The Labyrinth of Osiris (39 page)

Pinsker in particular was giving him a bellyache. Experience had taught him that every case throws up at least one rogue element, one piece of the jigsaw that simply refuses to slot with the rest of the picture. Pinsker was that piece. The Englishman felt like part of a completely different picture altogether. He’d been hoping Khalifa would turn up something, but five days had gone by and he’d heard nothing from the Egyptian. Which left him in a delicate situation. He badly needed to get to grips with the Pinsker angle, but at the same time didn’t want to be pressuring Khalifa for an update, not with everything else the man was having to contend with at the moment. He’d already called once, left a message, hadn’t heard back, didn’t like the idea of hassling him. Yet he couldn’t wait indefinitely. He had a murder to solve, and Samuel Pinsker somehow tied in with that murder. Should he bite the bullet and call again? Should he start making his own enquiries, get Zisky to do a bit of ferreting? He was still trying to decide when his cell phone went off.

Well, well. Khalifa. Jew and Muslim so in tune!

‘I was just thinking about you,’ he said, waving away a vendor who was trying to flog him a sunhat.

‘Not bad things, I hope,’ said Khalifa.

‘Nothing but sunshine and love, my friend.’

If Khalifa was amused by the comment he didn’t show it. He apologized for not having called sooner, explained that he’d wanted to talk to a couple of people before getting back to Ben-Roi, then launched into an extended summary of what he’d unearthed so far: the rape, the revenge murder, the Howard Carter letter, the mysterious discovery Pinsker claimed to have made shortly before his death which may or may not have had something to do with a labyrinth. If Ben-Roi had been hoping for a dramatic shedding of light, he was sorely disappointed. Not for the first time on this case.

‘What do you make of it?’ he asked when Khalifa had finished.

‘I don’t really know,’ replied the Egyptian. ‘The labyrinth thing is intriguing, but whether it’s what your murder victim was interested in—’

He broke off, shouting angrily in Arabic to someone at his end of the line.

‘Sorry, kids about to run across the road,’ he explained. ‘Foolish. They ought to look before they cross.’

Ben-Roi started to smile, then didn’t, realizing the resonance such things must have for his friend. Instead he asked Khalifa if he thought there might be any connection between the two murders: Luxor 1931, Jerusalem the present. The Egyptian gave a muted
hrumph
, the verbal equivalent of throwing his hands up in the air.

‘I can’t see an obvious one. Apart from the two victims being Jewish. Even that seems . . . how do you say? . . . flimsy, given that the murders are eighty years apart. But then I don’t know all the details of your case so maybe I’m missing something.’

It was a fair point. Ben-Roi had only furnished the most basic overview of the situation. Partly because the powers that be would have taken a seriously dim view of him going behind their backs and spilling a load of confidential case information to a third party, particularly an Arab third party. Mainly because he hadn’t wanted to pull Khalifa in too deep, look like he was taking advantage of their friendship.

But then without pulling Khalifa in, it was possible connections were being missed. Vital connections.

He hesitated, trying to balance out the imperative to find answers with a reluctance to pressure his old friend. It was Khalifa who resolved the dilemma.

‘Can you send me more information?’ he asked.

‘Do you
want
me to send you more information?’

‘Why not? Anything to further the cause of Arab–Israeli relations.’

This time Ben-Roi did smile.

‘I’ll get something over to you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’d appreciate it if it stayed between the two of us.’

‘Of course. I will make an appeal on state television, but apart from that it is our secret.’

Ben-Roi smiled again. Despite everything he’d gone through, the old Khalifa was still there. Bruised, but still there.

‘I do have one possible lead,’ continued the Egyptian. ‘An English academic. Apparently he’s done some research into Pinsker, might be able to fill in a few gaps. He’s lecturing on a Nile cruiser at the moment, but I’ve checked the itinerary and his boat docks in Luxor tomorrow afternoon. I’ll go and have a word, see what he can tell me.’

‘Appreciated,’ said Ben-Roi.

‘No problem.’

‘Really appreciated.’

‘Really no problem.’

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, not about the case at least, and they fell silent. Ben-Roi wandered along the seafront; in Luxor, Khalifa stood gazing at the family portraits in the window of the Fujifilm shop on the corner of Al-Medina and El-Mahdy. They couldn’t explain it, but both felt curiously reluctant to end the call.

‘How’s Zenab?’

‘How’s Sarah?’

They spoke at the same time. Apologized at the same time too.

‘You first,’ said Ben-Roi. ‘How is Zenab?’

‘She is fine,’ Khalifa replied. A brief silence, then: ‘Actually that’s not true. She’s not fine at all. She doesn’t sleep well, has nightmares, wakes up crying. Ali’s death hit her hard. Hit us both hard.’

Ben-Roi tried to think of something comforting to say, couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound unbearably glib.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘It is as it is,’ said Khalifa. ‘We cope.’

One of the pictures in the Fujifilm window was of a young boy, about Ali’s age, staring stern-faced into the camera. Khalifa gazed at it, then continued on his way down Sharia al-Madina al-Minawra.

‘Sarah?’ he asked. ‘She is well, I hope?’

‘Good,’ said Ben-Roi. In fact she’d been sick the previous night, but it somehow seemed insignificant compared to what the Khalifas were having to deal with and he didn’t bother mentioning it.

‘The baby?’

‘Also good. Thank you for asking.’

They lapsed back into silence, each appreciating the other’s presence, neither feeling the need to vocalize that appreciation. Khalifa trudged homeward past the Puddleduck English Restaurant and the Luxor Security Directorate Building; Ben-Roi stopped by the Crowne Plaza hotel and watched the Saturday afternoon dancers: two dozen couples, old and young, good and bad, moving to the music blaring from a large ghetto blaster. When he’d come this way before they’d been doing some sort of salsa. Now the accompanying music had changed to a waltz.

‘What’s that I can hear?’ asked Khalifa.

Ben-Roi explained.

‘I like this,’ said the Egyptian. ‘People dancing in the street. We don’t do things like that in Egypt, apart from the Zikr dancers. And revolutions. We always dance during revolutions.’

‘I hate dancing,’ said Ben-Roi. ‘You’d get more rhythm out of an elephant.’

Khalifa chuckled at that. Not much of one, but a chuckle nonetheless.

‘Zenab used to dance all the time,’ he said after another silence. ‘In our old apartment. I’d come back from the station and she’d have an Amr Diab cassette playing at full volume and be jumping around all over the place. She used to love dancing. Not any more, sadly.’

Again Ben-Roi tried to dredge up some appropriate comment, something that would acknowledge Khalifa’s situation without sounding trite or mawkish. Sarah would have known exactly what to say. She had an instinctive feel for stuff like that, always seemed to come up with the right words. It was a gift that, despite his best intentions, Ben-Roi didn’t possess. He fumbled a moment, then, feeling he had to say something, came out with, ‘One day she’ll dance again.’ Even as he said it, he knew it sounded stupefyingly crass, like the title of some shit ballad. Should have just stayed
schtum
.

‘
Inshallah
,’ was Khalifa’s only response.

They stayed on the line for a while longer, talking about nothing much in particular, Ben-Roi wincing inwardly at the dance line, trying to think of something more appropriate, some way of showing Khalifa how much he cared. It was only after they’d rung off and he was wandering round the city marina, gazing distractedly at the yachts and motor launches, feeling like the most useless friend in the world, that the name suddenly came to him. He let it sit a while, getting a feel for it, then called Sarah, asked what she thought.

‘I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ she said. ‘But what if it’s a girl?’

He didn’t have an answer to that. Had a hunch he wouldn’t need one. Deep down he knew it was going to be a boy. He just knew it.

T
HE
N
EGEV

She’d read all the online chat and speculation, the convoluted theorizing about who they were and how exactly they linked into Nemesis. All of it was bullshit. There had been no internal power struggle within Nemesis, no breakaway group, certainly no agent-provocateuring by spooks or dodgy multinationals. The simple truth was that she’d e-mailed the Nemesis website urging a more radical engagement, and the people behind the website had got in touch and told her to go for it. A brief flurry of contact, and the Nemesis Agenda’s militant wing was born. Even now, she was surprised by how straightforward it had all been.

There was more to it than that, of course. It wasn’t like she’d just e-mailed them on a whim; woken up one morning and thought,
Let’s go fuck the system
. There had been groundwork. Years of it. First in the States, after she’d escaped, drifting from one protest group to the next – anti-capitalists, anti-globalizers, communists, anarchists, radical environmentalists – marching and chanting and banner-waving and rioting, burying her past, rebuilding her identity.

Then, later, in Israel, where she had fled after the crash and where her anger had ratcheted up to a whole different level. Her shame too, although she knew she had nothing to feel ashamed about. It wasn’t like she’d asked for it. None of it was her fault.

It was in Israel that she’d hooked up with Tamar – they’d met in a police van after being arrested at a demo – and, through Tamar, Gidi and Faz. Shared ideology had obviously been part of the draw. More than their beliefs, though, it was their personalities that had brought them together, the fact that all were driven by an ulterior motive, something more intimate than simply a desire to stick a spanner in the works of the capitalist meat-grinder. Faz, the Arab-Israeli whose entire life had been an assault course of discrimination and disenfranchisement; Gidi, the IDF conscript who’d been vilified for blowing the whistle on army atrocities in Gaza; Tamar, the daughter of ultra-Orthodox
Haredi
parents who had been shamed and ostracized for her sexuality. Each projected on to the wider canvas of global injustice something of their own internal landscape. Each, like her, had their secret demons. Each, like her, was searching for exorcism.

Most important, each, like her, had come to the conclusion that the traditional lines of protest – the marches and rallies and sit-ins and petitions – were a complete fucking waste of time. This was a war, and ultimately wars could only be won with violence.

So they’d started working together. Small operations at first – an office break-in here, an arson attack there. Then, more complex missions. A pipeline sabotage in Nigeria; a munitions factory bombing in France; the kidnapping and mock execution of a leading American food speculator whose trades had made millions for his Wall Street investment bank while condemning a similar number of human beings to starvation in Africa and India. Taking the fight to the enemy.

They worked well together, made a good team, tight: Faz at his computer gathering the inside information; Tamar sorting the logistics; Gidi sourcing the weapons.

And her? She was the brains, the mastermind of the group. Even collectives have to have a leader, and she was very definitely the leader.

It was she who chose the missions, she who planned everything out right down to the finest detail, she who had realized early on that the missions alone were never going to be enough. For every target they hit, there were a thousand more that deserved to be hit and weren’t. Their reach was too small. A drop in the ocean. Because ultimately it wasn’t about the violence per se. It was about the ripples that violence caused, the wider momentum it generated. And they weren’t generating momentum.

Which was why she’d proposed throwing in their lot with the Nemesis Agenda. Piggybacking the Nemesis website to attract the sort of global attention they could never achieve on their own, however many executives they terrorized, however many installations they blew up. Initially the others had been sceptical, but she’d pushed the idea, insisted that Nemesis already had a profile and a following, that in alliance they could really start changing things. It had taken some persuasion, but eventually she’d won the day.

They’d filmed themselves firebombing the multinational’s office in Tel-Aviv as a calling card, sent it into the website’s secure mailbox, suggested joining forces. For a month they’d heard nothing. Then, one evening, she and Faz had been sitting in front of his computer and the screen had suddenly blanked out. Before Faz could determine what was wrong a small dot had appeared in the centre of the screen. It had slowly expanded and spread before forming into letters: OFFER ACCEPTED. WE FIGHT TOGETHER.

Connection made. Simple as that.

Who Nemesis actually were she’d never found out. A couple of geeks in a darkened room somewhere? An intricate worldwide matrix of activists? It was anyone’s guess, although looking back she suspected that whoever they were, they’d had her in their sights for a while. From the moment she’d got involved in the movement she’d had the feeling she was being watched. Still got it sometimes, even out here in the middle of the desert. She tried not to let it bother her. She was in, that was all that mattered. Serving the cause to the best of her ability. Punishing those who needed to be punished. Abusing the abusers.

After that initial ice-breaking, contact was kept to a minimum. They ran their missions, channelled the stuff back to Nemesis, it went up on the website. That was about the extent of it. Her crew concentrated on the direct action side of things, the Nemesis people took care of the cyber side, although Nemesis would sometimes feed them leads and suggestions, and thanks to Faz’s tech skills they weren’t averse to launching the odd cyber attack of their own. It wasn’t like there was a rulebook or anything. They were all fighting the same fight.