by Paul Sussman
She picked up the camera and film canister, holding them up.
‘And I think the answers are on here. That’s why the men in the oasis wanted the films. Because they’ll tell us what’s going on. We need to get them developed.’
Again there was silence. Flin continued to turn the compass over in his hand. Then, as if coming to a decision, he dropped it back into Freya’s knapsack and stood.
‘What we need is to get you somewhere safe,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you to the American Embassy.’
‘After we get the films developed.’
‘Now. I don’t know what’s going on, who these people are, but they’re clearly dangerous, and the sooner you’re off the streets the better. Come on, let’s go.’
He held out a hand to help her up, but she remained where she was.
‘I want to know what’s on the films. They killed my sister and I want to know why.’
‘Freya, those films have been lying out in the middle of the Sahara, probably for years. The chances of being able to develop them are a hundred to one. A thousand to one.’
‘I still want to try,’ she said. ‘We do that first, then we go to the Embassy.’
‘No.’ His tone was sharp suddenly, abrupt. ‘The films can wait, Freya. I want to get you somewhere safe. You don’t know …’
He broke off.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What don’t I know?’
Although her eyes were red with exhaustion and her face pale and drawn, she was alert and energized, her gaze drilling into Flin.
‘What don’t I know?’ she repeated.
He let out an exasperated sigh.
‘Look, Alex was a very dear friend of mine …’
‘She was my sister.’
‘… and I owe it to her to make sure nothing happens to you.’
‘And I owe it to her to find out why she was murdered.’
Their voices were starting to rise.
‘I am not having you wandering around Cairo,’ he snapped. ‘Not after something like this has happened. I’m taking you to the Embassy.’
‘After I get the films developed.’
‘Now. You need protection.’
‘Don’t patronize me.’
‘I am not bloody patronizing you! I’m trying to help you.’
It was her turn to snap.
‘I don’t need helping and I don’t need protecting. I need to know what’s on those films, why someone tried to kill me. Why they killed Alex.’
‘We don’t know …’
‘Yes we do know! I saw those men in her house, what they were capable of. They killed Alex and I’m going to find out why.’
She rose to her feet so violently she knocked the chair over. Shoving the camera and film into her knapsack, she threw open the door and crossed the corridor to the lifts. Flin came after her.
‘Hang on, hang on.’
She ignored him, pressing her thumb against the lift’s call button and holding it there.
‘Freya, just trust me on this,’ he pleaded. ‘I live in Egypt, I know these sorts of people. Whatever else you owe Alex it’s not to get yourself killed.’
The lift’s wooden doors rattled open and she stepped inside, pushing the button for the ground floor, still ignoring him.
‘Freya, please, listen to me, I’m just trying …’
The doors started to close, but Flin blocked them with his foot.
‘Christ, you’re as pig-headed as your sister!’
‘Believe me, Alex was the easygoing one,’ she retorted angrily, poking at the buttons, trying to get the doors shut. There was a brief hiatus, Freya continuing to jab at the control panel, Flin to block the doors, before he suddenly let out a snort of amusement. She glared at him, then she too smiled. He took a step backwards, she followed him out of the lift and the doors clanked shut.
‘Compromise,’ he said. ‘You humour me and go to the Embassy, I’ll get the films developed. I’ve got a friend who works in the Cairo Antiquities Museum, in the photographic department, he’ll be able to do them straight away. As soon as they’re ready I’ll bring them over. Deal?’
She pondered a moment, then nodded.
‘Deal.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Hold the lift, I just need to put some papers away and grab my wallet and mobile.
He disappeared into his office and the door closed behind him. The lift had by now been summoned by someone else and was clunking its way down to the ground floor again. Freya pressed the call button and wandered along the corridor, gazing first at a noticeboard – flyers for various concerts, a second-hand book sale, a Naguib Mahfouz symposium – and then out of a window. A faint sound of footsteps echoed up the stairs beside the elevator, barely audible behind the stairwell door.
Brodie’s office was on the fourth and top floor of the building, in the English Department for some reason, and the window offered good views of the campus gardens – lawns, palm trees, herbaceous borders – and beyond, to the chaotic swirl of Midan Tahrir. She saw a group of students saunter past, followed by two burly men. Something about them – the rough faces, the lumbering, muscular gait – seemed out of place in the grounds of a university. She felt a sudden twinge of anxiety.
‘Flin,’ she called.
‘Just coming,’ came his voice.
The lift was rising again now, moving up through the building with a high-pitched whirr of machinery. She went over, pressed the call button again and came back to the window, wondering what was taking Flin so long. The two men were still down there in the gardens, standing around, one of them smoking, the other talking on a mobile phone. From the stairwell the sound of footsteps was growing louder. A rhythmic, echoing slap of shoes on linoleum, two or three people by the sound of it. Crossing the corridor again she opened the stairwell door and looked down. She could see handrails, a thin strip of stairs and, two floors below, a man’s hand coming up the rails. A big, meaty hand half lost in a mass of chunky gold signet rings. Just like … She shrank back. Quietly closing the door, she ran to Flin’s office and barged in.
‘They’re here!’
He was holding the telephone receiver in his hand: he seemed startled by her arrival.
‘Freya! I was just—’
‘They’re here,’ she repeated, cutting him off. ‘The men from the oasis. The ones who tried to kill me. They’re coming up the stairs. And in the lift as well, I think.’
She was half expecting him to dither, ask if she was certain what she had seen, but he reacted instantly.
‘Call you back,’ he barked. Slamming the receiver down, he seized Freya’s arm and pulled her back out into the corridor. As he did so there was a bump and a click and the lift doors started to slide apart. Again his reaction was immediate. Sweeping her protectively behind him he stepped forward. As the doors came fully open, a suited man emerged, gun in hand. Flin punched him, shockingly hard, his fist whipping out like a steel bolt and shattering the man’s nose. He flew backwards, blood streaming across his mouth and chin, slamming into the lift’s rear wall. Before he had even time to compute what was happening Flin had stepped forward and unleashed three more punches in rapid succession, one thumping into the man’s stomach, doubling him up, one into his kidneys, knocking him sideways into the corner of the lift, and one into his jaw that sent him sprawling to the floor, where he lay dazed and groaning.
‘Oh my God,’ murmured Freya, stunned.
‘I didn’t get the impression he’d come for tea and a chat,’ said Flin by way of explanation. Grabbing her arm again he steered her along the corridor and out of a fire door. As it closed behind them the stairwell door swung open.
They were at the top of a short flight of metal steps that led down to the roof of a slightly lower building below. They took them two at a time, leaping onto the roof’s stone-tiled surface and running along a narrow walkway past a line of giant air-conditioning units.
‘Where the hell did you learn to do that?’ she gasped.
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�Cambridge,’ he replied, looking over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. ‘Double boxing Blue. The only thing that got me through three years of Middle Kingdom hieratic.’
They came to another set of steps. These took them up onto a much larger roof space with a small white dome at its centre and clusters of potted cacti grouped in its corners. As they started across it the fire door crashed open behind them. There were shouts and the thud of feet. They broke into a sprint, a group of students looking up in surprise as they careered past the bench on which they were sitting.
‘You’re late with your essay, Aisha Farsi,’ called Flin, half turning and wagging a finger at a plump girl in a silk headscarf. ‘On my desk first thing in the morning.’
‘Yes, Professor Brodie,’ said the girl, trying to conceal the cigarette in her hand.
‘And no smoking!’
They passed a prayer room, rows of men kneeling with their foreheads pressed to the carpeted floor, and ducked through another doorway and back into the building. Flin slammed the door and slid bolts across top and bottom to secure it.
‘Quick!’ he cried.
He led Freya along a dimly lit corridor, past a succession of classrooms and offices. The entire building seemed to vibrate as feet and fists started hammering at the door they had just secured. About halfway along the corridor a narrow staircase opened up to their right, flanked by a pair of water-coolers. They started down, only to backtrack as two figures appeared at the bottom – the men Freya had seen lingering in the grounds outside.
‘Shit!’ muttered Flin. Behind them the hammering grew louder and more furious. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
He looked wildly around. Seizing one of the water-coolers he shunted it across the floor and pitched it down the stairs at the men who were charging up from below. Their shouts were abruptly curtailed as the cooler slammed into them with a crash and a whoosh of water. The door still seemed to be holding.
‘Come on!’ Flin yelled, grabbing Freya’s hand.
Sprinting on along the corridor, they barged through another fire exit and clattered down an external staircase to a courtyard beneath.
‘Late for lectures again, Flin?’ cried a familiar voice. ‘Deary me, even the ancient Egyptians were better at timekeeping than you are!’
‘Very funny, Alan,’ Flin muttered, hurrying Freya past his colleague and into the campus canteen. They ran across the room, diners staring in astonishment as they slalomed between the rows of metal tables and chairs and through another doorway at the far end, back out into the university grounds. They slowed and stopped, heaving for breath. Almost immediately there were shouts to their left as three figures came charging round the side of the building, and more shouts behind as the twins burst into the canteen, bulldozing through the furniture, plates and cups cascading to the floor, diners yelling in protest.
‘Christ, they’re everywhere!’ cried Flin, waving Freya down a trellis-covered walkway between tennis and volleyball courts. They jinked right, then left along a broad alleyway lined with noticeboards and out through a tall iron gateway. They were on a street at the side of the university, cars and taxis rushing past in front of them.
Their pursuers had yet to turn into the alley, and for a brief moment Freya thought they would be able to lose themselves in the crowds thronging the pavement. Then, away to her right, she saw a gleaming black BMW parked up against the kerb. Two figures were leaning against it, both with the same menacing, rough-face appearance as those who were chasing them. An identical car sat directly opposite, outside a McDonald’s; another two men were standing beside it, while a hundred metres to their left, loitering around a traffic light at the end of the street, were a further three heavies. A rush of feet, and their pursuers came in behind them, blocking the alley, slowing to a walk as they realized their quarry was trapped. Flin wrapped an arm protectively around Freya, drawing her into him.
‘Bugger,’ he said.
DAKHLA
At the beginning of Dakhla Oasis, to either side of the main desert highway, stand a pair of tall, rather crude metal sculptures in the shape of palm trees. Apart from a line of telegraph poles and a couple of road signs, they are the only man-made features in the otherwise empty landscape.
It was here that Zahir waited for his brother Said, his Land Cruiser parked up in a slim strip of shade at the foot of one of the sculptures, scrubby fields the only thing between him and the rolling dunes beyond. Ten minutes passed, then, in the distance, its shape warped and twisted by the heat, a motorbike appeared. The road along which it was travelling had dissolved into a glassy mirage so that it looked as if the rider was speeding across water. Closer and closer it came before suddenly tightening into clear focus, covering the last few hundred metres and skidding to a halt beside the Land Cruiser.
‘Anything?’ asked Zahir, leaning out of the window.
‘Mafeesh haga,’ replied Said, cutting the engine and brushing dust out of his hair. ‘Nothing. I’ve been all the way down to Kharga and no one knows anything. Did you go to el-shorty? The cops?’
Zahir gave a dismissive snort.
‘Idiots. They said she must have run off with Mahmoud Gharoub. Laughed in my face. They think because we’re Bedouin we’re fools.’
His brother grunted.
‘You want me to keep looking? I could go up to al-Farafra, talk to people there?’
Zahir pondered a moment, then nodded.
‘I’ll keep asking around Dakhla. Someone must know something.’
His brother kick-started the bike, a battered Jawa 350, and, with a nod, roared away northwards.
Zahir watched him go, then started up the Land Cruiser. He didn’t engage the gears immediately, just sat there with the clutch depressed and the engine running, gazing out across the desert. Fumbling in the pocket of his djellaba, he pulled out a green metal compass. Resting his wrists on the steering wheel he opened it and gazed at the initials scrawled on the inside of the lid. AH. He fiddled with the magnifying lens and rotating bezel, ran a finger down the taut brass sighting wire, murmuring to himself. Then, with a shake of his head, he pocketed the compass, selected first and moved off, the Land Cruiser’s wheels skidding and churning on the gravel verge, dust billowing behind it.
CAIRO
‘What do we do?’ asked Freya, looking desperately around.
‘I’m really not sure,’ said Flin, his fists clenched, his head turning this way and that as he assessed the situation. Two men leaning against a BMW along the street to their right; two directly opposite, beside a second BMW; another three at the traffic lights; and, coming up behind, five more, led by the identical twins in their Armani suits and red-and-white football shirts.
Their pursuers came to the university’s gateway and stepped through, stopping two metres away, separated from Flin and Freya by a jostling eddy of pedestrians. They pulled aside their jackets, revealing a glimpse of Glock pistols. One of them pointed at Freya and grunted something in Arabic.
‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.
‘He told you to take off your knapsack and throw it over to him,’ replied Flin.
‘Should I?’
‘Seems we don’t have much choice.’
The twin repeated his request, louder this time. Threatening.
‘Take it slowly,’ said Flin.
As Freya began to remove the knapsack, a taxi – a battered black-and-white Fiat 124 – pulled up at the kerb behind them. She got the bag off, clutching it in her hands, reluctant to let it go.
‘Yalla nimsheh!’ called the twin, waving at her to throw the knapsack over. ‘Bisoraa, bisoraa!’
The taxi driver had now got out of the car, leaving the driver door open and the engine running as he helped an elderly woman out of the back seat and onto the pavement. Flin’s eyes jinked in that direction, as did Freya’s.
‘Bisoraa!’ shouted the twin, losing patience: both he and his brother were opening their jackets right up, grasping their pistols.
> ‘Better give it to them,’ said Flin, turning to Freya and reaching for the knapsack, his eyes again flicking towards the taxi as the driver moved round to the boot, opened it and started heaving at an enormous suitcase.
‘Come on, Freya, this isn’t a game!’ Flin’s voice was unnecessarily loud, exaggeratedly so. ‘Just give them the bag.’
He tried to pull the knapsack from her grasp. Freya sensed what he was doing and held on to it, buying them a few extra seconds as the driver manhandled the case onto the tarmac and slammed the boot shut. As he did so Flin gave the knapsack a yank, bringing his face right up against Freya’s.
‘Back seat,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll drive.’
He pulled away again, shaking the bag and remonstrating theatrically before suddenly letting the bag go and barging to his right, sending a man balancing a large tray of aish baladi on his head sprawling backwards into the twins. There were shouts, flailing arms and a loud clatter as the tray hit the pavement. In that brief instant of confusion, Freya dived headlong into the back of the taxi. Flin threw himself into the driver’s seat. He didn’t even bother closing the door, just flipped the knapsack over his shoulder to Freya, slammed the car into gear and thumped his foot down on the accelerator. The taxi’s owner gazed on in mute bewilderment as his livelihood screeched away in front of him.
‘Hold tight!’ yelled Flin, his tall frame crushed into the limited space behind the steering wheel. He swerved round a bus, its right rear corner clipping the taxi’s two open doors and slamming them shut. Yanking the gearstick into second and then third, he wove through the traffic, picking up speed, the taxi’s meter ticking madly on the dashboard.
Freya scrambled into a sitting position, looking back. The twins were at the kerbside frantically waving at one of the BMWs while across the street the other was already moving off, smoke bursting from beneath its skidding tyres.
‘They’re coming!’ she cried.
The taxi was now almost at the traffic lights at the end of the street, the vast chaotic expanse of Midan Tahrir opening up in front of them. The signals were on red, cars idling at the stop-line, a white-uniformed policeman standing in the middle of the road with one arm raised. Flin veered left into an empty lane and mounted the kerb, scattering the three heavies who were standing there and flying straight through the lights. There was a cacophony of hooting and a series of shrill blasts from the policeman’s whistle as they slewed round the corner and into the traffic running up the side of the square. They skidded, straightened, skidded again, slamming into the flank of a pick-up truck which in turn cannoned into a minibus, forcing it off the road and into a fruit stall. Pedestrians leapt out of the way, shouting and gesticulating; oranges and watermelons cascaded across the ground like giant marbles.