He burst out onto Ibn al-Nafis Street and into the early evening crowd. The café across the street was full and many of the market stalls remained open. They wouldn’t dare kill him right in front of all these people, would they?
Just to be on the safe side, he ran for the motorcar.
He leaped into the front seat, grabbed the horn where it sat atop the hood on the driver’s side, and gave it a good squeeze. It made a nice loud noise and everyone on the street nearby turned and looked at him. He’d seen the Englishman use it on their drive to Giza and marveled at it. He’d been tempted to ask to use it, but he knew what the answer would have been so he hadn’t. Now he got to.
Now he needed to.
He squeezed it again and again and made a loud honking like a hundred geese being startled by a felucca on the Nile. People began to gather, shouting at him to get out of the motorcar. He looked over his shoulder and saw Hassan and Qamar standing unsure of themselves a few yards away, fearful of all those eyes. He grinned at them.
His grin stopped when someone smacked him across the face.
Karim the watchman.
“Get out of there, you little runt!”
Karim hauled him out as the crowd shouted.
“Smack him again!”
“These brats are always stealing. Teach him a lesson!”
Karim did smack him again. Faisal only shrugged. He’d been smacked so many times in his life it didn’t even really hurt much anymore, and this was much better than having his fingers and toes cut off one by one with a dull knife.
***
Augustus awoke to the sound of a horn honking frantically outside his house. Still half-asleep, he stumbled to his feet wondering what it could mean. Visions of Heinrich blaring on his own horn to express his anger at the state of his motorcar passed through his mind. That brought a spike of embarrassment that he quickly quashed. Heinrich would never behave in such a manner, he thought as he hurried down the hall. He could already hear Moustafa thumping down the stairs.
When he opened his front door, all he could see was a mob around Heinrich’s motorcar.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Karim pushed through the crowd, gripping Faisal by the hair.
“Oh, not you again,” Augustus grumbled.
“I need to talk to you!” the boy said, all wide-eyed.
“Why not knock like anyone else?”
“I didn’t have time. Could you let me in?”
Moustafa stormed up. “What trouble are you causing now? Why can’t you just leave Mr. Wall alone?”
“I seem to have picked up a street boy like some people pick up malaria,” Augustus said dryly. “But he claims he has something to tell us. Let him go, Karim, I’ll handle it from here. Faisal, get in the house before you cause a riot.”
“Don’t let him in the house. It will cause talk in the neighborhood,” Moustafa whispered.
“I’m sure they’re already talking about me nonstop. This won’t change a thing.”
They entered the house and closed the door. Augustus sighed with relief, glad to be away from all those staring faces.
“So why did you wake us by getting your filthy fingers on Herr Schäfer’s motorcar?” Moustafa said, glaring down at the boy.
“I was being chased by Hassan and his cousins! They were going to skin me alive!”
“Oh, that lot.” Augustus sighed. “They’re like a bad penny.”
“How can a coin be bad?” Faisal asked.
“It’s a figure of speech. Well, you can stay here for a bit until the coast is clear. In the meantime, don’t bother us. We’re trying to imagine where there could be a church in a mosque. The Germans are supposed to be meeting there tonight, but we can’t for the life of us figure out what the devil that could mean.”
Faisal scratched his head, thinking. Augustus turned to Moustafa. “Any ideas now that you’ve slept on it?”
“There are many churches built next to mosques,” Moustafa replied. “One is not far from here. It’s an Armenian church, right beside a mosque.”
Faisal brightened. “I know where it is!”
Augustus ignored him. “No, that couldn’t be it. Shalaby said the exact words were ‘the church in the mosque.’”
Moustafa thought for a moment.
“I know where it is,” Faisal said again.
“Be silent, Little Infidel. I’m thinking. Ah, could it be one of the ancient churches that were destroyed in the seventh century when the first Muslims invaded?”
Augustus scratched his chin, noticing that he needed a shave. “One of the old Byzantine churches? That’s possible, but I don’t know of any example still surviving.”
“I KNOW WHERE IT IS!” Faisal shouted.
The two men turned to him.
“Where?” Augustus asked.
Faisal cocked his head and looked at him slyly. “If I tell you, will you do something for me?”
“Bah! He just wants money,” Moustafa growled. “Sit in the corner and keep your mouth shut.”
“I don’t want money,” Faisal whined. “I just want you to get Hassan and his cousins arrested.”
“Oh, I’ll gladly do that for free,” Augustus said.
“Great!” Faisal said, jumping in the air and spinning around. Then he thought for a moment. “Well, if you’d do that for free anyway, perhaps you could give me ten piastres?”
“Tell me where the damn church in the mosque is or I’ll let Moustafa squash you into a pancake.”
“What’s a pancake?” Faisal asked.
“Want to find out?” Augustus asked.
“Um, no. Well, sometimes I sleep at the entrance to the Sultan Hassan mosque, near the Citadel. The entrance has a big arch so it makes good shelter. The ulema don’t mind as long as we clear out before the students come to the madrasa.”
“Get to the point, Faisal,” Augustus said with a frustrated sigh. Why was he cursed with someone so annoying? It would be all right if the brat was useless because then he could ignore him, but Faisal had proven his worth on more than one occasion, which was the only reason he hadn’t been thrown out on his ear.
“Oh, right! Sometimes I hang around there after we’ve had to move. I sit across the street and beg. Every now and then, one of the donkey boys brings tourists there because it’s so big, one of the biggest mosques in Cairo, they say. The tourists stop on their way to the Citadel. Anyway, parts of the mosque are carved with pictures, and one of them is a little building that looks like a church. The tourists like that. The donkey boys tell a story that Sultan Hassan hired the best architect in Egypt to build his mosque, and that architect was a Copt. The Copt carved a little church by the door to show off his religion. Sultan Hassan cut off his hand so he couldn’t design a better mosque. The tourists like that part of the story too.”
“Nonsense. Sultan Hassan’s mosque wasn’t finished until after his death,” Moustafa scoffed. “That’s just a tale people are telling the tourists.”
Augustus scratched his chin again. “Perhaps so, but the story doesn’t need to be true for the Germans to reference it. It sounds like a good place to try. So where exactly is this carving?”
Faisal smiled. “I’ll show you.”
“And get another ride in the motorcar.” Augustus sighed. “Fine. I don’t have time to argue. Let’s go. I want to be set up well before the Germans arrive.”
“Can we eat first?” Faisal asked.
“No. We need to go,” Augustus said, already heading for his personal armory.
“But I’m hungry!” Faisal’s whine followed him down the hallway.
“Enough!” Moustafa bellowed. “Mr. Wall already said he’s going to get rid of those bullies for you. Why do you always ask for more?”
Augustus fetched a large burlap sack and put the MP 18 inside, along with a Lee-Enfield and bayonet for Moustafa, plus a few grenades. He tucked the sack in the back seat, giving Faisal strict instructions not to touch it. Augustus also gave Moustafa a Webley to p
ut in his pocket and brought along his own small automatic and sword cane. At the edges of his hearing, the big guns behind the front were already starting a barrage. Augustus tried to shake it off and focus on something else.
Faisal’s whining helped. The boy kept asking for food and sulked when he didn’t get anything. He only brightened when they drove off in the motorcar, waving to a couple of his filthy little friends as they stood at a corner and gaped back at him.
“Will we get dinner once we capture the Germans?” Faisal asked.
“Maybe,” Augustus replied, keeping his eyes on the road. The streets had more traffic than previous nights. Were the protests losing steam?
“A big dinner?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s in this bag?”
“I told you not to touch it.”
“I just want to look.”
In the rearview mirror, Augustus saw Faisal bend down to look at it. He slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the middle of the road and startling a camel carrying a load of hay. Its owner shouted something at Augustus, but he didn’t pay attention.
He turned in his seat and jabbed a finger at Faisal.
“Do. Not. Touch. That.”
Faisal wilted. “Sorry.”
The boy kept mercifully quiet for the rest of the way. Unfortunately, that meant Augustus could hear the distant sound of artillery more clearly.
The neighborhood at the foot of the Citadel appeared free of rioters. Augustus guessed this was because like all previous rulers of Egypt, the British army had taken over the fortified hill and turned it into a military base. From atop the massive stone walls strengthened by Mohammad Ali almost a hundred years before, British soldiers now stood sentinel where French and Ottoman soldiers had once stood before them. The muzzles of modern artillery poked through openings in the circular towers, ready to shell the city if things got out of control.
A few hundred yards before the foot of the Citadel lay a warren of little streets dating to medieval times. Breaking this maze was a wide, gently sloping avenue flanked by two massive mosques with high walls that created a sort of man-made canyon. On the left stood the Mosque of al-Rifa’i, a blocky edifice finished by the khedive only eight years ago, which Augustus found unlovely for its ostentation and obvious inferiority to its neighbor, the mosque of Sultan Hassan, a jewel of Islamic architecture. Completed in 1360, it was the kind of building that made Augustus forget the misery of the world and think of better things. Rising far above its imposing and somewhat spare walls were a series of Mamluk-style minarets, gracefully carved with arabesques and punctuated by a series of walkways in tiers up its length, each one like a bulb on the stem of a plant.
Both mosques had deep entryways covered by soaring arches. The two dark gaps, shaded from the moonlight, stared at each other like a pair of empty sockets in the night. Within these, Augustus spied a crowd of dark figures huddled up on the marble floor. More sat on the stairs rising between the two mosques in the direction of the Citadel.
“It’s all beggars here,” Faisal told him as they walked down the avenue and approached the entrance to Sultan Hassan’s mosque. “Don’t worry. There aren’t many thieves about. Everyone here is too poor to be worth robbing.”
Augustus flourished his cane. “I’ve come well equipped.”
Faisal skipped beside him. “You certainly made Hassan and his gang look like a band of baboons!”
They grinned at each other.
Augustus wished they could have brought the heavier weapons instead of locking them in the trunk. After the last encounter with the Germans, he felt almost naked facing them with only a pistol and a sword cane, but they were under the eye of the British army, and gunfire might make them trigger happy. He’d try to get this done quietly if possible.
As soon as they started ascending the steps to the mosque, that stopped being possible.
“A piastre, sir, for the love of God!”
“Some bread, sir, for a crippled man!”
“A piastre? Cigarette? Please, sir.”
The beggars crowded around, reaching out gnarled and dirty hands. All were dressed in tatters. One man had no legs and pushed himself forward on his hands as he sat on a little cart. Augustus looked around uncertainly. Faisal drew close to him while Moustafa tried to shoo them away.
“Don’t give them anything, Mr. Wall,” Moustafa said in English. “Otherwise you’ll start a riot.” He switched back to Arabic. “Begone, all of you! We are here on police business!”
That did the trick. Most of the beggars backed off, returning to where they had been and watching them in silence. They were replaced by new beggars, and Moustafa had to repeat his warning again and again.
“You said you sleep here?” Augustus asked Faisal, shocked.
“Not everyone in the world has a comfortable bed. Lots of people sleep like this. I have a better place off Ibn al-Nafis Street, but Hassan knows about it. So the dead Hassan protects me from the living Hassan.”
“Clever boy. Where is this carving?”
“Here.”
Faisal led them to the east jamb of the archway. Leaning over a pile of rags that Augustus barely recognized as a human being, Faisal pointed to a carving.
Augustus flicked on his electric torch and examined it. The corner of the archway had been fashioned to look like a square pillar. Three buildings were carved on it in low relief. The top one was too worn away to make out much detail, while the middle one had a soaring dome that resembled the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem. The bottom one, however, showed something like a basilica topped by a pair of colonnaded towers that looked more at home in Venice than Cairo.
“Well, well, you might have found something here, Faisal. You could make a good tour guide someday.”
“Do tour guides get paid well?”
“They certainly earn a big dinner.”
“Let’s go!”
“We have to wait for the Germans.”
“But I’m hungry now,” Faisal whined.
“We don’t have long to wait,” Augustus said, glancing at his watch and seeing it was already 9:30 p.m. “The Germans are a punctual people.”
“It is something my own people should learn,” Moustafa said with a nod.
Augustus didn’t reply. Moustafa was always singing the praises of Europe, and Augustus never knew how much of it was heartfelt and how much of it was simply Moustafa buttering him up. The natives were experts at flattery.
The beggars started crowding around again. Moustafa shooed them away and told them if they didn’t settle down they would all be arrested, beaten, and sent into the desert. The beggars moved away, sullen.
Augustus, Moustafa, and Faisal moved to the far recesses of the entranceway and sat down with their backs against the huge wooden door, now locked for the night. They curled up and tried to look like the beggars who were going back to sleep all around them. Augustus realized they didn’t make very good imitations, but with the deep shadow in this part of the entrance, the Germans might be fooled if they didn’t look directly at them.
“Mr. Wall,” Moustafa whispered. “This is a holy place. We should not draw blood here.”
“I hope not to,” Augustus whispered back.
The thought soothed him. His breakdown in the house had shaken him badly. He didn’t want to repeat that if he could at all avoid it.
Within a few minutes, they saw a slight figure tiptoe up the steps. He wore a tarboosh and carried himself like an Egyptian, although they could not see his features in the gloom. When some of the beggars pleaded for alms, he dismissed them in Arabic with the usual phrase, “I leave you in God’s hands.” Augustus had heard the natives use this many times. It seemed a rather dishonest way of saying “no.”
The newcomer stood by the pillar, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand. Augustus and his companions watched him in silence.
A few minutes later, the heavy figure of Klaus Baumer ascended the steps, shooing away beggars who clutched at h
is legs and pleaded for alms.
“Do you have it?” he asked the Egyptian in German.
“Yes, let’s go inside where we can talk without being seen,” the man replied in the same language.
Augustus tensed. Were they going to come to the door where he and his companions were sitting? He relaxed a moment later when the two began to descend the steps.
“Let’s follow them,” he whispered to Moustafa. “I want to hear what they say to each other. Faisal, you stay here.”
Baumer and the Egyptian made it to the bottom of the stairs and turned left, away from the Citadel and back toward the medieval city. Augustus and Moustafa peeked out from the arched entrance and saw them go around the far end of the mosque. They hurried to follow. Faisal tagged along, eager eyes wide in the moonlight. Augustus shook his head with annoyance. There was no time to argue with the boy.
Once they got to the corner of the mosque, Augustus crouched low and looked around the corner. He saw the Egyptian unlocking a small door that faced a garden by the side of the mosque. The two entered. Augustus and his companions hurried up to the door.
They were in luck. Whether out of carelessness or because he didn’t anticipate staying long, the Egyptian had left the door slightly ajar. Augustus heard the sound of receding footsteps and low voices. He caught a snippet of conversation.
“You have the money?” the Egyptian asked.
“Of course. With this we have all we need,” Baumer replied. “A remarkable discovery!”
Once the footsteps and voices faded into the distance, Augustus eased the door open, gritting his teeth as it made a loud creak. Faisal shook his head.
“You should have let me do that, you silly Englishman.”
“Quiet,” Augustus muttered.
The door opened onto a short hallway with smooth paving stones. At the top of a flight of three steps there was a long shelf for putting one’s shoes. Beyond it, the floor was carpeted, marking the area of the mosque where people prayed.
Augustus noticed that Baumer and the Egyptian had not bothered to take off their shoes. As Augustus ascended the steps, Moustafa pulled off his own. He said nothing when Augustus didn’t follow suit. There was no time for such formalities. Besides, his shoes were no dirtier than Faisal’s bare feet.
The Case of the Purloined Pyramid Page 19