Pharaoh (38 page)

She picked up her backpack, hid Blake’s in the wardrobe and, before going out, took one last look out at the street, which was dimly illuminated by a single street light. She was just in time to see a car stop and two men get out, Egyptians from their appearance, but wearing European clothes. They’d finally arrived! But Sarah’s initial euphoria at seeing the men quickly faded; she was beset by all sorts of doubts and decided she’d prefer to sneak out and reach the American embassy in Cairo on her own. It was too late, though. She could already hear the men coming up the stairs and that was the only way out, unless she went via the window.

While she was weighing her limited options, someone knocked on the door. She tried to be calm, reassuring herself that there was nothing to be worried about; after all, they were the agents sent by the American embassy. As soon as she opened the door, however, and got a good look at her callers’ faces, she realized she was in big trouble.

‘I’m an officer of the Egyptian Military Police,’ one of the men said in halting English. ‘The owner of this boarding house told us that you hadn’t left any identification at the reception desk. Can you show us your passport, please?’

The two agents couldn’t see the note stuck to the back of the door yet, because it was opened towards the wall and, at this point, Sarah was still hoping that it was just a routine hotel check. Holding out her passport, she said: ‘My name is Sarah Forrestall. I came to Egypt on a tourist visa and I’m stuck here now due to this silly war . . . It’s a real shame. I didn’t even have a chance to see Luxor or Abu Simbel, but . . .’

The man looked over her papers and then exchanged a quick knowing glance with his companion.

‘Madam,’ he said with a grimly stern voice, ‘where is your friend?’

Sarah realized she no longer had any way out. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He left over two hours ago and hasn’t come back. I have no idea where he is.’

‘You will come along with us to the police station. You can tell us everything you know there. We’ll take care of him later.’

‘But I—’

She tried to say something, but she didn’t have a chance. The man took her by the arm and dragged her out of the room, while his companion stayed inside to gather up the things lying on the bed and around the floor, then all three of them walked down the hall. They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when they ran into two other people who had just popped up from the landing holding pistols with silencers.

Guessing what was about to happen, Sarah dived for the floor, covering her head with her arms, as the hallway lit up with flashes of fiery orange light and the air was permeated with dense, acrid smoke. There were two dull thuds as the Egyptian policemen collapsed on the floor next to her without so much as a whimper.

She raised her head and saw one of the two men holding his right hand over his wounded left arm, as the other fellow approached her with his gun still smoking. They were both Egyptians.

‘Just in the nick of time, it seems,’ he said as he walked up to her. ‘Sorry about the delay, Miss Forrestall.’ Then, half smiling, he added, ‘But we ran into a little traffic. Where’s your friend?’ You could tell by his sense of humour that he was used to being around Americans, and this reassured her.

‘I don’t know,’ answered Sarah. ‘He left to buy some things around nine and still hasn’t come back. I’ve waited this long for him, but I don’t think he’s coming back any more. We can’t stay here any longer, though, and besides, your companion is injured—’

‘It’s just a graze, fortunately,’ the other man said. ‘I need to have my arm wrapped tightly. A handkerchief should do.’

He got some help in this elementary first-aid operation, then put his overcoat back on and headed down the stairs, followed by Sarah and his companion, who was still holding his pistol at the ready.

An old Arab gentleman who happened to be going up the stairs with the help of a cane murmured under his breath, ‘
Salaam alekum
.’

‘
Alekum salaam
,’ responded the man with the pistol.

Sarah couldn’t help giving a start, immediately recognizing Blake’s voice.

A moment later the same voice was heard again, this time more powerfully from behind: ‘Drop your weapons and get back up here. Now.’

There was a pause.

‘I said drop your weapons!’ Blake repeated emphatically, pointing a pistol at the men.

Sarah looked closely: it was the pistol he’d taken off the Egyptian he’d killed in the Sinai with his scalpel.

The two men dropped their weapons, which Blake scooped up. Then they started obediently back up the stairs, followed by Sarah. They stepped over the bodies of the two policemen still lying on the floor in a widening puddle of blood, drenching the carpet.

‘Inside!’ said Blake, pointing to the open door of the room. He pulled off the keffiyeh that almost completely covered his face. ‘I noticed some suspicious movement around the boarding house,’ he said to Sarah. ‘So I had to hide. That’s why I wasn’t able to come back up.’

‘But why are you holding them prisoner?’ said Sarah in disbelief. ‘They came here to rescue us. One of them was wounded in the fight with the two Egyptian policemen, the ones you saw out in the hall.’

‘Mr Blake,’ the other man began, ‘please, be sensible . . . We don’t have any time to waste. We have to get out of here. Don’t you understand?’

‘How do you know my name?’ asked Blake, still pointing the gun at them.

‘Miss Forrestall told us—’

‘That’s not true! The young lady only said that there was another person here with her. How do you know my name?’

‘Will, please,’ Sarah implored.

‘Sarah, don’t interfere. I know what I’m doing. We can’t trust anyone. The only place my name was listed was in the Warren Mining Corporation’s files. How did it end up at the American embassy? And how did it wind up on the documents those two guys who pulled us off the bus had? Tie them up for now. Get some cord from the curtains and tie them up.’

Sarah did as he said and, once the two men had been immobilized, Blake went through their pockets. One of them had a mobile phone. He turned it on.

What number do you report in on?’

The man just shook his head. ‘You’re nuts. The police could be here any time now.’

Blake raised the muzzle of his pistol. ‘I want that number!’

Biting down on his lip, the man dialled the number with some difficulty and the phone began to ring.

As soon as they answer, say that you have had a shoot-out with the Egyptian police and that the two of us are dead. Have you got that? Dead. And no funny business, if you don’t want to end up like those two out in the hall’

A voice answered and Blake put his ear up to the receiver so he could hear too. ‘Office “M”, state your business.’

‘This is Yussuf. Something’s gone wrong. The Egyptian police were waiting for us and there was a shoot-out. Our friends were caught in the middle of it and both of them were killed. Abdul was wounded, but it’s nothing serious.’

There was silence at the other end.

‘Did you understand what I just told you?’ the man queried.

‘I understood, Yussuf. Get out of there immediately. I’ll send an ambulance to the place we agreed upon for the handover.’

Blake folded the phone back up.

‘What are you going to do with us?’ the man named Yussuf asked.

‘We’ll send someone to get you,’ said Blake. Then he signalled Sarah to gather up their things and they left the room, locking the door behind them.

‘Put this on,’ he said to her, tossing her a dark jellaba. ‘We’ve got to get away from here as soon as possible.’

They went down the stairs and walked past the elderly owner, who was standing behind the front desk, bewildered and alarmed by the mysterious goings-on.

‘Call the police right away,’ Blake told him in Arabic. ‘There are dead and wounded people upstairs.’

He slipped out into the street, dragging behind him Sarah, who was wrapped in the jellaba, her head and face covered by a veil.

‘What in hell possessed you—’ she tried to ask him.

‘Not yet. I’ll explain everything later. Right now we’ve got to get out of here and fast. We only have a few minutes.’

Blake went down a narrow, dark side street, following it to the end, stopping at every intersection to make sure there were no unpleasant surprises waiting for them. There were still a fair amount of people in the bazaar area, sellers and porters for the most part, carrying in goods for the next day. Trade obviously continued, despite the holy war. Every once in a while, the still atmosphere was interrupted by the sound of helicopters or the roar of jets heading towards the battle front. Blake came to an abrupt halt beneath the sooty arch of an old blacksmith’s forge and ducked into the shadows, pulling Sarah in behind him.

‘What now?’ the girl asked.

‘Pick a god and start praying,’ answered Blake, checking his watch. ‘In just five minutes we’ll know if he or she was listening or not.’

They stood in frozen silence, keeping their ears peeled for any sound. Five minutes went by, stretching into ten, then fifteen long minutes of agonizing tension. Discouraged, Blake sank to the ground, resting his head on his knees.

Sarah laid into him. ‘Would you please explain to me what we’re doing here? Why didn’t we just go with those two men? By this time we could have been happily on our way to the American embassy, damn it!’

‘By this time we could also have been dead for all I know. I got suspicious when those Egyptian soldiers arrested us on the bus and we found those papers on them. You felt just as uneasy, if I’m not mistaken. Then this guy pops up, and he knows my name as well. Where did he get that little piece of information?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure about anything any more . . . It could have even been me . . .’

She didn’t have time to finish her sentence. An old black Peugeot 404 appeared from around a corner and pulled up right in front of them.

‘Maybe this is him,’ said Blake. ‘I should have known that Egyptians are rarely on time. Quick, get in.’

He had Sarah sit in the back, while he got in the front, next to the driver: a young Nubian with dark skin who greeted him with a beautiful smile full of gleaming white teeth.

‘
Salaam alekum, el sidi.
’

‘
Alekum salaam
,’ rejoined Blake. ‘You must be Khaled.’

‘That’s right, I’m Khaled,
el sidi
. Selim told me I’d find you here and he told me to bring you back to his house in Cairo as quickly as possible. He will join you tomorrow from Luxor. We’ll have to drive all night, because we’re taking a very indirect route, sticking to the back roads so we won’t run into any soldiers or policemen. There’s some food for you in the plastic bag. You must be famished.’

‘You said it,’ answered Blake. ‘It’s been days since we’ve had a decent meal.’

He took out some Arab bread stuffed with vegetables and minced lamb and handed it back to Sarah, who bit into it with relief and delight.

Khaled drove slowly and very carefully, taking secondary roads where there was practically no traffic.

‘I’ll be glad to keep you company as you drive,’ said Blake, ‘but my wife is dead tired and needs to sleep.’

He reached back to where Sarah was sitting and took her hand, holding it for a long time. He leaned back then against his seat, listening to the chugging of the old engine and watching the road as it was slowly devoured by the headlights.

Khaled almost immediately got off the tarmacked highway, taking a dusty dirt road full of bumps and holes, heading into the fertile delta plain. Now and then they would pass through a sleeping village with mud-brick houses topped by roofs made from bullrushes, just like in the days of the Exodus. Blake could smell manure and mud, the same smell that permeated the villages of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesopotamia and the valley of the Indus. The scent of places forgotten by history.

The biblical city of Ramses, whence the great migration originated, couldn’t be far away: they were crossing the land of Goshen.

At midnight, Khaled turned on the car’s radio to listen to the news and Blake could hear the triumphant tone of the speaker as he described how Israel was surrounded on every side; a country whose fate was already sealed! Next they interviewed a politician who declared that after the Arab victory, the few surviving Jews who could prove they were born in Palestine would be allowed to remain by becoming Palestinian citizens and swearing loyalty to the new flag.

Blake fiddled with the dial in search of a European or Israeli station, but there was too much static, making listening impossible.

Around one o’clock they stopped along the bank of one of the Nile’s many distributaries there in the delta and Khaled got out to urinate; Blake followed suit. The nearly full moon was lolling just above the horizon, leaving most of the heavenly vault to the teeming array of twinkling stars. A gentle gust of wind nudged the tufted manes of the papyrus plants, gleaming silvery in the pale moonlight, their shaggy crowns reflecting like jellyfish tentacles on the placid surface of the water.

The spell was broken by the dull thud of artillery against the eastern horizon, pulsating with terrible rhythmic flashes. A deafening roar pierced the profound peace of the night sky as four jet fighters flourishing the Star of David swooped low over the canebrakes, extruding long trails of ghostly white exhaust fumes: Israel was reacting angrily to the provocation. Blake couldn’t help but recall the implacable law that had guided this long-memoried people for thirty centuries in dealing with its enemies: an eye for an eye.