The Jerusalem Puzzle Page 12

  What was he waiting for?

  ‘Things are changing too bloody fast here,’ he said. ‘That’s the second attack on a major hotel. If they don’t get a grip here soon this place will be in a lot of trouble. They’re throwing away a hundred years of progress.’ He leaned towards Xena. He spoke in English this time.

  ‘Just poke the nose out. We can reverse if anyone takes a shot at us.’

  Xena squeezed the accelerator. We crawled forward until the front of the vehicle was outside the gate. Then we stopped. A dirty green Hyundai car and two black and white taxis sped by. One of them honked at us.

  ‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Mark.

  We moved slowly through the city. There were queues of cars everywhere.

  About ten minutes after leaving the hotel, we dropped the waiter at the emergency room of a hospital. Mark and Xena went in with him. They came out a few minutes later. He’d told us to stay in the car.

  Mark was smiling when they came back. ‘He’s going to be ok,’ he said, as he got into the car. ‘The embassy will take care of his medical bills. His wife is on the way. It’ll be better for him if we don’t hang around. That’s the way it is here.’

  ‘You haven’t lost your knack for attracting trouble,’ said Isabel.

  Ten minutes after that we were in Tahrir Square. The square had no demonstrators in it. It had six roads converging on it, and a large concrete central area with low bushes. There was a squad of perhaps twenty policemen standing in one corner and people walking around them.

  ‘There’s a demonstration planned for tomorrow against Israel, but it isn’t expected to be as big as the one last Friday.’ Mark turned to Xena. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it will be bigger,’ she said.

  Mark turned to us. ‘There are people here who think they can unify this country again if there’s a war with Israel,’ he said. ‘No matter what the outcome.’

  Xena honked the car horn repeatedly at a taxi that cut across us. We were heading south, parallel with the Nile, which was to our right, along a street lined with tall palm trees. It was busy with trucks and cars.

  As we stopped at a traffic light, I stared at the people streaming across the road. There was a mixture of Western-looking men, men in low white turbans, many of them bearded, and others with round white caps, as well as all types of women from those in jeans and short leather jackets to others dressed in so much billowing black that only their eyes could be seen.

  A few minutes later we were in the Rithmo Bar in the Cairo Intercontinental. The bar was in the Arabian Nights style and featured heavy armchairs, low settees and a scattering of Bedouin print cushions. It was busy with expatriates, almost full in fact. We’d passed through a security check coming into the hotel that included being waved at with a blinking metal detecting wand.

  ‘Isn’t this place likely to be attacked too?’ said Isabel.

  Mark pointed at the frosted windows. ‘Every one of those windows has a double layer of steel mesh embedded in the glass. You’d have to put a bomb on the window ledge outside to break it.’

  He paused for a few seconds and looked around. ‘Someone is trying to stir things up here. They hit the Hilton for a reason.’

  ‘For what reason?’ I said.

  Mark didn’t reply.

  ‘You don’t think the Egyptians would be stupid enough to attack Israel, do you?’ said Isabel.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet either way,’ said Mark. ‘They’ve cancelled all army leave for the next few weeks here.’

  ‘Isn’t that just a reaction to the attacks?’ said Isabel.

  Instead of answering, Mark waved at a woman who had just come in. She was waving excitedly at him.

  ‘With a bit of luck she won’t come over,’ he said.

  But she did. She had black high heels, black tights and a tight white top on. Her hair was piled up on her head and she had a friendly expression.

  ‘Hello, Mark,’ she said, in a high-pitched voice. ‘Found yourself some new friends?’

  Mark gave her a mocking smile.

  ‘What have you been up to, Kim? Revitalising international relationships all on your own again?’ said Mark.

  Kim sat down. Slumped would be more accurate. She dropped the two shopping bags she’d been carrying near to the table and smiled at me. Then she glanced at Isabel.

  ‘Aren’t you gonna introduce us?’

  Mark did the introductions. Kim was here while her husband was working at the Cairo MIASA oil refinery. It was her first time in the Middle East.

  We talked about the restaurant of the Hilton being shot up. Kim was shocked. Then she switched the subject to herself and began complaining about being left alone in Cairo. I didn’t envy her trying to make a go of it here.

  I looked at her shopping bags. One was black plastic and had a Khan el-Khalili logo in circular Arabic-style script on its side. The other was from the Museum of Antiquities and was made from thick brown paper.

  ‘You’ve been shopping?’ I said, when she stopped talking.

  She nodded. ‘That Khalili market is bloody amazing,’ she said. ‘It’s like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It’s lovely, just lovely.’

  Mark stared at her. He was giving off the impression that he was hoping she’d leave soon.

  ‘What did you get at the museum?’ I said.

  ‘Bloody sore feet.’ She laughed.

  ‘There was only a one hour queue for the Tutankhamun exhibition.’ She followed my gaze to the bag.

  ‘My husband asked me to get him some guide books. I think I bought the wrong ones.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Mind if I have a look?’ I asked. The Museum of Antiquities wasn’t far away, back past Tahrir Square, near our hotel, and despite a new, more modern museum being opened in Cairo, it still contained an incredible collection of materials from the era of the Pharaohs, and also Roman, Greek and Islamic artefacts.

  ‘Work away, love,’ she said. Then she asked Isabel what we were doing here. While Isabel answered with a story about sightseeing I took out the large coffee table book which I’d spotted. It was called The Hidden Treasures of the Cairo Museum of Antiquities.

  ‘I shouldn’t have bought that big one,’ said Kim, pointing at the book. I put it down on the table so we could all admire it.

  ‘It looks incredible,’ said Isabel. She reached over, turned a page, then another. We watched as Isabel flicked through the pages.

  ‘I better go,’ said Kim. She turned and waved at a man at the bar. He gestured back.

  As the pages flicked by I had a strange experience.

  ‘Stop,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Isabel. She stopped flicking the pages.

  ‘Let me have a look.’ I put my hand out.

  I turned back through the pages. I didn’t find what I was looking for. Had I imagined it? I was about to hand the book back to Kim when I reached a page with a number of photographs of ancient pieces of papyri. Most were just small jagged-edged fragments. Some were tiny. One of the larger ones had two interesting hieroglyphs on it.

  The bottom hieroglyph was a symbol of a square with an arrow pointing upwards inside it. It was the same symbol that was in the book we’d discovered in Istanbul; the symbol there’d been so many questions about.

  Above that was another symbol. It had two triangles facing each other and two more below them.

  Kim put her hand out for me to pass the book back to her. I bent down, peered at the tiny inscription below the fragment. It read:

  Papyrus fragment found 1984 in rubbish pit near the Black Pyramid (built King Amenemhat III, Middle Kingdom era, 2055–1650 BC). The lower hieroglyph represents the Queen of Darkness. The upper hieroglyph has not been deciphered. The only other example of these hieroglyphs is from a stone inscription at the Gihon Pool in Jerusalem, a Canaanite province of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom era.

  ‘This is interesting,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I take a picture?’ Kim
shook her head. I took out my phone and snapped the page with the papyrus fragments on it.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ said Mark.

  I hesitated, wondering whether I should explain what I’d seen. It was, after all, only a hieroglyph.

  ‘It’s just a papyrus fragment with some hieroglyphs Sean recognised.’ Isabel pointed at the page. She ran her hand down the hieroglyphic as if they all interested me.

  Mark peered closely at the page.

  ‘We did some work on hieroglyphs a few years ago,’ I said. ‘There’s a new theory about their evolution I’ve been following.’

  ‘Some of these glyphs are on inscriptions all over the Middle East,’ said Isabel.

  Mark pulled away from the page, raising his eyebrows. ‘You do know the Canaanites were into human sacrifice, don’t you?’ He looked from my face to Isabel’s.

  ‘You bet,’ said Isabel. ‘They used to roast their own children to death. They were a cruel lot. They thought Ba’al, their demon god, spoke through the screams of the anguished victims as they died.’

  Kim made a squeamish noise.

  ‘They worshipped goddesses too,’ Isabel added. Kim smiled, as if Isabel had just made a stand for all the females in the world.

  ‘Maybe this Queen of Darkness too,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past them,’ said Isabel.

  ‘How do they work out what these symbols mean?’ said Kim.

  ‘Some of it’s about star signs,’ said Isabel. ‘The morning star is the Queen of Heaven, so the evening star is probably the Queen of Darkness. It’s usually something simple like that.’

  ‘I like all that astrology stuff,’ said Kim. She put the book away.

  A few minutes after she had gone, Mark suggested we move to one of the hotel restaurants upstairs. We agreed.

  I wasn’t entirely happy with going out with him for dinner, but we hadn’t found out much from him yet.

  As we waited for Mark’s credit card to go through, he started talking about a Cairo football team he’d been following, Zamalek. I listened to him telling us all about their last match. I knew then there were more reasons than just being abandoned in a firefight, for Isabel to have left him. He didn’t want to allow anyone to fit a single word into his conversation flow.

  I went to find the toilets. As I crossed the foyer, I was startled to see Xena sitting in one of the cream leather armchairs. Why hadn’t she come into the bar with us? I’d thought she’d gone off.

  I passed near her. She didn’t seem to notice me until I was almost on top of her.

  Then she looked up and motioned me to her with a curling finger and a beguiling smile.

  27

  Susan Hunter woke and sat up. The stone wall behind her back was hard, icy cold. She felt every day of her forty-nine years. The image that had filled her mind since the last time he’d been down came back. She tried again to push it away. It wasn’t easy.

  She started counting. Was it day or night?

  She could smell congealing sweat and the stink in the tiny room from the Arab-style toilet, a hole in the ground, on the other side of the basement. She pressed her arms into her stomach. It ached, as if something had gone wrong inside her. Her teeth were sore too, and her head felt like a weight on her shoulders.

  The pains in her body gave no indication as to how long she’d slept. All they told her was that she was still a prisoner, still living on bowls of rice and bottles of water.

  She remembered how her husband used to bring her warm drinks if she was ever sick back in England, how he used to come up and ask after her every hour. A longing to be home, to see his face, flowed through her like a hunger.

  Then a memory of her hotel, the smiling girls who’d served her breakfast a week before, came to her. One of them had asked her about Cambridge University.

  How good it would have been to talk to her more, to find out what she wanted to study. They could have had lunch, been friends.

  How could she have ended up like this, waiting for this evil man, for the brief light and the food and the water that his return meant?

  She ran her hands around to check if anything had changed, as she did every time she woke now.

  All she could feel was hard earth. The earth that extended to the basement walls around her, a space that was big, but felt small in the darkness.

  She was slowly swaying again. Never before had she felt such malevolence around her. Even the stones in this place seemed to leak evil. And the air was alive with it. It wasn’t because of the pain he’d already inflicted or what she’d seen; the image that wouldn’t fade, that burn on the back of his hand. It was because she knew what such a mark meant.

  Susan had studied many ancient documents. She’d dated them, interpreted them, classified them. She knew what some of them said about our ancestors.

  She’d examined the only papyrus ever discovered recording a Canaanite human sacrifice from before the time of Abraham. The description in that oblong fragment of how the high priest would burn his own hand, to taste the flame that would consume his victims, to know better what they would feel, was something that had stuck in her mind since the day she’d read it.

  But she’d never expected to encounter such a thing herself.

  Who was this bastard? And why was he resurrecting an evil that should have died out thousands of years ago?

  And then a bigger question loomed, what was he planning for her? Was it what she feared?

  28

  ‘Hi Xena, you didn’t want to join us for a drink?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me. Her eyes seemed bigger than before. Her expression was friendly.

  ‘I don’t go to bars,’ she said. She put her hand forward, as if she wanted to shake mine. But all she did was open her fingers, as if passing me a handful of air.

  ‘What brings you to Cairo, effendi?’ She said slowly, leaning forward.

  She had a beautiful face, almost too perfect in its proportions. There was something unsettling about her.

  ‘I’m looking for a friend.’ It was the truth.

  ‘If you find friends in Cairo,’ she smiled, revealing sparkling teeth, ‘you can die here. That is what they say.’ Her smile hardened.

  The way she said it, it was almost a threat. A tiny shiver ran up my back, as if a spider had walked there.

  ‘Sean?’ It was Isabel’s voice. I turned. She was walking towards us. Her gaze was on Xena though, as if she was examining her.

  ‘You get around,’ she said to Xena.

  Xena switched her attention to Isabel. She nodded at her.

  ‘Do you know Cairo?’ asked Xena.

  ‘No,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I can show you some interesting places tonight,’ she said. She was looking at me when she said that.

  ‘Maybe another time,’ said Isabel. She put her hand on my arm. ‘Mark is waiting for us.’

  ‘Gotta go,’ I said to Xena.

  Her smile had a condescending edge to it now.

  ‘What the hell are you doing talking to her?’ said Isabel as we got in the elevator.

  I hadn’t seen such a flash of anger from her before.

  ‘I was just being friendly. Where are we going?’

  She looked at me for a few seconds, then replied. ‘To the third floor, to the Pane Vino Italian restaurant.’

  We rode the rest of the way up in silence.

  The restaurant was on a terrace overlooking the Nile. I could see why Mark liked it. It was busy, dark, and the tables were far enough apart that you wouldn’t feel you were being overheard. Pale yellow candles in elaborate ironwork Ottoman lamps sat on the floor. The view over the Nile was spectacular. The far side of the river was lit up by strings of street lights and the glow from apartment blocks beyond.

  As we walked through the restaurant, being led by a waiter to Mark’s table, a section of the far river bank, to the north of where we were, went dark, as if a piece of the picture in front of us had been wiped out.

  A
s soon as we sat down, I asked Mark what had happened across the river.

  ‘There’s been a lot of power cuts recently. It’s no big deal.’ He turned to look at the dark section of the river opposite. ‘Some idiot probably tried to steal some power cables. Probably fried himself. We’ve had a bit of that recently.’

  As if in response to what he’d just said, flashes of brilliant white light broke out in the darkened section. They were small, but they were reflected in the water and went on for seconds.

  ‘Is that gunfire?’ I said. ‘This place is like the Wild West.’

  Mark shrugged.

  The flashes started up again. They were from two sources now. People in the restaurant were pointing. Over the rumble of traffic and the din of car horns, I could just about hear a distant snapping noise.

  Then, just as suddenly as they’d started, the flashes stopped. The noise in the restaurant went up, as if a wave of relief had passed through us all. I saw a few men waving at waiters, as if they were determined to consume with a renewed vigour.

  ‘Order the Mediterranean pasta,’ said Mark. ‘They get their fish from Alexandria every afternoon, fresh from the fishing boats, which come in in the morning.’

  I ordered a pepperoni pizza.

  Mark shook his head in horror. I was sitting beside Isabel, Mark opposite her. Over the next few minutes he began to irritate me, like a wasp does when it circles a picnic. Not only would he not stop talking, most of it was directed at Isabel.

  Eventually I got a word in. ‘What do the locals call Cairo? I read the name Cairo is a European invention,’ I said.

  ‘A lot of them call it Misr; the metropolis, the city. That’s probably where the word misery comes from. Did you know that fifty percent of Cairo’s population is on the poverty line?’

  I shook my head.

  He jabbed a finger into the white linen tablecloth. ‘A lot of people here say things were better back in Mubarak’s day. If you’re at the bottom of the pile in Cairo, living in the Muqattam Hills south of here, you eke out a life from trash mountains and live eight to a room in temperatures like an oven in the summer.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘While you wait for the hill behind your mud house to fall on top of you.’