The Illusion of Murder

by McCleary, Carol

  His objective is the bow of the ship, which he has been told is the best place to avoid detection because the area is crowded with anchor hoisting and other machinery and equipment. He has been warned to stay away from all other areas even late at night since many passengers sleep on deck instead of in their cabins because of the oppressive heat.

  I am a messenger of the Father of Terror, Ahmad sings silently to himself.

  While rumors race like wild fire that the sphinx itself will rise against the foreigners who occupy the land, it is not the powers of ancient Egypt that Ahmad has sworn homage to, but one that has flowed down the Nile River valley from the Sudan and ignited the minds and hearts of the people: Jihad, the Struggle, a holy war to rid the land of infidels and Egyptians who have sworn false promise to Allah.

  The war against the Europeans and unfaithful Egyptians had been proclaimed by the Mahdi, the “Guided One,” whose appearance on Earth has ushered in the End Days and the Yaum al-Qiyamah, “Day of the Resurrection,” when the world will be rid of error, injustice, and tyranny.

  Ahmad joined the battle by the faithful that will make the land pure for the return of the Mahdi because those who toil in the Struggle are to be among the Chosen.

  To join the Struggle one must be a warrior for Allah, a mujahid, with a willingness to be a martyr for the cause.

  A poor fisherman, death to Ahmad would be freedom from a harsh life of relentless desperation just getting enough food each day to stay alive. He has no wife or children because he cannot feed them, but his parents and the people of his village will honor his name when they are told of his deed.

  Giving his life will be an opportunity to honor the will of Allah and receive the rewards given martyrs.

  Ahmad knows he will not return from the task assigned to him. He will take a life and give his in sacrifice and receive his reward on the Day of the Resurrection—paradise for an eternity.

  When he was told a woman must die, he was at first shaken, even frightened. Like all the men of his village, he was raised to protect women. But if her death is the will of Allah, so be it.

  Reaching the thick, bow anchor chain, Ahmad mounts it, using hands and feet to pull himself up until he is able to belly over the bow railing.

  On deck he crouches down, looking around to make sure he’s alone before he loosens the rope strapping down the canvas cover to a lifeboat and quickly slips underneath.

  Peeking out from beneath the cover, he remembers as a boy standing on the river bank and watching crocodiles hiding in the murky waters, just their eyes and snouts above the water as they waited patiently for a victim.

  Now, he will be that patient crocodile.

  “The woman will come to you,” his leader told him.

  Nestled inside the lifeboat, his mind swirls with what he had been told after he was named the chosen one:

  My mission for Allah is to deliver a message in blood.

  I will be blessed and enjoy the fruits of paradise for an eternity.

  I am a messenger of the Father of Terror.

  Allah Akbar!

  PART II

  Day 15

  SUEZ CANAL

  17

  Getting a look at the Suez Canal dragged me early onto the deck when I would have preferred to stay in bed and bury myself under the blankets. Having no desire to be stared at or hear gossip about a young woman who imagines dark plots and cries “Murder!” I am at the rail when most of the ship is still asleep.

  The famed canal is an enormous ditch with high sand banks that the ship moves through so slowly, no breeze is created over the deck. Even this early, the thick heat presses down, making it feel as if I’m standing on a hot plate.

  The oppressive air puts me in a brown study. A normal reaction to seeing one of the greatest man-made monuments in the world would have put me into a high state of excitement, but my body is still sore and my anger still raw at being nearly killed.

  “It’s really quite amazing, isn’t it?” The question gives me a start.

  Frederick Selous edges next to me at the rail. This time he has obviously approached me when he could have avoided it.

  Having such a gentlemanly air about him, I tell myself not to badger him further about what occurred between him and the ghost of Mr. Cleveland. It would be beating a dead horse.

  “Yes, it is, though it’s really just a big ditch.”

  “Quite, but it’s one hundred and twenty miles long and connects two great bodies of water. There were doomsayers who predicted that it would cause the Mediterranean to pour into the Red Sea with such force the entire planet would be thrown off kilter.”

  He is fresh shaven and has had a haircut.

  “Bath, too,” he says, amused by my examination of his toiletry. “I roused the ship’s barber early out of fear passengers who saw me would think I was a pirate who’d boarded the ship.” He leans beside me on the railing. “I was away from civilization for a week taking a look at Mount Sinai. ’Fraid what little water we had couldn’t be wasted on washing.”

  “Did you find the Ten Commandments?”

  “Actually, my friends were convinced Noah’s Ark was there, but we didn’t find it, either. See that caravan.” He points to my left at a camel caravan paralleling the canal. “They call camels ships of the desert, but that is no doubt what the caravanners are saying right now about this ship.”

  “Why would they call our ship that?”

  “Because the ship is lower than the sand banks of the canal, and from a distance you can’t see the water, making it appear that the ship is actually moving on sand. Truly a ship of the desert.”

  “That must be a marvelous sight. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes.” His eyes drift out to the desert and I feel like he’s looking past me to places no one else sees.

  He is a striking figure of a man: tall, broad chested, with well-carved features that are both aristocratic and sensuous. I find few men able to convey both personal warmth and a strong masculinity, and Frederick Selous manages both.

  While he impresses me as strong and assertive, I also detect a reserved side to his nature, perhaps even intellectual, not at all like most newspapermen I’ve met, and certainly a far cry from the boys in the newsroom back home who like to roll up their sleeves, put up their dukes, and wade into a story—when they aren’t spitting tobacco juice into a spittoon.

  All those admirable qualities about him dim in comparison to the fact that I can’t trust him. His discussion on the beach with a dead man can be excused because anyone who had not met John Cleveland would have taken the man’s identity at his word. But Selous’s presence at the sheikh’s table, his suspiciously intense conversation with the marketplace magician, and his coziness with Lord Warton means I not only can’t rely on him to be an ally, I sense he is deeper into the quagmire than he puts on.

  Not one to live in silence for long, I fill it with words. “It must be the greatest man-made construction project in history.”

  “I suppose that’s true, since we really can’t count the Great Wall of China because it was built in segments over the centuries.”

  “You’ve seen the canal before?”

  “Many times.”

  “On news assignments?”

  He smiles. “I’m not actually a reporter, at least not a professional one and certainly not the caliber of one who is racing around the world on a story. I decided to take a sea journey and a Cape Town newspaper kindly asked me to send back observations of my trip. I’m a big-game hunter.”

  “Is that a profession? Or a sport?”

  “In my case, a profession.”

  I had never met a big-game hunter, though I have read stories of men who explore trackless jungles on the Dark Continent in search of wild beasts and adventure.*

  “You should read King Solomon’s Mines. You’d probably enjoy it. It’s about a safari hunter, like you.”

  Mr. Selous gives me a quirky smile, as if I said a joke and don’t know it.

 
; “Yes … I should. Egypt’s quite a fascinating country, don’t you agree?” he asks. “So much colorful history and astonishing monuments.”

  “I’ve seen little of it, but what I have seen has made a lasting impression upon me.” That is an understatement.

  He looks away and then back to me with sympathetic eyes. “What happened in the marketplace was a terrible thing for any woman to witness.”

  “For anybody to witness.”

  “Quite so. Having the poor devil speak his dying words to you must have given you an even more significant connection to the tragedy.”

  I nod. “Ah…”

  “There is that ah again. What revelation have you received from the gods this time?”

  “Lord Warton told you the man spoke to me. Or was it the magician who told you about Mr. Cleveland whispering to me?”

  He appears at a loss for words for a moment. “You certainly don’t beat around the bush, do you? It was his lordship who told me you had held the man in his last moments. As for the magician, I told him about the snakes that have tried to put me in an early grave more than once.”

  “Did Lord Warton attribute my belief that the murdered man was British to female hysterics?”

  “Lord Warton was concerned for your female constitution under such trying circumstances, as any gentleman would be.”

  “Mr. Selous, for your information, I have traveled without male protection across the American Wild West and untamed Mexico. Besides fighting my way up in a field dominated by men, I have gone into slums, prisons, and madhouses to cover stories, and have interviewed murderers, prostitutes, and thieves. Let me assure you that my female constitution is just fine. It is my sense of justice that is being trampled.”

  He raises his arms. “I surrender!”

  “I don’t take prisoners.”

  “Yes, I can see that. I’ve faced charging rhinos that are less aggressive than you.”

  I suppress my ire and turn back to the canal, in need of changing the subject before I make a fool out of myself or worse—put him so on guard he never slips up and exposes his true part in the intrigue.

  “I left New York so suddenly, I didn’t get a chance to research places I’d see. Is it true that the lives of one hundred thousand laborers were sacrificed in the building of the canal? A ship’s officer told me that.”

  “I’m sure the authorities were not counting the bodies, but I have heard that estimate and from stories about how the canal was dug. I have no reason to doubt the figure.”

  I pat my face with my handkerchief. “This heat is quite oppressive. We could use a good sea breeze.”

  “Yes, but we won’t see one until the ship can gather speed. Ships have to travel slowly, no more than five knots, or they create wakes that erode the sand walls.” He hesitates, as if he’s making a careful choice of words. “That incident in the marketplace, what convinces you that it was John Cleveland? Were you acquainted with Mr. Cleveland?”

  “We weren’t formally introduced, but passed each other in the corridor several times during the voyage from Brindisi to Port Said. As he lay dying in my arms, I’m certain I looked into the face of Mr. Cleveland.”

  “But you never spoke to the man? Or heard his voice?”

  “True on both counts. But we can assume that he had a British accent.”

  I didn’t mention that I knew he was British because I’d searched his room.

  “Yes, that is a reasonable assumption. But just as you know, British accents are like American ones—they vary according to where one is raised. And there are many places in the world where the local peoples—”

  “Yes, I am fully aware of the fact you Brits have scattered your accent around the world. But you haven’t spread white legs, have you?”

  That gives him a pause. “White legs?”

  I describe the fall the “Egyptian” took on the road.

  “And you are certain that the man on the bike is the same person you saw in the marketplace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frankly, I’m forced to question your powers of observation. If a hundred of these followers of Muhammad appeared before us right now, I would venture that we would remember robes and hoods but few personal features. Why am I to believe that your powers of observation are any better than that of the rest of mankind?”

  That does it. “Mr. Selous … I see no evidence that entitles you to be a judge of me. You were not there. I was.”

  He holds up his hands in surrender again. “You’re correct, you were there. My concern is that you have been put through so much trauma in a short time. First the violence in the marketplace, then that accident at—”

  “Accident? You mean the attempt to kill me?”

  “Miss Bly—”

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and castle walls to storm. Important matters. I’ll leave you with your errands for Lord Warton.”

  I stalk off, my stomach and jaws tight. What insufferable insolence, but I’m irked at myself for being ruled by my emotions. Angry tantrums not only keep me from learning anything, but confirm Warton’s opinion of me. It’s hard, though, to maintain a reporter’s detached, professional assessment of the situation when I’m the bloody damn victim.

  18

  Barely able to keep from boiling over, I go down the deck to another spot as far away as I can get from him and everyone else. And I keep an eye out for Frederick Selous. Something tells me I am not rid of the man. He doesn’t appear to be a man who steps aside from a problem—even one acting like an angry bee. But at the moment I’m tired of dueling and wish I could have an ally rather than an opponent.

  What have I gotten myself into? Why I’m staying in the mess as a target is another good question. An easy way out would be to hand over the key to the ship’s captain and publicly admit that the man who whispered his last word to me was an Egyptian. But if I turn tail and run, I would do the same the next time I am confronted by a threat of violence. Shakespeare said something about meeting danger head-on so it doesn’t get the advantage and that’s what my instincts tell me I must do. It’s not like I can jump overboard and swim to the next port.

  A moment later Mr. Selous leans beside me again on the railing.

  I don’t give him the benefit of even a glance. “I’m going to ignore you in the hope you will go away. Rail leaning has become a bad habit on your part, at least when it’s next to me.”

  “What about dragons? Do you also fight dragons during your storming of castle walls and other adventurous activities?”

  I turn and lock eyes with him, hoping to see beyond his rich blue eyes and into his soul. “I have a strict policy of not harming dragons. There are so few left in the world outside of children’s stories.”

  “Did I mention I considered a career in law before I took up hunting?”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Your manner is that of a bullying lawyer.”

  “Yes, I deserve that. But may I ask you what I believe would be a lawyerlike question?”

  “Why? To discredit my observations?”

  “I can assure you that is not my intent.”

  “But is that Lord Warton’s intent?”

  He chews on that for a moment. “As an American, you may not be fully aware of all the ramifications of the presence of my country in Egypt. I have spent my entire adult life in Africa and I am acutely sensitive to the situations we face in our colonial empire—and the fact that the Mahdi movement along the Nile is the most violent opposition we face at the moment.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me that Lord Warton has the best interests of his country in mind, that has occurred to me. But he hasn’t come to me as a gentleman and expressed that. Instead, he treats me like I am a foolish woman with a wild imagination. And he acts as if he has some official authority concerning the matter, rather than just being a witness, as I am. Who exactly is Lord Warton, other than a man who inherited a title?”

  Mr. Selous leans closer and s
peaks in a confidential tone. “I became acquainted with him yesterday for the first time, but I do know he has served in the Foreign Office. Briefly and without distinction. Rumor has it that the only thing that entitled him to a position was his title and old school chums.”

  “In other words,” I whisper back, “his lordship is probably not a spymaster.”

  He clears his throat and hides a grin behind his hand. “I’m not aware of all his activities, but that is not a role I would pen for him if I were writing a story about the marketplace killings. More likely a chance bystander, but as a staunch British gentleman, ready to defend queen and country if he sees a threat.”

  He gives me an appraising look. “I suspect that Lord Warton’s reaction to your slant on the situation may well be colored since he believes you’re a reporter noted for, shall we say, sensationalism?”

  I give him the smile that Mr. Pulitzer once described as the grin of a barracuda.

  “I believe that I am noted for my objective reporting, sir, and that it is the wrongs of those I investigate that are sensational, not my reporting.” I tap his lapel with my forefinger. “I am not a threat to queen or country. I just want the truth. If someone would reveal it to me, you may rely upon my discretion and the fact that I would act in a manner that neither you, Lord Warton, nor your Foreign Office would find fault. You can report that to him.”

  “You’re right, you deserve the truth. The Good Book says that the truth will set us free. And I apologize for approaching you as an inquisitor, even if it was with the best of intentions. I trust that you are a person of great moral responsibility and would not do something that could result in furthering the already terrible toll of death and disorder the Egyptians are suffering. Now please, tell me exactly what you observed in the marketplace.”

  I laugh and shake my head and get a frown in return.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” I say, “it’s just that you are the same as me, always peeking under the rose to see what is hidden.”