Countdown in Cairo (Russian Trilogy, The)

by Noel Hynd

  “When he came out of the washroom, he went straight toward the exit,” Janet said. “And the men he was with left while he was in the washroom. They left together.”

  Carlos shook his head. “Strange, huh?”

  “What did you say to him?”

  Carlos repeated everything.

  Janet shook her head. “I don’t like any of this,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I’m sorry I said anything.” She paused. “Do you think it was really him?” she asked, changing her tone. “You had a good look.”

  “I think it was,” Carlos said. “Yes,” he decided, “it was him.”

  Janet shuddered. “I don’t want any part of this,” she said. “I mean, we were at his funeral. Old superstition of mine: don’t mess with people if you’ve already been to their interment! Let’s scram.”

  THREE

  The next morning, Carlos and Janet hooked up with some other tourists and took the motor coach on the eleven-mile trip south of Cairo to view and the Pyramids of Giza. As soon as they were away from Cairo, the incident at the Royale began to recede, though not completely.

  The highway passed across fields that historically had flooded whenever the Nile rose, but nowadays the area had been built up and the road elevated slightly. At its final stretch past the Mena House Hotel, the road wound gently uphill. Suddenly they were upon the pyramid and tomb of Cheops, the fourth-century pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the Old Kingdom, as well as the tombs of Chephren, Mycernius, and the smaller tombs of their wives. The pyramids stood, as they had for forty-six centuries, at the edge of the desert plateau.

  Yet striking as the antiquities were, a small part of the specter of Michael Cerny haunted both Carlos and Janet. They looked for a way to dispel altogether what they had seen; but in the evening, almost against their better judgment and certainly against common sense, they visited the same ragged quarter of Cairo they had the previous day. They arrived again at the Royale at 9:30 in the evening. They sat at a different table and waited. But there was no sighting of Michael Cerny that evening, incarnate or otherwise. They half expected him to step out of a shadow, an alley, or a doorway in the raffish old quarter, but he didn’t. They were relieved.

  When they awoke early the next morning, it was as if some foul air had lifted. They began to think less of the man they had or hadn’t seen and more about their trip. They fell easily back into the role of young lovers enjoying a holiday.

  After an American breakfast, they took their deft little rental car to the ancient citadel, Midan Salah al-Din, the tenth-century fortress that had once been a starting point for Egyptian pilgrims to Mecca. A Crusader-era fortress. Carlos drove.

  They were lucky and drew a clear day. They walked up to the esplanade that overlooked Cairo and took in the view of the city and the desert beyond. They enjoyed the journey better than had others who had made a similar trek centuries ago. It had been here that in 1811 the ruler Mohammad Ali had, behind the high walls and with the gate drawn, ordered the massacre of five hundred Mamluks who had been his dinner guests.

  By evening Janet and Carlos felt their time in Cairo running out. They had made friends with some other tourists from America and joined them for drinks at a more upscale location in the early evening and then a Western-style dinner at a Tex-Mex place near the hotel. As they savored contact with other Americans, the bizarre notion of Michael Cerny’s still being alive retreated from the improbable into the impossible. The whole incident in the Royale took on the aura of a strange little anecdote to tell to friends and one day to grandchildren. That, or it would be forgotten completely.

  Their final full day in Cairo arrived; they had it in mind to take their car out onto the highway again and travel down to Memphis, on the Nile, which centuries ago had served as the first capital of a united Egypt.

  Thirty centuries ago, the fortress-city controlled the water routes between northern and southern Egypt. The shrines and mud-brick palaces of the ancient civilization had vanished over the years, but Saqqâra, the necropolis of the ancient city, still stood and drew visitors by the thousands every year. Saqqâra would be the destination for Janet and Carlos on their final day. They planned to continue to Alexandria the next morning.

  It was a buoyant late morning of bright sunshine and less humidity than on the previous days. Most of the smog had lifted from the city. Up until now, Carlos had done all the driving, but Janet was intent on having her day at the wheel, nutty Egyptian traffic notwithstanding.

  They walked together to the parking lot of the hotel. Their rental car sat by a curb. Janet jumped into the car on the driver’s side and asked for the keys.

  “No,” he said, “I’m driving.”

  “It’s my day to drive,” she said.

  “What? You think I want to get killed?”

  Janet laughed. Carlos jumped into the front seat and slid toward her from the passenger’s side. Their laughter filled the car. She snatched the keys from him. Her hand pushed the keys toward the ignition, but his hand blocked hers.

  Then he pressed his hand to her ribs and tickled her with intensity, causing her to squirm in the seat, laugh, and use both her hands to push him away. His reactions were faster than hers and he snatched the keys back.

  “All right, all right,” she finally said. “You drive out of the city traffic, and I’ll take it on the highway,” she said.

  “Deal,” he said.

  “I’ll come around.”

  The battle over, they kissed.

  Carlos slid into the driver’s seat. Janet circled the car in a quick trot, came to the opposite side, and opened the door.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where’s the map?”

  “What map?”

  “The one that will take us down to Memphis?” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. She put her hand to her mouth to cover a smile. “It’s still upstairs.”

  “How are we going to find our way without a map?” he asked.

  “Duuh,” she said.

  “Duuh,” he answered. Playfully, he swiped at her backside, and she ducked away.

  “Good question,” she answered. “I’ll get it.”

  She turned and jogged back toward the hotel, a flurry of bare legs and arms.

  In the lobby of the hotel, she skipped past the doorman and the amused gaze of the porters and front desk staff. Anxious to get going, she went to the stairs near the elevator and sprinted up them to the first floor, taking the steps two at a time. She felt great.

  She would always remember how great she felt at the start of that day.

  The door to their room was open. She walked in, startling the morning maid. They exchanged greetings.

  Janet spotted the map. She grabbed it, gave the maid a courteous nod, then was down the stairs, through the lobby, and out the door again. She turned the corner. The sidewalk was quiet. Across the parking lot she saw their car. It hadn’t moved. She felt a new surge of love for Carlos. This vacation had been what they needed. She was more certain than ever that he was her perfect partner and the right man to marry. She was about fifty paces from the car, and she raised her hand with the map, waving to him. Through the rear window of the car, she saw him raise his hand and wave back. The day was set to begin. Time to get going.

  He cranked the ignition. The car give a little shake as the engine turned over.

  A tremendous eruption roared in a firestorm out of the car’s engine, then out of the chassis. It happened so fast that Janet later had a sense of first seeing it happen, then feeling the shock waves and then, with a disconnect of several seconds, hearing it.

  The explosion knocked Janet backward and sent her sprawling. She whacked her face and arms hard on the hot asphalt.

  The car flew up into the air and into the driving lanes of the parking lot, rocking the cars parked in front of it and behind it and setting them on fire.

  Stones, mortar, and brick cascaded off the walls of the hotel and tumbled down into the street near Janet, almost burying her.
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  Her entire world was suddenly immersed in a silence punctuated by a profound ringing. She felt nothing, knew nothing.

  Then it came to her that she was lying down on the sidewalk. Smoke billowed and flames raged from the wreckage of the car. There was something wet all over her, which she quickly realized was her own blood.

  An excruciating pain throbbed through the silence. Her vision blurred. Mentally and physically, she was in shock. Prone, she moved her hands, which seemed like someone else’s. She saw that all that remained of the auto in front of her was wheels and a chassis. The rest of it burned before her, the body of the young man she loved within it.

  She blinked. There was hot sticky blood in her eyes. Everything in her vision had a reddish tint. Words and ideas formed in slow motion, but they formed anyway. Carlos is dead, and in a few seconds I will be too.

  Good thing, she thought as an excruciating pain shot through her head. At least we’ll die together.

  Things went very white, and then completely black.

  FOUR

  In a quiet wing within the main building of the United States Department of Treasury in Washington, DC, Alexandra LaDuca leaned forward at her desk. On the screen of her main computer, Alex studied the final anatomy of a case she had plunged herself into upon her return from Spain two months earlier.

  Ray Medina’s clients had been his wealthy friends. He had promised them twelve percent on their investments; then, using the old technique of underselling his abilities, he had produced K-1 tax forms showing returns of twenty percent.

  But Medina had also been battling a serious liver infection. His health had declined to such a degree that he had taken his wife and children to the mountain home he was having built in Aspen. He needed time to convalesce.

  Medina’s clients grew worried. So while he was away, several clients exercised a remote clause in their agreement with him that granted them access to Medina’s office should he become incapacitated. A few hours later, the investors were phoning their friends. Office records showed that there was hardly any money in the brokerage accounts. Other accounts didn’t exist. The K-1 tax forms Medina had been providing them for years were forgeries.

  Two days ago, Medina had pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of theft, securities fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and forgery. He had been sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in the Arizona state prison system, plus a restitution order of nine million dollars.

  Through a default judgment in the civil case, which Alex had helped arrange, some of the victimized clients had reclaimed just over three million dollars of their missing funds.

  Another “mini-Madoff,” as these schemes had come to be known. With the downturn of the world economy in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was no shortage of them. These cases were starting to depress her. She was bored to tears of white-collar frauds, mini-Ponzi schemes, and their slick-as-oil perpetrators.

  A phrase came to mind from the old Woody Guthrie ballad about Pretty Boy Floyd:

  Some will rob you with a six-gun,

  others with a fountain pen …

  She was glad she had been able to help some of these people recover some of their retirement savings from one of the fountain-pen thieves.

  Enough!

  She sighed. She glanced at the time at the bottom right corner of her computer screen. It was past 6:00 p.m. For today, she was more than ready to blow out of the joint.

  She logged out of both computers on her desk. She was conscious of the weapon on her right hip. She was overdue at the firing range and always needed to stay sharp, just in case. Not everyone she went up against robbed with a fountain pen, and increasingly she found the other type of criminal a more exciting challenge. So she wore her firearm everywhere now. There was no reason not to.

  Recently, she had gone over to a new weapon for personal protection: a Glock 26, better known as the “Baby Glock.” The weapon was a snub-nosed automatic that carried ten rounds. It had been developed for ease in concealing and accuracy in firing. Alex had acquired it when she returned from Spain. It fit her hand nicely and on her right hip just as well. She appreciated the perfect match.

  Now if she could only get to use it …

  FIVE

  Shortly before dawn the next day, in southern Ontario, a blue Volvo pulled to a stop on the road that led to the official entry point into the United States. Out stepped a Syrian named Nagib, a large bulky man, about six-four when standing. His boots crunched on the thin layer of packed snow on the edge of the roadway. Winter had come early to the region just north of the border, twenty miles east of Buffalo; then again, it often did.

  Nagib looked at his driver, then over his shoulder at the southern embankment of the highway. It first sank lower than the road, then led up into a stand of trees that veered into deeper woods. He scanned the area for several seconds. He saw no one and neither did his driver. The location was quiet in the dim gray light of near-dawn. The only sound was the rhythmic flap of the windshield wipers and the rumble of the engine. Frost had turned the side and rear car windows gray and opaque.

  The men spoke in Arabic with Syrian accents.

  “You know where you’re going?” the driver asked.

  “I have it memorized,” Nagib said.

  “Then go with God,” the driver said.

  “And you also,” Nagib answered.

  They exchanged a hand clasp. Nagib turned and faced the quiet woods as the car did a U-turn and drove away.

  Nagib lit a cigarette and began his hike. He trailed a stream of smoke and breath. He entered the stand of trees, looked up at the moon, and listened to the churning crinkle of his boots on the snow in the woods. His gloved right hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a compass. He consulted it carefully. Yes, he was in the right spot, and, yes, he was heading in the right direction.

  He saw his first marker, a blue ribbon tied around the trunk of an otherwise bare maple. He trudged past it. Nagib had slipped in and out of many countries in the past and had developed an instinct about such things. He continued due south beyond the first marker and then found another yellow ribbon about fifty meters farther into the woods.

  There was a faint hint of a breeze. He continued to smoke. He found the third marker and the fourth. He came to a clearing and crossed it. By now there was a certain logic to his trek. He found a small lake and followed its bank. This was all as expected. He knew that he was now within a mile of the United States.

  He glanced at his watch. Seven past five in the morning. Hurry, hurry! His next ride—the one on the American side—could only sit for so long without arousing suspicion.

  Then he came upon something unexpected. A pair of men with rifles in heavy camouflage-style clothing. There was a green Jeep parked beyond them. Nagib halted and caught his breath. He didn’t like this. Not at all.

  The men were about fifty yards in front of him, near the lake, and they turned toward him. They seemed surprised to see him too. He had a choice now. Continue on, challenge their guns, or turn and run, which would perhaps mean challenging their ability with their guns. He wished he had carried a pistol, but his handlers insisted that he not do so. To be caught with an illegal weapon would have made things worse.

  He made a choice. He continued forward. The men stared at him. Nagib moved at a quick pace.

  He came within twenty feet. One of them broke into a grin and raised a hand in greeting. Then Nagib could see what they were doing. They had a bag of duck decoys that they were about to set onto the lake. They were hunters. Or they looked like hunters. Guns made Nagib nervous, especially when he didn’t have one.

  Nagib approached.

  One of the men raised a hand in a friendly wave. “G’morning!” he called.

  Nagib nodded. “Morning,” he answered. He hoped his accent didn’t betray him.

  “Where you off to?” asked the second man.

  Nagib made a funny motion with his head, pointing to where the woods picked up
again on the other side of the lake.

  “Yeah, well, enjoy your jog,” said the first hunter.

  Nagib nodded in accord. He kept going. He jogged several paces and wondered whether he was going to get shot in the back. He looked over his shoulder. The two men weren’t even watching him. One of them said something to the other, probably a joke at Nagib’s expense, and they both glanced back at him and laughed. They saw him looking. They gave him a friendly wave as if he were a nutcase to be indulged. Then they returned to setting out their string of decoys.

  Okay, Nagib said to himself, go ahead and kill the little birds. That’s good. I have larger prey myself. He kept jogging.

  A pair of blue ribbons tied to tree trunks marked his entry point to the far woods. He traveled a path, found three more blue ribbons. The last one was a hundred feet before a chain-link fence that ran through a thick area of trees. Forewarned, Nagib spotted the trip wire at the base of the fence that might have alerted the US Border Patrol. He stepped carefully over it and climbed the ten-foot fence.

  It was an easy climb, up and over the top. He spotted the trip wire on the American side and was careful to avoid it when he jumped back to the ground. The snow was brittle but cushioned his landing. A big man, he couldn’t avoid hitting the ground hard.

  Hurry, hurry.

  He glanced at his watch again. He was right on time, but this part had to be executed with speed and care. The Americans were paranoid about their borders these days. He knew they had teams patrolling the woods, sometimes on snowmobiles, often in pairs, and frequently with rifles. The last thing he needed was a chance encounter.

  He accelerated his pace. He looked again at his watch: 5:18. The trees were still thick. He continued to find the ribbons that had been left as markers for him by teams of Islamic moles within Canada and the United States.