It was a big place.
Clay arrived early, stood in line with the other tourists and bought his ticket. It was the first time since arriving in Egypt that he hadn’t felt conspicuous. The place teemed with Europeans, hundreds of them. A dozen languages collided, overlapped, cancelled. Not far away in the queue there were even a few Dutch guys – taller and fairer than he was. If indeed this was what Rania had meant when she’d made that half-second triangle with her two hands clasped close to her chest then it was a good choice.
Clay stood in the crowd, looking out across the sand and rubble towards the Sphinx, and beyond, the great pyramid of Cheops, and the smaller Chepren and Menkaure structures. He’d been here before, a couple of times, sat and marvelled at the dedication to the infinite embodied in these piles of rock. And yet everything he’d learned before and since only reinforced the complete impermanence of life. And now all of this was mere background. Less – irrelevance.
He searched the crowd. Would she come? Was this the place? And if it was, how would he find her? It was just gone one o’clock. The ramp to Cheops was crowded with sweating, harried, slow-moving tourists. Clay pulled his cap lower over his eyes and edged his way through the bodies. If she meant for him to meet her here, then he would go to the most obvious place – the biggest monument ever built to time and certainty in life after death.
Clay tracked along the side of the structure towards the south-west corner. He clambered up to the first tier of blocks. From here he could see back to the main entrance and across to the north-eastern side of Chepren. He looked out across the milling, camera-laden throng, and beyond to the encroaching blur of the city. Smoke drifted up from the streets, mingled with the exhaust of twenty million cars. Time passed. Clay sat, dangled his legs from the edge of the block and watched the crowd, looking for any sign of Rania, veiled or not.
At five minutes to two, a young woman with long black hair emerged from the main ticket barrier. She was wearing a summer dress that covered her knees but left her calves bare, a white cardigan thrown over her shoulders. At that distance, he could not make out her face. But there was something about the way she held herself, her build. His pulse jumped, hammered. It was her.
But then she stopped, turned back towards the barrier, held out her hands. Two young girls emerged from the doors, went to her and took her hands. They stood a moment like that, together, near the barrier. Clay watched as the woman engaged one of the white-uniformed tourist police in conversation. Clay exhaled, calmed himself, closed his eyes, let it go. He could have sworn, just for a moment. Jesus Christ.
When he looked again, the woman and her daughters were gone, absorbed into the crowd. By twenty minutes after what he had assumed to be the appointed time, he decided to move. If she was here, she would have seen him by now. He jumped to the ground and rounded the south-west corner of the pyramid to the quieter, western side. A swath of green edged into view – the Oberoi golf course and the gardens of the Marriott hotel, stark against the sand monochrome of desert and city.
A veiled woman was standing up against the base of the structure, about a quarter of the way along from the corner. Her black burqa was patched with dust.
She looked at him, held his gaze.
Clay stood, transfixed. The woman reached into the folds of her robe, withdrew her hand, moved close to the stone so that she stood facing the big limestone blocks. Then she pushed something into a gap between them. Clay watched as she glanced up at him again, held his gaze for a moment, then turned and hurried off, moving north, away from the main entrance.
Clay sprinted across the sand until he came to the place where the woman had been standing. Wedged into a gap between two blocks was a paper coffee cup, crushed and stained. He reached in, pulled it out and opened it up. Inside was a folded piece of card. On it, someone had written, in plain block letters:
GARBAGE CITY. TONIGHT. COPTIC CHURCH IN THE CAVE. EVENING SERVICE. R.
Clay looked up. The woman was gone. He tightened the note in his fist and sprinted towards Cheops’ north-western corner. Jesus, it was her. Again, so close. Right there. Materialising and then vanishing again like a dream, half reverie, half nightmare. His heart hammered. His legs felt like spongewood. He came to the corner, and looked out across the open ground. There she was. About a hundred metres away, hurrying towards the hotel green. But something was wrong. She stumbled, fell to the ground, picked herself up, kept going.
Clay started after her. He’d only managed five paces when two men appeared, moving across the open ground at pace, closing from the right. One was short, overweight, the other taller. The men he’d seen in the alley the day before, after Rania had disappeared. Cops. They called out. She stopped, looked in their direction a moment then kept going. They were closing on her fast, had almost reached her now. Clay pulled out the Glock, chambered a round. Rania stumbled again, tried to regain her balance, crashed to the ground. The cops were on her, pulling her to her feet. Clay raised his weapon, took aim. He was too far away, and he knew it.
Clay replaced the Glock in his waistband, moved back to the corner block of the Pyramid and watched the men lead Rania away. Plans started forming in his mind – counterattacks, improvisations many and varied. Free her, somehow. Get her back. He needed to follow. They were still too close. There was still too much open ground between them. He readied himself. Then the men stopped, as if suddenly they had realised something. Clay could see them look at each other and then at Rania. The tall one reached out and grabbed her headdress, yanking her head. She stumbled then righted herself. Clay took a step forwards, checked himself, anger pulsing inside him. The tall man pulled at Rania’s headdress again. Her black veil fell to the ground. The men stood staring at her.
Clay snatched a breath. At first, he wasn’t sure. It was a long way away. But no, the hair was wrong, thin and threaded through with lighter tones. A disguise? The face was round, not angular, and broader than it should be, the nose far more prominent, the lips slacker, without that distinctive arc and curve. Whoever the men had apprehended, it wasn’t Rania.