For a fleeting moment he made eye contact with one of the prisoners. It was an overweight man, balding, dishevelled, his hands tied behind his back, with gunmen holding him on either side. Jack’s mind froze. He had met the man only once, an imperious audience of a few minutes in the ministry after he and Hiebermeyer had been made to wait for hours. It was the antiquities director. Jack pushed past, holding his breath. There were only a few yards to go before they were out of the throng and on the street. There was still a chance he had not been recognized. He pressed on, pulling Costas close behind him.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the line behind him and he heard a shrieking voice, the high-pitched voice he remembered from the audience in the ministry. Jack knew enough Arabic to understand what he was saying. “It is Jack Howard, the archaeologist Jack Howard. He is a blasphemer, a destroyer of sacred works. Arrest him!”
Jack glanced over his shoulder and saw the man struggling to point toward him, his eyes wide and panic-stricken. And then one of the gunmen slammed his rifle butt into the man’s face, thrusting his lolling head back as he was carried forward in the line. Jack grabbed Costas, ducked down, and pushed through the cordon. “Come on. Our cover’s been blown. We’ve got to run.”
They rushed forward past the clusters of people heading toward the square and then ducked down an alley to the left. Jack had no idea where they were going; this was pure survival. Seconds later he heard booted feet pounding down the alley behind him, and a crack of rifle fire. Two men holding Kalashnikovs appeared out of nowhere in front. He and Costas barrelled through them, sending both men sprawling. Jack stumbled, snatching up one of the rifles as he did so, and pushed Costas ahead. “Run,” he yelled. “Run.” He turned, firing a burst into the air above their pursuers, his hands jarring with the clacking of the bolt. Chunks of brick and masonry fell from the upper story where the bullets had hit the wall, but still the men kept coming. One of them fired back, the bullets striking the walls of the alleyway ahead and filling the air with dust. Jack lowered the rifle, holding the wooden barrel guard to stop it from jumping, and fired a long burst into his attackers, seeing several of them jerking and falling. Another man lunged toward him only yards away. He pulled the trigger again, but the bolt was open; the magazine was empty. He threw it down, pulled out his Beretta, and turned to run, seeing Costas in the dust ahead. A rifle cracked deafeningly behind him, and the air was filled with shrieking and yelling.
Suddenly he was knocked sideways and sent sprawling in the dust. Then he was raised onto his knees and pushed against the alley wall, his arms pulled savagely behind his back and his wrists tied. Someone pulled him up by his hair and dragged him along, slamming him against the wall. The pain from his hair was eye-watering, but he was too dazed to care. He saw Costas alongside him, spitting blood from his mouth, and was conscious of a circle of gunmen forming around them, Kalashnikovs raised.
Somebody, a leader in the group, was talking, too fast for Jack to understand, but he guessed that their lives were in the balance. He stared at the intricate pattern in the granite of the wall in front of him, trying to focus on that, and breathed in deeply through his nose, smelling the dust and stone. He caught Costas’ eye, but they both knew better than to talk. Each knew what the other was thinking. After more than their share of near-misses underwater, of danger they accepted as part of their calling, it seemed a perversity of fate that they should die like this, in a squalid execution in a back alley of Cairo. Jack felt numb; all emotion seemed to have drained from him in the square. The argument behind them stopped, and there was a silence. Suddenly there was a deafening rip of gunfire, and chips flew off the rock above his head. Jack was thrown forward against the wall, and felt a hammer-blow of pain in his right arm. His knees give way, and he fell, seeming to fall a long way as if he were going far beneath the ground, back to that place from which he and Costas had just emerged, into a well of blackness. Then nothing.
CHAPTER 25
Jack recovered consciousness moments later as he was being hauled to his feet. He was aware of Costas alongside him as the two of them were shoved ahead by the gunmen down the alley. Costas already had his hands zip-tied behind his back, and Jack felt his own arms being pulled roughly together, causing a jolt of pain to course through him from the bullet wound in his right shoulder. His arm was dripping with blood, and out of instinct he played it up, bending over and yelling with pain each time they tried to pull it back. Someone shouted in Arabic and they relented, tying his wrists in front of him instead. At the end of the alley they were hustled into the back of a pickup. They were made to lie facedown and had hoods pulled over their heads. Jack braced himself as the truck revved up and screeched down the road. He was trying to keep his head from banging where it had been bruised when he hit the wall in the alley and been knocked out momentarily.
He forced himself to assess the situation. His right arm was still functional, but he could feel the stickiness of the blood on his hand and the numbness where shock was still overriding the pain of the wound. He knew that they had been reprieved, that someone had stayed their execution; there was some small hope in that. It was not the way of the extremists to carry out mock executions, so someone among the gunmen must have seen something, perhaps their CNN press cards, and ordered his men to fire high. Where they were going now was anyone’s guess, back to the killing ground of the square, perhaps, to face the judgment of someone higher up the chain of command, or to some hidden place to await an ignominious end, to join the many like the girl Sahirah who had already been arrested by extremist sympathizers before the coup, and would provide another wave of victims as the gunmen finished their first round of executions and swept through the city looking for more. Jack was thankful that Aysha and Lanowski had not been with them in the alley; he desperately hoped that they had not tried to follow but had made their own way to the felucca to make good their own escape.
The truck screeched to a halt and they were bundled out of the back, up a shallow flight of steps into a large space that echoed with shouts and commands in Arabic, and then up a flight of stairs, along a corridor, through some doors, and into a smaller space, where they were roughly forced to a halt. Jack’s hood was pulled off, and he blinked hard, looking around. He was standing beside Costas in an office of a minor government functionary by the look of it, with a desk and filing cabinets and a glass screen to the corridor outside. Two gunmen with wispy beards and black headbands loitered outside the door, and another two were inside the room facing them. One of them let his rifle hang on its sling, pulled some leaves from a bag, and began chewing on them, and the other asked for some, in English with a broad Yorkshire accent. Jack stared at the man with contempt. He knew that the gunmen included radicalized Western sympathizers, just like the other extremist groups elsewhere. Jack glanced at the gunmen in the corridor, and then back at the two who were chewing khat; they would be the easiest to deal with if the opportunity arose.
Another man walked into the room; he was short and dapper with a thick beard, and wore a white robe beneath his ammunition vest. He was carrying Jack’s Beretta with the spare magazines and Costas’ Glock, and placed them on the desk. He clicked his fingers at the two men, who slung their weapons on their backs and came up behind and frisked Jack and Costas. Jack could smell the khat on their breath, and stale sweat. They found nothing, and Jack saw that the zip pocket where Costas had put the camera microchips was open and empty. He must have destroyed and ditched them back in the alley as the gunmen were closing in. Jack could barely think about that now; his arm was beginning to throb and he felt faint. The small man perched on the edge of the desk, picked up the Beretta, turned it over, put it down again, and then gestured at the press card still hanging around Jack’s neck.
“We have been coming across quite a few of these.” His English was accented but educated. “If they are being carried by Egyptians, we shoot them on the spot. You are the first Western imposters.”
“We’re not impost
ers,” Costas protested. “We’re journalists.”
“If you carry these false cards, you must have something to hide. You are spies.”
“We’re journalists. Read the accreditation.”
“You are spies.” The man was becoming heated. “Zionist spies.”
Jack thought quickly. The truth might be the best option. “Okay. A friend arranged the cards for us. We’re archaeologists, making our way back to Alexandria.”
“You are lying. You are Zionist pigs.”
“I’m Jack Howard, and this is Costas Kazantzakis. The antiquities director shouted my name in the square. We’re from the International Maritime University. Look us up online.”
“We have no use for the Internet.”
“Except to show videos of executions,” Costas muttered. “And burning pyramids.”
The man stared venomously at Costas, and then turned to Jack. “I will tell you why our forces are in Cairo.” He pointed to a poster on the glass partition, one that Jack had seen gunmen plaster on walls as they had come through the city. It showed an old black-and-white photo of a whitewashed tomblike structure, the Islamic crescent above it, with words in Arabic lettering below. The man continued: “A hundred and twenty years ago General Kitchener swore that he would avenge the death of General Gordon in Khartoum by killing an Arab for every hair on Gordon’s head. He had his vengeance at the Battle of Omdurman, but then he went too far. He desecrated the Mahdi’s tomb, tossing out the Sufi’s relics and parading his head in front of his men. When that happened we swore our own vengeance, and now we are having it. History has come back to haunt you, to haunt all who stand in our way.” He picked up the Glock and waved it at Costas. “Kneel, infidel.”
Costas remained impassive, and the man gestured again. One of the gunmen chewing khat came behind Costas and kicked him below the knees. He fell heavily but then pushed himself back up off the floor and knelt.
Jack felt paralyzed. “He’s Greek,” he said. “He couldn’t possibly be an Israeli spy.”
“Show me his papers then. No passport? Then he is a spy. You will watch him die, and then it will be your turn.”
He raised the Glock to Costas’ forehead and pulled the trigger. In that split-second Jack remembered that the Glock was security imprinted, that it recognized only Costas’ fingerprints. It was a manufacturer feature that Costas had wanted removed, but had not gotten around to doing. The man tried again, and again nothing. He threw it down in disgust. There was a sudden screaming in the corridor and a burst of gunfire, and the two gunmen who had been outside the door disappeared. Jack lunged forward, grabbed the Beretta off the desk, and fell backward, emptying all fifteen rounds into the three men in the room. The man on the desk crashed back against the glass partition with blood pumping from a hole in his throat, and the other two dropped instantly with multiple wounds to the chest and head. Jack scrambled up, ejected the magazine and loaded another from the two on the table, chambered a round, and shot the small man in the head. He put down the Beretta, picked up a knife from the slew of blood on the floor and quickly cut the tie between Costas’ wrists, and then held out his arms while Costas did the same for him. They both grabbed their pistols and spare magazines, dropped down together beside the doorway, and huddled out of view. The two gunmen who had been outside were sprawled motionless in the corridor in a pool of blood, and a ferocious gun battle was raging in the direction of their entrance from the lower floor.
“I know where we are,” Jack said, shouting above the noise. “It’s the Ministry of Culture. You can read it on the label on the desk. This is where they’re holding the girl Sahirah, and where Aysha’s cousin Ahmed was going to try to break her out. Chances are that’s what all this gunfire is about. He’s ex–Egyptian special forces, trained with the SAS, and knows what he’s doing. Now’s the time I would have chosen for an assault if I were in his shoes, while most of the focus among the gunmen is on the executions in that square.”
There was a sudden clatter of boots down the corridor and the sound of doors being kicked open, followed by bursts of gunfire. Seconds later two men in civilian clothes with Egyptian paratrooper M4 carbines rushed in, weapons levelled. Taking in the scene, they saw that Jack and Costas were still alive and aiming at them. Neither of the men was wearing the black headband of the gunmen, and both looked Egyptian. Jack dropped the Beretta and waved the press card at them. “CNN,” he shouted. “Journalists.”
Another man came in, glanced at them, and gestured to the others to lower their weapons. “Dr. Howard,” he said, crouching down. “Remember me? Aysha’s cousin Ahmed. We’re in here to find Sahirah.”
Jack raised himself as he picked up the Beretta. “Where’s Aysha?”
“I sent her on to the felucca. She’s gone with your friend the Sufi.”
Jack closed his eyes. Thank God for that. He helped Costas up, and then turned to Ahmed. “I can help you,” said Jack. “I’ve been in here before, when I came with Aysha’s husband to see the antiquities director. He made us wait for hours, and I went down to the archaeological conservation labs. Aysha told me that’s where they’re holding prisoners. The previous regime turned the labs into interrogation chambers. I can lead you there.”
“Okay,” said Ahmed. “We’ve cleared this corridor and the ground floor. There are probably still gunmen in the basement. But we don’t have much time. Someone will have reported back to the commanders in the square, and they’ll probably send a couple of truckloads of gunmen here. I came in with only five guys, and one’s already down.”
“What if there are other prisoners still alive?” Costas asked. “Sahirah was probably one of many.”
Ahmed shook his head. “We get her out first. Anyone else waits inside until we’re sure we’ve cleared the building. If there are many of them and we try to get them out together, it will be chaos and a massacre.”
Jack heaved Costas to his feet, grimacing from his wound, and then approached the door with the Beretta held ready. He glanced back at Ahmed. “You good to go?”
“On your six.”
Jack nodded, turned, and stepped cautiously into the corridor, peering left and right, and then made his way quickly to the stairway and down to the entrance foyer. Bodies were strewn everywhere, and Jack saw Ahmed’s other two men guarding the street entrance. He could orientate himself now and turned along a ground-floor corridor through a swinging door and down a flight of stairs to the basement level. The labs lay through two more doors ahead and were visible through the glass partition. He turned to the others, putting a finger up for quiet, and slowly opened each door in turn. He led them forward until they all stood silently in the corridor outside the labs. The walls were still covered with archaeological posters, one showing artifacts from the travelling Tutankhamun exhibition, the same poster that Hiebermeyer had in the institute in Alexandria. Another advertised a forthcoming conference on the Cairo Geniza, with a section of medieval manuscript text in Arabic prominently displayed beneath it.
Jack turned to the first of the labs and slowly raised himself until he could see through the glass partition that divided it from the corridor. The scene inside was like something from a horror film. The lights were off, but he could see a body strapped to a chair, with electrical wires attached to its hands. Another body was suspended from a hook that had once been used to raise heavy artifacts onto the lab bench. A terrible stench came through the cracks around the door as he passed it. Neither of the bodies had been a woman, and he turned back to Ahmed, who was crouched behind him, and shook his head. He moved forward to the next lab, crawled along to the door, and slowly raised himself up, holding out his hand for the others to wait. He was expecting the worst, but this one was different. The lights were on, bright florescent bulbs used for archaeological work, and he could see that the lab was filled with crouching people, perhaps twenty-five to thirty of them, their hands behind their heads and their faces down. Against the back wall were two gunmen with black headbands, chewing khat
and fingering their Kalashnikovs, evidently left to guard these people while a decision was made about what to do with them.
Jack slowly dropped down and turned his back to the door. It was impossible to make out any faces, but if Sahirah were alive and in the labs, this was the only place where she could be; there were no other rooms. He looked at his Beretta, his hand stuck with his own congealing blood to the grip, and opened the slide to check that a round was chambered, letting it back silently against the spring. He ejected the magazine, checked it, and slid it back in again until it clicked in place. He looked back at Ahmed and Costas and the other two, putting his fingers to his eyes and pointing toward the door, holding up two fingers, and then raising his hand for them to stay where they were. If one of them tried to come up to him and dropped his weapon or made any other noise, it might provoke the gunmen to open up inside, causing carnage. Jack slowly turned toward the door and shuffled back a meter or so, keeping low so that he was invisible from inside, holding the Beretta out in front of him with both hands. He would have to ignore the pain in his shoulder when he struck the door. He closed his eyes and counted down. Three. Two. One.
He leapt up and crashed into the door, pushing it hard against the people squatting inside, turned to the left and fired twice in quick succession, hitting both gunmen in the head, the blood and gray matter splattering against the wall behind as they crumpled to the floor. The crack of the Beretta had deafened him, and for a moment he sensed only the smell of the smoke curling up from the muzzle. The people began to look up at him, their faces contorted with fear, the men with days of stubble and the men and women alike streaked with dirt and dried blood. A figure stood up and detached herself from the rest, a young woman, and lurched toward him, falling into his arms. He realized that he was shaking her by the shoulders, the pistol still in his left hand, trying to snap her out of her shock, shouting at her to pull herself together. He had never spoken to her before, had never even seen her except in Rebecca’s photograph, but in that split second she was all that mattered to him. His hearing came back, a hiss and then a roar that became yells and screams and gunshots, and he heard himself shouting at her. “We’ve come to get you out of here. Stay close behind me. Everyone else has to remain here until the building is clear. You tell them.”
Pyramid: A Novel Page 33