[Tempus Fugitives 01.0] Swept Away

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “So what’s the answer? You move out and we start dating each other again? I think we’ve come too far for that.”

  “No, Rowan. I love you. I want to be your wife. I do. But I want us to figure this out.” She waved to the air between them.

  He ran his hand over his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion.

  “How was work today?” she asked quietly.

  “Not great.”

  “What’s going on there, Rowan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “How long will you be gone?” he asked, finally.

  “I’ll fly out tomorrow, grab Maddie and fly back to the States the day after that. We’ll just push the wedding back a week.”

  “Are you sure you want to?” His eyes drilled into hers, searching for the most honest answer she had in her to give.

  She looked away. “Yes, I’m sure I want to,” she said. She looked up to see what the effect of her words on him were. His face never changed expression.

  “My mother will flip,” he said finally.

  “You need to care less about what she thinks.”

  He looked at her and then something in his face seemed to relax. “Probably.”

  “So you’ll tell them to come next week instead of this week?”

  Rowan sighed and reached out to take her hand. “Why don’t we just play it by ear?” he said.

  Great, she thought with her heart pounding in her ears. The wedding’s off. She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. For them to have come so far from the point where their love had them risking everything to be together to this place where their future together went on indefinite hold just made her want to cry.

  And breathe out a monumental sigh of relief.

  The drive to the airport with Rowan had been a chilly one.

  “I’ll text as soon as I land,” Ella said as they stood together in front of the Birmingham International Airport security line.

  “Don’t. Without a data plan in Egypt, it’ll cost more than your flight to send a text. If I don’t hear in the headlines about a major airliner going down in the Mediterranean I’ll assume you made it okay.”

  “I guess since Maddie won’t be marrying this tool that our trip there in September is off,” she said as she shuffled through her boarding pass and passport.

  “Guess so.”

  “Maybe we can go some place else just to get away.”

  “Maybe.”

  Boy, he sure wasn’t giving her anything to work with. She didn’t dare ask how the phone call with his folks had gone. She had a long flight and she didn’t want to be rerunning the tapes on what was probably a seriously unpleasant exchange. Just looking at Rowan’s face this morning told her that.

  “Did you call your Dad?” he asked, his eyes looking everywhere in the airport but at her.

  “Earlier this morning. He was cool.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Are you working the rest of the week?”

  He gave her a patient look and then sighed. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “No reason. I better go, Rowan. I’ll feel more comfortable waiting at my gate.” And away from the glowering and crippling guilt trip I’m starting to develop.

  “Okay, Safe trip.” He took her into his arms but she felt none of the usual warmth and protection those arms usually gave her. He broke the embrace before she did and she realized that that was a first too.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she said. “So you’ll be back here in three days to collect me?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  She strained up on tiptoe to deliver a kiss but, without his participation, only made it as far as his chin.

  “Love you, Rowan,” she said softly.

  “You, too, Ella,” he said gruffly.

  She turned and hurried off through the final stage of security screening. When she looked back, just the once, to wave, he had already disappeared into the crowd.

  * * *

  Nine hours later, as she wove her way through the thick crowds at the Cairo International Airport, she was struck with the sheer excitement of being some place new and different. While she had spent a good deal of her flight obsessing about her relationship with Rowan and his obvious unhappiness with her, not to mention her worry that she might have difficulty extricating Maddie from Gupta’s clutches, she hadn’t given a thought to how it felt to be heading toward what many would argue was the most exotic locale on the face of the earth. Now, caught up in the noise and movement of the crowd, Ella was overcome with how incredibly different this world was from the one she had just left.

  Suddenly a thought came to her. Whether it had been percolating all along underneath all the worry and exhaustion or whether it sprang fresh born into her brain, she didn’t know but as soon as she became physically a part of the mesmerizing color and vibrancy of this unique culture, she found herself thinking, after I’ve rescued Maddie, am I really going to rush back to Dothan, Alabama?

  Chapter Three

  Cairo 2013

  The driver of the taxi was only too happy—delirious, in fact—to take her to the Cairo Hilton. So bubbly was he, that Ella seriously worried he was inebriated or high on drugs. That fear only increased after the first mile of driving in the most congested and dangerous traffic that Ella had ever seen, let alone experienced. Forcing herself to concentrate on the cityscape before her instead of the lunatic’s driving, Ella felt like she was in a kaleidoscope of color and motion as they whipped down the broad avenues that carved into central Cairo.

  From their drive in from the airport, she could see to her amazement that the river—that would be the Nile, she reminded herself with amazement—cleaved the city in half. Mosques and high rise office buildings stood side by side affording a hodgepodge overview of a bustling, vibrant city.

  Even from inside the car, the noise was deafening. On the horizon she saw a thick orange blanket of air pollution that seemed to emanate from the city like a warm glow. The smog wouldn’t have been as bad in September, during the original time of the trip. Neither would the heat have been. The first steps outside the airport in search of a taxi had her gasping from the searing heat and slick with sweat. The misery of the heat combined with her burgeoning jet lag made her stomach lurch queasily. She should have eaten more on the plane but she had been grateful for the sleep instead.

  She had planned to do a little history background on Egypt, and Cairo specifically, before their trip in September so now found herself fairly ignorant of the city with the exception that she knew there were pyramids nearby and the majority of the world’s population of mummies came from Egypt—neither of which lit her jets in any way. From the safety of the taxicab she saw people walking who were in full-on robes and turbans—and people dressed like they could have stepped out of Neiman Marcus in Atlanta, Georgia.

  Arriving at her hotel, she paid the driver and the combination of her awareness of her ignorance and his exuberance convinced her that she had paid him hundreds of dollars more than was necessary.

  First thing, she scolded herself, as she hoisted her carry on bag onto her shoulder: Figure out the damn money system. That would have been a better use of your time on the flight over than obsessing over Rowan maybe leaving you.

  She sternly told herself that for better or worse there was nothing she could do about her relationship with Rowan while she was Cairo. She couldn’t make it better while she was gone and she had no control over what his mother did to make it worse. Might as well focus on the task at hand and that was find Maddie and get her the hell out of Dodge.

  After checking into her room, the first thing she did was devour half the fruit basket the hotel had left for her and chug a full liter of bottled water. She felt an urgency to get to Maddie immediately but knew she needed to have a plan first. She pulled out the map of Cairo that she’d bought at the airport. Because she didn’t have the proper converter plugs for her cellphone, she had watched its battery
light die an hour earlier. From what she could tell by the map and the last email she had received from Maddie, her friend was staying, or being held, at Gupta’s family home in Gisa. Ella had only met Gupta once and he seemed as charming and darling a man as you would expect from someone who would later fool everyone by turning out to be a wife beater. Ella couldn’t blame Maddie for being taken in. She was so distraught at being thirty-three and still single that she easily qualified as being flat-out desperate to find a husband. When Gupta showed up as one of the foreign clients at her law firm, Maddie couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to have to pay the price of waiting so long to marry.

  Some of Maddie and Ella’s other girlfriends—either still single or divorced—were having the devil’s own time marrying because they were all judging their present day prospects by the standards of their twenty-year old selves. A receding hairline? Next! A paunch? Kids from a prior marriage? No way!

  Maddie had felt the same way but with Gupta, she was able to have it all. He was tall, dark and gorgeous. He spoke French, Farsi, and English with the most delightful accent. He was educated at Oxford and was the picture of the perfect gentleman; he always remembered to think of Maddie first, whether it was car doors, ordering for her off the menu, or any other single situation where her feelings might need to be considered.

  The day Maddie called Ella to say she was getting married—in Cairo, no less!—was the happiest Ella had ever heard her friend. If there had ever been a dormant doubt or even the tiniest suspicion (had there been?) on Ella’s part with regards to the kind of man Gagan Gupta was, it was drowned out a thousandfold by the delight she heard in her dear friend’s voice that day.

  Ella drew a finger down what looked like a small mews on the map and glanced out the window at the waning light. She had enough time to go to her right now. If she hurried, she could have Maddie here, tucked in for the night in her luxury double room at the Cairo Hilton. They’d drink wine and eat pizza and Maddie would tell Ella the whole sad tale and someday—many, many somedays from now to be sure—but someday they would remember this night as a very special one in the long list of colorful and even romantic moments in their lives.

  At that hopeful thought, Ella smiled and then felt her stomach gurgle painfully. She gripped the side of the bed until the spasm passed. Within two minutes, she bolted to the bathroom holding her stomach and praying she would make it in time. As she ran, her glance fell on the bowl of sliced pineapples and peaches that had come with her welcome fruit basket.

  The next morning, after an unfortunate evening of jet lag punctuated by severe diarrhea, Ella felt fine. She showered, dressed and was ready for her adventure. She regretted having to leave her cellphone in the hotel room but without a charger it was useless. She stopped briefly in the Hilton restaurant to eat a banana and a bowl of muesli.

  Having spent some time reading up on how badly she might have been cheated the day before by the taxi driver, Ella felt confident in allowing the hotel’s doorman to procure a taxi for her. She told him where she wanted to go and watched him as he translated it to the driver who looked considerably less giddy than the one she’d had yesterday.

  After a brief exchange, the doorman told Ella she would pay the driver 10 LE and no more. She climbed in the back of the taxi, hugging her purse with her passport and all her money, and regretted she hadn’t been able to come into the country with her Taser. That little baby helped me out of many a jam in Heidelberg, she thought with a small smile. This time, she would just have to do it unarmed.

  Surely Gupta would release Maddie when he knew Ella wouldn’t leave without her? What other option would he have? To imprison Ella, too?

  Ella was surprised to see that the address in Giza was an upscale one. The residential streets the taxi drove her down were beautiful, well-manicured, and park-like, with the Nile just to the east. While she hadn’t expected Maddie to be chained in a tent somewhere, Ella was nonetheless surprised to discover her prison to be so luxurious, at least from the outside.

  She pantomimed to the driver to wait and he rubbed his fingers together in the international symbol of more baksheesh. She dug out three Egyptian pounds and hand-signaled that the rest would be given him at the end of the trip.

  Could it really be this easy?

  The swelter of the summer day hit her full in the face when she swung open the taxicab’s door. The street was quiet, although even from this distance, she could hear the hum of the constant noise of the center of town. She had heard people talking on the flight about the noise pollution in Cairo. They didn’t exaggerate.

  Deciding to try to be as respectful as possible because she knew Gupta’s family was Muslim, Ella had covered up as much as she could—even in this heat! She wore a long sleeve t-shirt over linen slacks with leather driving mocs and a colorful silk scarf knotted at her throat. If need be, she could wear the scarf on her head or even, if worse came to worse, over her face à la Jesse James. It was the best she could do. Instead of going to pains not to offend their religion she told herself, they should consider themselves lucky she didn’t call the police on them for international kidnapping.

  The house looked like a gigantic brownstone with a row of ornate doors facing the street topped by twin stacks of tall windows. Ella thought she saw the drapery flutter in one of the windows as she approached. This was definitely the address that Maddie had sent her a few months back. If she was no longer here, Ella wasn’t quite sure how to proceed from there.

  She mounted the five wide steps and rapped lightly on the door. It opened immediately.

  “Why, Ella, hello! What a wonderful surprise.” Maddie stood in the shadow of the inside of the door. She wore a full-length abaya with her face covered “Won’t you come in?”

  “Maddie?” Ella stayed where she was. “I’ve got a driver waiting. Why don’t you come out?”

  Maddie took a step outside the door as if to look for anyone who might be with Ella. When she did, Ella could see one eye was totally blackened. She could also see the shadows of the two women who stood behind her, draped in head-to-toe black garments, motionless and silent.

  Ella grabbed Maddie’s arm to pull her from the doorway. Her friend surprised her by crying out and trying to pull back. “No! What are you doing?! Help!”

  Maddie’s arm felt thin and shapeless under Ella’s fingers. Nothing like the firm and toned arms which had been the obvious product of so many successful tennis back hands. Disconcerted by Maddie’s reaction but determined to take her from the apartment, Ella pulled her friend across the threshold. Maddie stumbled into the sunlight and cowered in front of Ella, covering her face as if the sun would melt her. Instantly, the two women standing in the shadows emerged from behind Maddie. One held a large stick and brandished it at Ella.

  “Laa! Kef!”

  Ella pulled Maddie behind her and stepped up to meet the woman. “Back off, Cleo,” she snarled. “You so much as wave that stick in my direction, I will have the American Embassy down here to shove it up the south end of your ungreased burka. Capice?”

  The woman with the stick looked from Ella to Maddie. Except for her eyes, her face was covered, but her eyes were lethal. She regarded Ella with a combination of fierceness and fear. Ella guessed the latter was for what the old girl was imagining would be in her future when Gupta got home. The taxicab honked and Ella, who never let go of Maddie’s arm, backed away from the angry women in black as they stood guard to the portal of the jail without its prisoner.

  Later, Ella would admit that she had been way too optimistic about the aftermath of rescuing Maddie from her future in-laws. It became very quickly clear that she and Maddie would never be able to look back at it as a colorful chapter in a life well lived. It had been absurd to think it.

  When Ella brought Maddie back to the hotel, her friend cried most of the way there until she fell into a sort of stoned silence that worried Ella more than the crying. She had already been confused by Maddie’s initial resistance to leaving, feel
ing more like a kidnapper herself, and now instead of debriefing about what a bastard Gagan was, Maddie had literally spent an hour weeping about how much she loved him and didn’t deserve him.

  Ella ordered room service, made sure the doors were locked, informed the hotel security that she felt she was being stalked and to please take special care that no one was sent up to her room, and drew Maddie a bath. She threw the long dark abaya on the foot of the closet and laid out a tracksuit and slippers from her own suitcase for Maddie. She waited patiently for Maddie to emerge from the bathroom—checking on her twice to make sure she didn’t try to drown herself—and then set a slice of pizza and a Coca-Cola in front of her friend.

  “Let’s talk,” she said gently. “Tell me from the beginning.”

  Maddie looked up at her and her sadness filled up every inch of her gaze. Her left eye was dark purple and she was bruised from her temple to her jawline. It looked pretty clear to Ella that ol’ Gagan wasn’t just hitting with his open hand. As if that mattered. When Maddie pulled up her sleeve to reach for the Coke, Ella saw that both wrists were red and swollen. It looked as if she had been bound and, for the first time, Ella felt a sliver of fear.

  Would he really let her go so easily?

  “Everything was fine until we got to Cairo,” Maddie said, pushing the pizza slice away. “He was perfect. You only met him the one time, El, but he was.”

  “I know,” Ella said. “He sounded perfect.”

  “He was.”

  Except he wasn’t, Ella thought as she waited patiently for Maddie to continue.

  “He brought me home and that was it.” Maddie shrugged and stared out the hotel window, seeing nothing.

  “What was it, sweetie? What happened?”

  Maddie refocused on Ella in the room as if surprised to see her.

  “His mother and sister just kind of took me,” she said quietly. “At first, because they said they were training me to be a good wife to G-g-gagan, I thought it was like how they say you get broken in at boot camp?” She looked at Ella and Ella nodded warily. “How they break you, so they can build you back up their way?”