Oasis of Night (23 page)

I didn't believe it, but I didn't think I had the right to say so—not to Ibrahim Samir, not now. “So you know where he is?”

He shook his head. “Captain Halim left Newfoundland en route to Cairo. He was following Jonah Octavian. Octavian is a Nazi operative who uses his business connections to glean information he sells to the highest bidder. Captain Halim landed in Cairo. This much we know. After that, he disappeared. We heard nothing from him for many days. Last week, a coded message arrived at the police station. We knew by the code used it was from Captain Halim.”

“You're kidding me.” My heart thumped against my ribs. “So he's been in contact.”

“The message was only two words. I must confess they made no sense to anyone, even to me.”

I clenched my fists in the sheets. “What were they?”

“Cafe Heartache.”

It must have shown in my face. “Huh.”

“These words mean something to you?”

“No.” I concentrated on looking blank. “Nothing.”

Samir glanced over at the clock. “
Sahbi,
I must go. My shift begins very soon.”

I lay there thinking while he took a shower. The night air through my hotel window was very soft, almost a gentle caress, but I couldn't rest. I couldn't stop seeing those two blue holes in Shiva's forehead, and I couldn't stop thinking about Sam. Not knowing where he was or if he was alive was killing me. Maybe Octavian's boys had gotten hold of him and were torturing him. Mrs. Halim had asked me to circulate among her guests and see if I could find out anything, which could have meant she suspected someone at the police department of having inside information. She'd even told me someone had arranged to meet me at the party. Was Ibrahim Samir the man she meant? Under normal circumstances, this would have been plenty bad enough, but there was a war on, goddammit; Sam was out there somewhere in the midst of it, and there was nothing I could do to help him.

I got up and threw on a bathrobe. The shower had stopped, and I heard Ibrahim moving around in the bathroom. I turned out the lights and stood by the window, smoking in the dark and listening to the radio. Everything I'd felt and heard and seen started to get hot inside of me, like it did sometimes. It was like the meter was running and the driver was gunning the engine, but you weren't getting anywhere.

“There is an answer.” Ibrahim's arms went around me from behind, and he hugged me. I leaned back into his embrace. “Sometimes the thing to do is stop thinking about it.”

“Yeah, maybe you're right.” I turned so I was facing him. “Be careful out there tonight, huh?”

He stroked my cheek. “I will.” His mouth was warm when he kissed me. I closed my eyes and melted into the caress. The darkness was briefly sliced by a sliver of light from the opened door, and then he was gone.

I sat down on the bed and took a few deep breaths, trying to ground myself. Was the coded message really from Sam? And why “Cafe Heartache?” Why would he reverse the name of my cafe, and what was it supposed to mean? As far as messages went, it was damned obscure, or maybe that was deliberate. The sick, empty feeling in my stomach told me Jonah Octavian was probably behind this whole thing; he'd taken off for parts unknown after his little girlfriend, Julie Fayre, had tried to poison me, leaving her to face the gallows alone. Yeah, this sort of thing had Octavian's nasty stamp all over it.

The diorite bowl Blount had given me lay on the bedside table. I picked it up and held it, instinctively seeking out its cool, stone contours. I tapped it against my palm while I thought.

And then I felt something give, almost like the bowl had split in two.

It had. The round indentation had parted along a central seam, revealing a flat panel beneath, fitted with a tiny door carved out of a separate piece of diorite. I got a fingernail under the flap and pulled it up.

There, shining like a new piaster, was a tiny brass key no bigger than my thumbnail.

I was wondering what it unlocked when the phone rang. It was Tareenah Halim, and she sounded upset. “Mr. Stoyles, I must ask you to desist in your inquiries. Please.”

This was new. First, she asked me to look for Sam, and now she was telling me not to bother? “Mrs. Halim, are you sure this is what you want?”

“I cannot explain. Please.” She was on the edge of tears. “Do not ask more questions about my husband. In fact, it is best if you return home as soon as possible. I can say no more than this. Good-bye.”

There was a
click
and my ear was full of dial tone. But I didn't have too much time to wonder what she meant. Just then, the door of my hotel room blew in with a noise like a hundred pounds of dynamite, and everything around me was suddenly in flames.

 

 

I
DON
'
T
remember much after the room blew up, but the next thing I knew I was roaming the native quarter, wearing my tunic and trousers from Mrs. Halim's party, and holding that tiny brass key in my hand. It must have been well after midnight, maybe two o'clock in the morning, and the native quarter was still and quiet. I felt like people do when they're dreaming, like I was walking in an unfamiliar landscape, moving slowly through some alien dimension that had nothing to do with me one way or the other. I had no idea where I was and no clue how I'd gotten here. The important thing was to keep walking. As long as I kept walking, I would be all right.

The streets in this part of the city were narrow and very old, the buildings hanging over and forming a sort of tunnel. There weren't a lot of cars parked anywhere, and the style and general condition of the houses indicated the native Egyptians didn't fare nearly as well as the rest of Cairo. Even the flood of wartime prosperity, so abundant elsewhere, was scarcely in evidence here. This part of Cairo resisted the march of time, its face turned stolidly toward the east, its future uncertain and its present consumed with necessary day-to-day concerns. There wasn't much to hope for, not here among these shabby buildings with their tidy lines of clean laundry drifting in the warm night breeze. Hope was something that happened on the other side of town, in the imagined cultural heartland of the Ezbekieh or at Shepheard's palatial hotel, where army officers from various nations met for cocktails while their troops were dying horrific, flyblown deaths in the merciless desert.

I guess I walked for close to two hours.

How I'd managed to dress myself and flee the hotel, I didn't know. I'd taken nothing with me except the little brass key—no wallet, no passport, no valid form of identification that might help me out if I was stopped by Cairo's often overzealous police. Dawn had just begun to lighten the sky when I remembered something I'd read in one of my guidebooks, about how the muezzin would soon be making the first call to prayer.

I ducked into a doorway and sat down, resting my head against the wall and letting my tired eyes close. It seemed like weeks had passed since I'd been at Tareenah Halim's party, instead of only a few hours. I ached everywhere, my feet worst of all, and a spot over my right eyebrow throbbed painfully with my heartbeat. Who wanted me dead so bad they'd bomb my hotel room? Tareenah Halim and Ibrahim Samir knew I was in Cairo, as had Shiva, who had greeted me by name practically the first time we met. Mrs. Halim had deliberately sought me out to ask if I'd help find Sam. I'd left a trail behind me on the plane, in the taxi, in the hotel, at Sam's house. If anybody wanted to find me, they wouldn't have to look hard, I'd practically announced my presence the minute I set foot in Cairo. I figured the explosion in my hotel room wasn't some random act of violence, but a deliberate attack, set up by somebody who knew why I was here, who intended to try and stop me.

I'd brought nothing of value to Cairo. Even the diorite bowl Blount had insisted was a treasured Egyptian artifact had turned out to be a phony. Although, now I thought about it, there was something real funny about that whole thing. Egypt had a law that said any recovered artifact, regardless of its provenance, had to be handed over to the government. It was sometimes a problem getting people to turn things over, because more often than not, whoever found the thing could get more money for it on the black market. Your average farmer, or
fellah,
was going to hold out for the best deal he could get, and who could blame him? If he happened to turn up some ancient artifact with his plough, it could mean the difference between poverty and a modest increase in his personal wealth. Most people were honest enough to turn in whatever they found. And yet, when I'd brought the bowl to the Egyptian Museum, they hadn't wanted to hear about it. It didn't make any sense, unless that was the plan all along—and I had to admit, finding that little key hidden in the base of the bowl was surprising. It was very surprising. And Ibrahim Samir, he was pretty surprising, too. I hadn't expected that….

The muezzin's call pierced the early morning air like a klaxon, and my head snapped up. I was looking into a pair of vaguely familiar blue eyes. “Jack.” He touched my shoulder. “Jack, your feet are bleeding.”

Whatever I was going to say was lost for all time. I tumbled forward and the world went away.

 

 

I
T
WAS
the feeling of cold water on my face that brought me out of it. I opened my eyes slowly and waited for the room to stop whirling. I was lying on a bed in a modest little room with all the usual furnishings: chest of drawers, bookcase, lamps. I had no idea where I was.

“Whoa there, don't try and sit up too soon.” Gentle hands pushed me back down, just in time. I felt distinctly like I was about to embarrass myself.

“What happened?”

“Little explosion at Shepheard's, Jack. Don't you remember?” Tex helped me sit up and handed me a glass of water, but I couldn't imagine drinking it. My stomach felt like a bag full of bumblebees.

“Were you at the hotel when it happened?” I downed the water anyway. My mouth was parched, as dry as the Sahara.

“Just coming off my shift. Have you been back there?”

I shook my head. “All my stuff is still there. The room is probably destroyed. Tex, what the hell happened?”

“Nobody's really sure. All they know is a bomb was planted near your room, set to go off around midnight.” He sat back and gazed at me. “Jack, you got any enemies in Cairo?”

“I haven't been here long enough to make enemies. Unless….” As soon as I said it, the whole thing hit me: Jonah Octavian. He was the most likely candidate for this sort of thing. There was bad blood between us, especially after that stunt he'd pulled with Picco back in St. John's. I wouldn't put it past him to bomb my hotel room. It was just the sort of thing he'd go for. I hesitated to tell any of this to Tex. I didn't want to burden him with a lot of old news that had nothing to do with him, and I didn't know him well enough to know if I could trust him.

“Tex, thanks for everything but I gotta go.” I stood up and took one step, then collapsed on the floor, groaning in pain. My feet felt like they were on fire. This was a great start.

“Jack, come on. I'll get you a taxi.” He helped me back to the bed, and I noticed my feet were heavily bandaged. “You were wandering around the native quarter barefoot for hours. Didn't you even notice? When I found you, your feet were bleeding. I could have tracked you all the way back to Shepheard's just by following the bloody footprints.”

I didn't remember any of that. I'd been with Ibrahim Samir, and just after he left, the room blew up. I couldn't even figure out how I'd gotten dressed. When Ibrahim had left, all I was wearing was a hotel bathrobe. Who'd dressed me? How had I ended up in the native quarter? And out of all the things I might have taken with me, why had I chosen the little brass key? “I had a key in my hand.” My pulse pounded in my temples, and I felt sick again. “Where is it? Did you take it?” It was conceivable I'd dressed myself and left the hotel; I just didn't remember doing it.

“Take it easy, Jack.” He reached into his pocket and handed me the key. “I'm on your side, remember?”

“Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm… not myself. Look, you been awful good to me.” I felt like an idiot. “I don't remember much of what happened after the blast. Do you think…?”

“I'll go with you.”

We went out, and Tex hailed a cab. The morning sun cast its warm, level rays over the city, setting the Nile alight. I didn't relish the idea of going back to Shepheard's. There would be an investigation and the police would be asking questions; I would need to get my story straight.

“I'd rather not stay at Shepheard's if I can help it.” I hoped Tex wouldn't ask too many questions. I wasn't up for lengthy explanations.

“Sure thing. You want somewhere off the beaten path, am I right?”