by Paul Sussman
‘I can get us out of here,’ she said.
Flin’s head snapped towards her.
‘What are you talking about?’
She didn’t waste time explaining. Waving him over to the rope strung in front of the wall reliefs, she told him to coil it up, then ran across to the column and started climbing. Although narrow, the joins between the stone drums afforded her just about enough space for finger – and toeholds, and while it would have been easier with chalk and proper climb shoes, she still reached the top of the column without too much trouble. Wedging her fingers in behind the metal brace, she balanced the tips of her toes on the raised reliefs with which the pillar was covered and gazed across at the iron reinforcing rod. From up here it looked an awful lot further away than it had from down below.
Flin was now standing at the bottom of the column, the coiled rope slung over his shoulder. The direction of Freya’s eyes told him all he needed to know about what she was planning.
‘No way! You’ll break your neck!’
She ignored him. Edging her way around the column, she brought herself as close as possible to the skylight, adjusting her toe – and finger-holds to give her sufficient leverage to make the jump.
‘For Christ’s sake, Freya!’
The shouts and barking were drawing ever closer. With every second now crucial, she threw a final glance across at the skylight, braced her feet and leapt, powering herself away from the column and through the air towards the metal rod.
Her fear had been that either she wouldn’t get a proper grip or that the momentum of her leap would break that grip and send her plummeting to the floor beneath. As it was, like a seasoned trapeze artist, she made perfect contact, clasping the bar with both hands, swinging wildly back and forth for a moment before coming still, suspended above the chamber floor. Flin looked up from below, his expression a mixture of horror and admiration. She gave herself a few seconds, head thrown back, staring at the opening above, gathering her strength. Then, taking a breath, she started to heave herself up, hand over hand, towards the skylight. For someone without her climbing experience such an ascent would have been nigh on impossible, requiring as it did uniquely strong musculature in the shoulders and upper arms. Years of pulling overhangs on some of the world’s toughest rock faces, not to mention the hundred chin-ups she did every morning to keep herself conditioned, had more than attuned her body to such exertions and she was able to make reasonably light work of it. Biceps and deltoids bulging and knotting, legs flapping as though she were trying to swim upwards, she reached the underside of the skylight. Bringing her left leg up and curling it around the rod, she drove a hand through the opening and clasped its outer rim. She pulled herself up another few inches, got the other hand out as well, heaved and scrambled until her head, then her torso and finally her entire body was out on the roof of the temple.
Down in the chamber Flin watched her disappear through the hole. She dropped her arm back and clicked her fingers and he flung the rope up to her, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. The sound of barking echoed in the sanctuary leading into the chamber.
‘Ehna dakhleen lolo!’ someone shouted. ‘Ma tehawloosh teaamelo haga wa ella hanedrabkom bennar! We’re coming in for you. Don’t try anything or we’ll shoot!’
‘Come on!’ he hissed.
One end of the rope came snaking back down. Without even bothering to make sure she was properly braced at the other end Flin seized the rope with both hands and flailed his way upwards, the guards now only a matter of seconds away, the bark and snarl of dogs seeming to fill the entire temple. He reached the skylight, heaved and wriggled and kicked himself through and rolled away from the opening, leaving Freya just enough time to yank the rope up and out of sight before a pair of Alsatians came bursting into the chamber below, closely followed by half a dozen guards.
There were shouts, more barking, the thud of running feet, but they didn’t stick around to listen. Still gasping for breath, his shirt sleeve stained red with blood from where the wound on his arm had partially opened again, Flin led them across the roof to its rear edge. Because the temple was built back into hillside, this was only a couple of metres off the ground. They jumped down onto the loose sand below and made for the mobile phone mast Freya had seen when they first arrived, picking up the track that descended the hill beside the temple. Five minutes later they were back at the Jeep. Thirty seconds after that they were speeding along the road out of Abydos as lines of police cars passed in the other direction, sirens blaring.
‘I never realized Egyptology could be so exciting,’ said Freya, the first time either of them had spoken since their escape.
‘I never realized rock climbing could be so useful,’ retorted Flin.
They glanced across at each other and grinned.
‘We’ve got a long drive ahead,’ he said. ‘You sure you still want to tag along?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
He looked across at her again, nodded and floored the accelerator.
‘Dakhla here we come.’
CAIRO
Mohammed Shubra had worked on the front desk of the USAID building for the best part of twenty years, and in all that time he couldn’t remember ever having seen Mrs Kiernan looking more cheerful. She always had a smile for him, of course, was always polite, but this morning as she strode through the entrance gate and into the building she looked positively euphoric.
‘Something good has happened,’ he said as she came up to him and flashed her security card. ‘I see it in your face.’
She smiled and wagged a finger.
‘You don’t miss a trick, do you, Mohammed?’
‘Mrs Kiernan, you would have to be blind to miss this! You have had family news, I think.’
She shook her head.
‘Work. It’s always work, Mohammed.’
He would have left it at that – it wasn’t his place to question her about her business affairs – but to his surprise, and pleasure, she took a quick look around, then leant forward across the desk.
‘I’ve had some news about one of my projects,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was going to pan out but now it looks like it just might.’
She had never spoken to him like this before, never confided in this way, and he felt a thrill of excitement, as if he was being let into a great secret.
‘You have been working long time on this project?’ he asked, trying to sound offhand, as though he talked about these sorts of things all the time.
‘Oh yes,’ she replied, touching the cross around her neck, beaming. ‘A very long time. Since before you even started here. A very long time.’
‘It is big project? Important?’
Although she continued to smile, something in her eyes seemed to harden suddenly, as though she had revealed as much as she felt comfortable with and now wanted to close the conversation down.
‘All our projects are important, Mohammed. They all make the world a better place. Now I’ve got a busy day ahead of me so if you don’t mind …’
She raised a hand in farewell and headed towards the lifts, only to come back again, fiddling in her handbag.
‘One thing. Have you ever seen this man before?’
She laid a photograph on the desk in front of him – a fat, balding man with rosy cheeks and big lips.
‘He was here yesterday morning,’ replied the Egyptian, feeling that maybe he had overstepped the mark earlier and pleased that he now had an opportunity to redeem himself. ‘The director gave him a tour.’
Kiernan nodded and slipped the picture back into her bag.
‘Would you do me a favour, Mohammed? If you see him again give me a call, let me know he’s in the building?’
‘Of course, Mrs Kiernan. The moment I see him. You will be the first to know.’
She thanked him, crossed the foyer, stepped into the lift and disappeared.
‘A very nice lady,’ Mohammed Shubra told his wife when he called her later that m
orning. ‘Tough as old shoe leather, though. I certainly wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her.’
DAKHLA
Emerging from the undergrowth, the figure paused a moment as if listening, then hurried up to the side of the outbuilding – a plain, breeze-block structure with a palm thatch roof and a heavy iron door secured with a padlock and chain. It was a man, that much was clear from the way he moved. Beyond that, it was impossible to identify him for his body was swathed in a billowing black robe, his head and face in a shaal of the same colour so that only his eyes were visible.
Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out a small metallic object with what looked like a magnet attached to the bottom. He turned it over in his hands, then returned it to his robe. Clambering onto the old wooden cart parked beside the building, he scrambled through a window set high into the wall – a simple square opening without frame or glass. There was a muffled thud as he dropped to the floor inside, followed by a rustle of movement and a low clunk as of the magnet clamping itself to something. Within a minute he was out again and pushing his way back into the undergrowth behind the barn. Three minutes later there came the sound of a motorbike starting up, its roar slowly receding until there was nothing but the twitter of birds and the low putter of an irrigation pump.
CAIRO
Chaotic organization, that was the best way Angleton could describe it. Or organized chaos. Either way the Egyptian traffic monitoring system was one that, on the face of it, appeared hopelessly shambolic – bored, semi-literate police conscripts standing at roadblocks in the middle of nowhere scribbling down the number plates and driver details of passing vehicles – and yet when all was said and done actually proved remarkably efficient.
Just after midnight Major-General Taneer’s people had come back to him with the first batch of results: Brodie and Hannen’s car had passed through a checkpoint on Highway 11 at 9.33 p.m., travelling north towards Alexandria, and then back again through the same checkpoint at 10.54 p.m., this time towards Cairo. What exactly they had been doing out there Angleton had no idea, but whatever it was it had merely been a prelude to their main journey. The information had dribbled in steadily through the night and all of it had shown them moving south. First along Highway 22 to the Fayyum, and then along Highway 2 up the Nile Valley. They had passed through Beni Suef at 12.16 a.m., Maghaga at 12.43, Al-Minya at 1.16 – by this point he had asked the Egyptians to concentrate all their efforts on that particular route and its tributaries – Asyut at 2.17, Sohag at 3.21 and finally, at 3.56 a.m., a checkpoint just outside Abydos.
After which there had been nothing for over three hours. Around 5.30 a.m. he’d requested a telephone sweep of every officially registered hotel and guest-house in the vicinity of Abydos to see whether they had stopped off for the night. Zilch. He had started to curse and fret – not at all like him – convinced they had given him the slip. There had been no mobile traffic either, no communications of any sort for his listening equipment to pick up on and he’d all but accepted he’d lost them. Then, suddenly, at 7.07 a.m., he had received word that the Cherokee and its two occupants had once again passed through the Abydos checkpoint. Not only that, but their departure had coincided with some sort of security incident at the temple – a break-in, vandalism of some kind, a chase. He would have liked to know more, but the details were still sketchy and he’d had to content himself with the fact that Brodie and Hannen were at least back on radar. He had punched the air in relief and, sweeping poor old Mrs Malouff up in a bear hug as she came through the door for the start of her shift, planted a kiss on her cheek.
‘Game on!’ he cried in that girlish, high-pitched voice of his. ‘Game on again, you sons-of-bitches!’
Once he had calmed down and Mrs Malouff had smoothed her dress and primped her hair – ‘You will please not do that again,’ she had told him sternly, ‘I am respectable married lady!’ – Angleton left her to it and took a taxi to his office at the US Embassy. He had continued his vigil from there (and got a full breakfast sent up from chef Barney down in the kitchen – lack of sleep always made him hungry).
At 7.46 he received word the Cherokee had passed through the Sohag checkpoint again, heading north, and eighty minutes after that the one at Asyut. Clearly Brodie and Hannen were on their way back to Cairo.
Then came a surprise. On the basis of their outward journey, and the fact that there was more traffic on the road by day and so their progress was bound to be slower, Angleton calculated they would hit Al-Minya some time around 10.30 a.m. 10.30 came and went. Then 11, 11.30. He was starting to fret again when, just after 11.45, he got a call to say that, far from heading north, the Cherokee had been clocked at three separate checkpoints on the desert road south-west from Asyut, the last just twenty kilometres outside Kharga. More info had by this point filtered through on the events back at Abydos. Someone – it was too much of a coincidence for it not to have been Brodie and Hannen – had broken into the temple, smashed a hole in a wall and discovered some sort of secret chamber. As before, the details remained confused, but whatever they’d found or seen, it now seemed to be leading them out into the western desert. Interesting. Very, very interesting.
He went over to the map on the wall, staring at it for some while before going to the window. Part of him was tempted to hold out a bit longer, keep tracking the two of them from a distance, checkpoint to checkpoint. The problem was, that always left him one step behind, and as the crisis of the whole drama approached – as he sensed it was fast doing – one step behind was as good as being out of the game altogether. There was no point asking the Egyptians to put a tail on them: if he couldn’t keep up with Brodie they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to. He toyed with the idea of asking for the two of them to be stopped at the next checkpoint and held until he himself got there, but swiftly dismissed it: a fit, highly motivated former agent against a group of clueless hick conscripts – no contest.
He stared out of the window a while longer, watching as people wandered to and fro in the compound below. Slapping his palm against the glass, he came to a decision and returned to the map. Time to make his move – get in there, find out what Brodie and Hannen knew and then take them out of the picture. The question was, how? And, more pertinently, where? He traced his finger across the desert from Asyut to Kharga to Dakhla and then left and down to the Gilf Kebir. That’s where they were ultimately heading. Had to be – in this story all roads seemed to lead that way. Before the Gilf, however … He dragged his finger back to the desert highway, moving it between Dakhla and Kharga, to and fro as if playing eeny meeny miney mo before eventually settling on Dakhla. It was a gamble, of course, but then everything was in this game. He hadn’t put too many feet wrong so far and he felt deep in his gut that he wasn’t going to here. Dakhla was their next port of call, he was certain of it, and Dakhla was where he’d head them off. He rapped a chubby knuckle hard against the map, as if knocking on a door, and crossed to the phone. Snatching up the receiver, he dialled. A brief wait, then a voice echoed at the other end of the line.
‘I need a flight to Dakhla,’ said Angleton without preamble. ‘ASAP. And a car at the other end. I’m heading out to the airport now.’
He replaced the receiver and lifted his shoulder holster which he’d slung across the back of his chair. Slipping Missy out, he grasped her handle and sighted down the barrel, aiming across the room at the wall map opposite.
‘Cyrus is a-coming!’
DAKHLA
It was just past midday when they finally passed between the giant metal palm trees that mark the eastern limit of Dakhla Oasis. They had been on the road for five hours straight, Flin at the wheel for most of the time although Freya had taken over for the long middle section between Asyut and Kharga so he could catch up on some sleep.
It had been an uneventful, if, thanks to Flin’s driving, sporadically heart-stopping journey. First they’d retraced their route back along the Nile Valley with its lush fields and straggling mud-brick villages.
Then they’d turned out across the desert – sand, rock, gravel and very little else, the only signs of human influence the regularly spaced kilometre markers and the occasional police checkpoint. And, of course, the road itself: a seam of shimmering black tarmac stretching across the sands like some enormous fissure splitting the landscape.
Fifteen minutes after entering the oasis they reached Mut, where Freya took over the directions, Flin never having been to Zahir’s house before. They passed the hospital and police station – it had only been 48 hours since she had been there, but already it felt like part of a different life – and took the road out of the other side of town, speeding through maize fields and rice paddies towards the distant white wall of the desert escarpment. Eventually they reached Zahir’s village and pulled up in the street in front of his house. Flin cut the engine and started to open his door. Freya laid a hand on his arm, holding him back.
‘You know Zahir, right?’
Flin looked at her over his shoulder.
‘Well I’ve met him a few times. We’re not exactly friends, if that’s what you mean. I use another guide when I’m out in the desert. Why?’
‘I can’t really explain it,’ she said, staring over at the gateway of the house. ‘There was just something … He wasn’t very friendly when I was with him.’
Flin smiled.
‘I wouldn’t take it personally. It’s just the Bedouin way. They tend to keep their emotions to themselves. I once knew a guy—’
‘It was more than that.’
He released the door handle and swivelled round to face her. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep, her blond hair tousled and unkempt, still flecked with dust from the cavity in the temple.