He is so solicitous and seductive that Francis feels himself sexually attracted to the waiter, much against his will and normal inclination. The beauty and sordidness of this country are in a fine balance, he thinks, nodding at the beautiful face, “Thanks, Hamid. Yes, I would like another tea. And perhaps a snack to go with it. What do you have?”
“Let me get you the menu, Mr. Scott-Wren.” He bows slightly, happy to be of service. Hoping, perhaps, that the more daytime service is given, the better chance of a little nighttime extra. He returns with the menu and Francis orders cucumber sandwiches as if he perversely wants to punish himself with one of the tasteless culinary accomplishments of the British empire.
The heat is oppressive. Economic desperation hangs heavily in every word, on every ingratiating smile. Once upon a time, Egyptians were the royalty of the universe. Not only royalty, Francis corrects himself, but gods. Now they’re heading for the bottom, spiritually and materially. They live off the tourists, selling everything, including their souls to European travelers. A light shone for a short moment, these few years back when the Arab Spring showed a promise of another Egypt. But now these people, born into and worn out by the tourist industry, are desperately hungry for a little baksheesh. There is nothing else for the inhabitants to do but capitalize on the splendors of the Nile and the amazing tombs of the gods and kings and queens of an eternally golden age.
Old Winter Palace, the most renowned hotel in Egypt, sits on the Kornish al Nile like an over-powdered dowager and watches the tourists being haggled and offered services, as well as strolling lovers. Its pale, washed-out mustard color mirrors are the color of the desert—the color of colonialism. The hotel boasts of once having been the winter residence of King Farouk the First until he was expelled and forced to take his royal splendor and his second heir-producing wife into exile on Capri. The beautiful palace has been a home away from home for European artists, courtesans, and explorers. Agatha Christie wrote—according to legend—Death on the Nile here. Winston Churchill smoked his cigar on the balcony. Gentile British explorers called Old Winter their home while excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun.
But even here, in this five-star splendor, under the parasols on the marble terrace, Francis detects the smell of stale sex and mildew—a stench that accommodates any meeting of white privilege and tropical submission. Waiting for his sandwiches, he wanders back and forth on the balustraded balcony with a black-and-white-checked marble floor like a game of morals.
He is irritable, saddened, and angered by the heat, the smell, the noise—by the very wicker chairs, so opulent, so reminiscent of imperial times. His temper has, for once, gotten the better of him.
“Yes!” he snaps uncharacteristically when his phone buzzes.
“Nothing?” he listens while tapping his fingers impatiently on the tablecloth.
“All right. Get back to me as soon as you pick something up. Even the smallest detail.”
The afternoon drags on. Time flows as sedately as the Nile River. By sunset, he requests a horse carriage. Driving through the streets in the back of a shiny black barouche, dressed in a light linen suit and straw hat, being treated deferentially by the coachman, Francis is a caricature of the white overlord, the British dandy, the man of leisure. And he knows it, feeling every inch the delicate English public schoolboy that he is. Why ever did he take on such a meaningless case? In such a place? These locations make him the absolute most detestable version of himself. He is wasting his skills, his time, his life. The only thing that comforts him is that he is safe, as none of his acquaintances would be seen in Luxor. Only the jovial Brits and a certain kind of sensually indulgent Germans.
Francis listens to the soundscape of tinny music, honking car horns, monotone sighs from the cruise ships, and people talking, shouting, laughing, singing. As he travels, he hears the bells of scrawny black oxen, the hooves of horses against asphalt, braying donkeys, and the report of whiplashes.
There is a shabby ugliness to the streets and houses, which fits so poorly with the image of ancient Egypt. There is absolutely no dignity; every human being—child, parent, geriatric—all of them tuned to the financial benefits of the tourist. The heat creates a stench of manure from donkeys, horses, cats, dogs, from human sweat, and food waste. It is a rotten, clinging smell that lodges deep in the nostrils and stays there. The colors are subdued except in the souk, where wares have just that extra touch of garishness that denotes a tourist hub to be declining. Another twenty years, Francis thinks, then Luxor will be the destination of only the cheapest Russian and Asian charters. Anybody else who wants a little class to go with their grave hopping will be gone. This is a society which has been declining, painfully and slowly for the same amount of time as its greatness lasted.
Still, he tells the coachman to drive on until the night has descended mercifully over the city and hidden the slums and ugliness and plain human desperation. Now lights are twinkling, people are breathing freer, and one can almost imagine that this was once a serene place with dignified people strolling about.
Shortly before midnight, his phone buzzes again, and he hears what he has been waiting four days to hear.
“She is found.”
He lets out a deep sigh of satisfaction. Finally, time to take action.
He calls his contact in the Mukhabarat, the General Intelligence Directorate, “Mohammad, can you be ready for tomorrow around 6:00 p.m.?” While listening to the answer, he signals the driver to return.
“Great! And the cameras?” he asks. His tone of voice is lighter, freer.
“Fantastic. And there will be two plainclothes cars, no?” He pulls out a small notebook and scribbles something.
“Thank you, Mohammad. I really appreciate this. Oh, a small token of my gratitude will be arriving at your private address shortly. You may want to stay up and receive it yourself.” He smiles and rings off.
For the first time since he arrived in Luxor, his sleep is deep and satisfying. However, as to his mark, she is tossing and turning in bed, irritable and frustrated, yet unaware that her life will shortly become much worse.
Chapter 15
She touches the notebook in the inner pocket of her leather jacket. Small as it is, the Moleskine notebook was by this time almost twice as fat as it had been when she bought it. Stuffed with pieces of paper, paper cuttings, printed pictures, etc., it looks more like an artist’s tool than an agent’s tool. She pulls her fingers back. Not now. She shouldn’t be seen making notes now.
A distinguished looking elderly man exits one of the elevators and heads straight toward the reception desk, pulling an onboard trolley. A bellboy follows him with a large suitcase. The agent’s eye notices the discrepancy between a five-star hotel, a bellboy, and an elderly man pulling part of his own luggage. Money? She thinks, or papers? Photographs, perhaps? That’s when the desire to pull out the notebook and jot these questions down tempts her. But she resists.
Slowly crossing one jean-clad leg over the other and burying her face in Le News, the incomprehensible title of the only decent Swizz newspaper in English. She had hesitated between Le Monde and Le News but found no reason to attempt to hide her Anglo-Saxon background. In this hotel, she could be anybody. She could have shown up in long robes and remained inconspicuous or, as she had decided to, she showed up just in her ordinary work uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. The outsized marble pillars; the cool, white and black decorated marble floor; the dark mahogany furniture so heavy it seems impossible to move, and the massive, dark double doors are witness to mainly old money and the salaried lackeys that serve it. The lackeys are so much better dressed in suits and dresses, whereas the ultra-rich, more often than not, hang out on the terraced lawn in casual clothing. She fits right in, and with her habitual reserve, nobody is challenging her right to sit in the lobby behind a local newspaper.
The older man has finished his business at the counter and is moving toward the door with the bellboy behind him. Jo pulls out her iPhon
e and sends a text: “Leaving hotel now.” But instead of following the man through the heavy double doors, she quickly slings a backpack over her shoulder and moves across the lobby to the elevators, pushing the down button. A minute later, she is in the garage of the hotel. Clicking the car key, lights appear right next to the exit.
“Well done!” she murmurs. The car is an anonymous, dark BMW, the brand of every third car in the carpark. By the time she is driving up the driveway, only a few moments have passed since the older man has left the lobby. As she expects, his chauffeured car is still idling at the curb, the bellboy making a fuss of depositing the large suitcase in the back. Jo and another car stay behind, waiting to exit the driveway of the hotel.
Following the car from the hotel to the airport is easy, even if she had not known where he was headed. But staying awake is another matter. She has spent the night listening to the older man’s restlessness and his occasional snores and night mumbles. She could have slept, but the vigilance she always brings to a job, even to one as easy as this one, kept her from taking the risk. Francis once asked her why she made life harder for herself on jobs than was strictly necessary. She did have not have an answer for him then. Only much later had it occurred to her that to sleep on the job, to let down her guard, was to let the client down. And that, in her book, is absolutely not an option. She pulls a Coke out of her backpack. The third of the day. And certainly not the last, if the speed of the mark’s driver is anything to go by.
Two hours later, they arrive at Geneva International Airport. As the driver is helping the older man out of the car and retrieving the luggage from the trunk, Jo pulls into a handicap parking spot and in the space of a few minutes has transformed her looks to a young woman in a skintight gray dress and high-heeled boots. She throws a short fur jacket over her shoulders and pulls out a small handbag from the backpack. She consults the map of the airport she has obtained online, stuffs it into the pocket of the hoodie together with her Moleskine and iPhone and follows the man and his driver into the airport. She knows they are heading for Terminal 3, where the private jets are being handled. She has decided on two alternative routes to get there should she somehow be detected. But she isn’t. The man following his driver is slowly and unconsciously walking ahead to the third terminal.
As she is walking, she is texting Francis: “Which flight handlers?” Why hasn’t he told her that? But immediately, another more severe inner voice asks her, “Why didn’t you ask?”
She revises the risk of being seen by the man. It is negligible. She picks up her pace and soon reaches the two men, “I am sorry,” she says, putting her hand on the older man’s arm, “but I am a bit lost.”
He stops, calls out to the driver, and smiles at her. “How can I help?”
Such a gentleman, Jo thinks, to be wasted on such a bitch! She replies, “You wouldn’t know where TAG Aviation is located, would you?”
He looks her over appreciatively, but not sleazily, “Of course, that’s where we are headed. Come with me.” And the gentleman actually offers her an arm.
What now, Jo? She asks herself how then to detract herself from him again. But she will find a way. She always does. And then she can text Francis and tell him that another mission, although the most boring and indifferent one for a long time, has been completed.
It is now up to Francis to complete this mission and execute the client’s desire, which strongly contradicts that of another person.
Chapter 16
He is discreetly followed by two of Mohammad’s plainclothes policemen as he crosses the street and negotiates for a felucca to take him across the river. Just as the boat sets off, a sixth sense makes Francis look back at the pier. The two policemen are already in another felucca, ready to follow him. But that is not what catches his attention.
A very pale man with remarkably whitish-blond hair stands out against a backdrop of the almost entirely dark Arab faces. There is something disconcerting about his eyes, and it takes Francis a moment to understand the reason why. From this distance of about five meters, Francis cannot detect the man’s eyebrows nor his eyelashes, which must be because they are white as only seen in albinos. He is tall and slim, almost gangly. But even at this distance, Francis can tell that the man is packing solid muscle in his slim frame.
The pale man stares at Francis with a fixity that suggests a carelessness of being discovered. A shiver travels down Francis’s spine.
He has seen the man before. But where?
The professional in him rationalizes this man to be a threat that can be dealt with by Mohammad’s men. He calls Mohammad and explains the situation. Mohammad promises to take action.
A nagging feeling of anxiety, however, has lodged in his mind with a question, with two, actually: Why use a tail as conspicuous as a tall albino in an Arab country? Or is the albino an assassin?
The black Mercedes looks incongruous on the West Bank amidst mules, turbaned men, and veiled women. This is the part of Luxor where a bit of farming still goes on. Not everyone here is connected with the tourist industry. The driver opens the door, which already has a thin film of the gray dust that covers everything. And they can’t go fast due to the traffic of pedestrians and animals in the middle of the wide dirt road, so a rag-tag gang of dirty, ragged children keeps up easily. Their hopeful smiles, yet dead eyes press close against the dark-tinted windows.
“Baksheesh. Baksheesh.”
“Sir, big sir!”
“Money, please!”
Francis leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. Such incongruency: a hopeful prayer for money, yet a hard-earned experience that the world is no provider. It hurts less to give nothing than it hurts to give something, knowing that it will ultimately never be enough.
They have lost the children by the time the car stops in front of a medium-sized house a short distance from the most populated part of the village. It must be dark here at night, Francis thinks. Dark and lonely. The house door opens into a courtyard where a group of young men hang out, smoking cigarettes and talking on mobile phones.
One of them gets up, an expectant smirk on his lips. “Sir! Do you want a room? A horse?”
Francis smiles and extends his hand. He reckons this is Abdel Hamid, owner of the house and lover to Louisa Hardley.
“You Abdel?” he asks.
The man nods.
Francis slips him a roll of money.
Abdel looks startled at the heaviness of it.
“Yes, there is quite a lot, Abdel. But that’s because I want you to do me a favor.”
After a moment, Abdel nods eagerly—anything for the white gentleman who is so generous.
“You see, a friend of mine is staying with you. And I’d like to take her out for dinner and a little drive. Will that be okay with you?”
Abdel hesitates, his smile faltering.
“Of course, there will be a similar roll when we return.” Francis urges him, “Shall we say 8:00 p.m. at the latest?”
Abdel nods again, vigorously now.
Francis wonders whether the young man is dumb or just embarrassed by his English. Or maybe he is smart enough to realize that his sugar mama is about to disappear, and he finds it wisest not to say anything. “Show the way, Abdel. And then perhaps you and your company can go visit a friend.”
Francis’s arms get goosebumps from the dampness of the place, and he waits a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Abdel leads him through a large dining room decorated with tables and chairs. This must be the family restaurant that the bed and breakfast advertised. The dining room opens into a lounge, furnished with two large sofas, a low table, and a ceiling fan. A middle-aged woman is reclining on one of the sofas, leafing through a worn-out fashion magazine.
“Louisa, my dear!” Francis sits at her side with his arm around her shoulder, preventing her from leaving the room. He watches Abdel make a hasty exit.
“How are you, darling? I am so glad to have found you. I have a special treat for you,” h
e babbles on while kissing both her cheeks to pacify her distrust.
“Francis? What are you doing here?” she asks, sitting up and smoothing her hair in a vain attempt to look her usual self. But she doesn’t.
Francis lets his finger trail the outside of her arm while making a mental tally of her decline. Her clothes smell of day-old perfume. Her hair is messy and dry. Despite a deep tan, her skin appears grayish. The skin on her arms is sagging, and her face is badly in need of refills or an even more invasive procedure. She looks her age, which is, guesses Francis, around thirty years older than her lover. But she does have a slight glow of the woman once desired. She seems worn out, but there is still that sparkle in her eyes that Francis remembers. He feels sad for her and decides to make it easy for her to return to her husband. Painless even—if she plays along.
“I am here to take you out for dinner, darling. But I have a surprise for you before dinner.”
“What surprise?” she asks with a glint of light in her eyes.
“Something I know you’ve always wanted: a visit to the Tutankhamun tomb.”
She waves a hand languidly, “Oh, but Abdel has taken me there several times.”
“No, he hasn’t, Lou. The one I am taking you to is the original. It’s no longer open to the public.”
“Really?” her face lights up with a smile. “I’ll just have to ask…eh, tell Abdel.”
“I talked to him outside. He has gone to a friend’s place and is cool about us having dinner.”
“He is usually not cool,” she says, eying Francis warily. “Did you give him money?”
“Of course, I did. Now, run along and get changed. My car is outside. And, Lou, bring your passport. You’ll need it at the grave.” Francis thinks that if she is suspicious, she hides it well.
“Give me ten minutes.”
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