Keystone

by Talbot, Luke

  “I don’t want to say more over the phone, we have to meet.”

  Chapter 43

  Café du Corail was a French-style affair that, like many in Cairo, harked of a different era. George imagined that it hadn’t changed in a hundred years, and by the looks of it neither had its clientele.

  Whilst a lot of Cairo seemed to be constantly re-modelling itself with building sites that never seemed to end, many of the older areas still remained.

  The great marketplace of Khan el-Khalili was one of the most famous; a sprawling, maze-like network of narrow streets, the awnings of open shop-fronts reaching across the cobbled alleyways, drawing in endless streams of lobster-faced tourists with bum-bags. There, the bartering started three times higher than anywhere else, though few were tempted to shop around too much, lest the tour bus leave without them.

  Café du Corail was not in Khan el-Khalili. It was on the other side of the busy main street via a dank-looking footbridge, away from the kitsch, in what the tourist-guides referred to as the local market. To say it had a different atmosphere was to take understatement to the extreme. It was practically impossible to walk in el-Khalili without being offered something, or if you were a woman, without being propositioned. Here, in contrast, if you didn’t speak Arabic, or didn’t know exactly what you wanted, it was surprisingly difficult to buy anything at all.

  On the subject of price, all that needed to be said was that people bought in the local market, and sold on el-Khalili.

  But the biggest difference, and the exact reason why George and Gail liked it so much, was that the local market was, indeed, where you found true Cairenes. El-Khalili had its charm, it was bright and colourful and full of happy smiling people who spoke English, Spanish and a dozen other tourist languages. But here, you were actually in Cairo, not in a tourist-sustained bubble.

  To George, the Café now provided a quiet shai served without a smile by a man whose interpersonal skills extended only to waving the flies away from his face. A few minutes later a water-pipe, or shisha, was set down beside him, hot coals were placed above the tinfoil wrap on the top, and the long pipe hooked onto the little lid that covered it. A small plastic packet containing a single-use mouthpiece was placed on the table.

  George sat just inside the entrance and waited. He had chosen the café as he was sure no tourists ever went there, and as such he was certain that it would be the last place anyone would look for an Englishman; Martín Antunez had been quite specific that secrecy was highly important.

  However, his main reason for choosing the Café du Corail was that he always went there with Gail when they visited Egypt. If she was in trouble, she would see him there, he was sure of it.

  “Mr Turner?”

  He looked up and saw the man in the doorway; he looked exactly as he had imagined, with the exception that his skin was not pale as he expected a Frenchman’s to be, but olive-brown instead. Even George would have admitted that he was handsome.

  “Good afternoon,” he stood up and offered his hand limply. He felt drained, both emotionally and physically.

  It was eagerly accepted, and they both sat down at the round table. His guest eyed the tea, and George made a signal to the nonplussed waiter, who brought a second cup, along with a second mouthpiece for the shisha. Martín served himself from the small teapot.

  “So you are Mr Antunez?” George said, looking at the man intently.

  “Yes, please call me Martín.”

  “You don’t sound French.”

  “I’m Spanish,” he explained.

  “And how do you know my wife?” Despite the civilised surroundings, he couldn’t help but sound bitter and accusing.

  “Mr Turner, I am on your side,” Martín defended himself.

  “I wasn’t aware that there were sides?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Turner,” he held up his hands. “I forget that while you are coming into this cold, I have already been involved in this for several months now.”

  George gave a short laugh. “You can say that again. Cold is definitely the word.”

  “I don’t really know your wife; we met briefly many years ago at one of her lectures in London.” He had a sincere tone that George found quite disarming, despite his bad mood. “I have not spoken to her since I asked her to sign a copy of her book.” He placed the book on the table and offered the inscription on the inside of the cover as proof.

  George looked at the inscription and recognised his wife’s handwriting. It proved nothing; she had probably signed hundreds of books in the last few years. “Why are you looking for her now?”

  “As I explained over the phone: because of the finds on Mars. I work for the European Space Agency. We released the pictures to the press.”

  “And you want to speak to my wife because the Mars finds are like those she found in Egypt, like all the other reporters. All you want is a statement, and when you couldn’t find my wife, you thought you’d get hold of me instead. The scoop’s almost as good, isn’t it? Egyptologist goes missing – husband has no idea?” he said scornfully.

  Martín shook his head fiercely. “No, I am not a reporter. I am a scientist. And I do not want a story, although I am sure my boss would.” He added the last statement almost as an afterthought. “My Agency uncovered the images from Mars and released them to the press because someone involved in the Mars mission was covering them up. Without us, they would never have been seen. We believed that it would be important to speak with your wife to seek more information about the symbols, to understand how they came to be on Mars, to see if she could help unravel the mystery of why this is being covered up.”

  “Except you were too late?” George asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes. It is reasonable to assume that whoever is responsible for the cover up would also want to stop anyone from contacting your wife, and would therefore seek to have her kidnapped.”

  “Or murdered,” George said. The thought had crossed his mind a few times in the past day but he always pushed it away quickly. This time, he felt a huge weight descend on his stomach and his eyes dropped involuntarily.

  “No, I don’t think so, at least not yet,” Martín reassured him. “She knows more about her field than anyone, I expect she is as useful to them as she would be to us.”

  The man’s belief did little to settle him. “And who are these people who are supposed to have kidnapped my wife?”

  “We don’t know that much, but we do know that they are most likely to be based in the United States. It’s even possible, though I think highly improbable, that they are working from within NASA.”

  “You’re saying NASA kidnapped my wife?” George said in disbelief.

  “No, not at all. At the most they may be members of NASA who work for someone else also. NASA is as innocent as the other Space Agencies in this cover up.”

  George sat in silence for a while before letting out a long sigh.

  He hadn’t ordered the shisha, but neither had he had the energy nor presence of mind to refuse it. Maybe the owner had assumed from the look of him that he needed it. Now, he found himself unwrapping the mouthpiece and attaching it to the pipe. He looked at it vacantly for some time before lifting it to his lips and sucking on it tentatively, until the water bubbled gently and the glass chamber near his feet filled with thick white smoke. He then took a long, slow inhale, the satisfying crackle of the coals under the lid coming slightly before the thick, warm apple-smoke filled his mouth, throat and lungs. He exhaled slowly, pointing his nostrils towards the ceiling like a curious dragon.

  It had been a hellish twenty-four hours. He’d spent the previous evening sick with worry in his hotel room, without a word from the police. In the morning, he’d visited Captain Kamal, who had done his best to outdo himself on the previous day’s unpleasantness scale. The afternoon so far had been no better, and now this Spaniard was telling him his wife had been kidnapped by some unknown conspirators.

  From what he understood, shisha was simply tobacco
soaked in apple; there was nothing druggy about it. And yet it made him sink into his chair. Only the fact that he couldn’t find Gail remained clear in his mind.

  And here, he thought, is a man who’s trying to help find Gail. He slipped his mouthpiece out and passed the pipe over. Martín accepted it nervously, fumbling the mouthpiece from its wrapper and taking a quick suck of the pipe. He didn’t seem to enjoy it, and managed to hook it back on the shisha lid clumsily.

  “Did you tell all this to the police?” George asked.

  “Not the entire story, no,” he said. “But I relayed my fears that many people may want to talk to your wife, and that she may have been taken. The Egyptian police officer seemed very interested in my theory.”

  At that moment George’s phone rang, vibrating its way along the metal table. He picked it up, listened in silence for a long minute, then put it down gently. His fingers were like lead as they released the device and his hand slumped down on the table beside it. He felt his whole body sag like a wet teabag. He’d felt despondent before the shisha, numb during and now, after the call, he didn’t know how he felt. Helpless, still. More numb.

  Empty.

  Now there was nothing. No shisha, no shai, no el-Khalili.

  No kidnapping.

  He closed his eyes and felt his bottom lip begin to tremble.

  “Mr Turner?” Martín said, almost whispering.

  No kidnapping.

  He wanted to get up and leave, but his limbs were unresponsive, dead. He wanted to run, to jump back in time, to stop Gail, to call her, to hold her. To have anything but this.

  He could vaguely sense the Spaniard touching his arm, looking at him, asking him something. It didn’t matter anymore.

  He knew where Gail was, now.

  Chapter 44

  Captain Kamal was waiting when he arrived at the police station in a daze. He didn’t accept the Egyptian’s outstretched hand and was quickly ushered into the building and immediately down a short flight of stairs.

  “Thank you for coming,” Kamal said gently.

  His attitude was now entirely different, almost as if he felt sorry for the Englishman, possibly even slightly nervous.

  George could barely bring himself to grunt unintelligibly in reply.

  He was led past an open lift and through a long corridor flanked by half a dozen windowless doors on either side. The passage was well lit, leading to a set of hospital-style double-doors. George did not need to be able to understand the small sign in Arabic; a general sense of foreboding told him he was about to enter the station morgue.

  Kamal held the left-hand door open and he walked in.

  He stopped in his tracks as he laid eyes on the row of trolleys along one wall. About half were covered by thin sheets, and it was obvious to him that they concealed human bodies. Only one, at the far end of the room, was of a shape that could be his wife. With all his might he told himself that it couldn’t possibly be Gail, but deep down inside an overpowering dread informed him that it could be no one but her. His wife was surely under that sheet, but if he didn’t get any closer, it somehow made it less real.

  Kamal had continued forward into the morgue, and was now standing beside the trolley. He looked back at George, waiting patiently for him to follow.

  “Where did you find her?” he said without moving from the doorway. “Gail wouldn’t have been far from the Museum or the Professor’s house.” His voice was monotonous, going through the motions, dodging the fact that lay ahead of him, cold.

  “There is a series of canals running to the west of the city. Some are but a trickle of water, as Cairo nowadays gets most of its supply from the purification plants to the north. The canal is used mostly by vagrants. We received an anonymous call some hours ago that a body had been found under a bridge.” He looked down at the still-covered body between them. “It’s a long way, but still within walking distance of the Museum, Mr Turner. We need you to officially identify the body.”

  George walked forwards slowly. As he approached the trolley, Captain Kamal gently peeled back the cover to reveal the black hair and white skin of a woman in her late thirties to early forties. Her skin was undamaged and had a frozen, plastic-like quality. Her eyes were closed, but as he looked down at her lifeless corpse, George imagined her looking back at him, her infectious smile lighting his life. What had previously been a weight on his stomach lurched uncontrollable, welling upwards, no longer held back. He stroked her hair, touched his cheek to hers, and as he held her lifeless body tight, wept.

  His tears were confirmation enough for Captain Kamal, who after barely a minute moved him away from the table quickly and moved the sheet back across the woman’s face.

  “How?” George asked eventually, trying to control his voice. It seemed so wrong that Gail should be lying lifelessly in front of him. So wrong because she was such a good person, and could never hurt anyone herself. So wrong because he hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye. So wrong because he loved her, because he lived to make her life perfect, and her death only meant that he had failed. Gail couldn’t be dead.

  Kamal hesitated. “It’s not easy to explain, Mr Turner. I am very sorry for your loss.”

  George looked up at the officer. “How did it happen, Captain?” he asked more forcefully.

  “She was stabbed several times in the lower abdomen with a knife, probably a switchblade. They are unfortunately very common in the city. We believe that she was robbed,” he said.

  “What was she doing in the canal in the first place? Why would she want to go anywhere near it?” George raised his voice. Everything seemed to be wrong. Gail was dead, and all because she was wandering around some silly canal? It didn’t make sense to him.

  “Your wife was found clutching several pages of torn paper.” He looked nervously at the grief-stricken man before him. “The book they were ripped from was – and probably still is – extremely valuable. It was part of a collection of similar books that were taken from Professor al-Misri’s office yesterday evening.”

  George felt the hairs rise on his forearms and on the back of his neck. He rose to his full height, towering over the policeman.

  “There is no easy way to say this, Mr Turner. However we believe that your wife took these books from the Professor’s office.”

  “Are you’re suggesting that she killed him, too?” George challenged him.

  “Your wife had a strong motive to take the books: her career was at risk and the books would have offered financial security. We cannot be certain at the moment that it was intentional, as he fell and hit his head on the side of his desk. However shortly after the incident CCTV footage shows your wife running from the museum holding the stolen items.”

  “You can actually see Gail doing that?”

  “There were no other women in the museum that night, Mr Turner,” he said. “We can only assume that she did not know where to go from there; she probably did not plan the crimes beforehand, and so simply ran in the approximate direction of the airport. She will have stumbled upon the canal around midnight, and been robbed herself shortly afterwards.”

  George couldn’t believe what he was hearing. To find out that his wife had been murdered was bad enough, but to be told moments later that she had robbed and killed one of her closest friends and colleagues was simply ludicrous.

  “Are you serious? No, it’s not possible. None of what you’re saying makes sense!”

  The officer gave an uncomfortable smile and tilted his head sympathetically. “I’m afraid that we have all of the evidence we need, Mr Turner. Your identification of the corpse was the final detail, and as far as I am concerned the case is now closed. Of course, we are still looking for your wife’s murderer, but that is being handled by a separate department, who have your contact details.”

  George’s mind was a mess of grief, confusion and anger. He looked down at the now covered body of his wife, and then back at Kamal. The forced smile, a dismal attempt at sympathy, was still painted on
the Egyptian’s face, his head tilted in that patronising manner. His account of the incredible story had left George speechless; there was only one thing he could think to do.

  He wasn’t a violent man, by any means, but he felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as his fist hit the officer so hard on the chin that the small man literally spun round on his heels and fell over.

  By the time Captain Kamal was back on his feet, nursing his chin, George Turner had already left the morgue, with the doors swinging closed behind him.

  Kamal fished in his pocket for his phone and toyed with the sheet covering the body as he dialled a number with his free hand. As the phone rang, he pulled the sheet back to reveal the frozen face beneath. He shook his head to himself. Someone answered the phone.

  “It’s Captain Kamal. Mr Turner has just left.”

  A short pause.

  “Yes, it’s done.”

  He snapped the phone shut and tossed the sheet back over the face before marching quickly out of the morgue.

  Chapter 45

  Gail opened her eyes, but could see nothing. She blinked twice, each time chasing away an army of frenzied white dots, like TV static. The darkness in which she found herself was so complete that she had to work out if her eyes were open or not by mentally checking the position of her eyelids.

  She blinked half a dozen more times, a reflex of her eyes trying to adjust to the total absence of light, then lifted a hand up to her face, but it was like moving through treacle; eventually her fingers reached her cheek and made their way numbly to her eyes. Her eyelashes brushing against her fingers told her that they were indeed open, and that there was nothing obstructing them.

  Her second hand made its way towards the first and together she let them run over her face and body. To her relief, everything was there as it should have been.

  Sensation, slowly, began returning and she started to feel a cold, hard surface against her back and head. She was lying down on what her palms told her was a flat, metallic material.