by Paul Sussman
'Is he unconscious?' She was whispering for some reason.
'He's dead.'
'Oh my God!' She put her hands to her mouth. 'Oh my God!'
Daniel stared down at the body, then reached out and pushed back the man's black woollen 'imma, revealing a deep vertical scar running up his forehead. He gazed at it for a few seconds, then came abruptly to his feet and grabbed her arm.
'We're getting out of here.'
He started pulling her away, but after a couple of metres she broke free and leaped back to the mastaba, grabbing the box which was still lying there.
'For Christ's sake!' cried Daniel, coming after her and seizing her shoulder. 'Just leave it! There are things going on here . . . you don't understand . . . there'll be more of them . . .'
She shrugged him away. 'They killed my father,' she said, voice defiant. 'You do what you want, but I'm not letting them have this box! Do you understand, Daniel? They're not getting it.'
Their eyes met briefly, then she pushed past him and started back towards the dig house, slipping the box into her bag as she went. For a moment Daniel stared after her, face contorted with impotent fury, then followed, muttering to himself.
The gunfire had woken their driver, who was standing on the track looking towards them.
'What happen?' he asked as they came up.
'Nothing,' snapped Daniel. 'Take us back to Cairo.'
'I hear gun.'
'Just start the bloody . . .!'
There was a sharp crack of gunfire. Whirling, they saw two black-robed figures sprinting along the track towards them. There was another crack, from behind this time. Two more figures had emerged from the desert and were also making straight for them, black smudges against the shimmering yellow of the sand. The driver screamed and dropped to the ground.
'I told you there'd be more of them!' shouted Daniel. 'The dig house! Run!'
He seized her arm and they sprinted towards the house, one bullet whizzing past Tara's head, another kicking up a spray of dust just in front of them. They reached the side of the building and jumped down onto the rear terrace. Beyond it a steep sandy slope dropped away to the village beneath, where people were coming out of their houses and looking up, wondering what all the noise was about.
'Get down the slope,' shouted Daniel.
'What about you?'
'Just get down the slope. I'll follow.'
'I'm not leaving you!'
'Jesus!'
There was a thud of running feet. Daniel cast his eyes wildly around, spotted an old touria leaning against a bench and, seizing it, ran back to the side of the house, shrinking against the wall. The thud of feet grew louder. He raised the touria, took a couple of breaths, and then swung it as hard as he could, just as one of their pursuers scrambled into view around the corner. The metal head smashed into the man's face with a sickening crack, throwing him backwards into the undergrowth, his hand still gripping his Heckler and Koch. Daniel leaped forward and prised the gun away.
'Now!' he cried. 'While we've got the chance!'
They ran to the edge of the terrace and jumped, hitting the slope together and scrabbling downwards in a shower of dust, Tara still clutching her knapsack. There was a stretch of sand at the bottom, then a track, then the village, strung out along the edge of a dense palm grove. A car was bumping towards them and Daniel ran for it, flagging it down. The driver slowed and, seeing the gun, skidded to a halt. Shots rang out from above. Daniel turned and fired. There were screams and the villagers began to scatter. He fired again, keeping his finger on the trigger, raking the escarpment until the gun's magazine was empty. He threw the weapon aside and turned back to the car. The driver had scrambled out, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine turning. Daniel leaped behind the wheel.
'Get in!' he yelled at Tara. 'Get in!'
She dived into the passenger side and he stamped his foot on the accelerator, the wheels churning up a spray of gravel as the car careered down the track. A bullet shattered one of the rear side windows, another punctured the bonnet. They hit a pot-hole and skidded, and for a moment it looked as if they were going to hit a wall, but he managed to bring them back under control and they sped away, the sputter of gunfire echoing behind them, the dig house lost behind a curtain of dust.
'I don't know what the fuck's in that box of yours,' Daniel panted, 'but after all this I hope it was worth it!'
18
LUXOR
By the time Khalifa got home midway through the afternoon he was so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open.
As soon as he came through the door his son leaped on him. 'Dad! Dad! Can I have a trumpet for Abu Haggag?'
The Feast of Abu el-Haggag was due to start in a couple of days. For weeks Ali and his schoolmates had been decorating a float for the children's procession and the boy could barely contain his excitement about the forthcoming festivities.
'Can I?' he cried, tugging at Khalifa's jacket. 'Mustafa's got one. And Said.'
Khalifa picked him up and ruffled his hair. 'Of course you can.'
Ali bounced up and down in his arms, delighted.
'Mum!' he cried. 'Dad says I can have a trumpet for Abu Haggag!'
Khalifa slung the boy over his shoulder and, picking his way around the building materials in the front hall, went through into the living room. Zenab was sitting on the sofa holding the baby. Beside her were her sister Sama and Sama's husband Hosni. Khalifa groaned inwardly.
'Hello, Sama. Hello, Hosni,' he said, putting his son down.
Hosni stood and the two men embraced. Ali ran round and hid behind the sofa.
'They've just come back from Cairo,' said Zenab, a faintly accusing tone in her voice. She was always going on at Khalifa to take her up to the capital for a few days, but somehow he never got around to arranging the trip. And, anyway, they would be hard pressed to afford it.
'We flew,' said Sama, showing off. 'It's so much faster than the train.'
'Business,' added Hosni. 'Had to meet a new supplier.'
Hosni worked in edible oils and rarely talked about anything else.
'I tell you, we're struggling to keep up with demand at the moment,' he went on. 'People have to eat and to eat they have to have edible oil. It's a captive market.'
Khalifa assumed an expression that he hoped conveyed enthusiasm.
'I don't know if Zenab's told you, but we're about to launch a brand-new sesame oil. It's a bit more expensive than your normal oil, but the quality is exceptional. I could send round a couple of cans if you like.'
'Thank you,' said Khalifa. 'We'd like that very much, wouldn't we, Zenab.'
He looked towards his wife, who smirked. It always amused her when he tried to sound interested in Hosni's work.
'Come on, Sama,' she said, standing. 'Let's leave the men to talk. Would you like a glass of karka-day, Hosni?'
'Love one.'
'Yusuf?'
'Please.'
The sisters disappeared into the kitchen. Khalifa and Hosni sat trying to avoid each other's gaze, embarrassed. There was a long silence.
'So how's the police force?' asked Hosni eventually. 'Catch any murderers today?'
His brother-in-law was even less interested in Khalifa's work than Khalifa was in his. In truth he rather looked down on the detective. Working every hour God gave and for such a meagre wage! Zenab had definitely married beneath her. OK, she could have done worse. But she could have done a lot better as well. Someone in edible oils, for instance. That was where the future lay. A captive market. And with that new sesame oil things could really take off.
'No, not today,' Khalifa was saying.
'Sorry?'
'I didn't catch any murderers today.'
'Oh, right,' said Hosni. 'Good. Or rather bad.' He paused, confused, trying to recover the thread of the conversation. 'Hey, I hear you put in a promotion application. Think you'll get it?'
Khalifa shrugged. 'Insha-Allah. If Allah is willing.'
'I w
ould have thought it was more a case of if your boss is willing!'
Hosni laughed loudly at his joke, slapping the arm of the sofa.
'Sama!' he called. 'Hey, Sama! Yusuf said he'd get a promotion if Allah was willing and I said it was more a case of if his boss was willing.'
There was a loud braying from the kitchen, Sama evidently finding the comment as amusing as her husband did. Ali had come up behind the sofa and was preparing to hit Hosni on the head with a cushion. Khalifa glared at him and the boy disappeared again.
'So how's the fountain going?' asked Hosni after another long silence, struggling for something to say.
'Oh, not bad. Fancy a look?'
'Why not.'
The two men went out into the hallway and stood among the clutter of cement bags and paint pots, looking down at the rather sorry-looking plastic pond from which, hoped Khalifa, a fountain of water would one day spout.
'It's a bit cramped,' observed Hosni.
'There'll be more space when all this rubbish is cleared away.'
'Where's the water coming from?'
'We'll plumb it in from the kitchen.'
Hosni scratched his chin, bemused by the whole venture. 'I don't know why you don't just . . .'
He was interrupted by Ali, who chose that moment to come running out after them, knocking over a pot of paintbrushes rinsing in white spirit. A viscous grey-white liquid spread across the concrete floor.
'Dammit, Ali,' snapped Khalifa. 'Zenab! Bring out a cloth, will you?'
His wife looked out at the mess. 'I'm not ruining one of my cloths mopping that up. Use some newspaper.'
'I haven't got any newspaper.'
'I've got an old al-Ahram in my bag,' said Hosni. 'You can use that.'
He fetched the paper from the other room and began laying it sheet by sheet on the pool of white spirit.
'You see,' he said, 'it's soaking it up. Wonderfully absorbent.'
He detached another sheet and went to put it down. As he did so, Khalifa grabbed his arm: 'Wait!'
The detective fell to his knees.
'What date is this paper?'
'Um . . .'
'What date!'
There was an urgency to his voice.
'Yesterday's,' said Hosni, flustered.
One of Khalifa's knees was in the puddle of spirit, but he seemed unaware of it. He was leaning forward intently, reading something in the bottom right-hand corner of the page, his finger flashing back and forth along the lines of script. Ali came and knelt beside him, running his own finger over the sodden newsprint, imitating his father.
'Yesterday,' Khalifa said to himself when he'd finished the article. 'Yesterday. Let's see: Nayar's killed on Friday, they go up the same day . . . Dammit!' he cried, leaping to his feet, a dark stain now spreading slowly across his knee.
'Dammit,' cried Ali, jumping up after him.
'What?' said Hosni. 'What is it?'
Khalifa ignored him and hurried through into the kitchen, his exhaustion suddenly forgotten. 'Zenab, I have to go out.' 'Go out? Where?'
'Cairo.'
'Cairo!'
For a moment it looked like she was going to make a fuss. Then, however, she came forward and kissed him on the forehead.
'I'll get you some clean trousers.'
In the hallway Hosni was looking down at the article Khalifa had been reading. There was a photograph of an ugly old man with an eye-patch and, above it, the caption: 'Cairo Antique Dealer Brutally Murdered'. He shook his head. That sort of thing never happened in edible oils.
19
CAIRO
Neither of them spoke on the way back to Cairo. Daniel concentrated on the driving, eyes flicking nervously up to the rear-view mirror to check they weren't being followed. Tara just stared down at the bag on her lap. Only when they reached the main Cairo–Giza road and turned right through a scrum of traffic towards the city centre did Daniel break the silence.
'I'm sorry, Tara, but you just don't understand how dangerous this is. Those men – they were followers of Sayf al-Tha'r. The scar on the forehead, that's their mark.'
She was fiddling distractedly with the knapsack zip. 'Who is this Sayf al-Tha'r? I keep hearing the name.'
'A fundamentalist leader,' said Daniel, swerving to avoid a cyclist wobbling along with a tray of pastries on his head. 'The name means Sword of Vengeance. Preaches a mixture of Egyptian nationalism and extremist Islam. No-one knows much about him except that he appeared on the scene back in the late Eighties and has been killing people ever since, Westerners mostly. Blew up the American ambassador a year or so ago. The government's got a million-dollar bounty on his head.'
He glanced across at her, smiling humourlessly.
'Well done, Tara. You've just made an enemy of the most dangerous man in Egypt. Jesus.'
They drove on in silence for another couple of kilometres, the city closing in all around them, before eventually crossing a flyover and hitting gridlock. They sat for five minutes, then, cursing, Daniel swung off to the left, pushing his way through the oncoming lanes of traffic and parking up in a garbage-filled side street. They got out.
'We should try and get off the street,' he said, glancing around. 'It's too exposed. I don't think they followed us, but you never know. They've got people everywhere.'
They began walking, coming to a line of railings enclosing what Tara initially thought was a large park, but then realized was actually a zoo. There was an entrance thirty metres along and, taking her arm, Daniel steered her towards it.
'Let's go in here. We're less likely to be seen. And there's a payphone we can use.'
They paid the twenty piastre entry charge and pushed through the turnstiles. The noise of the city seemed to drop away behind them and suddenly everything was quiet. Birds were chattering in the trees, families strolling together, young lovers sitting on benches, hand in hand. From somewhere nearby came the babble of running water.
They set off down a shady walkway, eyes jerking back and forth for any sign of pursuit. They passed a rhinoceros enclosure, a monkey house, a sea-lion pool and a lake full of flamingos before eventually coming to a dusty banyan tree with a stone bench beneath it, on which they sat. There was a telephone booth five metres away and, opposite, a morose-looking elephant in a cage, its leg shackled to the bars with a heavy chain. Daniel scanned the surrounding walkways, then took her knapsack, opened it and removed the box.
'First things first. We find out what this is,' he said.
He looked around again, then pulled away the string and lifted the lid. Inside, sitting on a bed of straw, was a flat object wrapped in newspaper. There was a small card sellotaped to it:
Tara. Thought this might be appropriate. Love, as always,
Dad.
He glanced over at her, then removed the object from the box and tore away the paper. It was a fragment of what looked like plaster, roughly rectangular in shape, the edges jagged and uneven. The surface was painted a pale yellow, with three columns of black hieroglyphic figures running down it and, on the left, part of a figure from a fourth column. A line of snakes with their heads reared slithered along the bottom – the reason, Tara assumed, her father had chosen it for her in the first place.