by Parker Bilal
‘Another Apple PowerBook’
‘This one belongs to Mourad’s friend Ihab. Maybe you’ll find something that will give us a clue as to Mourad’s whereabouts.’
‘I’ll take a look. I was looking into that stuff you gave me.’
‘Stuff?’ Makana fished in his pockets for a cigarette. You had to give him time. There was no point in rushing with Ubay.
‘That material you wanted looking into. Algorabi Industries? The pharmacy company?’
‘Shaddad Pharmacies?’
‘That’s the one.’ Makana waited while Ubay gathered his thoughts. ‘They belong to the same people.’
Makana held the flame steady in the air. Now they were both doing it. As the match burnt his finger he dropped it.
‘What do you mean, the same people?’
‘Well, they both belong to some kind of consortium. Is that the word?’
‘You tell me.’ Makana felt as if he were being led by the hand into a dark forest by a child, with no idea where he was going.
‘The Al Tawq Group, which is a collection of businessmen and politicians so far as I can tell.’ He waited for Makana to nod before continuing. ‘You may not have heard of them, but we’re talking about some big crocodiles here. People close to the president and his sons. Inner circle. Elite VIP Club.’
‘I get the picture.’ To go into big business you had to be connected. Nobody got the concessions for factories or land developments, construction, business franchises with foreign companies – none of that ever happened without the blessing of the ruling elite.
‘Circles within circles,’ said Ubay.
‘Omar Shaddad is part of that?’
‘Well, he’s a small fish compared with some of them, but he’s in there all right.’
‘What kind of things are we talking about?’
‘Everything. Absolutely everything. From concrete production to frozen food, to luxury car concessions, to hotel developments in the Sinai, air freight, tourism. You name it and they have some piece of it.’
‘Can you get me a list of these companies and the people involved?’
‘It’s already done. I have it on my desk.’
While he waited, Makana stood and smoked by the cracked window, gazing down into the gloomy well of the staircase. A ghostly conversation floated up between a voice on the ground floor and another above him on the subject of sandwiches which vaguely registered as a dull ache in his stomach. Makana realised he hadn’t eaten anything today, but it would have to wait.
Ubay returned carrying a sheet of paper.
‘I don’t know if it’s going to be much help to you, but there it is.’
‘Everything helps.’ Makana scanned the sheet quickly, his eye drawn to a familiar name, Deputy Minister Qasim Abdel Qasim. They had crossed paths before. There was also another name, one he had only recently come to know, that of Ihsan Qaddus. Makana wasn’t sure what this meant. It might be significant, but then again it might simply mean that Shaddad had a hand over him, protecting him in return for certain favours. It explained the phone calls to get Okasha off his back. Shaddad had friends in high places, but that didn’t imply that he knew what Mustafa Alwan got up to in his spare time. The Al Tawq Group linked Shaddad with the Hesira Institute and big players like Qasim. He folded the paper away for later study. Ubay was peering down at him.
‘So you think this is important?’
‘It could be.’
‘How?’
‘It’s possible that my missing boy stepped on someone’s toes. Another organisation, somebody for whom this was a lucrative business, not just a charity, which is what Mourad and his friends were running. They were just trying to help.’
‘And it got them killed. At least one of them.’
‘Mourad is still missing and the girl has disappeared.’
‘You think he’s dead?’
‘I think it’s very possible.’
The two of them stood smoking in silence for a moment. Neither felt the need to speak.
‘How did they actually do it?’
‘Do what?’ Makana asked.
‘I mean, move people around. Did they have a car, a bus, what?’
Makana stared at him, wondering why something so obvious had not occurred to him. A vehicle. Where would Mourad and Ihab get a vehicle from? He slapped Ubay on the shoulder and thanked him.
‘For what?’ The young man looked blank, but Makana was already gone.
The Café Riche was teeming with life at this hour, the clientele of ageing intellectuals staggering in from offices in the area looking for a moment’s respite before enduring the daily catastrophe of the transport system that would take them home. There was, however, no sign of Sami. The waiter was busy, moving through the tables with a skilful ease that had been absent on his last visit. He regarded Makana with the grave welcome due to an uninvited rodent.
‘I’m looking for my friend.’
The dark, wrinkled face remained impassive. ‘What makes you think he’s here?’
‘You know that you’ll never be rid of him if you keep asking questions like that. You’ll be stuck with him for years.’
The old waiter weighed up his options and decided he would settle for peace of mind. A jerk of his head indicated the alleyway alongside the café.
‘There’s a storeroom up on the roof. You take the stairs next door.’
Makana thanked him and tucked some notes into an empty glass on the bar counter as he went, ignoring the tut of disapproval. A corridor led from the rear of the café to a side entrance that opened onto the alley. A staircase rose up into the gloom. It was narrow and the walls scarred but in good shape. These old downtown buildings decayed at their own pace. An old-fashioned, stately decline, as opposed to newer buildings that collapsed in a heap of rubble overnight without warning.
As he stepped out onto the roof the late afternoon sun filled the air with mysterious promise. He pushed his way through rows of laundry hanging out to dry, startling a tiny, doll-like woman in the process, her eyes burning with the waning sunlight. She hurried off without a word, arms filled with folded sheets.
Along one side there was a row of little rooms, built over years and gradually developed from storage shacks or pigeon coops into shelters for lost souls. In this case it was identifiable by the name of the café in faded letters on the door, which stood ajar. The interior was cluttered with old crates and dusty green bottles, bundles of flyers and magazines, shredded newspapers. Along the walls a striding Johnny Walker in red coat and breeches stood alongside a smiling blonde holding up a bottle of Martell cognac and, most incongruous of all, a poster for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. The azure glow from a laptop screen was the only source of light. Sami was perched on the bed with a blanket round his shoulders and hauled up over his head like a monk, deep in meditation.
‘You ought to think about whether social isolation is really what you need right now.’
‘I was wondering when you might start.’
Makana looked for a place to sit. ‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to give this maverick life up and go home to Rania.’
Sami cast him a withering look. ‘You know, I haven’t had one drink today.’
‘Mabrouk. To most people that’s considered normal.’
‘I’m just saying that . . . this is not a static situation.’
‘Whatever that means.’
‘I’d expect you to be a little more appreciative. I have been working for you, after all.’ Sami tapped the machine on his lap.
‘Is that Mourad’s computer?’
‘Full marks for observation.’
Makana tried to move, but his head bumped into something swinging from the ceiling that turned out to be a lampshade with no light bulb in its socket. The collision released a cloud of dust and expired insect life into the air that made his nose twitch.
‘By the way, you know you asked me about that clinic?’
‘The Hesira Institute
.’
‘It seems they are one of the biggest clients of guess who?’ Sami waited a beat. ‘The Shaddad Pharmacies. Interesting, right? They supply all their pharmaceuticals, and that’s a pretty long list.’
‘That is interesting,’ conceded Makana. He told Sami about the conversation he had just had with Ubay. Sami nodded before going on.
‘Also, I heard from a colleague who told me he was working on a story about the institute. Very hush-hush, but a serious scandal. He said it would throw everything wide open.’
‘Did he say what it was about?’
‘They’ve built something of a reputation, abroad at least, for bringing people back from the brink. Miracle cures. It’s what brings them flocking from America and Europe, especially the chronically ill, the terminal cases, the elderly.’
‘Did he say anything more specific?’
‘Only that he had a source on the inside.’ Sami shrugged. ‘But you know how journalists are. We always like to think we’re on the verge of breaking Watergate.’
‘When will the story come out?’
‘That’s the thing, his source has gone missing. It happens. Here, take a look.’ Sami moved along on the bed to make room. Makana remained standing. He was uncomfortable in narrow spaces. Anything confined triggered memories of being locked up. He shivered as a cold sweat blew through him. It was something that he could never shake off – he knew that now. The years went by and his recollection faded, but it never quite went away. It remained a background noise, humming on the edge of his consciousness. Lifts were bad, constricted spaces in general. Right now he was glad the door was open, despite the chill bite to the evening air.
‘So I had the idea that maybe there was a way of pinpointing Mourad’s movements if we could work out where he’d been communicating from.’
‘I see.’ If Makana seemed underwhelmed it was because when Sami got going on technical matters the only thing you could do was wait until he reached the conclusion. It was a wonder to him that so many people became obsessed with all this information technology. At times it struck him as a kind of modern-day cult. Once you had Isis and Anubis, now you had bytes and megahertz. In desperation he clawed for his cigarettes and lit one.
‘Okay, let me explain.’
‘Please do.’
‘Whenever you connect to the internet your computer is assigned a number which is unique to you and is linked to the service you are using and to your location.’
‘Okay.’ Makana inhaled the acrid, familiar taste of the Cleopatra and wondered about the Olympics poster. How had it arrived on the wall here? Had the room once been occupied by a frustrated downhill skier perhaps, dreaming of open slopes and Alpine air, losing himself in drink?
‘So, with the help of a friend in one of the telephone companies I was able to find out where Mourad’s computer was connected at a given time. You are following this?’
‘Numbers tell you the area where the mail came from.’
‘Good.’ Sami straightened up, getting into his stride. ‘That’s the simple version. In reality it’s more complicated than that. There are other elements that have to be factored in and you can get variants that throw you off. The point is that with a series of providers you can begin to see a pattern. So in this case most of the traffic was sent and received from the same locations, places where he lived and worked – around the university campus, the family business in Zamalek. But a couple of them take us outside the city, and those are the ones that are interesting.’ Sami turned the screen so that Makana could see the map better. He pointed to a list of numbers in a column to one side. ‘The problem is that often you only get a general area. Not a precise place. Especially if he’s using a mobile device such as this.’ Sami indicated the thumb drive sticking out of the side of the laptop. ‘So unless the number has been connected to a specific place, it’s hard to pin down.’
‘And that’s the case here?’
‘Precisely.’ Sami tapped the touchpad a few times until a map appeared. ‘Here.’
‘Where is that exactly?’
‘Hasna. A town in the middle of nowhere.’ Nowhere in this case appeared to be located in Northern Sinai. ‘It’s about an hour’s drive from the Israeli border.’
Makana perked up. ‘What’s out there?’ All he could see was a thin strip of road running through emptiness.
‘Nothing. That’s the point.’
‘So you’re saying Mourad was out there when he sent some of his messages?’
‘Right.’
‘And how would he do that? I mean, could he just switch on the computer or would he need a telephone line or something?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. He wasn’t using this computer.’
‘Then what was he using?’
‘An internet café, some place that provides computers and a connection.’
‘Out there, in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Nowadays it’s not uncommon.’ Sami reached for a cigarette of his own. The tiny room was filling up with smoke.
‘When was this message sent? What day?’
‘The twenty-first.’
Eight days after Mourad had last reported for work at Westies. Unable to bear it any longer, Makana walked over to the door for a glimpse of sky. Across the rooftops he could see the twin obelisks of the Nile City Towers. Lit like electric gods, they rose up into the night sky like the gateway to another realm. Beyond them, in the distance, on the other side of the river, lights dwindled into darkness. To the Ancient Egyptians when the sun sank in the west, the god Ra descended into the land of the dead, the Underworld. A road in the middle of the Sinai might be a good place to disappear. It might also be a route out of this world and into the next.
‘I have a theory,’ Sami said from behind him.
‘I’m happy to hear it.’
‘Well, you may not like it. But I was trying to think about what these kids might be up to, right? I mean, what pos-sible connection could there be between a couple of rebellious students and some refugees from South Sudan? But what would they do except want to help them? I was watching the news and they were interviewing people at the camp outside the mosque. A journalist asked one of the women what she wanted, and she said, a home. A place I can live in peace and make a life for myself. That’s all, a home.’
‘Estrella’s mother was convinced her daughter had gone to America. She told her she was going to start a new life, but her application was turned down. She was pregnant.’
‘So where would she go?’ Sami asked. He had put his computer to one side and was reclining against the wall, smoking. At least he was sober and thinking, which was something. ‘Europe is the obvious choice, but Europe is hard. Getting across the Mediterranean is expensive and it’s a tough journey.’
‘Especially for a pregnant woman.’
‘So, what is nearer than Europe and almost as good?’ Sami pulled a crumpled newspaper from underneath him and tossed it over to Makana. It landed on the floor. He didn’t even need to pick it up.
‘Israel,’ said Makana.
Sami looked crestfallen. ‘You knew.’
Makana stooped for the paper. A picture of desert guards patrolling a wire fence and a headline about refugees. He unfolded it by the doorway to read the story, listening with half an ear as Sami continued to talk.
‘If they were smuggling people across the border into Israel, this might get complicated. It says there they are shooting people trying to cross over.’
‘Who is shooting them, the Israelis?’
‘No, we are, the Egyptians. It’s a scandal, but it would help to explain some of this. Hasna is only a few hours from the frontier.’ Sami was already up and pulling on his shoes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You don’t think you’re going out there by yourself, do you?’ Sami was indignant. ‘Don’t look at me like that. You treat me like I’m an invalid these days.’
There was a certain amount of truth to that. Makana was more cau
tious about involving Sami lately. He could never meet him without noticing the scars on his hands from a previous occasion when he had enlisted his help and he had wound up being almost crucified.
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this? I mean . . .’
‘This is just what I need. Believe me, it’ll be good for me. I need to get out of this place before I go crazy.’
‘Why not go home to your wife?’
Standing with the blanket around his shoulders like a cape, Sami looked more than slightly deranged.
‘Either you take me along, or I’m going straight downstairs and start drinking again.’
When he put it like that there didn’t seem to be much choice to the matter. Still, it was too late to set out now anyway. Makana called Sindbad to arrange for an early start in the morning.
‘The thing is they would need some kind of vehicle to get out there. I don’t think you mentioned that either Ihab or Mourad had a car.’
‘I have an idea about that,’ said Makana.
Chapter Thirty-one
By night the area around the old pasha’s palace on Champollion Street was dark and lifeless. During the day it came to life, as the shutters came up along the arcades to reveal service outlets, parts shops and mechanics getting to work. Pillars of tyres stacked here, vehicles of all kinds in varied states of disarray, a disassembled lorry, with the cab raised and headlights pointed into the oil-soaked ground. Everywhere the faded glory of once bright logos beckoned like a dying age, advertising brands of spark plugs and filters, spare parts of all kinds. Now, at sunset, the workshops were closing down. Across the narrow street soft rays of amber light grazed the upper walls of the old palace. There was still a police presence: a handful of guards dozed in the back of a dark blue pickup parked in front of the main gate. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. The first time he’d noticed it the name had struck him as mere coincidence. Now he knew it wasn’t.
The paint around the door was faded and chipped, but showed the care and skill with which the lines had originally been added to the wall. Now everything was the same uniform grey, background and lettering blending in some organic process of decay. The man who stood inside the workshop showed similar evidence of time’s hand. A large, untidy figure clad in overalls that were ripped and stained with all manner of organic substances. The legs rode high and the midriff was tight as a barrel around a swollen belly. Smoking a cigarette and watching the world pass him by, the man wore a scruffy beard of grey curls that matched the poorly cut thatch on his head. The eyes that followed Makana as he ducked in through the entrance were baggy and red. One grimy hand gripped a cup of tea.