Dogstar Rising
Page 1
Apocalypse:
From the Greek , apokalupto,
meaning to uncover or reveal – to remove the veil;
the revelation of what was hidden from mankind;
the end of a long dark age ruled by corruption and dishonesty.
Contents
Prologue
PART I - Dog Days
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
PART II - The Voice of Reason
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
PART III - The Nile Star
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
PART IV - Fallen Angels
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
A Note on the Author
By the Same Author
Also available by Parker Bilal
Prologue
Cairo, 2001
At first no one really noticed. Everyone was too busy with the daily struggle. Nobody had time to lift their eyes from the uneven road in front of them to look skywards for fear of stumbling. The lighting in that part of town was poor anyway and you had to keep your wits about you if you didn’t want to get knocked down by an impatient driver. To make things worse, the sightings took place at night, when the street was one long vale of frustration: motorcycles popping, minibuses beeping, bicycle bells and sirens, vendors calling out their wares, horses protesting. There was no time to notice anything, least of all a figure perched high above the street.
The mysterious figure rarely showed itself in the same place more than once. It would appear high up on the corner of a building, or perched on the balustrade of a darkened balcony, with no explanation of how it got there, nor where it disappeared to when it went. ‘Malaika!’ cried one woman. An angel. She fell to her knees, much to the amusement of onlookers on either side of the crowded street. Gruff men threw back their heads and laughed. But then someone else pointed and soon a whole crowd was peering up into the gloomy shadows of the jumbled walls high above, trying to make out what it was that seemed to be poised there, halfway between heaven and earth.
It was a bad time for anything out of the ordinary. Nerves were on edge, tempers frayed easily. The appearance of this ‘angel’ had coincided with the murder of a number of young children in the area. How could anyone kill a child, people asked, and where were the police when you needed them? Three bodies had turned up so far, and every day brought the possibility of more.
The sighting of the angel was taken as a sign, that God had not abandoned them. A small group of devotees formed a loyal cult. They would meet every evening to hold a candlelit vigil on bended knees in front of the church, hands clutched together in supplication, praying for a miracle. As they waited, their eyes sought out any sign of movement above. Reports naturally varied. It was quite a slight figure some said, while others claimed it was tall. Some said it was as rigid as a statue, others swore that it had wings that glittered like silver or gold. It glowed as if it was burning.
‘It is a sign,’ they whispered. ‘Things are going to change soon.’
‘Good will prevail. Our suffering will come to an end.’
‘We will be released from this trial.’
The angel, many were heard to say, had been sent to protect the young ones in this dangerous time. Soon there were avid watchers posted on every corner, craning their necks to see if it would show. The word spread. Christians in particular took this as a message meant for them: an angel had descended from heaven to bring them comfort in these difficult times. To guide them through this trial of persecution. The newspapers and the radio stations chattered eagerly on the subject, with everyone adding their own interpretation of the facts. There were suggestions that it was a trick, a hoax, but no one could prove who or what might be behind it and nobody stepped forward to claim responsibility. Was it a government plot to take people’s minds off the hardships? Or had the Israelis started putting hallucinogenic substances in the drinking water?
The sightings continued. Whenever it was spotted the message went out and within minutes a group of Christians would arrive, hands held together in prayer, rosaries pressed to their lips. They ignored the jeering, the obscenities and rotten vegetables thrown in their direction. The newspapers and television stations began to take an interest and soon the Angel of Imbaba was being discussed on chat shows and talked about in the papers.
And while there were those who saw the angel as a benevolent presence, a sign of God’s protective hand, there were just as many who viewed it as a bad omen. Why had its appearance coincided with the murder of those young boys? What connection could there be between one event and the other? People became fearful of letting their children out of sight. The police, whose presence was rarely anything but scarce, made little effort to find the brutes responsible. The death of a child in these parts was hardly worthy of their attention. But this was different. The children were murdered, their bodies mutilated in the most awful way. Now if the child had been rich, it would have been another matter.
The weather was unusually hot for this time of year. The nights brought little relief since the temperature barely cooled down at all. People behaved like dogs, barking at the moon, going mad in the sun. Fights broke out between brothers, between people who had been friends for years. The neighbourhood was like a tinderbox, ready to explode at any minute. Over all of this the angel seemed to float, as if biding its time, waiting for what was to come.
i
Dog Days
Chapter One
The offices of Blue Ibis Tours were perched on a concrete ledge that constituted the third floor of a crumbling building downtown, a stone’s throw from Al-Ubra Square, named after the old opera house that once stood on that spot until it was burned down in the riots of January 1952 and eventually replaced by a multi-storey car park. Blue Ibis flew tourists down to the Valley of the Kings on whirlwind tours of the hot and dusty resting places of long-dead pharaohs. They took them on camel treks into the Sinai Desert in the footsteps of Moses, before depositing them on a beach by the Red Sea where they could roast nicely for a few days and feed themselves on lavish buffets or dive in clear blue water among the coral reefs. The nights shook to the uninhibited pulse of dance music that provided them with the hedonistic lifestyles they associated with being on holiday. They ran them up and down the Nile in luxury boats with belly dancers and live folklore shows every evening. The food was all prepared to European standards so that nothing as inconvenient as indigestion might come between them and their once in a lifetime experience.
Makana learned most of this from a stack of brochures resting on the table next to the chair by the
door, while he waited for Mr Farouk Faragalla to turn up for their appointment. He had plenty of time to study them because Mr Faragalla kept him waiting for over an hour. Makana was not in the best of moods to begin with, suspecting that he was wasting his time. He might even have left but for the fact that work had been slow, and that he was doing a favour for the son of an old friend.
Having gleaned a lifetime of information about the travel business, Makana tossed the brochure aside and kicked himself for being so soft-headed. Talal’s father had been a highly respected lawyer in the old days in Sudan, one of the few who dared to challenge the regime on a legal front, for which he paid a price. When his father died in prison, Talal and his mother fled to Cairo, where Makana had taken it upon himself to provide whatever help he could. Talal was a bright young man trying to make a life for himself in his adopted home. He wasn’t doing too badly and had turned himself into a respectable tourist guide and interpreter. He now unravelled the arcane mysteries of the pharaohs for eager visitors in Chinese and Spanish. Others did the same in Japanese, Russian and German. Curiosity about the Ancient Egyptians was unlimited. People came from all over the world. They saw the same mess that Makana saw, but they paid a lot more for it. Talal’s real problem was that he was a hopeless romantic. To begin with he secretly ached to be, of all things, a composer of classical music. It was an ambition Makana had not quite managed to grasp but he put it down to the boy having an Egyptian mother of a certain social class and no particular talents, channelling all her failed ambitions into her only son from an early age. His father’s death had brought mother and child closer together than was probably healthy, and so Talal was struggling. Being a tour guide was, as far as he was concerned, just a temporary station along the way to composing and conducting his own orchestra. Becoming an African Mozart seemed like an odd kind of ambition to Makana, but then again everyone needed a dream to hold on to.
Talal’s ambitions had become further entangled by his romantic involvement with Butheyna, commonly known to her friends as Bunny. Talal, being the muddle-headed and soft-hearted kid that he was, had convinced himself that his life would be incomplete without this woman. Love’s arrow had struck its fatal wound while they were studying the complexities of the tourist trade together. In this area, she had a distinct advantage over him as her father happened to be the very same Faragalla that Makana was now waiting for. Talal thought he might improve his standing with the girl’s father by persuading him to enlist Makana’s services to solve a problem that had been worrying him.
With a glance at his watch to see if the minute hand was still doing its job, Makana picked up a creased and well-read newspaper. He had ignored it at first, noting that it was several days old, but the appeal had started to grow as his interest in the tourist business waned. On an inside page he found a double spread about a recent spate of attacks on churches. It was not the first time the Coptic community had been targeted and in all likelihood it would not be the last. Every now and then somebody would get it into their mind that a 14 per cent minority posed a deadly threat to the way of life of the other 86 per cent. Violence towards Christians had been going on for centuries. The response from those on high had been the usual murmurs of consolation and promises of change to come. Al-Raïs himself, the president, was pictured shaking hands with the Coptic pope, always a useful gesture even if it signified little in the way of real change. The Minister of the Interior claimed confidently that such events were the result of a criminal element which was trying to undermine the country, and called on everyone to help fight this attack on the nation’s security. At the bottom of one page, tucked into the corner, there appeared a brief mention of a church in Imbaba which was battling against the threat of closure due to the building having been declared unsafe. There was a blurred photograph of a fierce-looking priest declaring he would fight until his last breath to keep the church open. In the closing lines of the article, the journalist noted that the priest, Father Macarius, was regarded as a controversial figure, accused by some locals of conducting satanic rituals, which may or may not have been related to the recent spate of young boys being murdered in the area.
Tiring swiftly of this nonsense, Makana tossed aside the paper with a sigh and got to his feet to begin pacing. There wasn’t much room for pacing, most of the office being cluttered with desks, all of which, bar one, were empty at this hour. Talal had led him to believe that Blue Ibis Tours was a fairly successful operation. It now seemed obvious that Talal’s eyes were clouded, firstly because he was employed by the company, and secondly, and probably more significantly, by the fact that he was infatuated with the owner’s daughter. Makana decided he would hold on a little longer, for the boy’s sake if for nothing else, but his first impressions were not encouraging. Either they were doing so well the owner didn’t need to be on time, or, more likely, there was so little to do nobody could be bothered to be behind their desks at nine in the morning.
The only occupied desk was the one closest to the door, facing the entrance. The woman who sat behind it was the person who had let him in. She certainly didn’t seem short of work.
‘I don’t have any record of an appointment,’ she had said, looking him over and coming up short of conviction. ‘Can you tell me what it concerns?’
‘Mr Faragalla would not thank me for discussing his business without his permission.’
To her credit she did not show annoyance at this. Instead she tried calling her boss a couple of times without luck. Obviously Faragalla had better things to do with his time than answering the telephone. Now the woman seemed to take pity on Makana. She ceased the clicking of her keyboard and reached for the telephone again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, listening for a time before replacing the receiver. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink? Coffee or tea?’
Makana reconsidered his options and decided a cup of coffee would not be out of place. ‘Have you worked for Sayyid Faragalla for long?’
‘Almost a year,’ she smiled briefly. ‘How time flies.’
Makana was beginning to warm to her. He smiled back.
‘And how is business these days?’
‘You don’t really expect an honest answer to a question like that, do you?’
‘I was just wondering why you are the only person who seems to be working.’
‘Oh, the others usually turn up just before it’s time for them to go for breakfast.’
‘You talk as if you were responsible. Are you Faragalla’s assistant?’
She laughed aloud at that. ‘Oh, no. I don’t know what made you think that.’
There was something about her which didn’t quite fit into this environment. In her late thirties, he guessed. She had a narrow face and eyebrows whose arch betrayed a keen intelligence. Her clothes had been selected with practicality in mind and not towards enhancing her slim figure. Indeed, the long skirt and jacket made her look somewhat drab, and certainly older than her years. She chose to blend in, not to stand out. The ring told him she was a married woman. The tips of her collar and cuffs showed slight wear. A woman who lived frugally and was careful with her money. Whatever Faragalla was paying her it obviously wasn’t enough to refresh her wardrobe too often. Either that or she was unconcerned about her appearance, except that she was not a mess. Her long dark hair was clean and neatly tied back with a simple black ribbon. She wore little make-up and on the inside of her wrist she had a pale-blue tattoo of a cross.
The building’s bawab, a grey-haired man with a hunched back, limped in carrying a tray in one hand. He saluted Makana like an old soldier as he set down cups of coffee and glasses of water with trembling hands, managing not to spill too much.
‘Ya Madame, you work harder than all the others put together. Give your fingers a rest and drink some coffee to give you strength.’ He winked at Makana.
The woman laughed, which made her look about ten years younger. Then the light faded from her eyes and her normal reserve returned.
She might have been about to say more when the glass door flew open and the first of the day’s arrivals finally made an appearance. A young man in his twenties entered. Wearing a brown suit and a white shirt with pleats down the front. His hair was slicked back heavily with oil and he trailed an overpowering scent of aftershave behind him.
‘Ah, there she is, the light of my eye,’ he breezed as he swept by, the heavy bag slung over his arm thumping into the door as it swung back. A young man heading firmly towards an overweight life, he had the plump, well-fed look of a proud mother’s pampered son. The suit bulged tightly around midriff and thighs.
‘Good morning, Wael.’
‘What’s new, ya habibti? Any pyramids fall down overnight?’
‘Not that I’ve heard of, but then I’ve been so busy working . . .’
‘Yeah,’ he said, slipping into English. ‘Always the busy bee. Well, all that gonna change now, darling.’ He broke off as he noticed Makana and reverted back to Arabic to address him formally. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’
‘He has an appointment with Mr Faragalla.’
‘Marhaba, welcome, bienvenue. Is he not here yet?’
‘Not yet,’ the woman said. As she caught Makana’s eye a brief look of complicity passed between them. The others began arriving soon after that. There were six in all, including the woman behind the front desk, whose name Makana gathered was Meera. There was a general assistant with a club foot who shuttled around between the desks running errands and carrying papers back and forth from the photocopier. The three main players were the plump young man, Wael, then Yousef and Arwa. Yousef was a small wiry man in a leather jacket. His eyes were cold chips of stone deeply sunk into their sockets. He muttered a brief greeting as he entered and then hurried across to his desk on the far side of the room where he threw himself down into his chair, spun towards the window and reached for the telephone. He smoked incessantly with his back to the room, glancing round from time to time to keep an eye on things. The vain and energetic Wael seemed to have boundless energy. He spoke to clients on the phone in a confused babble of English, Arabic and French, with a word of Spanish or German thrown in here and there for good measure, though by the sound of it his knowledge of these languages did not extend much beyond the odd compliment or greeting. Despite this, he carried himself with the weight of a man who was negotiating world peace or brokering million-dollar deals on the stock exchange rather than arranging a few holidays. The final member of this happy family was Arwa. Short and somewhat overweight, she was buttoned down inside a heavy black coat that came down to her ankles and wrists and turned her into a shapeless creature of indeterminate gender. She wore a leopard-skin hijab and chewed gum like it was an Olympic sport. She shuffled across the room to her workspace with barely a nod to anyone.