The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  It should have been an easy matter to scrape them off. And now, what she was seeing, the ants in thick layers over each of them, turning them into black clad shrouds, made her glad she hadn’t.

  Yacoub was wiping at his eyes, frantically. For a few seconds they were free of ants. He saw her in her hiding place. A pleading scream ripped through the hall, echoing off the far walls. When Xena didn’t move, his scream turned to anger, and his hand came up and pointed at her.

  He was demanding her help. But Xena was no one’s slave. She wouldn’t die for her master.

  Bayford appeared below her. He was carrying a crude torch made of papers, rolled together, with looser ones at the top, lit. Flame and smoke spewed from them.

  Mustafa followed with a similar homemade torch. She didn’t like Mustafa. He’d tried too many times to get her back to his house. The place where he entertained his mistresses. And he’d become more crazy with her when he saw her with Yacoub.

  And there was another thing to consider. If these people had opened a door into the hall, and they were all killed, she would be the only one with any knowledge of this secret place. This could be her opportunity.

  Bayford and Mustafa threw their torches towards Yacoub. Neither of them seemed to care about helping the two women. The dark shadows flinched away from the flames, then drew back even further.

  Gasps came from the two men below her. She leaned forward to see why. Then she knew.

  93

  I stumbled as I came nearer to the guard. I let my eyes close for a second, then blinked them. I was tired, but not this tired. I saw his gaze flicker to the right, as if he was checking if the other guard was looking.

  I stumbled again. I needed water, but not this badly. I was near him now, my head bowed, as if I was beaten. I went down on one knee in front of him. He reached down towards me, his steel water bottle in his hand. It was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. And his last.

  His machine pistol was pointed down. He was well trained, probably ex-military. They didn’t like to cause civilian deaths if they could avoid it. I bowed my head, reached my hand forward and up. Instinctively his hand came towards mine to help me.

  I looked up, grabbed for his gun hand. I had one second to get this right, before he filled me full of holes. I jerked the barrel upwards, sending his hand and fingers bending. He pressed the trigger. A deafening hail of bullets sprung from the gun. It shattered the rock above into a rain of shards, which clattered around us and sent his hand jerking, like a fish avoiding being caught. But I held on.

  The guard was screaming in Arabic, a mixture of shock and outrage that I’d dared to take him on. His fist came towards me. I saw it in a blur and fell backwards away from it, pulling the muzzle of the gun around so the stream of bullets headed in the direction of the other guard.

  The stream of bullets stopped, but the scream from the other guard made it clear it was too late. His face was white. A red hole filled his chest. He fell backwards. The thump of his head hitting the stone floor echoed on the stairs. I was rolling over by then, holding the first guard’s gun hand, twisting it one way then the other, trying to force it from him.

  He screamed again. Arabic curse words. I struck out with my hard tipped boot towards his genitals. I felt a connection with something soft. His shout changed from anger to pain. He released the pistol. I had it.

  I turned it towards him, hesitated, saw him reaching for a handgun on his belt and shot him in the face. The bullets entered through his cheek and his forehead.

  I felt a swift surge of remorse, but I knew how to suppress it. It had been my life or his. No choice there. They’d been draining Sean’s life too. And he would have shot me if I’d hesitated. The fact that bullets had smashed into the roof proved that.

  I ran back down the steps.

  Mustafa and Bayford were busy down at the end of the corridor. This was my chance to get away with Sean. I touched his face. It was still warm, but only barely. I slapped him lightly across the cheek to see if it would wake him. His head went to one side.

  “Please, Sean, wake up,” I shouted.

  I slapped again. Harder. I wouldn’t be able to carry him. Even half awake, he could stumble in my arms out of here.

  Then, on impulse, I kissed him. Not on the cheek. On the lips. I kissed him hard. I couldn’t stop myself. I was so happy to see him.

  And he responded.

  His lips moved. I was sure of it.

  94

  Xena watched as hordes of ants poured in from all corners of the hall. Perhaps it was the blood that signaled them. Perhaps it was their own messaging odors. She knew ants could summon their kind.

  Screams filled the hall as Mustafa and Bayford experienced what had happened to Yacoub and his two nieces, who were now just piles of dark matter on the ground with white edges, their bones sticking out. The mass of black on each of them had a red tinge to it, as ants, gorged with blood and flesh, came up to the surface of the hordes.

  Xena watched, her heart beating fast, a rushing in her ears. Only the overhang and the distance to the ground had kept her safe from a similar fate. The question was, how would she ever escape them?

  Further screams were like knives cutting the air. Mustafa’s mouth opened as he spun around. Blackness filled it. He fell to his knees beside Bayford. They would be gone soon, too.

  And still more ants were coming. How many generations had lived down here without sight or smell of anything larger than a rat or a desert fox? Had they some genetic memory of feeding on human flesh? Was that why this hall had been abandoned, blocked up?

  The mass of black below her was twenty feet wide at least now. Part of it was circling the five mounds, where the last remnants of human flesh were being consumed. The outer edges began to peel away, in smaller shadows. One came towards where she had climbed up. She held her breath as they tried to scale the wall after her, following her scent most likely. But the wall was too steep, too smooth.

  Another shadow streamed towards the doorway under her ledge.

  She closed her eyes. Would it be better if they were distracted by eating someone out there, so she could get away? And should she follow them out through the door?

  A new, higher pitched scream echoed into the hall. This had come through the doorway. And she knew who was screaming.

  95

  Henry was being bundled, in a deep underground garage, into a green van with the words Queen’s Suppliers in small red letters on its side.

  It took four men to ensure he was settled in the wire cage in the back. Two of them got in the front and headed for the ramp leading up to the bomb proof metal doors and the street. Within minutes he would be in a safe house in Elephant and Castle and would be unlikely to see daylight again until the security services investigation was complete.

  On Henry’s screen, back at his desk, an image showed the exterior of Yacoub Holdings research facility in Cairo. A group of Egyptian commandos were pinned down by gunfire near the gate. Muslim Brotherhood fighters had been reinforced with two more truckloads of men in black.

  Unless air cover came in swiftly the Brotherhood would overrun the commandos, and the facility would be entirely in their hands.

  As a sign of how imminent that moment was, the screen showed two black clad men planting something near the front door of the main building unimpeded. It was a black backpack. The men were doing something with whatever was inside.

  “Request permission to engage,” came a voice, over the speakers attached to the side of Henry’s desk.

  But no one answered, and a few seconds later the sound of bullets striking the Lynx could clearly be heard, and the flashes from several machine pistols pointed in its direction could be seen.

  A moment later the helicopter swung away and headed back over the jumble of flat roofs, piles of garbage and TV antennas heading back to the airbase.

  “Mission aborted,” came an exasperated voice over the loudspeakers.

/>   96

  I pressed my ear close to Sean’s mouth. His breathing was shallow, but there was something else I wanted to check. I felt for his knee, then tapped it hard with my knuckles through the thin blue cotton hospital trousers they had put him in.

  Sean had been sensitive about his knees for a long time. I had no idea if it was genetic, or a sign that he was getting older. He’d be forty soon, God willing. I tapped again.

  No reaction. I’d hoped for an intake of breath, even a shallow one, to say that he was conscious in some way, if even sleepily. But there was nothing.

  A moan came from behind me. I turned. The guard, who the other guard had shot, was crawling towards me across the stone floor. A trail of blood was like a stream behind him. He was up on his elbows dragging himself, his eyes wide in pain. The other security guard’s gun was only a few feet from him, twenty from me.

  The gun I’d taken from the guard was at the end of the hospital trolley Sean was lying on. I reached towards it. Another groan sounded from the guard. I touched the gun, pulled it to me. As I gripped it I saw something strange, glistening, almost magical, appear from the doorway in the cave.

  A black shadow was pouring out of the opening. It covered the ground, as if the light was being blocked. And it was heading towards me.

  It took a few more seconds for my brain to catch up. This wasn’t a shadow or anything magical, it was the ants.

  The guard let out a roar. I turned back to him. He had reached the gun. He was lifting it and screaming, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.”

  I bent my head down, my heart banging suddenly against my chest. If he let off a stream of bullets both Sean and I could be dead in the next few seconds. Instinctively I lifted my legs, pushed forward until I was covering Sean’s body with mine. Ricochets would hit me now, not him. It was all I could do to protect him.

  My breathing almost stopped. I was shaking as if I was ill. A great clattering, pinging, thudding sounded through the hall. I put my hands to my face, sure they were wet. But it wasn’t blood. Sweat was slicking them.

  “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” The screams were higher pitched now, as if the guard was under attack. Then the sound of the bullets stopped. I forced myself to look towards him.

  All I saw was a mass of black writhing on the floor. I looked below the trolley. The ants were parting at the steel trolley wheels and flowing on towards the guard. Some ants were trying to climb the wheels, the rubber was black from where they were mounting on top of each other, but the steel legs were too smooth for them to climb. They reached an inch or two above the wheels, then they were falling back in tiny waves.

  The guard wasn’t so lucky. His hands were still frantically beating at himself, but they were red with blood.

  “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” More shouts echoed in the hall. I looked up to where the stairs came down. Four men, dressed in black, with AK-47’s, had stopped near the bottom of the stairs. They were staring open mouthed at the carpet of black almost covering the hall.

  One of them laughed. He took a step down and started firing at the ants, as if they were one creature. Perhaps they were, because the next thing I saw was a wave of ants streaming up the stairs, first rising up that man’s legs, then pursuing the other black clad men as they retreated, stumbling backwards.

  Then the waves of black ants were leaving, heading up the stairs after the men. All that was left of the guards in the room were mounds of bones and flesh, as if the room was an abattoir.

  That was when the smell hit me. It was gross, like rotting meat. I groaned, held onto Sean, put my ear to his chest. His heart was beating, but as faintly as the sound of the wind passing through grass.

  Something touched the small of my back.

  “Now is the time to pray, Isabel Ryan,” said a voice. I knew the voice, too. I turned my head slowly, expecting a gun muzzle to be pointed at me.

  But it wasn’t a gun muzzle. It was a face peering down at me, with lips pressed together, dust on her hair and a hand held towards us.

  Was Xena going to pull us off the trolley and let the ants have us?

  97

  Henry stood between two of the officers who had arrested him. They were standing by the side door of the green van. The steel doors of the underground garage in Whitehall, which should have opened to let them through were still closed.

  The two other officers had gone off to see what the problem was. It wasn’t unheard of for the doors not to open, and especially this early on a Sunday morning, when there might be a gang from a nightclub passing.

  But it was unusual for there to be no response to the request the arrest squad leader had shouted into his headset. It seemed as if there was a communication blackout in the underground garage. If it had been a Monday morning there would have been street teams passing through every few minutes, taking vehicles from the underground parking spaces. There would have been people milling around because of the delay by now.

  “How long is this going to take?” said Henry. He flexed his shoulders. Wherever they were taking him, it was going to be a long time before he got some sleep.

  “Shut up.” The officer to his right was fidgeting with his headset, as if trying to get a signal. He added, “sir,” thirty seconds later, as if he’d only just remembered Henry outranked him, and was innocent until proven guilty.

  A warning klaxon sounded. The steel doors began to rise, as a red light up above, at each end, whirled into action, sending red tinged shadows around the concrete apron where vehicles could drop off or pick up passengers.

  The two men with him looked to the doorway where their colleagues had gone. Then one of them motioned with his thumb back to the green truck. The only reason they’d all got out of it was to show anyone watching on the security cameras exactly who was in their vehicle.

  Henry pointed at the steel doors. They weren’t opening to let them out. They were opening to let someone in. And whoever it was, they were driving an unusual vehicle. All he could see of it so far was a black steel roll bar and a black chassis. It looked like an armored Toyota Land Cruiser. He hadn’t seen one of those on the streets of London in a long time.

  The last time he’d seen one, was on a live video feed from Egypt.

  “Are you armed?” he said.

  The two men beside him nodded.

  98

  I blinked at Xena. What the hell?

  “How did you get down here?”

  “Through the Great Pyramid. How’s Sean?”

  “He’s alive, but he won’t be for much longer if we don’t get him out of here. Do you know any other way? Those bloody ants went up the stairs. Have you ever seen anything like them?”

  “No, and they’ll be back. When they get their fill they’ll head back to their nests.”

  “How do we know when they’ve eaten their fill?”

  She smiled at me. I knew the answer.

  “Do you know how to pray?” she said.

  “Of course? Are you Christian, or what?”

  “My people were Christian before Jesus Christ. Where do you think the cross and the holy mother of God came from?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t care. “How do we get Sean out of here?”

  “We need a lure, to get them to go rush back past us. Then we block the passage.”

  “What would you suggest?” I could smell sweat from her, as if she’d been down here a long time. I looked up the stairs. The ants were nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t reappear at any moment, if they found nothing more to eat up to the elevator.

  “One of us could be sacrificed.” We were standing on either side of the hospital trolley, Sean lying comatose between us.

  She looked down at Sean.

  I shook my head. “What about a trail of blood? They ran straight past me when that guy’s blood was on the floor.” I pointed at the pile of bones, still red from the last of the blood that had kept the guard alive up to twenty mi
nutes before.

  She smiled. “It could work, but you will have to be quick.”

  Xena went to the pile of bones and bent down. “Guards here usually carry a knife.” She started poking around the bones. Then, with her fingers she moved them, pulled something black from the pile.

  She walked toward me. She wiped the knife blade on her black trousers. The blade glistened.

  “Be quick.”

  I took the knife, held it, shaking, against my arm.

  “Not at the wrist,” she shouted. “Cut into the pad under your thumb. You’ll bleed, but you won’t die, and it can be stopped quickly.”

  “How deep?” I was flinching now. I didn’t like the idea of cutting into my flesh. I knew the pain that was coming.

  “Not deep. Do it slow. But do it now.”

  I took a deep breath, blinked, spat on the knife, rubbed my spit into the blade, held my breath, cut the tip of it into the pad under my left thumb. Blood came out, but not a lot.

  “Deeper,” she shouted.

  I pushed the knife into the cut. A razor sharp pain ran up my arm. I winced as the blood started pouring.

  “Like this,” she said. She reached over, took the knife from me, slashed it across her hand. Her blood came quickly, poured faster than mine.

  “Now we walk back to the doorway.”

  We walked backwards, our hands held near the stone floor, our blood lines coming together. When we got to the door, I said, “Is this enough?”

  “No, we go all the way through.”

  The pain in my hand was getting stronger, beating like a burning pulse, but I didn’t care. If it meant Sean could get out of this hell hole it would be worth it.

  When we reached the doorway, I looked briefly into the hall beyond. Whoever the archaeologist was who going to explore this, they were going to have the find of the millennium associated with them. Bayford had got close, but his name wouldn’t be attached to this.