By the time Clay returned from Suez it was dark and the scheduled rendezvous with Mahmoud was less than an hour away. He made his way back to Atef’s apartment in Zamalek, ensuring as best he could that he was not being tracked.
When he arrived, Rania was jumpy, withdrawn. She looked as if she’d been crying and hadn’t slept in days. But she noticed his wound right away, insisting that Atef’s wife examine him. As the bandage he’d applied came off, she gasped, muttered some invocation in Arabic under her breath.
As Atef’s wife sewed, Clay told Rania about his encounter with Tall at the hotel – what he’d said about Samira and G.
Rania listened in silence, watching the needle moving across what remained of Clay’s ear. He knew it hurt her to hear of her friend’s betrayal, of Samira’s guilt and final attempt at redemption – all things he knew well. By the time he finished telling it, Atef’s wife was finishing up, and Rania’s eyes were spilling silent tears.
‘She defied them, in the end,’ said Clay. ‘That probably saved you, those extra few minutes she held out.’
Rania said nothing, just stood gazing out through her tears.
Then Clay told her about meeting Yusuf Al-Gambal in Suez, about the details of the case and her husband’s involvement, the unrequited love, and finally, Al-Gambal’s unwillingness to continue the fight, to run even, his seeming resignation in the face of imprisonment or death.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Clay said, shaking his head. ‘It’s as if he just wants it all to be over.’
Rania watched as Atef’s wife finished bandaging his ear, cleaned him up.
‘We have a decision to make,’ he said, once Atef’s wife had left them alone. ‘We can go to Luxor, as planned, or we can head straight for the Red Sea, now. Mahmoud knows someone who can get us passage on a freighter heading south. We can be out of Egypt and on our way in twelve hours.’ What they needed now was clarity. Certainty. Logic. They needed to think it through well, all of it. If they didn’t, they were not going to leave this place.
Rania stared at him as if he’d just proposed that they turn themselves in to the authorities. But instead of the rebuke he expected, she said: ‘I have managed to make some sense of the Kemetic’s journal.’ She handed him a card. ‘Yusuf Al-Gambal gave me this, the one time I met him.’
It was a business card. Clay turned it to the light.
‘It’s a big industrial plant. A lead smelter. The one I told you about. The same place, the same name, is mentioned here.’ She pointed to a symbol on the open page of the Kemetic’s journal. ‘You see, it is the company logo.’
‘The place in the photograph.’
Rania nodded.
‘One of the Consortium’s companies?’
‘According to the journal, yes. Majority-owned.’ Rania traced her finger along the string of Arabic shorthand. ‘And you see here? SRD Holdings. The minority partner. I did some checking, while you were away. SRD is registered in South Africa.’
‘The AB.’
‘It must be.’
Clay told Rania about the blood data the Kemetic had encoded in his journal, that Ali had a cousin who organised the testing of the neighbourhood children. ‘They were starting to trace the link back to the actual sources of pollution.’
‘And when they got too close, the Consortium hit back.’
‘That’s why those cops were so interested in the file you got from your husband’s computer. Can you imagine if this got out?’
‘That is why they killed my husband,’ said Rania. ‘It is logical. Yusuf Al-Gambal, the Kemetic, and my husband. Together, taking on the Consortium in the courts. About this.’ She stabbed the document with her finger. ‘Pollution from their factories. Samira mentioned the same thing.’
‘And now, Yusuf and Ali’s cousin are the only ones left.’
‘Ali’s cousin?
‘Fatimah. She was the one who organised the blood testing.’
Rania gasped, held her breath a moment then grabbed Clay’s arm. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The one in the photograph, standing next to Hamid. She knew him, worked with him on the case. It all fits. Fatimah Salawi is Ali’s cousin.’
‘Hold on. Who is Fatimah Salawi?’
Rania told Clay about her conversation with her friend, about the warning of an imminent attack by GI. ‘That’s why we have to go to Luxor. Because Fatimah Salawi is the woman who killed my husband and who kidnapped my son. She is a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, and she’s on her way to Luxor right now to do something terrible.’
An hour and a half later the southern outskirts of Giza were fading into the distance. The Western Desert Road unspooled before them in the yellow myopia of the headlights. Mahmoud had brought the big twenty-two-wheeler and had arranged to carry a container of electronic goods bound for Aswan. He’d greeted Clay as he might an old friend, with a bear hug and scratchy kisses on each cheek. To Rania he offered a bow of the head and a smile, bid her welcome.
‘Your very good friend,’ he said to Clay, pushing out a big smile. ‘You found her.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘And now? Luxor or the coast?’
‘Luxor. We must find her son.’
‘God willing.’
‘Yes. Inshallah.’
‘And then?’
‘To the coast, as planned. Out of Egypt.’
Mahmoud ran his fingers through his beard, considering this. ‘I will arrange it.’
Clay and Rania sat up front, ready to disappear into the cab’s rear sleeping compartment if they encountered roadblocks.
As the kilometres wound by, Rania leafed through the pages of the Kemetic’s diary. Clay could feel her there next to him, her hip warm against his, her right elbow moving against his side every time she turned a page. Her smell filled his senses, that same elixir he’d first breathed in Yemen three years ago now – the smell of wildflowers and honey that would always remind him of their time together at her aunt’s chalet in the Alps, after he’d been reported killed and somehow found her again. He counted the times they’d been together. Once in Yemen, desperate and frightened, before she’d vanished into the night. Then Switzerland, three weeks that in his memory occupied a space equivalent to all of his life before meeting her. London, on the run from Medved and his thugs. And then, much later, those few days in Istanbul when they’d come as close as any time before or since, after which he’d lost her in the maelstrom of time and distance and events, chaotic and uncertain. Twenty-seven nights, or parts of them. That was it.
And yet, in everything she’d told him, everything he’d learned from Yusuf Al-Gambal, there was something that didn’t fit. ‘Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya,’ he said. ‘Who are they fighting against?’
‘The regime,’ she said, her voice almost lost among the sounds of the road.
‘And who is the regime?’
‘According to The Lion, to Samira, to the Kemetic, it is the Consortium.’
‘Right. And Yusuf Al-Gambal told me he was sure that Hamid and the Kemetic had been murdered by the Consortium. So, if this woman, Fatimah Salawi, really is a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, working with Hamid and her cousin to help expose one of the Consortium’s companies, then why would she murder Hamid? And why take your son? It makes absolutely no sense.’
Rania was silent for a long time. Clay let her ponder.
After a while, she said: ‘Perhaps she was using Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya as a cover, as misdirection. Maybe she does work for the Consortium. Maybe she was the one who blew the cover on what Yusuf and Ali were doing.’
‘A mole? Working against her own cousin?’
‘Maybe. Perhaps she always intended to murder all three of us. When I didn’t come home on time that day, maybe she decided to kill Hamid and take Eugène, framing me for their murders. What better way to ensure my silence than to kidnap my son?’
‘Then your friends in the DGSE have their facts wrong.’
‘Quite possibly,’ she said.
‘But if she isn’t with the Consortium, then she is exactly who your contacts in DGSE say she is – an Islamic terrorist – and most likely your son is dead. And if she is with the Consortium, mole or not, then she isn’t going to Luxor.’ He felt as if he was stepping into a minefield. ‘Your son is dead, Rania. Face facts. We should leave. Now. Get out while we can.’
Rania stared at him, her hair haloed in the phosphorescence of the truck’s instrument panel, her face in darkness. Time passed. Miles of darkened desert. The slow turning of stars. The drone of the truck’s big diesel engine. Clay let her alone. Mahmoud too, knowing this was a silence that should not be broken.
The lights of Beni Suef were well behind them when she said: ‘I need to be sure, Claymore.’ Then she reached for his hand, took it in her own. He could feel her calloused finger tracing the big vein from his second knuckle to the point of his wrist.
‘Please understand, chéri. This is the best chance we have of finding out what happened to my son. I need to do this. And I need your help. After, I release you from any obligation you may feel you hold.’
Clay let her words wash over him. ‘Okay, Ra. We make sure. Whatever it takes.’ It could never be any other way.