When Mahmoud woke him, it was still dark.
Whatever nightmare Clay had been inhabiting faded as the urgency in his friend’s voice doubled his heart rate. Clay pulled on his shirt, checked his weapon, secured his ammunition and grenades in his waist pouch, and then threw on the jelabia.
‘My father-in-law just called,’ whispered Mahmoud. ‘They think they have found her. A neighbour from Al Alqalta came to him late last night. She told him that a strange woman – a foreigner – arrived a week ago. At first, she paid it no attention. Then, over the next few days, she began to notice other men, also strangers, arriving and staying in the same flat. It is not far from here, on the west bank. The foreign woman goes to the nearby mosque every morning for the fajr, the dawn prayer, and again in the evening.’
‘That’s it?’ said Clay.
Mahmoud nodded.
‘Not much to go on.’
‘My father-in-law showed the neighbour Rania’s passport photo. She said it was her.’
‘Jesus.’
‘We must hurry.’
Rania was waiting by the car with Parveen. They embraced and Rania sat in the back. Mahmoud drove. Soon they were speeding south along the dark canal road towards Al Alqalta.
‘This is why it took us some time to find her,’ said Parveen. ‘We started in the town, the big places.’
Mahmoud slowed the car and turned right onto a small, unpaved road. Dawn was still an hour or so away, just a hint on the eastern horizon. After a few hundred metres he switched off the lights and rolled the car to a stop under a giant sycamore.
‘There,’ whispered Parveen. ‘At the end of the street, on the left. She is in the second-floor apartment facing the road. Where the balcony is.’
The place was dark, shuttered. Clay pulled out his binoculars, scanned the front.
Minutes passed.
‘Maybe she has already left for the mosque,’ whispered Rania.
‘It is still early. The mosque is very close. Walking distance.’ Parveen pointed. ‘Over there.’
A single minaret poked above the scattered buildings, bathed in a wan green light.
‘I am going to look,’ said Rania. And before anyone could respond she was out and moving away in the darkness.
‘Shit,’ said Clay. They’d just made their first mistake.
A light came on in the flat, then another. Clay and Mahmoud sat motionless. A minute or so later, the lights were extinguished. Clay checked his watch: just before five o’clock, the sky greying now in the east. A dark figure emerged from a side alley, got into a small van parked nearby, started the engine and drove it around to the front of the building. The front door opened. A man stepped out, looked both ways, walked to the van, opened the sliding door and got in.
‘Look,’ said Mahmoud.
Five more men filed out of the building and jumped into the van. Each carried a duffel bag. The door closed and the van moved away.
‘What should we do?’ said Mahmoud. ‘Follow?’
‘No, wait,’ said Clay.
A dark figure emerged from the same alley and hurried across the narrow street. A woman in a black burqa. She was carrying a small backpack. She turned left, in the direction of the mosque, and disappeared down a side street.
Mahmoud waited a few seconds, started the engine and backed the car away, keeping the lights off. At the end of the street he turned left. The call to prayer echoed out across the sleeping town. They trundled along the rutted, potholed road for a minute or so then Mahmoud stopped the car.
The mosque was perhaps fifty metres away. From where they sat they could clearly see the entrance, a house built close to its walls on the left, and to the right, the fields and palms of the flood plain. People began straggling into the mosque in ones and twos – men mostly, wrapped against the morning chill. There was no sign of the woman or Rania.
‘We must wait,’ said Parveen. ‘The woman we spoke to says she leaves after fajr.’
Clay scanned the street and the adjacent buildings. Rania wasn’t thinking straight. This woman – if it was her – was dangerous. Rania was unarmed, and they had no way of staying in contact. They should have established a rendezvous point. He had to hope that if they became separated, she would find her way back to Mahmoud’s. More mistakes.
Five minutes passed, ten. Clay and Mahmoud and Parveen sat in the car and watched the sky lighten. Worshippers began leaving the mosque, the same people they’d seen going in, the men hunched, wrapped against the chill, matrons in their dark burqas, neither the woman nor Rania among them.
Minutes passed. They waited.
A quarter of an hour later the lights on the minaret flickered out. ‘Jesus,’ said Clay. ‘They’re gone, both of them.’
Mahmoud pressed his fingertips together. Patience. But this was a commodity that Clay had long since husked away to the slimmest of cores. Any moment now, the call might be going out to the AB, the evidence perhaps already on its way, and then the window would open, at least for him. Whatever grace Tall had promised was already gone. They needed to go, now, not be scurrying around the backstreets of some shithole town in rural Egypt. And yet her strength beguiled him. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to her, all those days and months ago. But this seemingly blind, sometimes ugly stubbornness also frightened him, so beyond their control did it seem. He reached for the door handle.
‘Wait,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Look, there.’
A woman was leaving the mosque. Her face was veiled. She carried a small backpack on one shoulder and in the other arm, slung on her hip, a child.
Clay held his breath.
‘Is it her?’ said Mahmoud.
‘I can’t tell.’ Clay raised his binoculars and tried to focus on the child, but its face was turned towards the woman.
She stepped out onto the road, looked to her left. A car emerged from the darkness, rolled towards her. The car stopped, a bearded man behind the wheel. She opened the front door, got in. The car moved off in the direction of the canal road. Seconds later, it was out of sight.
Mahmoud made to follow.
‘There,’ said Clay.
Another woman was leaving the mosque. She stopped, looked both ways, flung off her headscarf. It was Rania.
Mahmoud gunned the engine. They pulled up in front of her moments later.
Rania jumped in the back. ‘Did you see?’ she said, breathless.
‘Was it her?’ said Parveen.
‘Yes. And she has my son.’