by Vincent Czyz
Drew held his hand out to Kadir. “Gimme that recorder.”
The dwarf pulled it out of a pocket of his flak jacket and handed it over.
While the Turks unpacked, Drew sat down at the desk and listened to the professor’s disembodied voice. He wrote the list of keywords twice: once in his notebook and a second time on a page that he tore out and stuck in a pocket. He marked about half the keywords in the notebook NFI—no fucking idea. Then there were those he knew, and those he thought he knew but was unsure about how they related to Jesus. He marked the latter CU: connection unknown.
• John the Baptist – Prophet who baptized Jesus shortly before his own death.
• James the Just – Brother of Jesus (CU—other than the obvious)
• The Ebionites – NFI
• Ananus – Vaguely familiar (CU)
• Damascus – City in Syria. Paul had his vision on the way there. (CU)
• Judas of Galilee – Zealot who rebelled against Rome (CU)
• Simon bar Giora – NFI
• Iscariot – Last name of the apostle Judas (CU)
• The Sicarii – NFI
• 2,000 pigs – NFI
• Clementine Recognitions – NFI
• Serapis – Egyptian god? (CU)
• Ezekiel’s Exodus – NF
• Philo of Alexandria – Hellenized Jew, prolific religious commentator. (CU)
• The Therapeutae – NFI
• The Bacchae – Play by Euripides. (CU)
• Nag Hammadi Library – Collection of Gnostic Christian gospels. (CU)
“We all stay in the same room,” Zafer announced, “and we switch hotels every night.”
Drew looked up. “Why?”
“People see you come and go enough, they remember when someone asks.”
Drew nodded. Zafer had already made him get rid of his old cell phone. Looking at the two beds, he wondered who was sleeping with whom.
“When we leave the hotel, we leave together,” Zafer said. “This way neither one of you gets snatched.”
Kadir scowled at Drew. “If you become kidnapped, I don’t give away the scroll for you.”
“I don’t give a scroll about you, either.”
“Look, that’s the point,” Zafer said. “If we’re together, that won’t happen. Right now we need some clothes. After that I’ll call a dealer who knew Abu and Tariq. Maybe he knows where Tariq got these photographs.”
Drew looked at Kadir. “You told the professor Tariq was the only one who knew anything about the photos.”
“Eh-eh? If the dealer knows nothing, I said the truth. If he is knowing something, I said a lie.”
4: 4
KHAN AL-KHALILI
CAIRO’S LARGEST MARKETPLACE, Khan Al-Khalili, was something like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul except that it was mostly outside and even more chaotic. Tourists, merchants, boys carrying trays of tea in their hands or long pallets stacked with round loaves of bread on their heads all fought for position in dusty, often-unpaved streets. With some of these narrow byways, a car was not an option. Sellers had set up their tables so that even pedestrians had to pick their way through.
They were stuck behind a man in a turban who was pushing a cart with wooden wheels. The cart was topped by a wood-fed oven with a tall pipe. The man, who was having difficulty maneuvering around tables piled with wares, was selling roasted yams.
And then there were the flies. Smaller, faster than the ones Drew was used to. They were everywhere. You could wave them away, but they’d settle right back on you—generally around your eyes and mouth, drawn to the moisture.
Khan Al-Khalili reminded Drew of an amusement park ride called the Tilt-a-Whirl, where everything blurred as you were spun around and then came into focus as the ride slowed down for a second or two only to speed up and turn the world into smears of light and color again.
Every stall was covered from ceiling to floor with meticulously arranged merchandise: a rainbow waterfall of fabrics, a profusion of leather bags, an Impressionist assortment of fruits, an array of ground spices—like multi-colored sand—in open sacks. The merchants patrolled their shop fronts with long broomsticks tipped with metal prongs, which they used to unhitch goods suspended overhead.
At one of the clothes stalls, Zafer did all of the talking while Drew and Kadir pretended they understood. Zafer bargained hard, making sellers knit their eyebrows, spread their arms, and whine as though some catastrophe had befallen them. They would start at one hundred Egyptian pounds and Zafer would counter with five. He reminded them he wasn’t a tourist, and if they couldn’t meet his prices, he knew sellers who could.
It took about ten minutes for him to buy three keffiyehs—the head-dress made famous by Yasser Arafat—and three jalabiyas, the gown-like garment Tariq had been wearing.
Drew looked at the clothes dubiously, swatting half-heartedly at a small cloud of flies.
“The best thing about these jalabiyas,” Zafer said, “is you can put them on right over your regular clothes.”
Drew still couldn’t see himself in one of those get-ups.
Zafer’s hand shot out, snatched at the air, and clenched into a fist.
Drew shook his head. “You missed.”
Zafer opened his fist. The mangled body of a fly rested in a palm crease.
“How the hell do you do that? I can only catch them if they land.”
“Training.”
“The Turkish army trained you to catch flies?”
Zafer scowled. “How do you catch a fly after it lands?”
“I sweep my hand a few inches above it because I know it’s going to take off when my hand gets near it.”
“Right. If the fly doesn’t move, you miss. If it’s a sleepy fly, a slow fly, a starved fly, you might still miss because you expect it to react quickly. Same thing in the air. The fly is faster than I am so I have to guess. Come on.” He beckoned with a hand. “Time for our phone call.”
“I guess we have to assume that this, uh … dealer’s phone is tapped and that his shop is being watched?” Drew asked.
Zafer nodded. “If they could follow Tariq to Istanbul, then they know he worked for Nabil. I’m going to tell Nabil that I have a family heirloom to sell. He’ll know from my accent that I’m not from Cairo. That won’t matter once we meet face to face.”
“Won’t he ask you to come to the shop?” Drew asked.
Zafer shook his head. “A coffeehouse, maybe his apartment. Those are the usual places for this kind of business. I’ll insist on the coffeehouse.”
Drew listened to the conversation, catching a few words—tijaret, muhtemel—that were the same in Arabic as in Turkish.
Zafer hung up the phone looking pleased. “Nine o’clock, Aswan Coffeehouse. In the Islamic Quarter.”
The Islamic Quarter was no more or less Islamic than the rest of the city, but it was home to the oldest mosques in Cairo.
Zafer grinned at Drew. “Can’t wait to suit you up.”
4: 5
NABIL
THE LONG LIGHT of the Egyptian evening had mostly flattened into shadow when they entered the Islamic Quarter, a labyrinth of alleys, narrow streets, gloomy workshops, and tightly packed houses. Reminiscent of Istanbul, the architecture favored jumbas (much shallower, they were called gambas) and slim balconies. The motif was no surprise given that the Ottomans had ruled Egypt for nearly three hundred years. One gamba, its wood exquisitely carved, was crowned with the last of the Sun’s dusty gold.
Overhead, clotheslines crisscrossed strips of fading blue.
European influences all but disappeared. Minarets rose in tiers marked off by sculpted balconies. Slender columns flanked windows and keyhole-shaped niches in the minarets. These restored pillars of Islam towered over rutted streets canyoned by crumbling walls, piled with rubble. Drew wondered if it hadn’t been the North African light itself that had eroded Cairo and its monuments.
The taxi dropped them off far enough from the coffeehous
e that they still had a ten-minute walk; anyone following them would have to go on foot.
The oldest part of the city, the Islamic Quarter was an inscrutable maze to Drew, but Zafer seemed to know exactly where he was going. Men wearing jalabiyas and cheap rubber sandals, turbans and keffiyehs, brushed past them.
Tiny Suzuki pick-ups, which looked to Drew like oversized toys, squeezed through the streets, occasionally getting caught behind a loaded-down donkey or a horse pulling a cart.
The gambas that weren’t shuttered were covered with latticework— mashrubiyya—that allowed women to see the street below without being seen. With such forced intimacy, it was no wonder the Orient was enamored of the veil, the screen, the curtain.
Aswan Coffeehouse was in one of the better maintained areas of the Islamic Quarter. Its entire front opened onto a cobbled alley crowded with tables and chairs. Inside, walnut-stained wainscoting trimmed mustard-yellow walls. The high ceiling was hung with lethargic fans and Islamic chandeliers—clusters of lamps with glass panels or tarnished brass with perforations that cut the light into star and moon shapes. Archways with tiny pillars marked the open boundaries between rooms. At least half the patrons puffed languidly on narghiles, and in spite of the open front, the mellow light inside was hazy with smoke.
A waiter guided them to a small table that was simply a wrought-iron stand with a copper disc riveted to it.
Although Drew felt absurdly conspicuous in a silk suit—a tasteful pearl gray—he had to look the part of a wealthy Turkish American. Both armpits lubricated with sweat, he was amazed that so many Egyptians could walk around in Western clothes in this heat.
Zafer asked to see the owner, and a moment later a short Egyptian with a potbelly and a red vest embroidered in gold thread appeared. Zafer explained that he was meeting Nabil and asked if he would direct the dealer to their table.
The owner lifted his chin toward the front of the coffeehouse. “He is here now.”
Nabil was in Western clothes, too—pleated trousers, a worn jacket, a cell phone clipped to his belt. His curly hair was gray at the edges, like charcoal turning to ash. Creased by sun and age, his face was the color of foamless cappuccino.
The three of them stood up and greeted the obviously bewildered dealer. When Zafer introduced himself and Kadir, a look of recognition rearranged Nabil’s features.
“Tariq’s friends,” he said in English. “From Istanbul.” The Egyptian’s eyes were never still, darting around the room, checking and rechecking.
“And an American purchaser.” Kadir looked up at Drew.
“We wanted to talk to you because Tariq … left a few loose ends.”
Nabil nodded sagely. “You are aware that Tariq was double-dealing?” He turned to Kadir. “Please excuse me if I speak openly. Tariq was a good man. He was more clever than most, but he came from a village. He was not educated. He was only a runner, and runners do not leave Egypt to do business. They supply dealers.”
While Nabil’s English was good, his P came out like a B and his TH sounded more or less like S, which meant “that” sounded more like “sat.”
“Three years ago, Tariq made a very lucky find. He sold it to a buyer of his own—a tourist or perhaps another dealer who paid a very good price. From this he got the idea he could become a dealer himself. He left his village and moved his family to Cairo. He bought a small car, rather old. He bought a cell phone. He dreamed of owning a shop and retiring in another country. Cairo’s air is the worst in the world.”
The waiter brought four cups of Turkish coffee served not in cups, but in tiny water glasses. The conversation paused while the waiter unloaded his tray.
Nabil sipped from his glass. “Tariq got ahead of himself. Over the years, he somehow made contact with some of our customers. He began to go to them in secret, promising better prices.”
Nabil, Drew noticed, was wearing a gold ring on each hand. Which was odd because Muslim men are forbidden to wear gold. While Turks often flouted the proscriptions on alcohol, they generally observed this one. And Egyptians tended to be a good deal more conservative than Turks. Women covered their hair, and quite a few were veiled in black with nothing but their eyes visible.
“It may be that one of these contacts got him killed.” Nabil shook his head sadly. “It may be that it was an accident as the police say. But there was a scroll …”
“Abu’s scroll,” Kadir said. “This is the why he came to Istanbul.”
“Ah, so the rumor is true.” The darting bird eyes that seemed attuned to movements as insignificant as the twitch of an insect’s wing settled on Kadir. “What happened to it?”
Kadir shrugged. “Tariq was too much clever. No one can find it now.”
Zafer waved away flies. “A professor from England was also killed. Shot to death.”
“A British professor? Why?”
“Because there’s another scroll, more valuable than the one stolen after Abu died.”
Nabil shook his head. “Even in the black market two deaths is … what’s the word? Unsettling.” The expression on his face changed. “Why did you pretend you wanted to sell a family heirloom?”
“Your phone might be tapped.”
“I see.”
A waiter passed and Drew felt the heat of the coals he was carrying.
“Do you know anything about the other scroll?” Zafer sipped Turkish coffee and glanced at Drew.
Drew reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. He took out a wad of bills held neatly by a silver clip, counted out $1,000, and put the money on the table.
Nabil glanced at each of them, his quick eyes glittering, sensing that while Drew had the money, Zafer was conducting the bargaining. He tucked the wad away.
“If you can give us any information—something we can use to locate the scroll, there will be a finder’s fee. Say, five percent?”
Nabil’s eyes closed slowly, and he nodded.
“Do you have any idea who has the other scroll?”
“Unfortunately, no. Runners never reveal their sources. If they did, dealers would steal them. And runners who talk about where a dealer has acquired his goods …” He shrugged. “There is a kind of brotherhood in this business. He who betrays one, betrays all. That is why Tariq could not sell the scroll in Cairo. Abu was a very great customer.”
Zafer nodded. “Has anyone else come to you about the scrolls?”
Nabil sighed. “Yes.”
“Who?”
“As I said, we don’t reveal the names of buyers or sellers. It would make for very bad business.”
And they’re probably offering a lot more money, Drew thought.
Nabil reached for his coffee. He tipped back the glass, and a gold ring glinted. “Tariq was not a bad man. He merely wanted to be successful. He left a wife and three children. I was among the first to visit them when we received the news.” Nabil stood up. “Please excuse me. My wife is waiting.”
“Of course.”
“Stay as long as you like as my guests. I will settle the bill tomorrow.”
He was barely out of earshot when Drew held up his cup. “Four very expensive coffees. Kind of watery to boot.” Luckily, the thousand dollars he’d just shelled out wasn’t his money. All Zafer had asked him to pay was his own airfare.
“And now they know we’re here.” Zafer was following one or another of the flies zigzagging over their table.
“What do you mean?”
“Nabil is probably on his cell phone right now.” Zafer’s hand shot out. When he opened his fist, a bit of black dropped to the floor. He turned to Drew. “You think he told us the truth? There isn’t a businessman alive who enjoys competition. Nabil’s giving Tariq’s wife guilt money. As for our competition … they got here first. And promised Nabil at least what we just paid, maybe more, to contact them as soon as we made contact with him. It doesn’t matter to Nabil who finds the scroll first. As long as he gets a cut.”
“So that’s it? They’re onto us already?”
Zafer nodded. “Probably, but we had no choice.”
“Where are we supposed to go now? Back to Istanbul?”
“Salak,” Kadir said. “We go to see the Tariq’s wife.”
“Stay as long as you like he said.” Zafer smirked. “He wants us to be relaxed.”
“I guess we should go then before whoever he calls gets here.”
“Exactly.” Zafer was already on his feet. Shouldering the satchel with the photos, he stepped into the alley and began negotiating the obstacle course of tables and chairs.
After a couple of turns, they were on a narrow street lit by a streetlamp riveted to the stone wall of a building. Like a camera flash, the lamp created as much angular shadow as cold illumination. Patches of cobblestones attested that the street had once been paved, but it was now mostly dirt, the color of which gave Drew the impression that a drizzle of unrefined petroleum had recently fallen. As they neared the corner—a continuation of the same street at a right angle rather than an intersection—someone began shouting in Arabic.
The three men stopped and looked back.
An Egyptian, dressed in keffiyeh and jalabiya, waved a hand over his head as he ran. Another, the size of a freight car, lumbered behind him.
Drew glanced at Zafer. “What’s he saying?”
“He has a message from Nabil.”
“Don’t turn around.”
The voice, which came from behind them, was familiar. Apparently, Nabil had decided to deliver his message in person
4: 6
DEBT COLLECTION
CURSING HIMSELF UNDER HIS BREATH, Zafer kept his back to Nabil.
“Hands behind your head.”
Elbows out, Zafer laced his fingers together on the back of his head. The muzzle of the pistol was pressed between his shoulder blades.
“I have been waiting for you.” Nabil spoke in English. “So have they. The story about a family heirloom was believable, and you speak fluent Arabic, but it is not Egyptian Arabic. You think I am stupid? You think I don’t know the midget has the Habakkuk Scroll? He is going to be my guest in Egypt. You are going to fly back to Istanbul with your American friend and bring back the scroll. You don’t even know its worth, do you? Don’t worry. You’ll be paid. One hundred thousand dollars each. I am not a thief.”