Firebird

by Michael Asher

  I opened my eyes wide and smiled dreamily at Van Helsing, who was resting his bony elbows on the desk top with his fingers entwined. His eyes were focused intently on me. Too intently, I thought. His shirt cuffs had parted revealing the beginning of hairy forearms, and on the left arm, not far above the wrist, I could clearly make out a small icon tattooed or branded on so hard that the skin actually stood up. It was the twin of the one I’d seen on the man I’d knocked down outside my apartment block earlier in the evening — the hieroglyph of the lion-goddess Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra.

  30

  When they left me standing in an alley with my fingertips against the wall and a sack over my head, I almost thought I was a dead man. Almost, but not quite. My memory of the Old Man’s test had restored my equilibrium, and I knew that whatever the reason Van Helsing had let me go, it wasn’t out of compassion or concern for the state of my health. Van Helsing wanted something he thought I could supply, and I had a good idea what it was. They’d told me to count to fifty before I moved, but as soon as the car engine had droned away I pulled the hood off and looked around. It was still dark — my watch told me it was 3.20 a.m. — not the best time for positive action. I felt like Ra in the Underworld of the night, passing from Sacred Hour to Sacred Hour by means of spells and incantations, never knowing what enemies might wait for him in each. There were Twelve Hours of the night in the ancient Egyptian reckoning, and this was the Tenth. By this time Ra had already fought and overcome his arch—adversary Apop — the Eternal Serpent — and was looking forward to emerging once more victorious into the dawn.

  From where I stood, though, the dawn looked one hell of a long way off. I’d had no sleep and my nerves were shot, but I knew I had to keep going, because everything might depend on what I did now.

  There was one pleasure in store for me. Van Helsing had left my Beretta and its shoulder rig on the ground at my feet, with a full round of shells, unclipped in a little pile. Next to it was my stiletto in its sheath. I strapped on my blade, then filled the magazine and loaded my piece. Van Helsing was giving me full rein, I thought. Whatever it was he wanted, he was making sure I could zap anyone who tried to stop me getting it. He wanted it bad, and he was confident that he’d be able to take it from me when he decided it was hand over time. That’s when he would get the shock of his life. I buckled on the shoulder rig and let the weapon ride, then I cased the alley. I was in a half derelict back street, somewhere in Old Cairo, I guessed — a place full of rubble and dustbins. It was cold. I zipped up my jacket and turned in what I reckoned was the direction of the river. In Cairo, all roads lead to the Nile.

  Before I’d gone ten metres, though, I heard a scuffling sound behind me, and I turned instinctively, unzipping my jacket ready to draw. Behind me the street basked in stillness, punctuated by bars of darkness and pockets of light. I drew in a breath and continued, but almost at once the scuffling sound came again. I stopped once more, and just as I turned to look I caught the faintest outline of a fleeting shadow in a square of light. It was only for the slightest fragment of a second, but the shadow stamped itself on my retina — strangely insectile: a head with a protruding jaw and a cranium that projected backwards too far. I had the urge to run, but I checked myself and turned back into the zebra pattern of light and shade. There was a broken doorway with no door in it, and I halted there and listened. It seemed to me I could hear laboured breathing from inside, and I held my own breath to make certain it wasn’t me. When I stopped the breathing seemed to stop also, but when I started again I thought I could make out whispering — a raw, rough cut voice speaking my name, ‘Sammy...Sammy...Sammy,’ over and over again. The hair on the back of my scalp started to stand up and a thread of perspiration ran down my neck. The whispering came again, but so low and subliminal that I couldn’t swear I heard it at all. A sensation of pure fear began to swell through me, starting somewhere in my belly and working outwards, and my heart began to pound. The urge to escape burst through me powerfully again, but I clenched my fists and held on to myself, torn between abject terror and fascination. Instead of pulling my Beretta I slipped my dagger into my hand. It was a far more primitive weapon and just having it there, clasped in my fingers, answered something wild and ancient in my psyche. The moonlight glinted suddenly on the blade — faintly, but enough to drive me forward quakily into the old house, which loomed over me dimensionless, like a vast cavern.

  I halted again, and held my breath. This time I was certain I could hear whispering — no, not whispering but the slightest rumble of animal breath that sounded like it was being formed into vowels and consonants. I let my own breath out and stepped forward and something erupted out of the darkness at me with a banshee shriek so piercing that I actually dropped my blade and sank to the floor. It was like the cry of a swooping eagle magnified through a bank of speakers — a dinosaur scream that seemed to come right out of the bowels of time. Never in all my experience had I heard anything so utterly terrifying. I scrambled for my knife in the darkness and in that instant something seemed to pass over me — something huge and dark like a giant bat, and for an instant a gangling, spider silhouette showed clearly in the frame of the door. Then it was gone. My hand came into contact with warm, viscous liquid on the floor, then something solid, warm and tactile. I found my knife, replaced it in its sheath, and felt for my pocket torch. In its thin beam I saw that the warm and sticky stuff was a pool of blood. In the centre of it, like an eldritch island, wide, terror-filled, dead eyes stared at me from the sockets of a severed human head.

  31

  I hung on the doorframe and vomited in the street. It had been the ghoul of course, and the skull belonged to a child — a little girl, maybe no more than ten years old. It didn’t belong to the body I’d seen the previous night, which meant the ghoul had killed twice in two days. If the frequency was shifting from weeks to days, that was serious — it meant that time was running out. I didn’t have the nerve to go back into the derelict house — I needed to see Hammoudi. I pushed on towards the Corniche, gagging as I went.

  There was a patrol of blackjackets by the butt end of the aqueduct, huddling together against the cold by a wall and smoking cigarettes. They looked as alert as glue sniffers and I didn’t rate their chances of recognizing me off hand. Still, they were bored enough to stop any lone passer-by at this time of the morning, so I avoided them and crossed the road in the shadow of some pencil cedars. From the promenade the Nile was like oil, and looking across it I could see my old apartment block rising out of the darkness. I felt no regrets about not being able to go back, only a pang of unfulfilled desire when I thought of what might have happened between Daisy and me. There was a payphone a couple of hundred metres away, but I didn’t go for it. I wanted to see Hammoudi badly, but I didn’t have to call. I’d missed my nightly report, and if that happened we had a fall back plan. Hammoudi would wait for me as long as it took. Van Helsing’s mob wouldn’t know about that. All right, they would follow me, but friendless as I was I still had at least one favour up my sleeve.

  The taxi was parked at the kerb and the driver jumped when I woke him up.

  ‘Curse your father!’ he said. ‘For a minute I thought it was Jinns!’

  ‘There’s plenty about,’ I commented.

  There were a few cars out on the Corniche, and as we turned across Tahrir Bridge a pair of headlamps beamed after us. I watched them for a while, then gave up. Van Helsing would find me whatever happened, I thought. Still, I paid the driver off a couple of blocks from the Scorpion Club and made my way there by all the devious means I could, down alleys too narrow to take motor vehicles, in and out of ruined buildings — at one stage I even crawled through a cellar. No point in making it too easy for them, and every second gained was a head start.

  The Scorpion was still open, but it was dead as a doornail. There was no one around but Bakhit, the Turkish bouncer, who was sitting on a stool inside, smoking a Cleopatra and reading a nudie magazine. He cocked his good eye at me
and grunted when I appeared. ‘Is he here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he grinned, ‘he’s our only customer. Even the barmen have gone bye-byes. Things I do for you boys.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I need you to do something else.’

  He put down the nudie magazine and started to look interested. ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said, ‘but maybe you’ll be getting a visit from the same guys who came looking for me last night.’

  ‘The Undertakers?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But whoever they are, they might not take no for an answer this time. Just keep them off till Boutros and me’ve had a little talk.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said, beaming. He closed the outside door with a clang and bolted it, then opened the padded seat of his stool. Inside was a silver Colt Cougar Magnum revolver with a bunch of rounds. He picked it up in his big mitt and spun the chamber with a whizzing sound, then snapped it open and began to fill it. He winked his good eye after me as I hurried down the stairs.

  The club looked big and lonely without its clientele, and the ultraviolet lights were off. Hammoudi sat at a table at the far end, almost where Halaby and I had last talked. He was wearing a ragged old combat smock from his parachute days, and his .44 pistol lay on the table in front of him, next to a pack of Cleopatras, his lighter, and a pitcher of water. He looked worn in the light of the table lamp — like an old soldier waiting to die. As I came up he laid two big blue pills on the table. ‘You’ve had a long night, Sammy,’ he said, ‘you need these.’

  I sat down and eyed them hesitantly. ‘Bennies,’ he said, ‘we used to take them on night patrol behind enemy lines. When the chips are down they can mean life or death.’ He gestured towards them, but I ignored him.

  ‘The cops were waiting for us on the river,’ I said. ‘Then some hit team bumped my apartment. Finally, I got picked up by Van Helsing, and he let me go.’

  Hammoudi didn’t look surprised. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He didn’t say, but I’d guess it’s the map. That’s what he was hoping to find in Ibram’s suitcase, only it wasn’t there. He reckons I’ll lead him to it.’

  ‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘it’s only half a map.’ He drew out a slim brown envelope from inside his jacket and held it out to me. ‘You sure you want it, Sammy?’ he asked.

  I took the envelope and put it away inside my own jacket, then I snatched the bennies from the table and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the pitcher. For a moment I retched at their bitterness. Van Helsing’s got a Sekhmet tattoo,’ I said, ‘more like a brand — on his left arm. I saw the same thing on one of the guys who bumped us tonight.’

  Hammoudi stared at me and for a moment I thought I saw a pulse of fear in his eyes. Or maybe I’d imagined it. The bennies were already starting to sizzle through my system, raising my heart rate, rousing my exhausted muscles. My tongue had started to go numb and I had an irresistible impulse to suck my teeth.

  ‘It looks like the rats are coming out of the woodwork,’ Hammoudi said, ‘and they aren’t Militant rats.’

  ‘Yeah. Van Helsing tried to tell me the Sanusiya’s been revived and that it’s got members in the army and the police. He hinted they did Ibram because he was supplying info on Militants to the US . Also hinted that Ibram was mixed up with U S national security in other ways. It might be a crock of shit, but I think the map shows where Ibram and Sanusi were working in the desert, and it was the same place the Germans and the Sanusiya were workin in 1916. Daisy and I found the British file on the project in the archives tonight. It’s entitled Operation Firebird, but all the good stuff’s been torn out.’

  ‘Anything left?’

  ‘Yeah, an essay on Cambyses’ army by T.E. Lawrence.’

  ‘What in the name of Holy Mary is that about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There was hammering on the steel door upstairs followed by the clamour of excited voices. ‘They’re here,’ I said, groping for my pistol. Hammoudi stopped me with a gesture. We listened for a few seconds and heard Bakhit mouthing a string of abuse.

  Hammoudi didn’t move, except to light another cigarette. ‘We’ve got a couple of minutes,’ he said. ‘That door’s solid steel, and Bakhit’s a good man. The time for fighting’ll come.’

  ‘The game’s over, Boutros,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he said, calmly. ‘It’s over for both of us. I got removed from the case officially tonight, and a little bird tells me there’s a demand for my resignation to follow. I can fight it, of course, but I’ll only end up with a slug in my spine down some alley. The shit has finally hit the fan. They know who I am — that I’m protecting you — and they’re going to get us both. What the hell? We always were on our own.’ He sucked on his cigarette as if it was going to be his last. ‘You’re not the only ones who’ve been busy today,’ he went on. ‘Someone snuffed Halaby this morning. Found hanging from a ceiling bracket in his flat. Neck broken and signs of torture — I mean, real bad torture. They lacerated his balls.’

  ‘Shit. They must have picked him up outside the Scorpion last night.’

  ‘Maybe. Halaby was bent as they come, but he was a smooth operator. Professional.’

  ‘Sanusi’s got a lot to answer for,’ I said. ‘Somehow I feel he was trying to get a message through to me but I didn’t read him right.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Hammoudi said, ‘Sanusi also went walkies today. I told you someone’d been busy. He was found floating in his own ornamental pool early this evening with a bullet smack in the forehead.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s the bad news — or most of it. The good news is that the results of Fawzi’s autopsy came through. You didn’t kill him, Sammy. The doc found traces of poison in his body, but it didn’t come from any hash. They’re not sure what it was yet, but it sounds like ivacaine — what they used to call soba.’

  ‘The ancient Egyptian special!’

  ‘That’s it. The stuff’s supposed to disappear without trace, but the dope Fawzi ate somehow inhibited the breakdown. Doc said the sauce had probably been introduced into his drip. Now, I got a little stoolie in the medical facility who tells me the last person to see Fawzi before he died was Van Helsing.’

  The bennies had come fully on line now, and my body felt electric. I sucked at my teeth and fidgeted, hardly able to stay in my chair. Upstairs there was a boom of iron on iron as if they were trying to ram their way through the door. Bakhit’s voice had reached a crescendo.

  I made to stand up, but Hammoudi placed his massive hand gently on my arm. ‘You haven’t heard it all yet,’ he said, ‘I had a phone call from a guy called Monod today. Said you’d given him the number. Wants you to meet him at a place called the Austet Inn in Khan al-Khalili, tomorrow 8 a.m. You better be there, Sammy. When you’ve talked to Monod, get out of it. Just disappear.’

  ‘I can’t. I never found the ghoul. I saw it though — last night and tonight — with different victims. It’s killed twice in two days. That never happened before, Boutros. It’s building up its strength ready for something big.’

  ‘You’re right, Sammy. Whatever it’s been planning is going to take off pretty soon. Time’s running out, and we don’t even know what the hell is going down. But it’s too late now. We have to fall back on our emergency plan, or we’re both going to wind up dead.’

  ‘Is Van Helsing the ghoul, Boutros?’

  ‘Sammy, it could be anybody.’

  ‘What about Daisy? Van Helsing made out she’d snitched to the police about the archives job. That’s how come they were waiting for us outside.’

  Hammoudi looked worried. ‘Yeah, Special Agent Brooke,’ he said. ‘I ran a check on our Barbie doll through various contacts in Interpol. There is a US senator called Brooke, an ex-army general who was decorated for his service in Korea and Vietnam. He does have a daughter named Daisy who read Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley all right, and she did train with the FBI at Quantico. That�
��s all straight — but there’s a small hitch.’ He brought out a brown paper bag from his pocket and tipped out a two-by-four-inch black and white snapshot. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

  I took the photo and stared at it. It showed a plain looking girl with a retrousse nose, glasses, brown eyes and thick brown hair. ‘Who’s this?’ I said.

  Hammoudi smiled grimly. ‘That’s Daisy Brooke aged eighteen,’ he said. ‘Now tastes differ, and people change as they get older. Hair can be dyed — there’s even such a thing as plastic surgery. On the other hand she doesn’t look much like any Barbie doll I’ve ever seen.’

  From above came the sound of the door bursting open, and the — big of submachine guns. There were yells, belching gunfire, and the answering deep boom of Bakhit’s Cougar. Someone screamed in pain, and I winced. The thud of Bakhit’s weapon ceased suddenly, and Hammoudi looked sharply towards the stairs. I put the photo away. Hammoudi stood up, picked up his .44 Magnum and cocked the mechanism.