Suddenly a thought came to her. Whether it had been percolating all along underneath all the worry and exhaustion or whether it sprang fresh born into her brain, as soon as she became physically a part of the mesmerizing color and vibrancy of this unique culture, she found herself thinking, after I’ve rescued Maddie, am I really going to rush back to Dothan, Alabama?
Chapter Four
Cairo 2013
The driver of the white taxi was only too happy—delirious, in fact—to take her to the Cairo Hilton. So bubbly was he, that Ella seriously worried he was inebriated or high on drugs. That fear only increased after the first mile of driving in the most congested and dangerous traffic that Ella had ever seen, let alone experienced. Forcing herself to concentrate on the cityscape before her instead of the lunatic’s driving, Ella felt like she was in a kaleidoscope of color and motion as they whipped down the broad avenues that carved into central Cairo. From their drive in from the airport, she could see to her amazement that the river—that would be the Nile, she reminded herself with amazement—cleaved the city in half. Mosques and high rise office buildings stood side by side affording a hodgepodge overview of a bustling, vibrant city.
Even from inside the car, the noise was deafening. On the horizon she saw a thick orange blanket of air pollution that seemed to emanate from the city like a warm glow. The smog wouldn’t have been as bad in September, during the original time of the trip. Neither would the heat have been. The first steps outside the airport in search of a taxi had her gasping from the searing heat and slick with sweat. The misery of the heat combined with her burgeoning jet lag made her stomach lurch queasily. She should have eaten more on the plane but she had been grateful for the sleep instead.
She had planned to do a little history background on Egypt, and Cairo specifically, before their trip in September so found herself fairly ignorant of the city with the exception that she knew there were pyramids nearby and the majority of the world’s populations of mummies came from Egypt—neither of which lit her jets in any way. From the safety of the taxicab she saw people walking who were in full-on robes and turbans—and people dressed like they could have stepped out of Neiman Marcus in Atlanta, Georgia. Arriving at her hotel, she paid the driver and the combination of her awareness of her ignorance and his exuberance convinced her that she had paid him hundreds of dollars more than was necessary.
First thing, she scolded herself, as she hoisted her carry on bag onto her shoulder: Figure out the damn money system. That would have been a better use of your time on the flight over than obsessing over Rowan maybe leaving you and how do you feel about it?
She sternly told herself that for better or worse there was nothing she could do about her relationship with Rowan while she was Cairo. She couldn’t make it better while she was gone and she had no control over what his mother did to make it worse. Might as well focus on the task at hand and that was find Maddie and get her the hell out of Dodge.
After checking into her room, the first thing she did was devour half the fruit basket the hotel had left for her and chug a full liter of bottled water. She felt an urgency to get to Maddie immediately but knew she needed to have a plan first. She pulled out the map of Cairo that she’d bought at the airport. Because she didn’t have the proper converter plugs for her cellphone, she had watched its battery light die an hour earlier. From what she could tell by the map and the last email she had received from Maddie, her friend was staying, or being held, at Gupta’s family home in Gisa. Ella had only met Gupta once and he seemed as charming and darling a man as you would expect from someone who would later fool everyone by turning out to be a wife beater. Ella couldn’t blame Maddie for being taken in. She was so distraught at being thirty-three and still single that she easily qualified as being flat-out desperate to find a husband. When Gupta showed up as one of the foreign clients at her law firm, Maddie couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to have to pay the price of waiting so long to marry.
Some of Maddie and Ella’s other girlfriends—either still single or divorced—were having the devil’s own time marrying because they were all still judging their present day prospects by the standards of their twenty-year old selves. A receding hairline? Next! A paunch? Kids from a prior marriage? No way! Maddie had felt the same way but with Gupta, she was able to have it all. He was tall, dark and gorgeous. He spoke French, Farsi, and English with the most delightful accent. He was educated at Oxford and was the picture of the perfect gentleman; he always remembered to think of Maddie first, whether it was car doors, ordering for her off the menu, or any other single situation where her feelings might need to be considered.
The day Maddie called Ella to say she was getting married—in Cairo, no less!—was the happiest Ella had ever heard her friend. If there had ever been a dormant doubt or even the tiniest suspicion (had there been?) on Ella’s part with regards to the kind of man Gagan Gupta was, it was drowned out a thousandfold by the delight she heard in her dear friend’s voice that day.
Ella drew a finger down what looked like a small mews on the map and glanced out the window at the waning light. She had enough time to go right now. If she hurried, she could have Maddie here, tucked in for the night in her luxury double room at the Cairo Hilton. They’d drink wine and eat pizza and Maddie would tell Ella the whole sad tale and someday—many somedays from now to be sure—but someday they would remember this night as a very special one in the long list of colorful and even romantic moments in their lives.
At that hopeful thought, Ella smiled and then felt her stomach gurgle painfully. She gripped the side of the bed until the spasm passed. Within two minutes, she bolted to the bathroom holding her stomach and praying she would make it in time. As she ran, her glance fell on the bowl of sliced pineapples and peaches that had come with her welcome fruit basket.
The next morning, after an unfortunate evening of jet lag punctuated by severe diarrhea, Ella felt fine. She showered, dressed and was ready for her adventure. She regretted having to leave her cellphone in the hotel room but without a charger it was useless. She stopped briefly in the Hilton restaurant to eat a banana and a bowl of muesli.
Having spent some time reading up on how badly she might have been cheated the day before by the taxi driver, Ella felt confident in allowing the hotel’s doorman to procure a taxi for her. She told the doorman where she wanted to go and watched him as he translated it to the driver who looked considerably less giddy than the one she’d had yesterday. After a brief exchange, the doorman told Ella she would pay the driver 10 LE and no more. She climbed in the back of the taxi, hugging her purse with her passport and all her money, and regretted she hadn’t been able to come into the country with her Taser. That little baby helped me out of many a jam in Heidelberg, she thought with a small smile. This time, she would just have to do it unarmed.
Surely Gupta would release Maddie when he knew Ella wouldn’t leave without her? What other option would he have? To imprison Ella, too?
Ella was surprised to see that the address in Giza was an upscale one. The residential streets the taxi drove her down were beautiful, well-manicured, and park-like, with the Nile just to the east. While she hadn’t expected Maddie to be chained in a tent somewhere, Ella was nonetheless surprised to discover her prison to be so luxurious, at least from the outside.
She pantomimed to the driver to wait and he rubbed his fingers together in the international symbol of more baksheesh. She dug out three Egyptian pounds and hand-signaled that the rest would be given him at the end of the trip.
Could it really be this easy?
The swelter of the summer day hit her full in the face when she swung open the taxicab’s door. The street was quiet, although even from this distance, she could hear the hum of the constant noise of the center of town. She had heard people talking on the flight about the noise pollution in Cairo. They didn’t exaggerate.
Deciding to try to be as respectful as possible because she knew Gupta’s family was Muslim, Ella had co
vered up as much as she could—even in this heat! She wore a long sleeve t-shirt over linen slacks with leather driving mocs and a colorful silk scarf knotted at her throat. If need be, she could wear the scarf on her head or even, if worse came to worse, over her face à la Jesse James. It was the best she could do. Instead of going to pains not to offend their religion she told herself, they should consider themselves lucky she didn’t call the police on them for international kidnapping.
The house looked like a gigantic brownstone with a row of ornate doors facing the street topped by twin stacks of tall windows. Ella thought she saw the drapery flutter in one of the windows as she approached. This was definitely the address that Maddie had sent her a few months back. If she was no longer here, Ella wasn’t quite sure how to proceed from there.
She mounted the five wide steps and rapped lightly on the door. It opened immediately.
“Why, Ella, hello! What a wonderful surprise.” Maddie stood in the shadow of the inside of the door. She wore a full-length abaya with her face covered “Won’t you come in?”
“Maddie?” Ella stayed where she was. “I’ve got a driver waiting. Why don’t you come out?”
Maddie took a step outside the door as if to look for anyone who might be with Ella. When she did, Ella could see one eye was totally blackened. She could also see the shadows of the two women who stood behind her, draped in head-to-toe black garments, motionless and silent.
Ella grabbed Maddie’s arm to pull her from the doorway. Her friend surprised her by crying out and trying to pull back. “No! What are you doing?! Help!”
Maddie’s arm felt thin and shapeless under Ella’s fingers. Nothing like the firm and toned arms which had been the obvious product of so many successful tennis back hands. Disconcerted by Maddie’s reaction but determined to take her from the apartment, Ella pulled her friend across the threshold. Maddie stumbled into the sunlight and cowered in front of Ella, covering her face as if the sun would melt her. Instantly, the two women standing in the shadows emerged from behind Maddie. One held a large stick and brandished it at Ella.
“Laa! Kef!”
Ella pulled Maddie behind her and stepped up to meet the woman. “Back off, Cleo,” she snarled. “You so much as wave that stick in my direction, I will have the American Embassy down here to shove it up the south end of your ungreased burka. Capice?”
The woman with the stick looked from Ella to Maddie. Except for her eyes, her face was covered, but her eyes were lethal. She regarded Ella with a combination of fierceness and fear. Ella guessed the latter was for what the old girl was imagining would be in her future when Gupta got home. The taxicab honked and Ella, who never let go of Maddie’s arm, backed away from the angry women in black as they stood guard to the portal of the jail without its prisoner.
Later, Ella would admit that she had been way too optimistic about the aftermath of rescuing Maddie from her future in-laws. It became very quickly clear that she and Maddie would never be able to look back at it as a colorful chapter in a life well lived. It had been absurd to think it.
When Ella brought Maddie back to the hotel, her friend cried most of the way there until she fell into a sort of stoned silence that worried Ella more than the crying. She had already been confused by Maddie’s initial resistance to leaving, feeling more like a kidnapper herself, and now instead of debriefing about what a bastard Gagan was, Maddie had literally spent an hour weeping about how much she loved him and didn’t deserve him.
Ella ordered room service, made sure the doors were locked, informed the hotel security that she felt she was being stalked and to please take special care that no one was sent up to her room, and drew Maddie a bath. She threw the long dark abaya on the foot of the closet and laid out a tracksuit and slippers from her own suitcase for Maddie after her bath. She waited patiently for Maddie to emerge from the bathroom—checking on her twice to make sure she didn’t try to drown herself—and then set a slice of pizza and a Coca-Cola in front of her friend.
“Let’s talk,” she said gently. “Tell me from the beginning.”
Maddie looked up at her and her sadness filled up every inch of her gaze. Her left eye was dark purple and she was bruised from her temple to her jawline. It looked pretty clear to Ella that ol’ Gagan wasn’t just hitting with his open hand. As if that mattered. When Maddie pulled up her sleeve to reach for the Coke, Ella saw that both wrists were red and swollen. It looked as if she had been bound and, for the first time, Ella felt a sliver of fear.
Would he really let her go so easily?
“Everything was fine until we got to Cairo,” Maddie said, pushing the pizza slice away. “He was perfect. You only met him the one time, El, but he was.”
“I know,” Ella said. “He sounded perfect.”
“He was.”
Except he wasn’t, Ella thought as she waited patiently for Maddie to continue.
“He brought me home and that was it.” Maddie shrugged and stared out the hotel window, seeing nothing.
“What was it, sweetie? What happened?”
Maddie refocused on Ella in the room as if surprised to see her.
“His mother and sister just kind of took me,” she said quietly. “At first, because they said they were training me to be a good wife to G-g-gagan, I thought it was like how they say you get broken in at boot camp?” She looked at Ella and Ella nodded warily. “How they break you, so they can build you back up their way?”
Ella let out a breath. God, those two psychos were even worse than Carol. Probably.
“And when I complained to…to…G-g-gagan…” She put her hands to her face to muffle the sobs. Ella rushed to her friend and put her arms around her.
“It’s over now, Maddie,” she said. “He can’t hurt you now.”
“I know,” Maddie said through her tears. She looked up in agony at Ella and could barely get the words out: “But I miss him so much.”
That night, as Maddie slept in the other double bed in the room, Ella went online to a passport expediting company and arranged for a replacement passport for Maddie. Then she booked her friend a seat on her own return flight out the following day. She was worried about actually getting Maddie on that flight since up to the point where she fell asleep exhausted in the bed, Maddie was insisting that she couldn’t leave Egypt and she couldn’t leave Gupta.
Ella found herself frustrated with the fact that the person being rescued was resisting the rescue. She figured she would just have to take it a day at a time. She couldn’t force Maddie to come back with her. Could she? If Maddie needed another day or two to warm up to the idea, they could manage that. Ella stood next to the window and stared out into the dark Egyptian night. Something out there excited her. Something out there called to her.
Unnerved by the feeling, she stepped away from the window and decided a long hot bath wouldn’t be a bad idea for her either. She glanced at the bedside clock which read five a.m. Dothan time, and wondered if her cowboy marshal was up yet. As soon as the thought came to her she stopped as if she’d been slapped. Rowan hadn’t worn his cowboy hat in months. How could she not have noticed that? The realization was so dramatic that she had to sit down on the edge of the bed to field it. Rowan, whose identity and signature trademark had been his white, low-brimmed cowboy hat, had stopped wearing it.
And she had not even noticed.
The next morning, she and Maddie had breakfast in their hotel room. Ella could see that Maddie was a little better. She even laughed a few times and she hadn’t mentioned Gupta’s name once. However, when Ella told Maddie that they were booked on that afternoon’s flight back to the States, Maddie asked if they could push it back a day.
“I don’t think I could stand being cooped up on a nine-hour flight while in the middle of still trying to process this,” she said.
While Ella wasn’t exactly sure how a flight would impede her ability to “process” anything, she agreed.
They spent the day talking about trivial things. Ella was
careful not to mention her own wedding—which would have been taking place right about now, she realized—since she didn’t want to remind Maddie of weddings that don’t happen. They spent most of the day talking about their time together in college and about life in Cairo. Maddie had seen very little of the city before being whisked away to bastille Gupta. When she suggested that the two of them go out that night, Ella wanted to believe that her friend really was feeling better, but the way Maddie continued to look at the telephone and the front door—as if expecting company—made Ella suspect otherwise.
“You know, Maddie, if you really want to go back to him and those lovely women who tied you up and beat you with sticks, I won’t stand in your way.”
“Don’t be silly, Ella.” But Maddie didn’t look at her.
“But what I will do,” Ella said, “is call your brothers, your mom and dad and I’ll put an update of it all on Facebook—complete with InstaSnaps of your bruises—and then, when your brothers and parents come roaring over here with smoke pumping out of their ears to disembowel your intended, then and only then, will I agree to give up and go home alone. And I will go then because I will have handed the torch off to better people than me for getting the job done. And by done, I mean a supreme dose of whup-ass for your ex-fiancé. Just to be clear.”
Maddie stared at Ella and said nothing.
“Room service sound good?” Ella said brightly picking up the hotel phone.
Rowan turned off the television set and picked up his cellphone. He was regretting his hurt comments now at the airport where he told her not to bother texting him. Every time he tried to call her he got a recording saying the line wasn’t available. While he figured it was likely Ella had gone off without taking a charger converter for her phone, it was also possible that he’d upset her to the point that she didn’t want to talk to him.
Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Page 4