline?
“I remember you, you were at the church,” Gigi said softly without turning. “You were with Seth.”
“Thaddeus di Blumagia. I am glad to see you again.”
Thaddeus remained perfectly still, and this intrigued Gigi. Usually, faced with infirmity and the proximity of death, young people tended to fill the space around them with words, gestures or wasted energy, anything to put distance between themselves and this inevitable reality. But Thaddeus remained still, and although Gigi was sure she heard him speak, his words could have quite easily been the product of her imagination, such was his calm.
“Do you mind if I stay a while?” Thaddeus asked.
“Please, do,” Gigi replied.
“Thank you.”
She heard the paper wrapper crumpling, and smelled the stronger scent of lilies as he placed the bouquet on the bedside table. She recalled the twittering of the ladies who gushed at how handsome Thaddeus was, during the wedding reception. But Gigi studied every smell, every movement of the air, every sound around him. She stared at him with all her senses.
And she knew that Thaddeus possessed something else, far rarer than beauty.
His presence was more than electric: it was disrupting every thread of energy in the room, including within herself. Yet he had not touched anything, moved an inch, nor made any sound. Gigi tried to conjure up a word that would explain that feeling, box it and put it back into the realm of the familiar. She couldn’t.
“I'm sorry about Seth, I know he was a dear friend,” Gigi whispered.
“I hope he's at peace, wherever he is,” Thaddeus replied, in a neutral voice, after a silence.
“Have you heard? They have arrested a man.”
This time Gigi heard footsteps; Thaddeus had approached the bed. He came so close that she recognized in his breath the toxic, flammable note that had announced his arrival in the room: it was not gasoline, but turpentine. Thaddeus was an artist, Gigi remembered it now. He walked around the bed.
In the silence, the old lady heard an almost imperceptible rustle of sheets. Then Jessica's fingers, folded within her own, moved slightly. But Gigi was adept at deciphering the invisible: and knew that it was only because the young man had taken Jessica’s other hand into his.
None of them spoke for a long while. Outside in the hospital corridors, life went on.
“Are you happy with your hotel?” Thaddeus asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“I have left my card on the table,” he whispered. “Ask someone to call me if you need something. Anything. I know Seth and Jessica would have wanted you to have everything you need.”
“I am her only remaining family. The doctors are waiting for my agreement to...” Gigi choked. The words had not been uttered, and yet there they were.
Disconnect her from life support.
Disconnect youth, disconnect hope and all the days to come. Disconnect the whole world, leaving only loneliness. As the tears washed down her face, she felt Thaddeus's fingers rest lightly on her arm.
“She must live,” he murmured. “Give her one last chance. One more day.”
Gigi heard him leave the room. When the door closed, it was as if something was suddenly missing, as if the absence of some crucial atoms had left the universe unbalanced.
She listened again.
All that remained was the distant sounds of the hospital, the murmur of the machines, and more imagined than real, the feeble breathing of her niece.
She must live.
Gigi pondered Thaddeus’ sentence, enveloped in the dissipating scent of lily and turpentine. As their echo faded, she knew the words he spoke were no prayer, but a commandment from a prince who dared to instruct the gods.
She had found the word she was looking for, to name that intense, fearless, raw presence she had felt around Thaddeus di Blumagia.
Power.
25
“So you got your man?” Max said, defiantly. “So I can have my passport back.”
“You still haven’t explained what you were doing in Giza at that time,” Aqmool replied, not looking up from the papers that lay across his desk.
“I have already answered all your questions. My passport. Please.” Max reached out a hand and Aqmool raised his gaze.
Max’s jaw was tight, his eyes ringed in shadow and there was a tense, strained tone in his voice. Aqmool pulled out the file with Max's passport but simply dropped it onto his desk and then placed his hand on it, as if to keep it safe.
“Did you d-d-drill the hole?” he asked.
“No. No!” Max exclaimed, “I told you before. I hadn’t been to Giza for months!”
“And the man who called you?”
“I also told you that already. He claimed he was from the SCA.”
“Describe the voice. Did he speak to you in English or Arabic?”
“In English. No Egyptian accent, more eastern European.”
“And Jessica Pryce, did you know her?”
“Never heard of her.”
“And yet she was in all the newspapers.”
“Which I don’t read. But I will be sure to catch up when I get home, once you return my passport, which you have no reason to keep now that you have a suspect in custody. Or is that not the whole story?”
“Room X,” Aqmool said, ignoring Max’s question. “How did Moswen get there?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He isn’t talking. The guards say he got in from the main entrance, together with the victims. Someone is lying. And I think you're l-l-lying too.”
Max saw Aqmool fold his long fingers around the passport but before he had time to wonder what the policeman intended to do with it, shouts and gunshots echoed against the walls outside.
Aqmool rushed to the window, hastily but without panic. Outside, the commotion grew in volume. Large numbers of police were rushing down the corridor, readying their weapons. The door swung open, and a junior officer reported to Aqmool that protesters were attacking the station. Aqmool returned to his seat behind his desk and proceeded to lock all the drawers of his desk shut.
“What’s going on?” Max asked.
“R-r-riots. We are prepared. This building has seen worse. But our interview is over. You'll need to leave from the back; it’s safer. I will make sure you are accompanied.”
“And my passport?” Max asked.
“The interview is only over for now,” Aqmool said, coming around the desk. “With Moswen charged, there are new facts to review.”
Max started to protest, but then everything seemed to slow down.
Shouts first. Then a blast. It threw Max to the ground, and only then did he hear its deafening roar. An explosion had ripped through the police station. His limbs were making decisions without him. He saw himself crawling over the debris and the world was suddenly reduced to smoke, dust and terror.
Aqmool had unholstered his weapon and rushed out of the room, leaving Max alone. He saw people grappling with fire extinguishers and a blood-soaked body kneeling in the rubble. Everyone else was running. More explosions, more heat. Then two silhouettes running, too young to be policemen. What were they doing here? Who were the attackers and who were the defenders?
A gray steel locker stuffed with papers caught fire and fell to th
e ground in a deafening crash. Max lay frozen on the floor, heart beating too hard, throat burning. Then felt himself being pulled up to a kneeling position against a wall.
Aqmool shouted into his ear, pointing down the corridor: “We can’t get out from the front. You need to get to the rear exit. Go to the end and then turn left. You understand?”
Max nodded.
“Now get going!”
Aqmool disappeared, a Glock 9mm semi-automatic in one hand.
Max managed to get up. He was about to head off down the smoke-filled corridor when he spotted his passport still on Aqmool’s desk. He grabbed it, stuffed it in his pocket and then ran in the direction of the exit. He had not yet reached the end before thick smoke obscured his vision so that he had to feel along the walls with his hands.
It was then that he heard a male voice, choked with tears, pleading.
“The door is stuck! Help me, I beg you, help me!”
Eyes bulging from their sockets, trying desperately to push his way through a crack between a door on the opposite side of the corridor, was Moswen.
A large cabinet was blocking the door, preventing it from opening further. Max tried to push it aside, but the bare metal scorched his hands. He then tried leaning against the wall and pushing with his feet, but still, the cabinet did not budge. The heat of the fire was coming closer with every second, his lungs protesting at the smoke suffocating him.
Was there any sense in trying to save a murderer, especially if it meant losing his own chance at survival? In a split second, Max stared at the panic-stricken face on the other side of the jammed door. The memory of the horror seeping through the small hole in the pyramid’s stone wall – the screams, the ghostly dust, the smell of decomposed flesh and dead flowers – they were all that man’s doing. An eye for an eye.
Max edged away from the struggling, gasping figure and pushed on through the smoke towards the end of the corridor to safety.
“Come back, I beg you!”
Max paused long enough to look into Moswen’s eyes, long enough to remember the gut feeling he had had earlier that day: that man could not possibly be the one. It took someone extraordinary to pull that off, and Moswen was a mere mortal, guilty of many things, but innocent of that crime. But before Max could think any more, Moswen, eyes bloodshot, sweat running down his desperate face, wailed breathlessly, “Oxan Aslanian! Oxan Aslanian! He’s the man you must find! Please help me!”
The plastic frame of the suspended ceiling crashed next to Max, warped and melted; the unsupported panels fell and blocked the doorway that would have taken him to safety. The corridor was in flames. His eyes only a blur of tears, he knew he had waited too long. Casting around desperately, leaving a screaming Moswen behind, he smashed through one last unobstructed doorway, praying to find exits on the other side.
There was one. A lone window looking onto a concrete courtyard. Three floors below.
The cries had stopped, and he thought of Moswen, only a few feet away and already surely dead. All around him, he heard the roar of the fire and the groaning of the timber beams and columns as they began to give way to the heat.
He knew he had to jump, to grasp this one chance. He saw with cruel clarity the things and the love he was leaving behind and the brilliant simplicity of all his past happiness. He heard the terrible crunch of timber and plaster collapsing together, and then took one last breath of the smoke-filled air that scorched his lungs. As he jumped, he thought of the last words he had said to his mother.
“Nothing will happen. I promise.”
26
Kamal Aqmool lay in the ambulance, trying not to lose consciousness.
The assault on the police station was over. The firefighters had been delayed in arriving as all the streets leading to the station had been blocked. When they did come, they found a charred wreck, dripping with the black sludge of ash mixed with water. The army was still on the heels of protesters, and the battlefield, with its tail of TV crews, had moved to Tahrir Square.
More than twenty wounded. Two dead. A policeman, and Moswen.
“The German architect,” Aqmool stuttered with intense effort.
“Who?” his assistant asked.
“Hausmann,” Aqmool finally managed.
“We don’t know.”
The left side of Aqmool’s face was ravaged. His left eye, nose, lips – all was a messy mass of torn flesh. From his shoulder to just above his right elbow, a gaping wound was matted with a blackened cloth. The pain was so intense that it engulfed Aqmool, body and soul.
“He must not talk,” the paramedic ordered.
But he needn’t have worried. With a slow and exhausted groan, Aqmool slipped into a world beyond words.
Franklin rushed towards the ruined police station, a knot of fear in his stomach. Why didn’t he think of it before?
All the streets were blocked, so he had to walk, trying to weave his way through crowds that crackled with nervous excitement. Looking around, he did not recognize the Cairo he loved. Its warmth and peacefulness were nowhere to be seen. The violence and fear that had taken their place seemed profoundly unnatural and only fueled the dark premonition that pressed him forward.
He arrived at the police station. The building he had left only an hour before was now in ruins. He picked his way through the smoking remains, burying his nose in the crook of his arm to block the stench. He stepped carefully over broken furniture, charred computers and thousands of papers floating in the dirty water. A single shoe lay in the midst of a mass of broken, indistinct shapes. Then, standing amongst the rubble, he saw a figure he recognized: the FBI agent, Aaron Rodriguez. Franklin called over to him, but Rodriguez just ignored him.
“So. Franklin Hunter lives.”
The detective turned to see Aziza Rust, a look of deep scorn on her face. Speaking to one of the Egyptian policemen in her entourage, she motioned to Franklin and said, “This man has no clearance to be here. Can you escort him beyond the perimeter, please?”
The policeman nodded and stepped toward Franklin, but the detective did not move and asked calmly, “Was the evidence room hit?”
The policeman grabbed his arm and Franklin struggled. “Rust, answer me!”
But the FBI agent had turned away. Rodriguez ran over, separated Franklin from the policeman and lead him toward the hastily constructed perimeter of what used to be the station compound.
“What are you doing here?” Rodriguez hissed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Aaron,” Franklin snapped back, “you know as well as I do what's going on here. Just tell me if it is still there.”
“One more word and I swear I will throw you into a cell myself.”
Rodriguez made a show of pushing Franklin away from the smoldering remains of the building. He didn't resist. As Rust watched, another policeman rushed over towards her.
“Miss, you were right. The mask of Tutankhamen has been taken from the evidence–“
“Thank you,” Aziza Rust interrupted abruptly. “Continue your research, please.”
So, I was right, thought Franklin. A sudden wave of determination rushed over him as he glanced back over his shoulder and saw Rust, inscrutable amidst the ruins. He wanted to shout out one last time, to provoke her into revealing something, anything – but then a woman’s voice cried out for help from the other side of the compound. Franklin dodged his distracted minders and ran toward the source of the scream. The first thing he saw was the shock of pink hair amongst the black and grey of the ashes.
In Florence’s arms lay a grotesquely disjointed figure, crowned with blood. It was Max.
Like a modern Pietà, she cradled his inert head in her arms, her fingers gently stroking his grime-covered face. Her gaze was focused on his unconscious form, and she did not look away from him for a moment, even as she pleaded for help. When paramedics arrived and their practiced hands set to work, Florence’s trembling lips placed a kiss on Max's forehead. It was as pure and simple a declaration of love a
s Franklin had ever seen, and all the more beautiful for the lateness of its arrival.
27
Joanne was watching the news on the TV in the nurses' lounge, her brow furrowed.
Protesters were attacking a police station in Cairo. Tires burned, three police cars too. Retaliation for the clearing of Mohammed Hassan, they said. The protestors were claiming a whitewash. There had just been a press conference at the police station and many reporters and photographers were still on the scene. Maybe this time they might save some lives, these journalists, rather than merely spectating, Joanne thought. Then a nurse call sounded.
It was room 12.
She walked as fast as her large frame could manage. Had the girl's great-aunt decided to unplug her?
She opened the door to discover Gigi, even paler than she had been earlier that morning.
“I don't know what's happened,” she said, falteringly. “But her hand... it’s different.”
Joanne didn’t need to look at the encephalogram, she had felt it as soon as she had entered the room. She left to summon the doctors.
Jessica Pryce was coming back to life.
III
28
Four months later
* * *
Sixtine lay at the bottom of the indoor pool on the top floor of her Manhattan penthouse.
The surface of the turquoise water was entirely still, except for the ripples produced by the bass of a sound system thundering Jay Z's and Kanye West’s No Church in the Wild. Sixtine's limbs moved in slow motion, like a sleepy nymph caressed by an invisible current. Her green eyes were open but did not focus on anything. Her gray hair spread out like a fragile anemone.
She was naked, the water deforming the cross tattooed on her navel.
Reflected in the mirror of the water surface, an elderly Asian man looked on. And he wondered if she was dead.
The Pyramid Prophecy Page 12
