by Paul Sussman
‘Wanker,’ echoed his brother.
‘We’ll give it a few more months …’
‘Then set up on our own.’
‘No more bosses.’
‘Just the two of us.’
‘And Mama.’
‘Of course Mama.’
‘It’ll be good.’
‘Very good.’
They reached the bottom of the stairs and set off along the street, arms linked, discussing torly and food concessions and Mohamed Abu Treika and where on earth they could get plastic sheeting and a nail gun at this time of night so they could do what Girgis had instructed them to do once they’d tracked down the two westerners.
‘Freya, I don’t know what you think …’
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ she said, leaning right into Flin’s ear and keeping her voice low so the driver couldn’t hear what she was saying. ‘I think it’s a bloody strange Egyptologist who knows how to handle a gun like you just did. Get a Cambridge Blue in that as well, did you?’
‘Freya, please …’
He started to turn towards her, but she pushed the pistol harder in under his ribs.
‘I haven’t met many Egyptologists but I’d lay good money there aren’t a lot of them like you, Professor Brodie. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but I want to know who you are and what’s going on. And I want to know now.’
He craned his neck round further, trying to meet her eyes. Then, with a nod, he shifted in his seat and faced forward again. He seemed suddenly weary.
‘OK, OK. Just put the gun down.’
She sat back, laying the pistol on the seat beside her, her hand still on its grip.
‘Talk.’
He didn’t, not immediately, just sat staring out of the window as they motored along. The gloomy shadow of Manshiet Nasser slowly dropped away behind them, a wedge of darkness thrust up underneath the floodlit wall of the Muqqatam cliffs. The driver lit a cigarette and slotted a cassette into the taxi’s dashboard stereo, filling the car with the sound of a wailing female voice accompanied by discordant bursts of violin. A motorbike drifted by on their inside, a sheep slung across the saddle behind its rider, a bored, resigned look on its face. Almost a minute passed and Freya was on the point of reminding Flin that she wanted some answers when he reached out towards the dashboard, picked up the driver’s mobile and asked if he could use it. There were negotiations – his wife was ill, the driver explained, they were behind with their rent, calls were expensive. In the end Flin had to count out another large wad of banknotes before he was given the go-ahead. He keyed in a number and placed his thumb on the call button, only to lift it again.
‘Who knew you were coming to see me?’ he asked, staring down at the phone.
‘What?’
‘At the American University. This afternoon. Who knew you were coming to see me?’
‘It’s you who’s answering the questions, remember?’
‘Come on, Freya.’
She shrugged.
‘Nobody. Well, Molly Kiernan. I left a message on her voicemail. You’re not saying she’s involved in all of this, are you?’
‘Not in the way you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Molly and I go way back.’
‘So what are you saying?’
Again he didn’t answer her, just continued staring at the phone, then pressed Cancel, wiping the number he was about to call. Instead he keyed in a text message, thumb bouncing over the pad. Freya craned forward, trying to see what he was writing, but the phone’s display was in Arabic and she couldn’t read it. He finished tapping and pressed Send, murmuring ‘Shukran awi’ to the driver and replacing the mobile on the dashboard.
‘I’m waiting,’ she said.
‘Just bear with me, Freya. There’s a lot of stuff … I can’t … Not here. We have to go somewhere first. I will explain everything, I promise, but this isn’t the right place. Please, trust me on this.’
He glanced round at her, then spoke to the driver in Arabic, issuing instructions before settling back in his seat again and staring up at the roof.
They drove for thirty minutes – half that time spent sitting stationary in a traffic jam – heading north, Freya thought although she couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain. They passed cemeteries, and some sort of military base, and an enormous floodlit stadium before leaving the Autoroute and following a broad avenue lined with palm trees. From there they turned off into a grid of drab, dusty streets between uniform four-storey concrete apartment blocks. Roadside lamps suffused everything with a drab yellow glow as though the buildings and pavements were suffering from jaundice. The driver clearly had no idea where he was going, and it was left to Flin to direct him, instructing him to turn right here, left there, straight ahead at this crossroads until finally they pulled up outside one of the blocks, indistinguishable from its neighbours save for the slightly different patterns of washing hanging from its balconies. As Flin handed over a sizeable tip on top of what he’d already paid the driver, Freya slid the gun under the front seat, knowing she was never going to use it and there was no point taking it with her. They got out.
‘Do you want to tell me where we are?’ she asked as they walked towards the building’s entrance, the blare of music receding as the taxi motored off behind them, leaving everything eerily silent.
‘Ain Shams,’ replied Flin. ‘It’s a suburb in northern Cairo. Appropriate, I suppose, given the circumstances?’
Freya raised her eyebrows, asked what he meant.
‘Remember the papyrus we saw in the museum? Imti-Khentika wrote it in the great sun temple of Heliopolis, and the remains of the great sun temple of Heliopolis …’
He stamped a foot on the ground.
‘The most important religious centre in ancient Egypt now propping up a housing estate.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Such is progress.’
They passed into a dusty foyer area – a row of gas cylinders lined up along one wall, a stack of broken chairs against another – and started up a staircase.
‘Is this where you live?’
Flin shook his head.
‘Just somewhere they use.’
She waited for him to expand on this, explain who ‘they’ were, but he just led her up to the third floor and along a gloomy corridor, stopping in front of a door about halfway down. He paused, head cocked, listening – whether for sounds from within the apartment or from back along the corridor she couldn’t tell – then, raising a hand, gave three sharp knocks. Almost immediately, as though someone was waiting on the other side, there was a soft scraping sound as the door’s spyhole cover was drawn back, and then the door itself was thrown open. In front of them stood Molly Kiernan.
‘Thank God,’ she said, grasping Flin’s hand and then Freya’s, pulling them into the apartment and kicking the door closed behind them. ‘I’ve been so very worried.’
Although it was less than 48 hours since Freya had last seen her, she seemed older somehow, more careworn, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, her skin lined and grey. She gazed at them, taking in their filthy clothes, Flin’s bloodied arm, then ushered them down a hallway and into a softly lit living area, Flin all the while filling her in on what had happened. No great detail, just a basic overview, starting with what Freya had told him about the body in the desert, the map, the photographic films, and then moving on to the events of that afternoon and evening. As he spoke Freya got the unsettling impression from the manner in which he described it all, the way he seemed to take it as read that Kiernan would know about such things as the Hidden Oasis and Rudi Schmidt and Romani Girgis and the Gilf Kebir, that while the specifics of what they had gone through might have been new to her, the characters and places involved most certainly weren’t.
In the living room Kiernan sat them down on a sofa and disappeared. She returned a moment later with a bowl of warm water, a first aid kit and a steel surgical dish in which sat various syringes and glass ampoules.
‘Flin texted me that y
ou weren’t in great shape,’ she explained to Freya as she knelt in front of Flin and, clicking her fingers, motioned him to roll up his sleeve. ‘There are towels and clean clothes in the bedrooms – I had to guess your size, I’m afraid – but first we need to get you both patched up. Ow!’
She winced as she saw the wound on Flin’s arm, a gaping four-inch tear slicing down his forearm.
‘Whole shirt off, please.’
He mumbled something.
‘For goodness sake, it’s nothing Freya and I haven’t seen before. Come on, get it off.’
Reluctantly he stood. Undoing a few buttons, he pulled out the photographs of the oasis – unharmed save for some mud smears on the topmost one – and placed them on the floor before unbuttoning the rest of the shirt. He slipped it off his shoulders and sat down again. His torso was wiry and muscular, his chest matted with dark hair. Brisk and businesslike, Kiernan snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and set to work wiping down his arm with water and cotton wool before gently cleaning the wound with a disinfectant swab.
‘My mother was a nurse,’ she explained to Freya as she dabbed. ‘I’ve been doing this sort of stuff my whole life. You up to date with your tetanus and hepatitis jabs?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Freya. ‘Look, I want to know—’
‘Let’s get you cleaned up first, then we can talk.’ Kiernan’s tone was kindly but firm, matron-like, leaving no room for argument. ‘I’m going to sort Flin out, then give you booster shots. You don’t want to take any chances if you’ve been crawling round somewhere like Manshiet Nasser. The place is home to every germ known to man. And probably a few that aren’t as well.’
She finished cleaning Flin’s arm and, pulling what looked like a large biro from the first aid bag, removed its lid and gently ran its tip along the lip of the wound. A transparent, glue-like liquid trailed out across the lacerated skin.
‘Dermabond,’ she explained, pinching the two edges of the gash together. ‘Not ideal, but it will have to do till we can organize proper sutures.’
Flin had turned his head to one side and was gazing out of the window, trying not to look at his arm and what was being done to it. There was a brief silence, then:
‘They can’t find it.’
Initially Freya thought he was talking to himself, or to both of them, but when she looked across she saw that his eyes had swung towards Kiernan. That the comment was directed at her alone.
‘They wouldn’t have bothered showing me the photos otherwise. They can’t find it.’
Kiernan was still pinching the lips of the wound, holding them together while the tissue adhesive bonded.
‘What about Schmidt’s map?’ she asked. ‘You said there were compass bearings, distances.’
‘Obviously not accurate. It’s hard enough navigating in the desert with proper equipment. By the looks of things Schmidt only had the single compass, and that had a broken sighting wire. He could have been fifty kilometres out. A hundred.’
It was surreal, as if Freya had ceased to exist.
‘But Girgis has got helicopters,’ Kiernan continued, checking that the wound was firmly closed before starting to bandage Flin’s arm. ‘Even if the bearings were a hundred kilometres out he should still be able to track it down. All he’s got to do is to fly over the Gilf in the rough vicinity: a tree-filled gorge can’t be that difficult to locate.’
‘I can’t explain it, Molly, any more than I can explain why every other bugger who’s searched for the place over the years has come up empty-handed. All I know is that if Girgis had found the oasis he would have killed us straight away instead of playing name the picture. He’s struggling, he’s seriously struggling.’
Freya just sat there, bewildered. She felt as if she had slipped into some sort of dream state in which she was part of a scene and yet at the same time divorced from it, present but, for some inexplicable reason, barred from interacting with those around her. I’m still here, she felt like screaming. I’m not invisible, you know.
She said nothing, just allowed the conversation to unfold around her. When Kiernan had bandaged and inoculated Flin – who put his shirt back on despite it being caked in mud and blood – she instructed Freya to roll up her own sleeve and injected her as well. Two swift shots in the biceps, one for tetanus, one hepatitis B, in and out with barely a prick. Expert.
Only when all the medical stuff was out of the way and Kiernan had started talking about towels and clean clothes, explaining how to work the temperature control on the shower – ‘It’s a bit stubborn, I’m afraid. You have to play around with it’ – did Freya finally snap.
‘I don’t care about the goddam shower!’ she yelled, standing and backing away towards the door. ‘Or towels or clothes or any of the rest of it. I want to know what’s going on. You hear? I want you to tell me who you are and what the fuck’s going on! Or so help me I’m walking out of this building and straight into the nearest police station.’
Flin and Kiernan exchanged a glance. Slowly and deliberately, Kiernan started gathering all the medical equipment together.
‘Please sit down, Freya,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to sit down! I want to know what’s happening! How many times do I have to ask? Someone’s just tried to cut off my arm and you’re telling me to take a shower. What the hell’s wrong with you people!’
Her voice had risen almost to a scream, her eyes wide with fury and frustration. Kiernan allowed her to finish, talk herself out, then again asked her to sit down.
‘I appreciate how very difficult this is for you,’ she said, calmly, but firmly. ‘And please believe me, Freya, I am genuinely sorry for everything that has happened. If I had thought for one minute you were going to be in danger I would never have allowed you to stay alone in Dakhla.’
She crossed the room and dropped the used swabs, syringes and bandages into a wastepaper bin in the corner, staring down at them for a moment before turning back to Freya.
‘Unfortunately one can’t always foresee events,’ she said, eyes fixed on the younger woman. ‘One just has to deal with them as and when they occur. Which is what we are trying to do now. You have every right to demand answers, and you’ll have them, I promise, but first I needed to get the full picture from Flin. Whatever you might think, you are with friends here. You’re safe. Now please, Freya, sit down and we can talk.’
She extended a hand towards the sofa, the gesture at once both placatory and commanding. Freya hesitated, then sat, not on the sofa, but in an armchair opposite, perching right on the edge of the seat as though poised to leap up at any moment. Kiernan stared at her, the faintest hint of annoyance in her expression, like a teacher who has been deliberately disobeyed by a pupil. Then, with a sigh, she collected the water bowl, surgical dish and first aid kit and passed them through a serving hatch into the kitchen before taking the seat beside Flin, her hands clasped primly in her lap, her back ramrod straight. Something about the scenario, the way the two of them were positioned opposite her, made Freya feel as if she was in a job interview.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘Well, as you’ve already guessed, there is more to recent events than either of us has let on to you,’ said Kiernan, staring straight at Freya, her grey eyes unblinking, hard chips of flint. ‘I apologize, both for myself and I’m sure for Flin as well, that you have been kept in the dark about certain things. Unfortunately there are issues of national security involved here – very considerable issues of national security – that have prevented us being wholly candid with you. I am only doing so now because after everything you’ve gone through continued evasion would seem both pointless and unfair. I’m going to explain what’s going on, Freya, and I’m going to explain why it’s going on. Before I do, however, I require your assurance that you will respect the highly sensitive nature of what you are about to hear. That no word of it will pass beyond these four walls. Will you give me that assurance?’
Freya said nothing.
‘Wi
ll you give me that assurance, Freya?’
Still she didn’t respond and Kiernan’s tone hardened.
‘Freya, if you can’t guarantee …’
‘She’s not going to tell anyone, Molly,’ said Flin. ‘Not after what she’s seen of Girgis. She has more reason to hate the man than either of us. She’s safe.’
Kiernan continued to stare at Freya, her eyes narrowed. Then she nodded, her features softening slightly. When she spoke her voice was more gentle.
‘I’m sorry, Freya, but you have to understand, this is an extremely delicate situation. I can’t take any chances. There’s just too much at stake here.’
Freya looked from her to Flin and back again. There was silence, then:
‘You’re some sort of spook, aren’t you?’ she said.
Kiernan unclasped her hands, smoothed down her skirt, laid her hands in her lap again.
‘I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Counter-terrorism. Flin is …’
‘Ex-spook,’ he said. ‘I had a brief and distinctly inglorious career with MI6 after which it was decided the world would be a safer place if I stuck to pottery and hieroglyphs. Although they did teach me how to shoot, so I guess it wasn’t a complete waste of time.’
For the briefest of moments his eyes met Freya’s before veering away.
‘And Alex?’ she asked. ‘Was she … ?’
Kiernan was shaking her head before Freya had even finished the question.
‘Your sister was a desert explorer, not a spy. She was helping us, that’s all. Just like Flin has been helping us.’
‘Helping you with what, Molly? What the hell did you get my sister involved in?’
Kiernan held her stare, raising a hand to touch the small gold crucifix hanging round her neck.
‘I think it’s time I told you about something called Sandfire,’ she said. ‘The reason we’re sitting here now, the reason I’ve been in Egypt for the last twenty-three years and the reason a singularly unpleasant man named Romani Girgis will stop at nothing to find the whereabouts of the lost oasis of Zerzura.’
DAKHLA