Oasis of Night (27 page)

I was napping in the corner when the guard rattled his nightstick against the bars and summoned me over. “You, Stoyles, Americani, come here.” He was the young man with the big ears I'd met the first time I'd come into the station. Obviously, he was pretending not to recognize me.

I climbed to my feet and did what I was told. “Yes?”

“You are free to go. Someone is here to meet you.” He unlocked the cell door and led me out to the front desk. Khybir, the taxi driver, stood anxiously waiting for me with a worried look on his face.

“Khybir! What are you doing here?”

He reached out and touched my arm. “I have told the police all I know, effendi Stoyles. Now you are free to go.”

Free to go?

“The taxi driver has come forward as a witness.” The cop handed me a brown envelope containing my personal belongings, including my wallet with that precious scrap of poem in it. “His report on the murder of Pasha Nubar makes it clear you could not possibly have killed him.”

I knew enough to keep my mouth shut until we were in the car. “Khybir, thank you. You're a right guy.”

He blushed with pleasure. “It is my wish that the effendi Stoyles be free.”

Right.
What was he getting out of it, I wondered… and from whom?

I was exhausted by the time I got back to the Acacia Court, so I tipped Khybir big and headed straight for a nice, cool shower followed by a late lunch from room service. Ibrahim Samir had said he was going to meet me at four, but I wondered if that plan still held, considering the earlier debacle over Pasha Nubar's death. I didn't get Ibrahim Samir, first he was all hearts and flowers, and then next thing I knew, he had the cuffs on me and I was stuffed in a cell with a hundred other guys for something I didn't do. I was learning real quick how the justice system worked here. Obviously the testimony of one witness, biased or unbiased, was enough to damn or save.

After I ate and got comfortable, I picked up the phone and requested the long distance operator. Frankie Missalo had military connections that could have gotten me priority access, but I wasn't about to take advantage of something I wasn't entitled to. I sat on the line and waited. It was midmorning back home, and Chris would be at the Heartache.

Sure enough, he picked up almost as soon as it started to ring on the other end. “Jack! Where are you? I can't believe you're calling.”

It was good to hear his voice. I hadn't realized how much I missed him. I filled him in, talking only in generalities and skipping the whole thing about me being thrown in jail. I deliberately didn't mention Ibrahim Samir, and I said nothing about Sam, knowing this
was wartime and somebody, somewhere, was probably
eavesdropping. Mostly, I asked how things were going at home, if there were lots of people coming into the Heartache, and how Alphonsus Picco was doing.

Sergeant Picco was a young officer of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary who'd been instrumental in exposing corruption and graft in his department; he and Chris had gotten close after the death of Chris's girlfriend, Julie Fayre. Picco and I had been involved in an investigation of the Nazi collaborator, Jonah Octavian, who, along with Picco's superiors, was running a few side deals. When Picco had gotten too suspicious—and too close to the truth—Octavian slapped us both in a hole in the ground.

“What can I say, Chris? I guess I just needed to hear a friendly voice.” I kept things general with talk about the weather and so on. Something Chris said stuck with me, though, and I found myself turning it over and over in my mind.

“Everybody's wondering what happened to Jonah Octavian.”

The overseas connection was a bit crackly, and I had to ask him to repeat himself, but it still didn't make sense. “Everybody? Like who?”

“Phonse said Octavian's become what they call a person of interest.”

“Octavian?”

“Something wrong with your ears, Jack? Or maybe it's the overseas connection.”

“No, it's just….” Octavian? Why were the cops nosing around traces long left cold? “Skip it.”

“No, Jack. Listen, Phonse said this was real. Octavian had a lot of lines in the water. Watch yourself over there, huh?”

“I will.”

By the time Chris rang off, I felt real lonely and figured I'd better find some way to keep myself busy. I still didn't know anything about Shiva El Rawy, and I figured I had a good hour and a half before Samir showed—if he decided to show—so I got dressed and went downstairs to the main desk, where the registration clerk was absorbed in a Whiz comic book with Superman on the front, all tights and teeth, charging toward an unseen enemy. After I'd been standing there awhile without any sign from him that I existed, I banged on the bell a few times. “Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me with something.”

He looked at me as if drawing himself back from a long way away. “Help you, sir?”

“If you don't mind.”

“Superman has tracked the evil Doctor Ratoman to his lair and is extracting information from him by slowly pulling out his teeth one by one with hot pincers.” He giggled behind his hand. “It's very funny.”

“Yeah, sounds like a real laugh riot. Look, did you know a taxi driver by the name of Shiva El Rawy? He used to work Shepheard's, but he parked here a lot, too.”

The clerk delicately licked his fingers and turned the page without looking up. “Shiva El Rawy, the driver who was murdered by an associate of the Americani Jonathan Stoyles?” He sniggered. “That Shiva El Rawy?”

It was like someone had just upended a jug of ice water down my back. “Sure, if that's the way the newspapers are playing it.”

“Shiva El Rawy lived with his sister on the Sharia Eloui. His sister lives there still.”

“You get that out of the newspapers?”

“Perhaps.” He held out his hand, palm up, and I put a piaster in it. He glanced down at my small offering with disdain and went back to his comic book. “The Americani Jonathan Stoyles is clearly not a man of wealth.”

I had just turned to go when I ran face-first into an enormous human torso clad in the khaki drill of the Long Range Desert Group. I looked up. The torso belonged to the huge Greek who'd been at Tareenah Halim's party. “Mr. Stoyles.” His voice was low and surprisingly soft for a man so large; he had to be six feet six or more.

“Yeah?” I wasn't in the mood.

“You will come with me.”

“That the best you guys can do? This is getting really old.” I made a break for it but the big Greek caught me around the waist and held on as if I weighed no more than a child. “I dunno what your game is, buddy, but you better lay off!” I kicked and pushed but it was like trying to move a boulder. Maybe I'd be better off saving my strength. Besides, everybody in the lobby had turned to look at the commotion.

“That is much better. My name is Andros Scala. My colleagues would very much appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.” He didn't bother holding a gun on me, but he didn't have to. Those big fists looked like they could pound me into hamburger with no trouble at all—either that, or he'd squeeze me to death. “You will come with me, now.” We went out by the back door, where a Jeep was parked, and I got in. Scala pulled away from the hotel and turned the car in the direction of Old Cairo.

“So tell me. Who'd I piss off this time?” I fetched out my cigarettes and lit one. “You don't mind if I smoke, do you?”

He laughed. “I do not mind at all. Please, smoke as you wish, Mr. Stoyles. I am not your enemy.”

“Yeah. That's what they all say.” I couldn't figure his part in all this. Obviously he was military but, unless I'd attracted the attention of the Long Range Desert Group, there was no reason in the world he and I should be having this conversation. Unless…. “
North Atlantic Command advised us to expect you.”
The young woman at the desk had said that to me as soon as I landed at Shepheard's, my first day in Cairo. I didn't think much of it. I just figured somebody had their memos mixed up, or maybe I looked like all the other soldiers. But what if it hadn't been a mistake? What if she'd meant it? I didn't know anybody in North Atlantic Command, and I'd surrendered my commission when I'd been booted out of the army. Why the hell would any part of the Allied command be interested in me? “You're, ah, Long Range Desert, huh? Tough bunch of guys.”

Scala smiled at me. “Perhaps. If my presence requires a suitable affiliation, that one is as good as any.”

“Commandos, maybe?”

His grin widened. “Relax, Lieutenant Stoyles. Enjoy the scenery.”

The streets were predictably crowded at that hour of the day, but Scala handled the traffic like a pro. We drove through Giza and into the desert, past the undulating dunes that to me always looked like the breasts and thighs of a reclining nude. I sized Scala up: matinee-idol handsome, maybe forty, with black hair that was graying prematurely at the temples, and a suntanned face. His dark eyes sized up the landscape around him and dismissed it, and he struck me as a man entirely at ease in his own environment. “Do you know where we are going?”

“I'm going to take a wild guess and say the desert. Probably so you can put a bullet in my head.”

This obviously amused him. “Why would I want to put a bullet in your head?”

I sat back and drew on my cigarette. “Buddy, your guess is as good as mine, but the way my life has been going lately, nothing would surprise me.”

He didn't answer, just looked at me with a quizzical lift of his brows. After a while, we pulled up in front of a modest little house set in the middle of an oasis, near a clump of date palms. Two scabby goats foraged nearby and some items of laundry waved on a clothesline to one side of the house. A woman in a headscarf and with a broom in her hand came to the door and looked out. Evidently displeased by what she saw, she went away again. “This is real nice,” I said. “That the little woman there?”

Scala got out of the Jeep. “You are a brave man, Lieutenant Stoyles, to joke in the face of the unknown.”

His pronunciation of the word “lieutenant” was after the Commonwealth fashion: one more irritation in a seemingly never ending series of annoyances. “Just Mr. Stoyles is fine by me, buddy. I left the rank behind a long time ago.”

“Do you understand the term ‘blue ticket,' Lieutenant Stoyles? Then get your pansy ass out of my office.”

Inside there wasn't a lot of furniture, but there sure was a lot of radio equipment. The woman in the headscarf was actually a WAC, and I saw the two other men Scala had been with at the party standing off to one side, talking quietly to a blond kid with headphones over one ear. A dark-haired, brown-eyed man with the lean, sculpted features of a star athlete got up from behind a desk and came over; like Scala, he was wearing the khaki drill of the Long Range Desert Group. “Lieutenant Jack Stoyles, isn't it?” His accent was not quite English; I couldn't place it. “I'm Captain Kevin MacBride. Welcome to our Cairo listening post. We've been expecting you.”

 

 

I
DIDN
'
T
know what the hell MacBride was talking about, and I had no desire to find out. “Listen, this big goon here kidnapped me from my hotel—”

“You shouldn't call Colonel Scala a goon.” A third man—a gangly, sandy-haired American—appeared at MacBride's elbow. “It hurts his feelings. Maybe you ought to gimme what's in your wallet.” His accent was Appalachian all the way, West Virginia or Kentucky maybe, or I missed my guess. “We've been waiting for it.”

“What the hell is this, anyway? Some kind of a shakedown?” I brought out my wallet. “Here. I got ten Egyptian pounds. Take it, unless you want the piasters in my pocket as well? I dunno what your game is, MacBride, but as soon as I get hold of somebody at the American embassy….”

“The slip of paper in your wallet, Lieutenant.” MacBride suppressed a smile, but only just. “If you please.”

“Slip of paper?” This was confusing me all to hell.

“The one you took from the safety deposit box at the bank.” MacBride held out his hand. “Quickly, man, Berlin's about to get on the wire. We haven't got all day.”

“No use, MacBride. Some Finnish guy with a Luger took it from me. He's probably halfway to Helsinki by now. The only thing I got in here is this poem… part of a poem.” I handed it over.

Scala and the American grinned. “Thank God,” MacBride said. “Looks like Captain Halim was as good as his word.”

“Wait a minute… there was another piece of paper… blue, with writing all over it, columns of numbers and stuff like that. Isn't that the one you want?”

“No, this is exactly what we want. What we've been waiting for, in fact.” MacBride gave it to the blond kid with the headphones, who fiddled around with some dials on his console. “You see, for some months now, Captain Halim has been… well, he's been what you might call our point man out here.”