by K J Griffin
It was the moment of truth; but now that it had come, the desire to postpone it was stronger than the will to see it through. She asked him about his guests. He waved a dismissive hand.
‘They don’t need me to put them to bed,’ he yawned.
But Sophie pulled him up again just outside the balcony door. Inside, the singing was still loud.
‘Can I ask you one more thing, Omar?’
He looked at her severely in the stronger light.
‘It’s about Hennessy,’ she continued. Why do you trust me not to go to the police about him?’
‘Because you would lose your money, Sophie, and I trust you not to do that.’
The smile was smug, appreciative of the inherent cruelty. Every time she felt she was making progress, Al-Ajnabi had a habit of stabbing her straight in the heart. Brusquely, she turned her back on him and marched huffily across the room, ignoring the festive Latins and the comatose Hennessy.
But in that way Al-Ajnabi perfected of being able to control her every thought and move, she found Hasan in the corridor, evidently waiting to lead her to the altar. In protest, Sophie made him wait for ages in the corridor outside her apartment while she sat inside, head cupped in hands. Suddenly, she longed to be back with Joanna in the Iffley Road, or in bed with Marcus in his college rooms.
It was a morbid fascination which Omar had cast over her as much as any sense of resignation that eventually drove Sophie to scoop up her night things and prepare herself for the walk to the gallows. Hasan was waiting there as she had left him, giving no sign of impatience or inconvenience.
They walked the length of the hallway and climbed the cream-carpeted stairs. Al-Ajnabi’s rooms were at the far end of the right transversal corridor, somewhere over the smoking room. Hasan knocked, waited a second, then opened the door for Sophie without entering himself.
The light was dim. Straight in front, Sophie could make out the bed, the head pushed up against the right hand wall. She had imagined a four-poster. It wasn’t, but to her relief, it looked wide enough to exclude any but the most contrived of intimacies.
Al-Ajnabi was standing in the balcony facing towards her, cradling what looked like a nightcap.
‘Can I get you another drink?’ he asked morosely.
Sophie shook her head and stood frozen in the doorway, her night bag hanging limp in trembling hands. The urge to bolt was almost overwhelming. She could picture herself vividly, running down the stairs, knocking Hasan over in the corridor, screaming for Carl to let her out, then running mad and unstoppable across Folly Bridge, all the length of St. Aldates to Marcus’s rooms in Christ Church, where he would be waiting to scoop her into his arms.
Again, Al-Ajnabi must have read her thoughts, for he was walking straight towards her, and before she knew it, he had taken her hand, escorting her across the room. He switched on a soft light and opened the bathroom door.
‘Why don’t you get changed?’ he commanded, rather than asked, in a tone that didn’t allow for any more hesitation.
Sophie did as he asked; what was the use in delaying the inevitable any longer? Instead, with the door locked tight behind her, she changed into her sexiest underwear and a negligee. She had thought about wearing her staid old pair of stripy pyjamas, just to annoy him, but pride had dictated a last-minute change of heart; she had a hunch that attack was her best form of defence.
He was waiting between the bed and the balcony, glass in hand. In the softest of light, his gaze was inscrutable.
‘So what are you going to do, Omar—stare at me all night?’ she teased, walking round him to the other side of the bed.
He seemed startled, shook his head then, to Sophie’s incredulity, turned his back on her and retreated to the balcony.
‘You get some sleep,’ he grunted taciturnly, ‘I will be some time.’
There was nothing to do but comply with his strange directive, so Sophie turned away from him and did as he suggested. The bed was nothing fancy. No tacky silk sheets, just plain white cotton. It was cosy and quiet inside, but Sophie couldn’t sleep. Why had Omar gone to all this trouble to have her in bed, only to ignore her for an extended, solitary drinking session outside? Somehow it was more uncomfortable with him outside on the balcony, brooding about whatever he brooded about, rather than snoring an arm’s length away across the bed.
Chapter 12: Cairo: October 14
Cairo airport was an old friend. Nothing seemed to have change despite the tumult that had ravaged the seat of the Pharaohs of late. With a sense of well being, Clayton breathed in the warm desert air, listened in amusement to the animated Arabic gabble all around, appreciated the confusion and dilapidation that reigned unchallenged inside the airport terminal.
He was also glad to see that the British Embassy had sent a youngster to collect him. Impressionable and easy to commandeer, thought Clayton approvingly. No, he did not wish to stay in the Embassy’s guest suite. And no again, he did not wish to join the Ambassador’s Anglo-Egyptian soirée. He had other meetings that night. His instructions sent from London had been explicit and he intended this visit to be strictly off record.
‘Just take me to the Nile Sheraton in Garden City,’ he told Beale, the driver. ‘And be prepared to hang around. You might be in for a late night.’
Beale was driving an embassy Land Rover Discovery that gave the two Englishmen a superior view of the chaotic Cairene traffic. Neither man bothered with conversation. Clayton wound his window down to stare at the raucous nightlife. Above the furious clanking of car horns, interminable strains of Arab pop or Koranic verse blasted from roadside kiosks, fighting out their own battle between religion and secularism that had so recently almost plunged the country into civil chaos. Smells of barbecued meat and corncobs filled the air. The pavements seethed with the bustle of pedestrians in jellabas, thobes, abayas and western dress.
Clayton was familiar with the forty-minute drive from the airport to downtown Cairo, but he noted with frustration that the swelling Cairene population had more than doubled the journey time since his last visit. This had been his first posting back in 1980, shortly after he had joined the Service. Back then he had enjoyed Cairo, too—a pleasant base in the madness of the Middle East—before postings to increasingly risky trouble spots had forced him to work ever harder for his civil service pension.
Inside the lobby of the Nile Sheraton, Clayton collected the message he was expecting, checked in, and told Beale to wait around. A gentleman was waiting for Clayton in the bar, the receptionist informed him. Clayton grunted. This one could wait a few minutes while he freshened up and placed an important call. In any case, the man in the bar was paid well enough for his services.
The bar was quiet, the lighting dim, seemingly apologetic about its very presence in a country where so many would have wanted it banned. There were only a couple of executive types sipping imported beers in the darkness, lost inside their padded black leather chairs. Clayton found his man, an Egyptian businessman, sitting alone at a table at the far end of the bar. They shook hands, and Clayton ordered a beer to the Egyptian’s abstemious mineral water. He looked around. It was reassuringly quiet. They could get straight down to business.
‘So why do our Ramli friends want to spend so much money in Britain, Waleed?’ Clayton asked, munching a mouthful of peanuts.
The Egyptian was effusive but vague, unable to tell Clayton anything new. Which made him restless. And in his impatience he started to toy with the remains of the tasteless Egyptian peanuts, gulped his beer, ordered a second.
‘Thank you, Waleed,’ he cut in with an irritated swish of hand, ‘what about the chap they’ve sent to England to place all these contracts? Know anything about him?’
‘Sultan Adil’s adopted son. Responsible for putting down the attempted coup. Name of Al-Ajnabi—‘The Foreigner’.
‘Ah, yes. Russian, isn’t he?’
‘Russian? No. That is only a rumour, though it is believed by many, even in Ramliyya. There is no truth
in it.’
This was more like it.
‘Not a Ruskie, eh? So where’s our foreigner from then?’
Waleed smiled briefly, then looked confused.
‘From Africa. Either South Africa or Zimbabwe, I think.’
Clayton narrowed his gaze and took a long swig of beer.
“South Africa, you say?” His voice had become distant and thoughtful. ‘OK. But tell me, Waleed, how does a South African come to be a Ramli prince?’
‘Well—,’ the Egyptian began, but Clayton put down his glass and cut in.
‘Wait, wait. Don’t give me the story of the coup and all the Lawrence of Arabia stuff. It’s before that I want to hear about. Tell me how our Boris Botha got to Ramliyya in the first place.’
Clayton knew how difficult it was to find good information from Ramliyya. That probably explained why Waleed was pulling such a contorted face.
‘Nobody can tell you about that for sure,’ he all but whispered, ‘but I have heard an interesting story.’
Clayton gave the Egyptian a sceptical frown.
‘No, no, this is from a good source,’ Waleed insisted. ‘It comes from one of the old Sultan’s brothers.’
‘Go on.’
The Egyptian lent closer to Clayton across the table.
‘About one year before the coup, the Sultan hired twenty foreign mercenaries. This was highly secretive for two reasons: Firstly, because Sultan Adil wanted the foreigners to form and train elite hit squads. These special squads were to mount cross-border raids into Yemen against the bases of the Sultan’s opponents. Secondly, the company hired to provide the mercenaries was South African, a company called Critical Interference. As you know, all the Arab states were still wary of South Africa because of its collusion with the Israelis in their atomic programme. That is why you will not hear of this from anybody inside or outside Ramliyya.’
‘Very well,’ continued Clayton, indifferent to the Egyptian’s vindication of his own veracity. ‘But can I be sure that all these mercenaries were actually South African citizens?’
‘According to Critical Interference, all the mercenaries hired were either veterans of the guerrilla war against SWAPO or of the more recent civil war in the Congo. It was their expertise gained in these conflicts that had recommended them to the Sultan.’
‘But that still doesn’t answer my question,’ Clayton pounced testily, his quest for a specific item of information making him insensitive to the Egyptian’s wounded pride.
‘For sure, for sure,’ Waleed shrugged, ‘but, ya sheikh, you will not find that information in Ramliyya, or anywhere else. Records of deals like this do not exist. You know how it goes in the jazeera, Mr Clayton. Cash paid. No questions asked. If it is Al-Ajnabi’s original nationality you wish to know, then you should try asking Critical Interference. Alternatively, you could ask in Eritrea. Al-Ajnabi’s help was crucial to the present regime in Asmara during the war of secession from Ethiopia. But I doubt if you will hear anything said about or against Prince Al-Ajnabi there, either. As in Ramliyya, Al-Ajnabi is a man who shuns attention. They say he is a kingmaker who dabbles behind the scenes in the affairs of many nations; that he has a network of agents all over the Middle East and beyond; that his organisation has tentacles far beyond the reach of Al Qaeeda’s, though religion has nothing to do with the man or his aims.’
Clayton was pensive and inattentive again, stroking the corners of his mouth with his fingertips. His mind had seized on a bizarre and impossible fixation.
‘Does anyone have a picture of this man?’ he asked eventually.
The Egyptian shook his head.
‘Al-Ajnabi is rarely seen in public and never officially, even though, as I have indicated, he travels often and far. He is a secretive man who can hide away, when he chooses, and it’s no coincidence that his known hideouts are in the most secretive of countries. When travelling, they say he usually travels as an ordinary man, not as an Arab prince, and that he keeps a very low profile; maybe even uses a different identity.’
Clayton lent across the table till he was almost eyeball to eyeball with Waleed. Then, in a barely audible whisper,
‘Ok, so photos are hard to come by. But have you ever seen Prince Al-Ajnabi face to face, Waleed?’
The Egyptian laughed, sipped his water, and muttered something in Arabic. Clayton pressed him to explain.
‘I have seen him only once. He is like you, Mr Clayton, very much like you indeed, if I may say so—a good-looking man. Maybe just a little shorter and fuller across the chest. Hair maybe blonder, eyes green, not blue like yours. That is all I can tell you, but really, you could almost be his twin brother!’
Clayton did not appreciate the flattery inherent in the Egyptian’s description. On the contrary, a strange sense of unease had overtaken him; something irrational that he couldn’t explain. The beer turned sour in his mouth and left his glass unfinished on the table, making a quick getaway from the Egyptian and hurrying off to the lobby, where Beale was turning the pages of the day before yesterday’s Telegraph.
‘OK Beale, I’m going to make it easy on you,’ Clayton snapped. ‘You can drop me at a nightspot I’ll show you on the Pyramids Road, then bugger off to cocoa and bed back in the Diplomatic Quarter.’
The nightclubs Clayton remembered that fringed the road leading to the Giza pyramids were shady destinations whose very existence was now under threat from Islamic militancy. It hadn’t been like that in the good old days. The more salubrious attracted Western tourists to belly-dancing shows; others were no more than discreet pick-up joints, and it was one of these establishments that Clayton remembered with particular fondness. A faint whiff of nostalgic delight whetted his appetite when Beale told him with a sly grin that the Bayt El Faraha was still a going concern.
The Cairene traffic jams grated on Clayton’s nerves for forty-five minutes of stop-start exasperation, making his first glimpse of his long-lost old haunt more than doubly welcome by the time the Discovery pulled besides its whitewashed walls, coronaded with glitzy pink neons. On top of the entrance, a blue pyramid flashed like a suggestive beacon to lusty sailors stranded in the sterile sea of the black veil. This talismanic frontispiece was just as Clayton remembered it, though in these harder times, only two sides of the gaudy blue outline actually lit up.
Beale had grown cocky.
‘This is more like it, Sir,’ he winked.
‘Like what?’
‘You know, what the Service life is supposed to be like, Sir: rendezvous in exotic nightclubs with dusky tarts skitting about in the shadows. Wouldn’t mind checking it out myself one night, on the quiet, like, I mean.’
‘Bugger off, Beale,’ Clayton snarled, slamming the door. ‘Fuck off back to the Embassy Club and treat yourself to a few free rounds telling stories about what a naughty boy the Number 2 from London is!’
Beale took the offence in the spirit it was meant and made a gruff getaway. Clayton was happy with his handiwork as he watched the Discovery snarl off like an angry night wasp. Turning on his heal, Clayton straightened his jacket and took a wistful glance around his old stamping ground, before approaching the bouncers hidden in the palm fronds that secluded the shady entrance.
Most of the pleasures in the Bayt El Faraha occurred on the terrace outside, where dull pink lights glowed from small round tables covered with starched white tablecloths. At his own suggestion, Clayton was escorted to a corner table, even more discreet than its sequestered peers. On a podium in the centre of the terrace, a belly dancer careened to piped Arab folk music. The waitresses, Clayton noted with approval, were all suspiciously attractive; and yes, he would have champagne.
“Which one? Why the most expensive, of course!” he winked suggestively to the waitress. His extravagant request prompted the swift arrival of the most fastidious and attentive brand of Egyptian manager, whose crisp finger clicks from fat, sweaty hands heralded the arrival of three attractive women, who seated themselves around the table and smiled at Clay
ton with cat-slit eyes.
The wait for his source lasted Clayton half an hour’s worth of pleasurable sipping in alluring company. He was particularly pleased with the attentions of one of his new companions in particular, a girl called Aisha, whose fulsome curves and Cleopatra face he drank in with deep desire, impressing her with a smattering of his broken, long-lost Arabic. For the Middle East, Aisha’s bare arms and neck, was about as provocative as things got. A hint of cleavage popping out of a white tunic girded by a thick gold sash was the coup de grace. Clayton was mightily relieved that for now, at least, the Islamic Brotherhood hadn’t closed the doors of the Bayt El Faraha and made Aisha veil up.
The Egyptian manager was astute enough to understand that the other two ladies were soon surplus to requirements. A second click of his fingers dispersed them back to the shadows.
By the time a second bottle of the establishment’s most expensive champagne had arrived, the burly man Clayton was waiting for appeared out of the patchy light near the entrance.
‘Max! Good to see you again. Just like the old days, eh? The long-beards haven’t done away with all this yet!’
‘Thank God,’ Clayton smiled, casting another lascivious glance over Aisha’s cleavage before rising to greet his old friend.
Colonel Ronny Eitan of the Israeli Mossad offered a firm but moist hand before slumping his huge frame down on one of the cushioned chairs opposite Clayton and wiping a film of sweat from his walnut-dark bald pate. When he got his breath back, he stooped to light a local cigarette.
‘Ah, they must be looking after you in London,’ Eitan smiled, accepting a glass of champagne which Aisha decanted from the new bottle. ‘You’re in great shape, man. Still got all your hair, hardly a day older. And you’ve moved up to number 2 in the organisation, I hear.’
Clayton smiled, partly in sly recognition of Ronny Eitan’s compliments; more specifically to encourage Aisha’s increasingly flirty attentiveness. But Ronny Eitan had other ideas. After exchanging a few curt words in Arabic with the manager, he waited till both the manager and Aisha had withdrawn.