The wound, it turned out, wasn’t that bad. Manheim’s two bullets had glanced off the hard curve of his ribs without damaging the intercostal muscles, leaving two parallel tears. He was in pain, but he could work his arm almost normally.
After finding Clay on the pavement outside the post and telegraph office, Mahmoud had helped him to the truck and taken him immediately to a doctor he knew in Aswan. Clay had been in no shape to argue. The doctor disinfected and sewed his wounds, bandaged him and ran him an IV. He was, the doctor explained, more dehydrated than anything else. Soon they were heading north along the Western Desert Road, the truck’s cargo trailer empty.
Desert air flowed over him, hot and centuries dry. Clay blinked away the dust, felt the truck’s wheels rumbling over the cracked and fraying tarmac beneath him, and looked out across the jagged aeolian horizon, miles and miles of it, the everchanging constancy of sand and wind and sun.
‘Thank you for all you have done,’ said Clay, in Arabic.
Mahmoud grabbed the steering wheel with his gear-shift hand, reached for the bottle, unscrewed the cap, took a swig, smiled wide and passed the bottle across.
Clay drank. ‘I must get to Cairo tomorrow, Mahmoud. The day after is too late. Please drop me in the town and I will hire a car and a driver.’
‘Did you place your telephone call?’
Clay nodded and passed back the bottle.
‘Yes.’
‘It is very important?’
‘Very. A good friend. She in danger.’
Mahmoud thought on this a while, shifting in his seat. ‘Then we will go together,’ he said. ‘Tonight, by car. My brother can drive the truck with the dates.’
‘I cannot ask this of you, Mahmoud.’
Mahmoud touched Clay on the shoulder. ‘Please, my friend. Allah asks this of me. He has put you in my path, and now it is my duty.’
Clay pointed to his bandage. ‘You know what this was from, yes?’
Mahmoud nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘It is not your duty to put yourself in danger.’
The big truck driver turned in his seat and stared at him a long time, the wheel wedged stable against his hip. ‘Duty is not changing with risk,’ he said.
‘My best friend was a…’ Clay stumbled, stopped, unable to find the Arabic word. He pointed to his head. ‘One who thinks.’
‘Filsw’uf,’ said Mahmoud, smiling. Philosopher.
Clay repeated the word. ‘This is not the time for being a philosopher.’
Mahmoud faced the road. ‘Your friend is a good man, yes?’
‘Was.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘No need. Yes, he was good.’ Clay realised it had been a while since he’d thought of Eben. ‘It was philosophy killed him, Mahmoud. Philosophy and me.’
‘You cannot claim this power, my friend.’ Mahmoud pointed skywards. ‘Only Allah.’
‘The woman who is in danger, in Cairo. She tells me this also.’
‘She is very wise.’
‘Yes.’
‘She is Muslim?’
Mahmoud smiled, shifted gears, pushed the truck faster. ‘Then it is clear what must be done, and why.’
They drove on in silence for a long time, through Al Kajuj and then Edfu, the sun moving through the sky above them, the rare shadows of road signs and distant mesas lengthening, the heat shimmering like sky on the road ahead, always out of reach. Mahmoud did not ask how he had come to emerge from the desert, alone and cut by bullets. He did not ask the nature of his friend’s danger in Cairo, nor of the reasons for Clay’s fear of the police. He sat behind the wheel of his truck and hummed verses from the Koran, swigging his cheap local booze, and drove towards whatever destiny Allah had ordained for him.
By the time they reached Luxor, the first planets had appeared in the blush over the Nile – Venus cool and bright, Mars low in the sky, their positions not much changed since the time of the pharaohs. Mahmoud’s family home was set in the fertile west valley of the Nile, just outside town, a place of green fields, thickets of reed and palm, and clustered mud-brick buildings rendered in alabaster and shaded by cascades of bougainvillea and wreaths of oleander. Surely, green was the colour of paradise.
Mahmoud parked the truck and turned off the engine. They sat a moment, staring ahead, silent, listening to the sounds of evening.
‘Come,’ Mahmoud said. ‘I will speak to my brother. Then we will take the car and start for Cairo. Your friend needs us.’
They left for Cairo not long after, driving through the night.
Mahmoud had given Clay a southern keffiyeh, which he wound around his head in the style of the Nubians. At the police checkpoint near the highway interchange at Asyut, they were waved on without stopping. A few hours later, at Minya, Clay feigned sleep as a policeman played the beam of a hand torch across the inside of the car. He heard Mahmoud exchange greetings with him. There was laughter, familiarity in their tone. They drove on.
Three hours later, they were navigating through the early-morning haze of Cairo’s southern reaches, the traffic still quiet. Mahmoud pulled the car into a side street just off King Faisal Street in Giza and turned off the engine.
Clay pulled his pack from the back seat and opened the door. ‘You are a good man,’ he said, reaching out his hand. He thought of offering money, but decided not to risk offending him.
Mahmoud took his hand, squeezed hard and smiled. ‘Find your friend,’ he said. ‘Protect her now and always.’ Then he handed him a business card. ‘If you ever need anything, please call.’
Clay smiled at the man’s words. ‘Inshallah.’
‘Whatever you must do, do in God’s name, my friend. You carry my fate with yours now.’
‘Please,’ said Clay. ‘I do not deserve such a responsibility.’
Mahmoud pushed his chin to his chest. ‘Still, it is the truth.’
Clay took a deep breath. ‘Live well. Mahmoud. I will do my best.’
‘God willing,’ said Mahmoud, ‘we must all.’ And then he was gone, swallowed up in the morning traffic. Another random meeting, plucked from the infinite and made real by fate or chance or determinism – who knew.
It didn’t take Clay long to find the place. Number fourteen was a half-completed, half-decayed edifice of brick and cement and searching rebar covered over in a film of brown silt, wedged in like an afterthought between two larger, older structures. Here, the lanes between the buildings were narrow and steep, like the canyons of fraying wadis, choked with half-degraded plastic bags and discarded drink tins, torn through by speeding auto-rickshaws and lumbering, fenderless bakkies. He circled the place once, noted entrances and first-floor window alignments, scanned for rooftop joinings and overhangs, and then went in the front door.
If the guy was home, he would not be expecting him. If he wasn’t, Clay would look around, settle himself in and wait, Crowbar style. If Rania was there, he’d do whatever he had to to get her out. Either way, he’d have the advantage. Hit first.
The stairway was dark, stank of piss and vaguely of incense and cat. He took the stairs two at a time, moving quietly, counting off the flights. At the sixth floor he emerged into a dimly lit corridor. Same smells, but with something else there now, something familiar. He scanned the Arabic numerals on the wooden doors. Apartment ٦۱ was halfway along the corridor. Clay stopped, looked both ways, listened. The corridor was deserted. He reached out to knock on the door, but stopped, his knuckles inches from the wood. The door was ajar.
Clay filled his lungs, steadied his pulse, reached for his Glock and pushed open the door.
It was the smell hit him first. A swirling miasma of heat and decay. Memories came flooding back, rolled over him. He staggered, steadied himself, followed the lurking reek through the relic-strewn sitting room, past the filthy kitchen to the bedroom.
The guy was lying on his back, his big hairy belly bulging towards the ceiling, his penis lying snaked in its den of wire. The full-length kaftan he was wearing was bunched up around his chest. His eyes were open; his mouth agape. Clay could see the guy’s big upper canines, the gold fillings in the molars. His chin sprouted a dark beard that had been waxed into a long, thin curve. The sheets beneath him were stained dark, arterial red. Clay counted three wounds in the guy’s fleshy neck, all in the left side.
Clay stood a moment, his eyes still adjusting to the gloom. On the floor beside the bed, a lamp lay on its side, the shade dented and crushed. Bits of glass scattered the hardwood. He reached out, touched the body. It was cold. He turned over the man’s hands. Abrasions across his right knuckles and cuts across his left forearm where he’d tried to protect himself from a knife. Whoever he was, he’d fought back.
Clay moved through the rest of the apartment, checking every door and cupboard. Except for the corpse, the place was empty. He went back to the sitting room. Near the door was an old mahogany table strewn with papers. Sheets of hand-drawn hieroglyphs, utility bills in Arabic addressed to Mehmet Al Sami. Was this the guy he’d spoken to from Aswan? Clay flipped through a stack of bills, found the phone company invoice and checked the number. It wasn’t the one Rania had given him. But this was the address. The invoice confirmed it. He must have another number. Perhaps another place, an office perhaps.
On the phone, the guy had mentioned the Consortium. Had they got to him? Had they got her, too? Was it the AB? He shook his head, tried to push the thought away. He had to hope that this Mehmet had passed on his message, and that Rania would meet him tomorrow at the café.
Clay took a last look around the flat, closed the door behind him and left the building through the back door, emerging into the noonday heat and stink of Cairo.