Now adrenalin began to flow through my body, unleashing all the symptoms of panic. Sweat trickled down my forehead: my palms were damp. I felt a tickling sensation at the back of my neck and realised with shock that my hair was standing on end. By the time we pulled into Kolpos’s street, I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Stop!’ I told the driver. ‘Let me out here.’ I slapped down the money we’d agreed on and, leaving the car door open, I ran down the alley towards ‘The Osiris Arcade’. There was no one else in the street. My steps seemed to ring hollow on the flagstones like the footfalls of a giant. The shop door was slightly ajar and I charged in, straight through the woven hanging covering the connecting door behind the counter. The sitting-room was empty, dark and silent. Panting heavily, I paused and looked around. The luminous hands of the clock on the wall read exactly ten, and suddenly it began to chime with low, tuneless notes. I jumped and waited until the ten chimes had rung, then I pushed open the door of Kolpos’s study. Kolpos was sitting behind his writing desk. His face, transfixed by a beam of light, stared directly at me with eyes that bulged obscenely from their sockets. His head was tilted to one side at an awkward angle, its flesh scarlet and bloated as a balloon, his mouth hanging open in a grimace of agony. His hands rested on the desk before him in pools of blood, and as I came near, I saw that half a dozen three- or four-inch nails had been hammered right through the palms. Quaking now, I examined his neck. A slim leather band had been tied beneath the chin and ears, and tightened expertly. Just then, my eyes moved to the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. There on the glass, in Kolpos’s own blood, probably, was drawn a clumsy image of the Eye of Ra and under it, in hieroglyphics:
Let the Eye of Ra descend
That it may slay the evil conspirators
I didn’t get the chance to take a closer look. Suddenly there was the unmistakable click of footsteps outside the room, and I stiffened. I dashed out just in time to see a tall, bulky figure lurching through the woven curtain. It was at that moment that I had the vision. Something seemed to clutch at my brain, squeezing it with vice-like pressure, convulsing my body with pain. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but in that moment I heard a door bang in my mind and saw in my head a metallic object rolling across the floor. When the connecting door really slammed, I knew what was going to happen. Even before the Mills grenade slid across the floor I’d taken two steps, and dived straight through the sash window that looked into the street. I didn’t even hear the glass shatter or feel its slivers cutting into my flesh. My life spun by me in a frantic reel of half-glimpsed images like a video-film on super-fast rewind — my infancy in the desert, my mother’s face, my unhappiness as a boy in England, Julian Cranwell’s ecstatic jig at Bahriyya, my father waving goodbye for the last time at the door of his private hospital room, racked with cancer. I was flying down a dark tunnel with brilliant light at the end, when suddenly there was a deafening clap as the grenade exploded, and I felt the singeing waft of the shock-wave that followed, shredding debris around me. I had a sudden vision of myself as a huge black vulture with vast soft wings flapping noiselessly in space. I hung there for a timeless moment, poised between heaven and earth, life and death, filled with the immaculate knowledge that whatever was going to happen was now totally beyond my control. Then I slapped into the earth with a bump and found myself snapping frantically like a snake on the floor of the alley, bowling over and over, bashing my skull against the stone flags. When I sat up, tongues of fire were lashing out of the broken window, followed by billows of smoke. There were shouts in the bazaar. Shutters opened, lights went on, windows began to go up, heads poked out. Doors opened and half-clothed figures rushed by, yelling: ‘Fire! Fire!’ I stood up unsteadily and groped for my glasses. I found them easily enough, but to my dismay, one of the lenses was cracked. I put them on and for an instant I stood there, completely dazed. At my feet lay pieces of a clock, broken bric-a-brac, and the shattered photo of Kolpos’s wife.
I’ve only a hazy idea of what happened after that, pieced together from fragments later. I must have passed into a dream. I recall staggering away from the light and the noise down a long dark tunnel with blood streaming from my head, face and hands. I have the impression that I stalked on blindly, passing no one, until I paused outside a shop, feeling that I couldn’t go on. It seemed to be the same shop my taxi had stopped at on the way in, with the life-size image of the jackal-headed god Anubis and the words ‘Welcome to the Underworld’ written above it. Only this time the door was open. I was about to enter, when I thought I heard a voice calling from behind, saying, ‘Omar! Don’t go in!’
I recognised my mother’s voice, and I looked back and saw this dark female figure shrouded in black Bedouin dress, standing behind me. I couldn’t see the face, for she was wearing the full burqa mask with only slits for eyes, but I was certain it was Maryam. ‘Mother!’ I called in Arabic, my eyes filling with tears. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Run away, Omar!’ Maryam’s voice came back, ‘I’m with you.’
I began to hurry along the dark tunnel, faster and faster, but no matter how fast I went I felt my mother’s presence always behind me, urging me forward. She seemed to remain there behind me for hour after hour as the walls of the tunnel passed by. At last, though, I realised that a terrible thirst was burning in my throat and I came across a zir, a pitcher of cold water Arabs leave outside their houses as an offering to thirsty passers-by. I remember stopping to drink greedily, like an animal, from the enamel cup attached by a chain to the pot, slopping the water over my bloody face and hands. Then I recall lurching towards a nearby doorway, and vomiting all over the street. Mother stood at my shoulder, watching me. I turned to look at her and this time she was no longer wearing the burqa. She was smiling at me, the same beautiful face, the same wild hair I recalled vividly from my childhood. ‘Mother, you won’t leave me again, will you?’ I said.
‘I’ll never leave you, Omar,’ she said, ‘I’ll always be here.’
At that moment I heard harsh shrieks of laughter from along the alleyway, and I looked up to see a group of hooded figures in dirty off-white robes, gathered around a baroque-looking cart, lit by lamps on gimbals. I couldn’t see their faces, because they were standing with their backs to me, facing what appeared to be a glowing brazier of charcoal. I looked around and realised suddenly that Maryam was gone. I must have been attracted by the light of the lamps and brazier, because I recall drifting towards the figures weightlessly like a diver. As I got near, I saw that a coffin lay on the back of the cart, just like the one that had passed the taxi earlier, but this time the coffin lid yawned wide open, and I could just make out the dark form of the cadaver which lay within. I floated down the alley through giant hunched shadows thrown by the hooded figures against the flames of the brazier, calling to them to help me. Fragments of coarse laughter drifted back. It wasn’t until I could almost touch them that they turned, pulling back the hoods that shadowed their faces and I saw with a shock that they were faces I knew: Hammoudi, Rifad, Mustafa, Margoulis, Julian’s fat ghaffir, my rat-toothed taxi-driver, even the red-haired hunchback I’d seen outside Julian’s apartment. And there was another figure, hooded like the rest, but hanging back in the shadows, whose face I couldn’t see at first until he moved towards me. As the light fell on him, I realised with a shock that it was Melvin Renner. They were crowing at me through red mouths full of sharp teeth, and sneering with eyes that glowed yellow in the darkness, like the eyes of a cat. I sought out Renner’s features, and found his yellow eyes boring into me with an angry intensity. ‘What’s this all about?’ I asked.
‘I should have known you were one of the illuminati,’ he said, his mouth gaping blackly. Now you’ll never be one of us.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said, backing away, to roars of flaying derision from the crowd. The brazier burnt brightly for a moment, lighting up the cadaver that lay in the coffin on the back of the cart. It was only for an instant, but enough to convince me
that the man in the coffin was myself.
21
It was a party at the British Embassy, all scintillating chandeliers and tables covered with white cloths, silver dishes and magnums of champagne. I couldn’t remember how I’d got there. The place was full of men in dinner-suits and Dicky-bows, and women in haute-couture dresses with expensive hair-dos and sparkling jewellery. There was a band of British Guardsmen playing jazz softly, and a buzz of animated conversation filled the room. I was dressed in a white tuxedo, standing alone, nervously quaffing bumper after bumper of champagne that a dismembered hand kept filling up for me. When I looked to see whom the hand belonged to, I noticed with a start that it was joined to the hunch-back I’d seen outside Julian’s, now dressed in the bottle-green jacket and red cummerbund of a waiter. As I stared, the man winked at me suggestively: ‘Sweet potato!’ he said. ‘Very fresh! Very nice!’ As I reeled away in terror Doc emerged from the crowd and took me by the arm. She was wearing a voluminous evening gown of black silk. ‘Doc, do you know who that was?’ I said, pointing after the hunchback who had already lost himself among the guests. ‘It was no one,’ she said. ‘Come on, Jamie. I want you to meet the Consul, Melvin Renner.’
‘But I’ve already met him!’ I said.
She ignored me and dragged me in front of a group of immaculately dressed Englishmen, who were looking around suavely, grasping their champagne bumpers delicately between finger and thumb. I recognised Renner, whose unkempt mop of blond hair was tonight neatly slicked back. ‘Ah, Mr Ross,’ he said, with a touch of patronage, glancing momentarily at my earring, ‘I see we’re in full regalia tonight.’ There was a flutter of rude laughter. ‘How’s the research going?’ he added.
I was going to enquire what he meant by ‘the research’, but instead I asked, ‘Didn’t I see you the other night in Khan al-Khalili, wearing a dirty-white robe — you know, with the hearse?’ The laughter stopped abruptly and there was a stiff silence. Renner looked at me strangely. Everyone was looking at me strangely, including Doc. I realised that the words had come out in a slur, and that I was swaying slightly on my feet. I was suddenly aware of a splitting headache, and the strong desire to throw up.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Ross,’ Renner said, placidly. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I don’t feel well,’ I said.
‘Probably too much champers.’ He turned to Doc and for a second I had an impression that something passed between them, some fleeting hint of understanding.
‘Evelyn, why don’t you take Mr Ross to the guest-room,’ Renner said.
Next thing I remember is that Doc had laid me down on crisp white sheets in a room that smelt of lilac and had a photo of the Queen on the wall. She was stroking my hair, making soothing sounds. ‘You see, Doc,’ I was saying, ‘I never really was one of them.’
‘I know, Jamie,’ Doc said. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be all right. You never have been one of them, you’ve always been an illuminatus...It’s just that nobody realised it until now.’
I tried to open my eyes in surprise, but they were stuck fast. ‘No, Doc!’ I tried to say, but my vocal chords weren’t functioning and no sound came out. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of darkness. I tried desperately to claw myself out of it, to climb back to the surface, but the darkness was sucking me down. In a moment I lost my grip and black wings folded over me, blocking out the light.
When I woke up I was no longer in the guest-room at the British Embassy, but in my old room at Doc’s, with sunbeams probing the blinds and leaving mottled patterns of light across the walls. I was wearing an old pair of cotton sirwal as pyjamas and there was some sort of hat or helmet clamped tightly on my head like a vice. The skin of my face felt as if it had been scraped with emery-paper. I pulled myself to my feet and almost collapsed. I was weak, very weak. Then I touched my head and realised suddenly that what I’d thought was a hat was actually a massive headache. I thrust myself over to the mirror and saw a haggard, pale face that I hardly recognised. It was covered in lacerations, and my eyes were almost lost in the puffy purple mass of my swollen cheeks.
I heard the click of a keyboard from the sitting room, and threw open the door to find Doc working on her computer. When I staggered into the room she stopped abruptly. ‘Jamie, you’d better sit down,’ she said, jumping up and helping me over to an armchair, ‘you’ve had a terrible bang on the head!’
‘I thought it was a hat at first,’ I said, giggling. ‘What time is it, Doc?’
‘It’s three twenty in the afternoon.’
‘Christ, I must have drunk a lot of champers.’
‘What are you talking about, darling?’
‘The party. By the way, Doc, what did you mean that I’d always been an illuminatus?’
‘What party, Jamie? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
I giggled again. ‘Are you telling me there was no party at the British Embassy last night?’
‘Jamie, you arrived at my doorstep at three o’clock in the morning in the back of a three-wheeled baker’s van. My ghaffir rang to tell me there was a raagil ta’aban — a “tired gentleman” — waiting for me. I went down and there you were, lying in the back rambling dementedly about Kolpos. You said he’d been murdered and that his shop had gone up in flames. You looked awful, your face swollen and covered in blood, your white suit torn to shreds and your glasses cracked. The baker’s boy said you’d paid him fifty Egyptian pounds to bring you to this address all the way from Khan al-Khalili. I gave him another fifty and told him to keep his mouth shut. He said he didn’t know what had happened to you, but said you’d told him a Bedouin woman had guided you to him.’
‘A Bedouin woman?’
‘Yes, he said he got a bit spooked at first, but he looked around and there was no one there but you.’
‘Maryam,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘No, nothing. I had a dream about my mother, that’s all. And then this party at the Embassy. But for the life of me I can’t remember any baker’s boy or three-wheel truck.’
Doc went off to the kitchen while I sat and tried to remember. I couldn’t. There were snatches of myself running through a long dark tunnel, vomiting in the street, Maryam’s face, the demonic features of the men with the hearse, the hunchback dressed as a waiter, the word illuminati. No baker’s boy. I tried some deep breathing exercises, but it only made the pain worse. My head felt as if it was undergoing continental drift in several places. I felt mentally shattered, singed, cut and bruised, numbed by the memory of the disgusting things they’d done to Kolpos. I tried to stop myself thinking about it, but my mind wouldn’t cease cranking away, sifting through all the data, the half-seen images. I felt as if I’d just dug up fragments of ancient Egyptian ruins in the sand, aware that they fitted together in some immense design, but I was unable to see the shape of that design hidden in the sand. And beneath that there was another layer of feeling — that I really did know more than my mind would admit, that the design was all there in the murk of my subconscious, waiting for me to gain access to it.
I stood up, groaning. Holding my head with one hand, I limped over to one of Doc’s bookcases and pulled out the Concise Oxford Dictionary. I dropped it on her desk and flipped through the pages with a trembling hand. At last I found it: illuminati, it read, ‘persons claiming to possess special knowledge or enlightenment’.
I closed the book, puzzled. What special knowledge or enlightenment did I claim? Only my knowledge of the origins of ancient Egyptian civilisation, which almost everyone mocked. Suddenly snatches of a poem rumbled through my head, and I murmured them to myself:
Let the Eye of Ra descend
That it may slay the evil conspirators.
‘ “Hymn to Ra”,’ Doc said, bustling in with one of her seaweed-like concoctions in a glass.
‘What?’
‘That poem you were reciting. Isn’t it the “Hymn To Ra”, the one they found inscribed in Tut
ankhamen’s tomb? Jamie, sit down, please. Here, drink this. It’s a herbal infusion for pain and shock. Drink it all.’
I retched and pushed it away ungratefully. ‘Christ, Doc,’ I said, ‘can’t I get a bloody Aspirin round this place?’
She smiled pityingly and took the green mess away, returning after a few minutes with a salad of pills and a glass of water: ‘Here you are,’ she said, ‘Paracetamol for pain and antibiotics in case of infection.’
‘Great!’ I said, swallowing the pills and drinking the water.
‘What was that “Hymn to Ra” stuff all about?’ Doc enquired.
‘There was some kind of conspiracy among human beings against the god Ra, who was getting on in years. Ra sent his Eye, which in another guise was the goddess Hathor, to earth to slay all human beings, but relented and spared a few of them.’
‘I know that, Jamie. What I mean is, what has it got to do with anything?’
‘If my memory isn’t playing me tricks, it was written in hieroglyphs on Kolpos’s mirror — in what appeared to be blood. Christ, Doc, what did happen last night? I mean, I remember all sorts of things, but I can’t say which of them were real.’
‘Kolpos’s shop burned down, that’s real enough,’ she said. ‘I went up there to have a dekko this morning while you were out like a light. I gave the ghaffir the keys and asked him to look in on you. Told him you’d been in a car accident. I tell you, Jamie, there was nothing left of the place but a shell. The fire people and police were rummaging around in the ashes and then they carried out this revolting bag of oily, blackened bones on a stretcher and said it was Kolpos. I very nearly threw up. They told me they’d only identified him by his wedding ring. No other bodies in the place, they were certain. I knew you were out of it, but I thought about Elena. One of the onlookers told me that if it hadn’t been for the bazaar people the whole street might have gone up. I was snooping around quite successfully, I thought, when an unmarked police car pulls up and out jumps this big bull of a man — built like a weight-lifter — domed forehead, clipped moustache. Very nasty-looking piece of work.’
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