The Curse (25 page)

“It's not possible!”

He sounded genuinely shocked and I got some satisfaction out of that, too.

“It's the same as the Radcliff replica, beautifully done; they're the best forgeries I've ever seen of an antiquity. This one was a side job done by a guy named Quintin Rees at the counterfeiting shop. I suspect Quintin might have had his throat cut after finishing it. He's MIA from home.”

“MIA?”

“Missing in action.”

“Are you certain you haven't made a mistake?”

I wanted to laugh out loud.

“The only mistake I made was letting you talk me into this mess. It's a phony.”

I took the battery out of his phone and chucked it and the phone out the window.

I leaned back in the cab and closed my eyes.

What was the old expression—being put through the wringer? That's how I felt. As if I'd been splashing around an old-time washing machine and then hauled out soaking wet and put through the rubber rollers that squeezed the water out before the wash got hung out to dry.

It had been one hell of a day, and it wasn't over.

I still had to meet Rafi al Din.

He hadn't told me why he wanted me to meet him at the train station, but I had hopes of a jaunt over to a Red Sea resort, Egypt's Riviera. Anywhere, as long as I got out of Cairo while I was still alive. And still had money in my pocket.

Now I needed my passport. Any way I could get it.

Even if I had to do some things that a lady shouldn't have to do.

Fortunately, Rafi was good-looking. Just the type I hate and am attracted to—a tough cop, probably drinks beer and smokes ugly black cigarettes as he watches soccer after sex.

What can I say?

Maybe it was me.

Did I expect too much from a man? Was I looking for Mr. Right to come along?

Maybe my standards were too high. Did I have to settle for less?

No, I didn't believe so.

It had to be that I was raised bad.

Being desperate with killers and thieves after me didn't help, either.

53

A Mercedes with dark-tinted windows bearing the insignia of an Egyptian army general transported Mounir Kaseem through the dark streets of Cairo. He sat in the backseat of the car driven by an active duty sergeant who had been Kaseem's own driver when Kaseem had been a high-ranking military officer.

After midnight, the crowded, frantic pace and harsh discordance of horns had quieted.

When they pulled up to a private marina on the east bank of the Nile north of the Imbaba bridge, Kaseem got out. The driver didn't need to be told to wait.

The camel market was not far from the area.

Kaseem walked past two sentries standing guard with automatic weapons and up the gangplank of a large dahabeeyah, a luxury houseboat-yacht.

Dahabeeyah meant “golden boat” in reference to the luxury river boats of the ancient pharaohs. The modern versions were the idea of Thomas Cook, the British tourism pioneer, about a hundred and fifty years ago, and as often carried archaeologists up the Nile to digs.

The boat Kaseem boarded was a floating Egyptian Army Officers Club, reserved for field grade officers.

Tonight it was being used for a meeting of a clandestine group of officers who supported Kaseem's Golden Nile nationalistic political action group.

As the middle-aged officers were about to hold a meeting in which they planned to decide the fate of their country, a group of young women enjoyed cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and gossip on the stern deck patio.

The women weren't the wives of the men, though some had most of the privileges of wives without the formalities.

Once the meeting was over, the young women would join the older men for drinks and later entertain the men privately in the twelve bedroom suites on the boat.

Although the men weren't exceptionally wealthy by Western terms, they lived rich and privileged lives: their homes were behind high walls in secure neighborhoods, their wives shopped in London, Paris, and Dubai, and their children went to elitist Egyptian prep schools before attending universities in Britain and America.

The men considered themselves patriots, though by most reasonable standards they would be considered extremists whose political views were not shared by most of the people of their country.

Their goal was not to bring democracy to the country, but to stop the growing influence of Islamic reactionaries who wanted to return the country to medieval societies like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the northern Pakistani tribal areas.

If they succeeded, they would be autocrats who enjoyed even more power and wealth. That was never far from the minds of any of them as they voluntarily involved themselves in conspiracies that would earn them death by hanging if they failed.

Kaseem had been their commander before he fled into exile. Even in exile he was still in charge. Of all of them, he was the most dedicated and the least interested in enriching himself.

He was also the most fanatical and dangerous.

Waiting for him in the lounge were a commanding general of an armored division, a general recently forced into retirement, and three colonels who knew they would never reach general rank.

The five men who had been waiting for him welcomed Kaseem with a salute that he returned. Then handshakes and praises were exchanged, fresh drinks were poured, and questions were asked about the health of their wives and the state of their children's schooling, jobs, and marriages before they started the meeting.

Though unspoken, the men were impressed that Kaseem had the courage to return clandestinely to Egypt.

Also understood by all of men was that their families would suffer and be impoverished if any of them were discovered to be traitors.

When the social greetings were finished, they stared at him, as a group, waiting for what he had to say.

He raised his glass. And smiled. “A toast to the Heart of Egypt.”

“Is it true? Can we see it?” one of the colonels asked.

“It is en route to the place where it will be used at the proper time. I didn't dare bring it here. We are all expendable, but the heart … it must be preserved until then.”

Except for the retired general, the officers were nervous and cautious as Kaseem once again went over their plan to seize power.

A paramount issue with the men was the fact that others had tried it and failed, most notably when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by army extremists during a military parade.

“We know what went wrong that day,” Kaseem said. “The plot only involved junior officers who lacked the ability to deploy large forces. We have that ability.”

“They had no plan for seizure of the government,” the retired general told them. “That was the height of lunacy. They did not have a leader, as we do”—he nodded at Kaseem—“ready to declare a state of emergency and seize power, along with the troops to back up the seizure.”

“You will command the necessary troops,” Kaseem reminded them. “Preparation and readiness to strike are the keys. We will move quickly and get the rest of the army on our side. The word will swiftly spread that it is the Golden Nile that has acted. The core leadership of the army know that we are not terrorists, but patriots.”

For another hour they talked and planned and refined the stratagem that they had worked on for years, one that they believed would flush out the old powers and bring in their new thinking.

When they had their fill of politics and whiskey, Kaseem called it quits, informing the group that it was time for him to return to his quarters and begin implementing his plan.

The old general, who had been Kaseem's commanding officer in a bygone day before Kaseem rose in rank above him, walked him to the waiting staff car.

They chatted about the government's plan to build huge megacities to reduce Cairo's twenty million or so population by diverting millions of its inhabitants to the new metropolises, a scheme already under way and generally considered doomed to failure.

It was innocent talk on the dock in case they were overheard and it was not until they were at the car that the older officer explained the real reason he had walked Kaseem to the car.

“My friend,” he said to Kaseem, “tell me the truth. Do you really have the Heart of Egypt in your hand?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if you did, I believe you would have showed it tonight.”

“There has been a minor setback,” Kaseem said. “I didn't dare mention it because our colleagues are too squeamish to hear the truth. I know who has the scarab. We will have it when we make our move.”

54

I had already downed one glass of wine and was working on my second glass as I sat in the club car of the sleeper train from Cairo to Aswân. Considering what I'd been through, a third one wasn't that far away in my mind, and it would put me to sleep.

Rafi and Dalila were drinking fruit juice.

The trip was more than five hundred miles, an eleven-hour train ride between the two cities, passing through Luxor on the way.

Most tourists traveled the Nile by boat between Luxor and Aswân, but the train was faster and cheaper. The town of Aswân didn't have much appeal to me—it wasn't the Riviera, Egyptian or otherwise—but it was a gateway to one of the most stunning artifacts in the world, the colossi of Ramses at Abu Simbel.

“Lana is waiting for us at Aswân,” Rafi said. He was referring to the edgy assistant that picked us up from the airport when I arrived in Cairo. “She'll drive us to Abu Simbal.”

He still hadn't explained the reason for our trip, but now that there were no killers in sight, I wanted to know.

“So tell me why we are going there?” I asked, yawning.

I had come down from my hyperadrenaline and was starting to feel a little tired as I finished my second glass.

“Some fellahs digging an irrigation ditch near Lake Aswân have uncovered a burial tomb of a wealthy Twenty-ninth Dynasty merchant. It had already been looted, probably soon after it was created over two thousand years ago, but there was enough left behind for these poor peasant laborers to have become rich if they had had more sophistication.”

It was an old story heard over and again in the antiquities-rich Mediterranean area—workers digging a ditch, a road, or basement stumble upon a piece of history and grab it for themselves rather than turn it over to the authorities.

There was little temptation for these men to turn in the artifact. Desperately poor, even the small amount they received from a local antique dealer could equal years of income for them.

The piece would then make its way up the food chain of antique dealers until the artifact finally got smuggled out of the country and sold at auction in London, New York, or Hong Kong, often for millions of dollars.

When everything went to hell, it would be the poor workers trying to get some extra food and necessities for their families who would end up getting punished.

“The sudden advent of having more money brought the workers under the scrutiny of the local police chief,” Rafi said.

“Of course, he didn't get a piece of the action, so he busted them,” I said.

Rafi looked at his daughter. “Isn't she cynical?”

“That's what you said, too.”

“Whatever.” I laughed. “It's a good reason to see Abu Simbel again.” And for me to stay out of Cairo until I figured out how to keep alive.

“Well, Dalila, I think it's time you finish your schoolwork and then to bed,” Rafi said, his way of telling me he wanted to discuss what had happened between me and Kaseem.

We had two cabins next to each other with a connecting door in between. Rafi was to sleep in one, Dalila and I in the other. I initially had the cabin to myself, but Dalila asked if she could share it with me and I said sure, we'd have a pajama party.

Not exactly the sleeping arrangements I thought would work to my advantage, but the girl seemed like a nice kid.

Before we talked business I wanted to know more about Dalila's medical problem. As soon as he closed the adjoining door, I asked Rafi about her condition.

“What is Dalila suffering from?”

He didn't say anything for a moment but I could see from the way tension gripped him when I asked that it wasn't something he wanted to talk about.

“I don't mean to pry—”

“No,” he interrupted, “it just makes me angry when I talk about it because I'm so helpless. There's nothing I can do to help her. She always had a weak immune system and was always sick.” He stopped for a moment to get his emotions under control. “She has leukemia. The doctors say she needs a bone marrow transplant. If they don't find the right donor soon, then…” He looked away and didn't finish the sentence.

The prognosis sounded bad. I could see the agony on his face as he talked.

He obviously wasn't a donor candidate.

“You'll find a donor if you keep looking,” I said.

“It wouldn't matter even if I found one. I don't want to discuss it.”

“I'm sorry.” What do you say to a father whose daughter is going to die?

What would I do if I were in his position? Everything that was humanly possible, I thought.

I felt his pain.

It was cruel punishment for any person, knowing that someone you love is facing death and there's nothing you can do about it. You still hope for a miracle but know in your heart it won't happen.

I held back the tears that were about to come, and changed the subject. “I'm sure you want to know about Kaseem.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Tell me what happened.”

I told him about the incident at the marketplace.

This time I was completely honest with him. I owed Kaseem nothing and I needed Rafi on my side if I was to stay alive and get back my passport.

“Are you sure it was a replica? You said the light was bad—”

“I could smell the paint. It would take scientific tests to distinguish it from the original, but I'm sure it was a reproduction.”