9

“Sometimes the solution is right beneath your nose, but you don’t see it because you’re too busy looking for it.”—Abbas Mahalawi

“Abbas . . . Abbas . . . what are we going to do about Nadia?”

Zeinab’s question kept ringing in my ears. Of course! Reports of the Cicurel murder mentioned he’d had a daughter called Nadia from his first wife. She’d been in another wing of the house, sleeping like a babe through the whole ugly thing. I hadn’t even known she’d existed. But the others did and they’d forgotten about her. As I would later learn from Paula, a few months after the incident Nadia moved abroad to live with her uncle and that was the last anyone heard of her. But now, Zeinab had just found a handwritten will bearing Cicurel’s signature and a second document itemizing the estate that would go to Nadia. The documents were in both Arabic and Italian, and bore the official seals of the Mixed Courts, the notary public in Napoli, and the Foreign-owned Properties Registrar in Cairo. There were also dozens of official signatures, countersignatures, and oval, round, and triangular stamps. “Estate” meant everything: stores, shares, land, cars, and, last but not least, the villa, the Heart of Palm in Zamalek, the site of my long hunt for Cicurel’s hidden treasure.

Where was Nadia now? Why hadn’t she ever resurfaced to claim her inheritance? Nearly all his property had gone to his brothers. Not that Paula was left penniless. Who stood to benefit most from concealing this will? It required little thought. It could only be Paula, of course. There was nothing left for Nadia to inherit now but the Heart of Palm and a few thousand pounds.

Returning to my surroundings, I felt a sudden surge of hopelessness. I contemplated the stately pillars, the high ceilings, the plush furniture, and for a moment I saw the villa shrink into the distance and nearly fade from of view. Then out of Zeinab’s mouth popped the question: “Now why on earth would Cicurel call it that? Hearts of palm are small and hollow. What a strange man!”

I stood stock still, staring at her face, which bore an almost indignant expression. Then I nearly jumped for joy. “I found it!” I barely managed to keep from shouting. I looked around to make sure we were alone, then gave her a bear hug and said, “You did it, Zeinab!”

“I did what?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“But what are we going to do about Nadia, Abbas?”

“She brought us luck!”

I left my sister with her mouth agape as I rushed out of the house and around to the side door to the basement. Using a lantern so as not to alert anyone to my presence in there, I crept forward on tiptoe and made my way to the office. I unfolded the map on the desk, turned in the direction of the arrows, and began to look for the little tile that had a hollow palm heart, Zeinab’s unwitting revelation. All the floor tiles had the same design: a small palm tree with a finely drawn green heart in the middle of the trunk. This was what had confused me before. Now I realized there must be one exception. The map said as much, but of course I couldn’t see it because I couldn’t think the way Zeinab did. And I was sure she was right.

I searched for over an hour beneath the light of the lantern, tapping the tiles with a fingernail, testing to see whether one would budge. Nothing. I returned to the desk and stared at those crazy fronds and two sets of arrows. Suddenly it clicked. One of them pointed to about a yard above the floor. I swiveled around. I could have kicked myself again for my stupidity! The tile I was looking for had to be behind the tall bookcase against the righthand wall. That piece of furniture wouldn’t have been here at the time the map was drawn. I tried to shift it but it wouldn’t budge. It was affixed to the wall, which struck me as odd. I took a step back. Then I noticed some large old box files in the middle of the second shelf from the bottom. I lifted them out with some difficulty, as they were bulky and awkward to hold. Behind them were tiles similar to the ones on the floor. I resumed the search with the aid of the lantern, my heart racing. I was very close. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it.

Then I nearly cried out for joy. There it was, right before my eyes: a lone tile different from the rest. The palm heart in the design was white, not green like the others. My hand trembled with excitement as I touched it. It wobbled slightly. When I pushed it gently, it slid into a hollow space behind it. I held up my lantern and saw the metallic gleam of a handle. I quickly began to remove the rest of the tiles around it. The work was easy, but I was pouring with sweat because of my excitement and my anxiety. At last the safe stood before me in its full glory. My God! How in the world did that crafty foreigner conceive of this hiding place? And why? The safe was relatively small. What did he keep in it? Surely he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to conceal some more documents.

I jiggled the handle. Locked. This safe had a dial lock with both letters and numbers. I knew the combination had to have five digits. That much was clear from the map. I dialed the number “5” five times, alternating between clockwise and counterclockwise. That didn’t work. I tried the numbers one through five. No luck there. I was getting more nervous. I needed to finish this quickly and cover up my tracks. My breathing grew louder as my mind raced.

I couldn’t say what time it was exactly, but all of a sudden I felt a hand clamp down on my left shoulder. I jumped, but before I could turn around I felt the cold mouth of a gun barrel on my neck. Then came the command, in a hard voice barely above a whisper: “Dial the letters N-A-D-I-A.”

I heard the faint clicks as I dialed, clockwise and counterclockwise in turn. At the fifth click, I took hold of the handle with trembling fingers. It turned. When I pulled the door open, my eyes came to rest on a diamond that was truly the size of a heart of palm, if not larger. It sparkled majestically on a dark green velvet cushion, radiating an inner gleam, yet it was so transparent you could see what was behind it. I was breathless. For a moment I felt lifted off the ground to some space on the border between reality and fantasy. I had never seen anything so splendid in my life. Next to it lay many small ingots of gold, carefully stacked on top of each other. But they seemed to shrink from embarrassment at being compared with that magnificent diamond. There was also an assortment of other diamonds of different sizes, mostly small. When I was a child, I sat spellbound at the tales my grandmother told me about a boy who’d discovered a hidden treasure chest. I was that boy. The fairytale had come true at last. Better late than never.

I’d heard Hassanein gasp when I opened the safe and felt the pressure of his gun against my neck slacken. But I made no move to fight him. I was too enthralled by the vision before me. Its spell was more powerful than the weapon that threatened my life. But then the spell was broken when his big fat hand reached in front of my face, took hold of the diamond, and stuffed it into his pocket, making a large bulge. Using his gun, he signaled for me to take several steps back. Calmly and methodically, he laid the gold ingots side by side inside a canvas carryall, which was large enough that it didn’t bulge and divulge its contents. Then he reached back into the safe to scoop up the small diamonds, which he slipped into a velvet pouch. After setting this on top of the ingots, he wagged his gun at me again and said, “Just walk in front of me and don’t do anything foolish. I’m sure your life is worth much more to you.”

He probably thought he spoke an incontrovertible truth. In fact, I’d decided to risk everything, including my life. I could smell the fear oozing from his pores despite the gun. I may have even detected a faint tremor in his hand. He was using the gun to transfer his fear to me. He probably had doubts about his ability to kill me and wasn’t even sure what to do next. I took a seat on the nearest chair and lit a cigarette. I inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs and with it I filled with confidence. I crossed my legs to appear calm.

“Go ahead and kill me. Because if I get out of here, I’m going to turn you over to the police.”

“What are you going to tell the police? That I caught you burgling the villa?”

I answered in the same sarcastic tone, “No. I’ll tell them you were the fifth culprit in the Cicurel case. You were at the Rixos bar plotting with Ernesti and Jonah. I recognized you the moment I first saw you here. I was sure you’d started hunting for this safe before me. It was you who put them up to the burglary because you wanted them to do your dirty work for you. But you came out empty-handed. I’m the one who pocketed the map that day.”

As I spoke I watched his face turn from smug to shocked, and then to awed. Then we both turned at the sound of a cane rapping on the parquet floor upstairs. It was remote but clearly audible. Hassanein hushed me with a finger over his mouth and moved closer to where I was. Our bodies nearly touched as we focused our ears. The knocking was rhythmic but still distant, as though the person were standing in place and knocking his cane on the floor to frighten us.

“Maybe it’s Zeinab trying to warn us,” I whispered.

Hassanein shook his head. Instinctively, we inched backward until we found our backs against the bookshelf. Hassanein turned around, put the carryall in the safe, and silently closed the door, leaving it slightly ajar. Then the sound stopped. We remained frozen in place for a full five minutes. Finally, he breathed a sigh of relief and stepped away from me.

“I was sure it was you who stole the map. But I couldn’t figure out how you did it and when. Madame Paula and I suspected you from day one, but we pretended to accept your pitiful offer to renovate the villa in the hope that you’d lead us to the diamonds and gold. It took you long enough, that’s for sure. I kept my eye on you whenever you came down here. I’ve watched and waited for years for this moment. When I visited Ernesti in prison, he told me how you gave them the slip and ratted on them. That’s why I never trusted you for a moment.”

“You mean Ernesti who you left the key to the basement door beneath the doormat? Don’t take me for a fool, Hassanein.”

He thumped his forehead with his the heel of his hand. I too felt I’d given too much away. Our cards were on the table now. From now on, this would be a battle of strength, not wits or luck. Drops of sweat rolled down my back. I needed to keep my tongue in check. My mind turned to Paula. So she’d been Hassanein’s partner in the hunt for the diamonds all along. She was a far better actor than he was.

Now that I was sure that Hassanein’s fear blinded him to mine, I could relax a bit. His main worry now was to save his neck from the same noose that had taken his accomplices all those years ago. He wasn’t going to risk pulling the trigger. He wouldn’t want a homicide labeled “Abbas” added to his charge sheet. Our silence was broken by another knocking sound, muffled and distant, but coming from outside the villa this time. I tensed, but Hassanein seemed calm, and gave me a cold smile. He climbed onto an old crate and shoved his head through a small window overlooking the rear garden. When he stepped back down, he told me that Zeinab had tried to block his way when he was heading toward the cellar. She’d picked a quarrel with him for no reason, which made him suspicious. So he tied her up, taped her mouth shut, and locked her up in the shed next to the dock.

We fell silent again. Our silence was so intense we could hear each other’s breathing. At last Hassanein spoke, calmly, but with a hint of defeat in his voice, or so I imagined. “All right. We’ll go halves.”

I smiled inwardly. He’d begun to give in. He wanted to get this over with, and with the least possible loss. But before I could speak, he dredged up some of his dwindling courage and added, “Don’t think too much. It’s my only offer.”

“What guarantee are you going to give me that I get my share?”

“You have my word. That’s my guarantee. I’ll dispose of the goods in a day, two at the outside. After I pay you, you clear out of Zamalek for good. Go back to your village.”

This was a bargaining opportunity. I wagged my finger and clicked my tongue as I approached him slowly. He seemed to shrink, as if possessed by a djinni, and turned passive and pliable, ready for me to mold him. Pausing a moment to gird myself, I lowered the gun in his hand. I could feel his breath on my face.

“Madame Paula should get a share,” I said. “Meaning the money’s got to be split three ways, not two. And don’t even think of ratting on me. Zeinab knows all about you. She’ll turn you in and denounce you to the police if anything happens to me. By the way, she deserves a share too. Meaning you get a fourth.” Holding up a hand before he could speak, I said, “And after you get it, you’re the one who’s going to leave Zamalek. In fact, you’re going to leave the country.”

Hassanein, tired from our circling each other, plopped into a chair and swayed, seeming on the verge of collapse. I continued to pile on the pressure, but he merely stared into space. He remained that way for so long that when he finally started to speak, I wondered whether he was fully aware of what he was saying. There was an echo in his voice, as though he were reading out of an old book he’d dug up in the attic.

“It was by pure accident that I learned about that map Cicurel drew up shortly before his death. Paula let it slip out. He planned to leave everything to Nadia, his daughter from his first wife. He didn’t want his brothers or his second wife to inherit anything.”

Afterward, he’d worked out a deal with Ernesti to rob the upstairs safe, but he never intended for anyone to get murdered.

“So Ernesti knew about the map too?” I asked.

“No, of course not. He just wanted the money. The agreement was for him to bring me any papers he found and he could keep the rest. But then you stole the map!”

“So Madame Paula knew about the heist in advance?”

“You might say that she was taken by surprise, then chose to remain silent. After the incident, all I cared about was the map. As for Paula, she doesn’t have long to live, so remove her from your calculations.” He took a deep breath, then continued. “You know the rest from the time you guys broke in and killed Cicurel. One day, Paula caught me hunting around in the basement and figured out what I was doing. From then on, we both started looking for the hidden gold and diamonds until you showed up. I smelled something fishy about you, but she recognized you right away, despite the hat, the glasses, and the phony beard, which you only removed after you thought you’d conned us. It was because she recognized you that she agreed to let you renovate the villa even though it had been recently repainted. She even agreed to take on Zeinab, even though she suspected she was really your sister. She played along with all your tricks, because the sooner you located the treasure, the sooner we could get rid of you. But as the years went by, she gave up hope and, at the same time, she grew attached to Zeinab. Eventually she forgot about it, and then her illness started to eat away at her. But I never ever forgot, not for a moment.”

“I’m not the one who killed Cicurel. I took the map and made my getaway. Now this here is my right. I sweated blood looking for this safe. I’m not going to let you take it from me. Not over my dead body!”

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on top of the desk, with the soles of his shoes facing me.

“No wonder you hid the fact that Zeinab was your sister,” he sneered. “You wanted to marry Paula, you scumbag.”

My jaws clenched. But I refused to let him provoke me. I was about to repeat my threat, but he cut me off. “Here’s my final offer. We’ll sell the stuff off and then we’ll talk. You can be sure you’ll get your share because we’ll dispose of the goods together. If you don’t like it, I’ll report you to the police. Paula—or Nadia, if she’s still alive—will get the safe and its contents, and you and I will lose everything. Now think. Paula’s dying and Nadia, wherever she is, knows nothing about the will. But you and I still have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“And if Nadia returns?”

“She could have stayed and demanded her rights after her father died. But she left to Switzerland with an uncle of hers and hasn’t been heard from since. She’s not going to come back. Paula isn’t her mother and she’s got nothing to bring her back here. So, just put Nadia out of your mind.”

We were back at square one. He brought his feet back down to the ground and started to wave his gun around again. He was getting fidgety. I suggested splitting the large diamond in half and dividing the rest of the stuff between us. He laughed out loud.

“You’re a real peasant from the Delta. Still as green as grass. Paula was right, there’s no making something decent out of you.” He stood up suddenly and walked toward me, looking straight into my eyes. “You can’t cut a diamond just like that. It takes another diamond to cut a diamond. And you need a special machine and an expert who knows what he’s doing. Otherwise you’ll ruin the whole thing.” He backed me into a chair as he continued to lecture me as though I were a dimwitted apprentice, telling me how Cicurel only kept breadcrumbs in the bank, just for the essential liquidity—the cash he needed to run his business with his brothers and for domestic purposes. The rest of his profits he invested over time in the diamond and gold trade. In other words, he converted all his money into diamonds and gold ingots. Despite his obesity, he pivoted with the grace of a ballet dancer, reached into the safe, and pulled out a sheaf of receipts, and flung them into my lap.

“Stop being greedy, Abbas. Take a look at their real value. We can be millionaires in a month at the outside. We’re almost there!”

As I turned this over in my mind, he added that he knew Jacob Zananiri, a well-known diamond merchant whom Cicurel dealt with. “Zananiri will be our next stop. He’ll buy the diamonds from us, have them cut up, and sell them in Belgium. We’ll make a tidy sum—a quarter of a million pounds at least, for each of us. So stop being an ass!”

I gasped. I had no idea the diamonds could be worth so much. I hadn’t dreamed of a tenth of that amount, which I wouldn’t make even if Abdel-Naim and I were contracted to build every new building in Zamalek.

Hassanein prepared to leave. He lifted the gun again and pointed it at me as he reached into the safe to grab the carryall. He shut the safe, spun the combination dial to make sure it was locked, and replaced the tiles in a slapdash way. Then he flicked the muzzle again to tell me to get moving. I was sure he was now working out how to kill me. As I walked in front of him, my mind scrambled to figure out my next move. As he himself always said, no serious poker player throws in the towel easily.

We went down to the dock and untied Zeinab. She’d fallen into a stupor inside that dark, stuffy shed. She followed us silently up to the house, where we left her. Before going inside, she held me in her gaze as though expecting an explanation, but I had none to offer since I hadn’t made up my mind what my next step was. Hassanein warned her against saying a word to Paula or to the police, or he’d kill her and kill me too. I didn’t doubt he was serious. I signaled to her to assent.

Hassanein and I climbed into my small Fiat and headed to our building at the north end of the island. On the way, he asked me to stop at the grocer’s so he could pick up some food. I told him to plan for me, because I’d be spending the night at his place. “I’m going to stick to you like a shadow until we dispose of that big diamond tomorrow and I collect Zeinab’s and my share,” I said. He gave me a curt smile and said nothing. We made another stop on the way at a pharmacy because he needed some cough medicine. I waited for him in the car. After a while, it occurred to me he might slip out the back door. I rushed into the pharmacy and saw no one. Then the curtain to a back room swept aside and he appeared carrying a small bag and adjusting his belt.

“Sorry it took so long. I needed a shot,” he said. The pharmacist appeared behind him.

Once inside his apartment, he set the carryall on the poker table where it would remain visible. I pointed to his trouser pocket. He took out the large diamond and set it inside the bag. Then I phoned Zeinab to tell her I was going to spend a night or two in Alexandria because of work. She was worried and started to ask questions. I cut her off and, raising my voice, told her to call the police if Hassanein came over to the villa by himself the next day. I replaced the receiver.

“In case you didn’t hear that, I told Zeinab to call the police if anything happens to me,” I said as I returned to my seat and tried to focus.

He calmly picked up his gun, flicked it open, emptied the six bullets from their chambers, and put them in his pocket. That was meant to reassure me, but I was still nervous. He opened the bag, took out the gold bars and diamonds, and divided them equally. He slid my share across the green baize table, extending an open palm and a greasy smile to offer it.

I began to breathe a little easier. I asked him about his wife. He told me she’d gone to Alexandria to stay with her family until she gave birth to their first child. He yawned, then smiled and said, “How about a bite to eat? Then we’ll have broken bread together.”

He went to the kitchen to prepare a light meal. I hurried after him to keep watch as he prepared it. His fingers were as quick and nimble at making sandwiches as they were at shuffling and stacking decks of cards. I made sure that he took the first bite, just in case he’d managed to slip some poison into the food. Then I waited a good five minutes before taking my first bite. He prepared a couple of glasses of very strong tea to keep us awake until it was time to go to the diamond merchant in the morning. Neither of us could trust the other enough to be able to close his eyes for a second.

“How about we play a round for the villa and its contents?” he said as he reached for a deck of cards and began to shuffle them with speed and dexterity.

I watched as he riffled and cascaded the deck several times, until my eyes began to blur. I yawned, then laughed, and said, “Who gave you permission to stake something that doesn’t belong to you?”

“Well it doesn’t belong to you either. So you won’t lose anything when you lose it. Anyway, isn’t this better than prison, Mr. One-Eyed Abbas?”

Despite the threat, I waved away the invitation to a game.

“Oh, okay. Then you call the shots. It’s your right. After all, I haven’t forgotten how you earned yourself a 10 percent cut from this table the night you exposed our game because of Salem’s stupidity. By the way, whose money were you playing with then?”

I ignored him. He started to talk about this and that: from King Faruq’s decision to divorce Queen Farida to the famous traffic accident on Qasr al-Nil Bridge that killed Ahmed Hassanein Pasha a couple of years earlier—“The British were behind that one,” he said. I shrugged. What did I care about palace gossip and the political intrigues people were rabbiting on about? He turned to the king’s friendship with Pouli. They played cards together at the Automobile Club, he said, and he started to describe how Pouli cheated the king in baccarat. I tried to tune him out. After a while, I jerked my head up. He was still jabbering, but now he was strutting back and forth in front of me in an undershirt and a pair of blue-striped pajamas. He cursed the heat and humidity, and removed the undershirt. Plopping himself down in front of the radio, he started to roll the dial back and forth, causing an infernal racket of squeals and squawks that went on and on.