‘Well, now – that dreadful man has nationalised it. Nasser. Beastly, beastly man. He’s admitted the public! It’s a tragedy. The golf club? Nine of its eighteen holes given over to a “youth club” . . . whatever that means. The club was a perfectly wonderful establishment for adults. The “youth” have more than enough to do without needing to take over our places.’
‘A travesty. What does your venerable Great Aunt Natalia have to say about this dire state of affairs?’ Ben began sniggering. ‘Speaking of which, how is her health?’
Ben and Katerina laughed out loud.
‘I must be missing something,’ interjected Ilhan.
‘Great Aunt Natalia . . .’ The countess wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘She was a fiction . . .’ Another guffaw escaped her lips. ‘. . . A fiction invented to defend my reputation from neighbours who might have thought it indecent that a young woman was entertaining battalions of British officers in her home without a chaperone.’
Ben fought back another fit of giggles. ‘The elaborate tales we had to come up with to excuse her always being indisposed . . . never has there been a sicklier human being. Remember when Signora Castegli sent her personal physician around to attend to her? What excuse did we come up with that time?’
‘I think she’d gone to take the waters at Hammam Musa – the mineral waters did wonders for her health . . .’
‘But the effects were very short-lived . . .’ Ben burst out laughing again.
The hilarity subsided. ‘So, Ben.’ Katerina was serious now. ‘Why are you here? It’s not just to share memories with me.’
‘No. As delightful as that is. I’m chasing something . . . someone.’
‘Always so mysterious, Benedict.’
‘I’m not trying to be. It’s just that I’m not entirely sure yet myself. But there’s an ancient artefact two people are searching for – and if they want it, then it’s something important. And you can help me. Do you still have contacts at the museum?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m looking for a particular statue in the collection.’
‘I’ll speak to the director. He’s a dear friend.’
Ilhan leant forward. ‘Countess, I’ve never been to this city, and although I’ve arranged to meet some antiquities dealers tomorrow to see if I can turn what would otherwise be a waste of time into a profitable journey, I certainly don’t want to miss the chance to look around. It seems that Ben’s going to be preoccupied with his dusty research, so might I beg the pleasure of your company to escort me to Cairo’s best sights?’
‘It’s a charming invitation. And one I’d be happy to accept – on the understanding that we do so only as friends.’ She smiled sadly and placed a hand on his sleeve. ‘Perhaps Benedict might explain . . .’
Hand cupped theatrically over his mouth, Ben spoke sotto voce. ‘The countess has had many lovers. Many, many lovers. But most of them have been women. Which is why her virtue was largely left intact even though she was living in a house full of horny Allied officers.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Ilhan smiled.
‘Not entirely intact, though.’ She glanced knowingly at Ben.
‘No. Not quite.’
‘I think we both introduced each other to new things that night,’ she said. ‘The French embrace – it has been useful to you in your relations with women, I’m sure. But it was just a brief, passing moment between you and I . . .’
‘. . . Facilitated by more than our fair share of “peach schnapps”.’
‘Ah, yes. There is no doubt about that. Though I regret nothing.’
‘That’s your motto for life, isn’t it, countess?’
‘Yes, you could say that.’
Ben drained the last of his drink and stood. ‘Now, if you will permit it, Katerina, might I make use of your telephone?’
‘. . . Just transferring your call now, sir.’
The operator flicked a switch and Ben listened to the crackling and buzzing of the long-distance line. A muffled voice speaking Turkish with an unmistakably Italian accent broke through the background noise.
‘Yes? Benedict? Is you, faccia di cazzo?’
‘Yes, it’s me, Raphael. You do realise the operator can listen in on the call, don’t you? So keep it decent.’
‘You think the zoccola understand Italian? Va fan culo! If she can, then to her, I say good luck. Now, Benedict. This paper. Where you find it?’
‘In a book.’
‘You think I stupid? Of course I know is from a book. What book?’
‘A medieval manuscript in the Topkapı archives.’
‘Is interesting, then. The ink you ask me to check? Is made with uranium – as you think. But is strange – it make no sense. I never see in this form. Chemical makeup is very different from normal.’
Uranium . . . is that what Sebile was talking about? Ben wondered. ‘The power that creates – and destroys – life’, she’d called it.
During the ferry ride between Mersin and Alexandria, he’d pored over the journal Sebile had given him in Kemerhisar. Much of what it contained were obscure and – to him – incomprehensible strings of formulae and calculations. But what he could decipher was written in French and included a fragmentary account of Fulcanelli’s life. It recounted a visit the alchemist had paid to a Russian-born chemical engineer in 1937, where Fulcanelli had warned the scientist about the nature of his work, claiming that alchemists had long ago mastered the manipulation of matter and energy to create a force field that put the alchemist in what he described as a ‘privileged position’, where realities of the universe that were hidden by time and space, matter and energy were revealed. By purifying certain materials, geometric arrangements of subatomic particles were produced that would create an explosive force powerful enough to level entire cities.
According to the journal, when the Nazis heard about Fulcanelli’s research, they arrested him in France and brought him to Berlin where he was to be questioned by Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. When Goebbels entered the prisoner’s cell and pulled up a chair opposite Fulcanelli, he asked him if he would answer some questions. Rising to his feet, the Frenchman replied, ‘No. I will not,’ then exited the room by walking through a solid concrete wall. Minutes later, the alchemist dined with his friends in Paris.
Ben assumed that account was allegorical, but had no idea what it represented. Allegorical or not, whatever was recorded in Goebbels’ report of the incident was compelling enough to pique the interest of the KGB, into whose hands it fell at the close of the Second World War. In August 1945, when American Army Intelligence was seeking information on German research into atomic energy, they also joined the hunt for Fulcanelli in France.
Wherever this was heading, Ben suspected it would be no garden-variety hunt for ancient treasures.
He thought of Essie and his gut clenched with a strange mix of dread and desire. She was brilliant and she was dangerous, and she had a hold over him he could not explain. Where are you leading me this time? he wondered. Whatever else was going on, Ben was beginning to suspect he was joining the last lap of an arms race.
14
Cairo, Egypt
If she’d been in any doubt about how long it had been since she’d turned her back on her family, the feathery top of the date palm that had barely been visible above the tall whitewashed front wall when Essie left now rustled and swayed well above the rooftop.
Running from one mess into another, she thought.
Her departure from London had been abrupt and the explanation she’d given to Garvé wasn’t only plausible, it was also true – she had a family emergency she needed to attend to in Cairo. The other reason – which was that she couldn’t bear to face Adam Penney after the evening she’d spent at his home – she kept to herself. With the Sinai invasion imminent and her presence at Penney’s side no longer necessary, there was no reason she couldn’t meet Garvé and Penney at the staging post for the operation once final arrangements were
confirmed. And given what had occurred in London, she had no desire to spend any more time with Adam Penney than was absolutely necessary.
She had no regrets about her encounter with the stranger at Adam’s gathering. But the fact that she’d been so compromised and had only narrowly escaped physical assault at Adam’s hands was deeply disturbing. That he’d witnessed her at such an unguarded moment made it even worse. With so much feverish sexual activity preoccupying the other men and women in the room that evening, she’d been able to slip out without attracting any attention other than an attempt by her lover to extricate her name and a promise to see him again. Knowing that some relationships are best consigned to the realm of fond memories, she’d said nothing; just smiled and kissed him on the lips. It was the first time she’d been with a man since her last, brief encounter with Ben on the island of Lesvos – a union that, for her, had been tarnished by a messy inner conflict at the knowledge that she was going to betray him. If she was honest with herself, the physical and mental release in London had been liberating and immensely enjoyable. But that didn’t change the fact that Adam had tried to rape her. Acknowledging that, and breathing the same air as him without succumbing to a desire to tear his throat out, was going to be a challenge.
She paid the cab and stepped out onto the dusty street. The parade of children that had kept pace with the vehicle as it crawled along the potholed laneways, shrieking and gawking at the well-dressed foreign woman within, had now transformed into an impenetrable human barrier between her and the blue-painted front door of her stepmother’s home. She was surrounded by a gaggle of waist-high, nut brown–faced boys, their heads shaved bare to keep lice at bay. They tugged at her skirt and leered up at Essie with bright eyes, babbling the only English they knew: ‘My name is . . .? My name is . . .?’
‘Don’t touch!’ she snapped in perfect Arabic, slapping their hands away. ‘Your behaviour is deeply shameful! Now, go home to your mothers!’
Her cheeky assailants withdrew, eyes wide with shock. That this glamorous woman, so clearly European with her blonde hair and contemporary, foreign clothing, spoke their language, was inconceivable to them. They turned and fled, laughing and chattering. The news that the widow Shadid had a most unusual visitor would spread like the plague in the lanes and alleyways of Al-Azbakiyya.
Essie took a deep breath and held it in – a feeble attempt to quell the anxiety that rose in the back of her throat. Her heart lurched in her chest as she glanced up at the perforated dark timber mashrabiya screen projecting above the street on the first floor of the eighteenth-century Ottoman building. Are you watching me, old woman? she wondered.
No more avoiding it. She grasped the heavy iron knocker and hammered it against the door. She heard it echo around the internal courtyard which she knew opened to the sky above.
Nothing. She raised the knocker again. Then came footsteps inside, the sound of slippers on wooden stairs, now shuffling across the tiled floor. A smaller entrance set into the large, double timber doors opened a crack. Black eyes framed by a white headscarf peered out. ‘You? What are you doing here?’
‘Meera. You’ve grown.’
‘Shouldn’t come as any surprise. It’s what people do.’ Essie’s half-sister’s voice was brusque, the gutteral Arabic words clipped and angry. ‘And it’s been twenty years.’
‘But you still recognise me. You were barely five when I left.’
Meera looked Essie up and down, lips thin with disapproval. ‘Your time in the West has changed you. But your face is the same. A face I’ve had to look at every day – she still has your photograph hanging in her room . . . a rod for her own back. If I had my way, I’d throw it out. Why are you here? And why didn’t you use the side entrance to the haramlik? You know how she feels about that. Women upstairs in the haramlik apartments. Reception rooms down here in the salamlik are for men only. What will the neighbours think with you arriving, bare-faced, at the front door?’
‘They won’t care because they won’t recognise me. They’ll think you’re being visited by a Westerner. And what would an infidel know about haramliks and salamliks? Please, Meera. May I come in?’
‘I’ll get you some tea, but then you’ll have to leave. She won’t agree to see you, you know. And, you’ll need to come upstairs. The last thing she needs before Allah calls her is to be upset by you flouting her rules. Again.’
‘There are men here?’
‘No, there most certainly are not. That’s not the point.’
‘Meera – you’re not happy to see me. And I understand why. But I thought you and I could speak –’
‘Speak about what? I’ve nothing to say to you. But if you insist, meet me at the haramlik door.’
Essie lurched back, startled, as her sister slammed the front door in her face.
The room was exactly as she remembered it. Low benches surrounded the walls, topped with kilim-covered cushions upon which guests were expected to recline. As was the custom, she’d left her shoes at the door before she entered and climbed the narrow, timber stairs that led up to the haramlik. She sat down, breathing in the aromas of decades of family meals shared in the communal living and dining area – the distinctive signature of browned onions, cumin, bay leaves and coriander seeds. A Bedouin table with a collapsible timber base and blindingly polished brass top stood at the centre of a finely woven red Baluchi carpet Essie knew had been a gift to her father from a British officer in Palestine in the years before the troubles.
The thought of her father made her gut clench with guilt and regret.
Her sister returned to the room carrying a tray bearing gilded glass teacups filled with steaming, absinthe-green mint tea and a small dish of lokum dotted with pistachio nuts and dusted with icing sugar.
‘Thank you. You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.’ Essie took a glass of tea, its delicate aroma awakening many bittersweet memories.
‘I didn’t. The tea was already made.’ Meera lowered herself onto the cushions on the opposite side of the room. An awkward silence descended.
‘So, what has been happening in your life . . . since . . . well, since I left?’ Essie knew it was a ridiculous question the minute it left her lips.
Meera raised her eyebrows. ‘Twenty years you’d like me to recount, would you? How about we start with more recent events?’ She picked at the delicate red and orange embroidery on the skirt of her thobe, the traditional dress worn by Palestinian women from Yafa, their father’s birthplace. ‘Well, as you can see, I’m unmarried. Without a father to arrange my dowry, and with my obligation to care for my mother –’
‘Our mother,’ Essie corrected her.
‘She stopped being your mother the day you left,’ Meera snapped. ‘She tried so hard with you. But you were always Father’s favourite. The daughter she gave him could never measure up to the offspring of the sainted dead wife.’ Long-harboured bitterness had carved lines around Meera’s mouth and eyes that belonged on a much older face. ‘And then you left in disgrace and made her an object of scorn and mockery. Not even Father’s martyrdom could lift her in the eyes of our neighbours after you left as you did. What do you want here? Is it money? You think you’re due something after she dies? Because this house is all there is.’
‘No. Of course not. I don’t want anything. Just her . . . and your . . . forgiveness. Please.’
‘As I told you. She won’t want to see you. Not now. Her last days shouldn’t be troubled by your demands.’
‘Could you please do me this one favour, sister? Just ask?’
Brow furrowed, Meera rose to her feet. ‘Fine. If it will hurry along your departure.’
Her sister’s rage was incandescent. Essie couldn’t say she blamed her.
‘She’ll see you.’ Meera stood at the door with hands on her hips. ‘Come.’
The door into Fatima’s bedroom stood ajar at the end of the long corridor. The old woman sat propped up against a pile of cushions, her frail shoulders rising and falling with he
r laboured breaths. Once-proud features were drawn and gaunt and framed by a halo of whispery white hair.
‘Why are you here?’
Essie was shocked by how much she’d aged. ‘To say I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to leave this world without hearing it from my own lips.’
Fatima’s dark eyes were set in sunken sockets, but they flashed with fury. ‘You have said it. And I have heard it. Now leave.’
‘If there’s anything I can do . . . I have money now, more than enough . . .’ Essie stumbled over the words. ‘I can help you with doctors . . . anything you need.’
‘Help?’ the old woman wheezed, her body racked with a rattling cough that seemed to crackle from between her ribs. ‘The time for you to help me is long past.’ She glared at Essie. ‘It was because of you, you know. It was because of you that he died.’
‘But I wasn’t here, Mother.’
‘Don’t call me that. And if you’d been here rather than running off with that Greek boy, he might have stayed in Cairo. Stayed to care for his precious daughter, instead of going back to Palestine to fight. She –’ The old woman extended a spindly finger to where Meera stood in the doorway. ‘– She and I, we were never enough for him. You were his pearl. And when you left, he had no desire to stay.’
The shocking realisation that her stepmother was speaking the truth made Essie’s knees feel as though they were giving way.
‘So why are you here?’ Fatima asked again. ‘Why did you come to bother a dying woman with black memories?’
Essie no longer knew the answer.
Essie and Meera were both silent as they found their way downstairs. There was nothing left to be said.
Tears clouded Essie’s vision as she took her father’s dusty fez from where it still sat upon its stand near the entrance. ‘Sister – would you mind, if it’s not too much to ask . . . I’ve nothing of his. Might I . . .?’
‘His hat . . . you want his hat? That’s all?’ Meera opened the door to the street. ‘Fine. Take it. And get out. Sister.’
The Emerald Tablet Page 13