Shooting the Sphinx (12 page)

“Call the general!” Ari yanked hard on the case.

The sergeant grew still. Having seen something over Ari's shoulder, he let go of the heavy black case. It thumped against Ari's legs. Ari turned around to follow the sergeant's mesmerized stare.

Across the terminal, a tall man with a loping stride emerged from the hundreds of travelers. He was such a distinct figure. Very thin, very hip, with a close-cropped gray beard—a cool jazz musician, Ari guessed. The man carried only a newspaper, no luggage. He walked straight toward them, winked at the sergeant with a knowing confidence, and went inside the customs storage room. The sergeant followed him in.

Here was the bag-man, thought Ari, the man who makes all the payoffs at the airport. Without saying a word, the man handed the sergeant his newspaper. The sergeant looked inside, saw something, presumably money, and took the newspaper. The man walked out.

Ari picked up a case, and before he knew it, a team of smiling porters who had been watching everything and knew their cue, wheeled a large wagon underneath the case for him to set it down upon.

“No, mister! We do it,” said the porters as they competed with the sergeant over who could stack up the most cases on the wagon.

Ari was elated. He had his cases back. He actually had them. Within a minute, the SpaceCam was rolling out through the terminal. The porters leaned forward pulling the yoke while shooing people out of their path. My own little pyramid crew, thought Ari.

Outside on the curb, Samir stood by a banged-up white five-ton truck.

Ari reached out to shake Samir's hand, but Samir held back. Ari patted him on the back instead. “Well, that's half the battle.”

“Not at all,” said Samir as the porters started heaving the heaviest cases up onto the back of the truck. Dejected, he turned to go.

“Why so sad? We got our camera! Is everything okay?” asked Ari concerned. “Where are you off to?”

“The Ministry of…,” said Samir over his shoulder without looking back, “… Defense.”

 

Chapter 24

Back from the airport, Ari walked into the Mena House and over to the front desk in the lobby.

“Anything come for me? Basher, Room 101,” asked Ari, expecting nothing.

“Yes, Mr. Basher.” The clerk handed over a pink message slip.

I await you in the lobby—Omar el Mansoor
, read the paper, written in a florid hand.

Ari looked around. On an easy chair beneath the chandelier sat a large Egyptian man in his late fifties. Dressed in bell-bottomed jeans, a puffy silk shirt, a black velvet vest, and cowboy boots, he had shoulder-length hair, a Van Dyke beard, and a seventies vibe—a chic Egyptian hippie with expensive clothes.

Both men slowly crossed the lobby for that first tentative handshake.

“Mr. Basher?” asked the man with a flawless American accent.

“Yes?” Ari sensed something familiar about this person.

“I'm Omar el Mansoor of Studio Giza.”

“Right.” Ari remembered the name.

“You called me about working on your movie.”

“I know. But we … uh … hired somebody else.” Ari looked around. He didn't want Hamed to walk in and spot him talking to Samir's biggest competitor.

“Whom did you hire? If you don't mind my asking.” Omar had a courtly sensitive
politesse
, but it seemed to veil some deeper inner power.

“Pan Egypt Films,” said Ari. “Samir Aziz is our fixer.”

“Never heard of him,” said Omar, nonplussed.

Ari wondered if he was telling the truth. “Well, if you hadn't taken two weeks to call me back…” Ari looked at the hotel entrance for any sign of Hamed. “Excuse me, Mr. el…”

“Please call me Omar.”

“I have a very urgent call I need to make.”

Omar was surprised. “But we have a meeting now.”

“We do?”

“Elizabeth Vronsky sent an e-mail to both of us.”

“Beth did…?” In all the excitement over liberating the SpaceCam, he hadn't bothered to check his e-mail.

Omar continued. “I am about to leave the country in a few hours and this is the only chance I have to meet with you.” He pointed to the bar. “May I buy you a drink?”

“Uh … someone's coming to drive me over to the university to scout. Do you mind if we go up to my room instead? It's a suite.”

“Not at all.” Omar followed Ari's glance at the front entrance. “There are no secrets in Cairo.”

Upstairs, Ari opened the door and let Omar in.

“
Très
élégant!
” Omar admired the view. “You can even see your target, the Sphinx.”

“Research,” joked Ari. “I had to check out this suite for our star. It was cheaper by the month.”

“But of course.”

There was something very smooth, very pleasant, very worldly about Omar. College or film school in the States, guessed Ari, and before that he must have gone to some posh boarding school in France or Switzerland.

Ari opened his computer and dialed.

“Hey, Beth.” Her face popped up on screen. She was in her office working late. Ari shared his big news: “We got the camera out of customs!”

“Great,” she said, unimpressed. “How about permission to use it?”

Deflated by her lack of enthusiasm, he said, “Samir's working on that.”

“So I'm paying Don and Charley a thousand dollars a day to sit around on vacation?”

“I don't think they're going to take another pay cut.” Ari changed the subject. “Omar's here.”

“Did you like him?” Beth perked up.

“He's still with me. In my room. I just bumped into him in the lobby.” Ari trained the computer on Omar.

“Oh. Hi, Omar.”

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

“Should I start?” asked Beth.

Start what? Ari wondered. “Sure,” he said.

“Omar,” said Beth, “what do you think of Samir Aziz?”

“Who?” asked Omar.

A little annoyed by what he took to be feigned ignorance, Ari said, “Pan Egypt Productions. I mentioned him to you in the lobby.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Really?” Ari decided that he didn't believe Omar on this point.

“He's a nobody,” Omar went on. “How has your experience been with him?”

“So far so good,” said Ari. “We just got our camera out of customs.”

“Yes. And your budget?”

Beth replied before Ari could. “He says he's going over.”

“Uhmmm. Not exactly the right thing to do.” Omar frowned.

“It's complicated.” Ari defended Samir.

“It always is.”

Ari figured he'd better nip off this kind of talk. “Well, Omar, we're committed to Samir. We have a contract with him. So—”

Just then the phone rang. Ari answered.

“Hello…?”

“Mr. Basher, your car is here,” said the desk clerk.

“Thank you, I'll be right down.” Ari hung up.

“That's my ride. So sorry. This meeting was a total surprise to me. Is there anything else?”

“I want to offer my services, free of charge, as a consultant,” said Omar.

“That's very generous.” Ari could smell a Trojan horse. “For what purpose?”

“To make sure everything works well for you. That you hire the best crew and you do not get cheated.”

“A very, very kind offer.” Ari knew it was anything but that. “We'll think it over.”

Omar pointed to a spreadsheet on the desk. “Is that Samir's budget?”

“His initial bid. Yes,” confirmed Ari.

“Do you mind if I look it over?”

Ari could feel the dynamic of control shifting around him. “Beth?” What would she say?

“I have no problem with that.”

Ari picked up the papers, about to hand them over, but he stopped. “Oh, I need this copy.”

“Really?”

“It has my notes in it.” Ari hadn't written a thing on the pages. “I want to review this on my way to the scout.”

“Very well,” said Omar cheerfully. “A pleasure to meet you.”

He's very charismatic, thought Ari, but underneath lies something reptilian. I like him, but I don't trust him, Ari decided.

Omar stopped with his hand on the antique doorknob. “A suggestion, if I may? Your permission to fly around the Sphinx must be signed by the defense minister himself.”

“Tantawi,” acknowledged Ari.

“Did you know that the defense ministers of Egypt and Israel talk every week?”

“So?”

“Your production company in Hollywood is owned by one of the richest men in Israel, a former arms dealer on the highest level.”

“True,” admitted Ari.

“Just a word from one defense minister to another would solve your problem.” Omar's idea to pull strings at the top was undeniably a good one. The sort of thing that only a connected member of the elite would conceive of. “Here is my card. If you need anything…,” Omar continued with earnest obsequiousness. “Any complication. Any delay. Anything. Call me anytime. This is my personal cell phone.”

“Thank you, Omar.” Ari slid the business card into his pocket.

“Good-bye, Beth.” Omar waved at her on the laptop. “I'll see you in New York.”

“You'll see her in New York?” Ari tried to cover his surprise.

Omar was casually dismissive. “I'm just passing through on my way to the Sundance Film Festival. I go every year. My plane leaves in three hours. So I must say good-bye.”

Ari opened the door, relieved to let Omar out.

“Thank you for taking the time to come all the way to Giza to meet me.”

“It is nothing.” In the doorway, Omar made a polite little bow. “I wanted to shake the hand of the man who will shoot the Sphinx.”

 

Chapter 25

Ari followed the location scout, a talkative, energetic Egyptian with good English, up the stairs of the Geology building of Cairo University. They walked across a marble floor in the large entry hall, their footfalls the only sound. When he stopped to shoot pictures, the snap of his camera echoed in the silence. Ari realized that they were alone in this grand hall. The students must all be in class, he thought. He saw a set of double doors finished in dull green leather with glass portholes in them.

Ari pushed through the swinging doors into a large empty academic theater. He snapped a panorama of the three or four hundred wooden seats with those little half desks for note taking. The huge room had ceiling fans on each suspended light fixture. One was missing a blade and spun around in a wobble out of phase with the others. On the stage was a black slate slab counter with a sink and gas jets. A selection of beakers and test tubes sat in a rack on the counter. On the back wall hung a double row of blackboards, which could slide up or down. The place was a perfect time capsule. Nothing had changed since the 1930s.

“Class is canceled?”

“No, Mr. Ari,” said the location scout.

Ari wandered down to the lectern and took some pictures of the empty seats from the stage. He faced the empty chairs.

He had an old college memory of sitting in a large academic theater like this one, as a venerated historian and former national security advisor gave a guest lecture to his Comparative Civilization class.

“In war do you not become your enemy?” the great man asked them. “When one civilization seeks to destroy another, does the victor not consume the vanquished, digest it, assimilate it? Do we not become the very thing we seek to kill?”

Ari walked off the stage. He wandered back out of the lecture hall and up a grand staircase to the second floor. At the top, the landing turned into a square cloistered balcony that looked down on a large courtyard below. Was the style of architecture Spanish? Moorish? Southern Californian? Turkish? Or did all those styles spring from one fountainhead, the assimilation of war?

Ari stopped by a bulletin board laden with notices: A
PPLY FOR THE
H
ALIBURTON
F
ELLOWSHIP IN
G
EOLOGY
T
ODAY!
F
ULL
T
UITION AND
S
TIPEND
.

A poster showed young Arab students in hard hats out in the desert with a friendly American engineer, a series of seismic charges blowing up in the background. C
ONCENTRATIONS IN
S
EISMOLOGY AND
F
LUID
D
YNAMICS WELCOME.

Ari turned around. “Where is everybody?”

“Another student strike,” explained the location scout.

They walked along the corridor, which overlooked a courtyard on one side and a row of seminar rooms on the other. Ari peeked in their open doors as he passed them by.

“Do you want to go in?”

“No,” said Ari. “We don't need a classroom. Just a lecture hall and an office.”

There was one door that was almost closed. Ari stopped next to it. A woman's voice emanated from within, speaking in both Arabic and English. Ari recognized the voice. It can't be her, he thought, and he pushed open the door. Farah was giving a lecture. She finished writing the last line of a large chunk of computer code on a blackboard. She turned around and saw Ari. She switched into English.

“If you hack into your operating system and insert this piece of code…”

Ari looked around the small seminar room. A hundred people were crammed into space for twenty.

“… then their spyware will cycle into an endless loop. They will not see anything on your computer until you shut down. Then it will bypass all of your files and spit their spyware into your logging off sequence. Any questions before I erase this?” She put down the chalk and picked up an eraser.

A Lebanese student raised his hand. “Are there digital copies of this code?”

“Yes, but you must only pass this by hand. Never e-mail it or the Americans will crack it. They have a room at Nilecast, which I have seen, where they copy every e-mail we send and give it to Military Intelligence.”