Dance While You Can (42 page)

Through the hanging haze of smoke and steam I could see blank faces sucking peacefully on their hookahs, while excited traders bellowed for turbid mint tea and Turkish coffee. The Fishawi was a strange place. Though decaying and filthy, it had a unique sepia-like charm; battered tables spiled out into the covered alleyway, and waiters scuttled back and forth hoisting hookahs and trays from kitchen to table.

Robert bought a copper tray.

To my dismay I watched Shami remove his shoes and hand them to a shiner. The Chief called for a hookah, and Robert bought an urn. Time dragged on.

Eventually the Chief set aside his hookah and wandered over to us. He made a pretence of admiring the brass pots while saying he could only assume that either Shami had been lying, or he himself had been recognised.

My heart sank. I moved to one side to let a woman and her baby pass, thrusting my hands in my pockets before I hammered my fists against the nearest object.

I felt a sharp kick on the leg and Robert – now so laden with purchases he could barely move – nodded towards Shami. The woman who had just passed us was standing over him, speaking to him hurriedly. Shami listened, stroking the baby’s head. When the woman had finished, she tucked the baby back into its blanket and started to move away. Shami got to his feet.

I started towards him but the Chief pulled me back. ‘Wait,’ he hissed.

The woman and Shami disappeared round a corner and we moved across the Fishawi. As we rounded the curve of the building I spotted the woman, pressing determinedly through the crowd. Shami was behind her. Following him, we pushed steadily on through the maze of passageways, past stalls selling carpets, jellabas, jewellery . . . . Traders dived into my path, thrusting their wares in my face, and motor-cycles roared through the crowds, but I never took my eyes from the woman ahead. Suddenly somebody screamed, there was the crash of a stall falling, and a motor-cycle skidded into a shop front. I looked up, and the woman had disappeared.

I started to run, tearing through the people, thrusting them ruthlessly aside. My eyes darted from left to right, searching the alleys. A man grabbed me by the arm, spinning me round to show me the damage I’d done to his stall, but I shook him off and charged on. A sea of startled faces loomed towards me as I pressed through the crowds. And there was the woman with the baby again, but no Shami. She was standing on a corner, looking to her right. I forced my way towards her, but as she saw me she ran on. I let her go and turned into the dark alley. It was thronging with sheep, but at the other end I saw Shami’s scrawny figure disappear into a doorway.

The animals huddled round my knees in a knot of bleating, lice-ridden bodies. I grabbed at them, throwing them one on top of another as I forced my way through. There was no sign now of either Robert or the Chief.

The doorway opened into a blackened passage. I almost drew back as the acrid stench kicked at my gut. The walls were slimed with mildew and the dingy linoleum floor was coated with filth. I strained my eyes to see into the shadows. Several feet to the right was a staircase. I took it, two steps at a time. When I reached the top, I could see daylight at the end of a corridor. I rushed towards it, and as I pushed out into the fresh air I found myself faced with a maze of roofless gangways and stairwells. Turning into the nearest, I felt my foot hit something heavy and soft. I looked down into a face covered in blood. Shami groaned. I bent down to help him, and as I did so a foot crashed into the side of my head.

Then there was mayhem. I fell on to Shami, blood cascading from my mouth and nose, as my attackers trampled over me and ran back the way I had come. I dragged myself to my feet and down the stairs after them. A gun was fired and I dodged back into the shadows. Then there was the sound of running feet and voices yelling. More gunfire – and I dashed out into the street. The police were swarming in as my attackers – four of them – fled in all directions. I saw one of them dive into a twisting alley and made after him. We broke out at the other end into the very heart of the bazaar. I paused and looked round. Someone screamed, and a black Peugeot sprang out of the crowd.

Quick as a flash, I heaved a driver out of his taxi. As I started the engine the passenger door flew open and Shami, his face battered and still bleeding, leapt in beside me. ‘Let’s go, Meester Belmayne!’ he cried.

I roared out into the traffic. Shami hung out of the window, screaming at everyone to get out of the way. Minarets and domes sped by in a blur. Behind me I could hear the wail of police sirens, while in front the black Peugeot tore through the streets until eventually it screeched into the Pyramids Road. I turned in after it, then slammed my foot on the brake as I skidded round a pack of meandering camels. The Peugeot was surrounded. I leapt out of my car. Then suddenly the camels parted and the Peugeot was speeding off into the distance. Back behind the wheel, I pressed my hand on the horn, yelling at the camel drivers to clear the way. The police came round the corner, managed to skirt the mêlée, and roared off towards the Pyramids, after the Peugeot.

By the time I was clear there was no sign of the chase. About two miles further on, where the road stretched endlessly out in front of me, I knew it was pointless to carry on. I turned round and drove slowly back. Then a police car came speeding up behind me and screeched to a halt as I waved. The Chief clambered out of the back seat.

‘We’ve got him! Turn your car round and follow us. If you get lost Shami knows where the Alexandria Road is. And you, Shami . . .’He said something in Egyptian and went back to his car.

A few minutes later we pulled up outside a palatial villa. The gates were locked but a police officer got out of the Chief’s car and spoke for some time on the intercom. Eventually the Chief joined him, listened for a while, then went back to his car and opened the back door. Robert got out and the two of them came over to me.

‘The Pasha is inside,’ the Chief said. ‘He wants to speak to you. I have agreed to wait outside, but Mr Lyttleton will go in with you. I think you know by now that the Pasha is a dangerous man. Please, just listen and don’t do anything foolish.’

I nodded and waited while the Chief went back to the intercom. A few seconds later the villa gates slid slowly open. As I drove in I saw the Chief and two police officers creep in behind me and disappear into the bushes of the garden.

Robert followed me over to the door. Tentatively I tried the handle, and to my surprise the door opened. The entrance hall, carpeted in tiger skins and ornamented with elaborate gilt mirrors, was empty. I turned back to Robert and suddenly the double doors at the end of the hall swung open.

‘Mr Belmayne.’

The first thing I noticed about the Pasha was the almost overpowering beauty of his smile. The second was his height. His forehead was masked by the doorframe, but his eyes gazed down into mine as he lifted a gold-laden hand. With a long, claw-like finger he stroked his lips. His movements were almost feminine and yet his every gesture exuded menace – a sinister combination that made me shudder with revulsion.

‘We will not waste words, Mr Belmayne,’ he drawled. ‘If you want your daughter returned, then you will ask the police to leave my premises immediately.’

Suddenly my control shattered and I lunged at him, grabbing him by the throat. ‘Tell me where she is now, or so help me, I’ll kill you.’

He squealed like a rabbit, his limbs thrashing about in all directions.

‘Let him go!’

I wheeled round to see a woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. She was pointing a gun at Robert. Her hair and part of her face were covered by a spangled scarf, and her eyes were heavily ringed with kohl. She was looking at me and I sensed rather than saw the triumphant smile.

I let the Pasha go. He held his hand out for the gun, then casually looked Robert and me over. ‘It would seem, Christine,’ he said, ‘that they have not yet solved my little riddle. So what we have in the child is our passport out of the country.’

Christine looked up at him, and I saw a strange, almost hypnotic adoration shine from her face. The Pasha nodded for us to go into the room behind him. Robert and I exchanged glances, but there was very little we could do with a gun at our heads.

I was already inside the room when I heard the shout. The front door crashed open and suddenly the place was filled with police. Two shots were fired, almost simultaneously. I swung round – and the Pasha’s eyes seemed to bore into mine. Before he fell I saw more evil in that one look than I had ever seen before in my life. Christine screamed and ran towards him, then before any of us had time to move, she had seized his gun and was pointing it at me.

‘You!’ she spat. ‘You! Everything that’s happened is because of you and your slut! You killed my brother, and now you’ve killed my husband.’ And before anyone could stop her she had pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through my shoulder. Within seconds the police had seized her. Robert was hanging on to me, keeping me from falling. It must have been only minutes later that I lost consciousness.

I passed the night at the Embassy, drugged with painkillers, and my left arm supported by a sling. Robert came to see how I was next morning, and after taking my temperature and checking my wound, the nurse told him I was fit enough to leave the room. On the way to the Ambassador’s office he filled me in on what had been happening throughout the night.

The Pasha wasn’t dead. While Robert brought me back to the Embassy doctor, where I would be safe from the press, the Pasha had been rushed to hospital under police escort.

‘And Christine?’

‘She’s being held at El Knater – the women’s prison.’ He stopped to let someone pass, but made no move to walk on again. ‘I don’t suppose you knew she’d married the Pasha, did you?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No, but I suppose that’s what her brother meant by the Pasha having some kind of hold over her. She’s going to live to regret that marriage.’

We started to walk on. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Under the laws of Islam isn’t a woman her husband’s property? I take it the Pasha is a Moslem?’ Robert nodded. ‘Then she’ll have to face the rigours of Egyptian law. With the murder of the security guard, the forging of the mask, illegal import and export, kidnapping and God only knows what else they’ve been up to, she could be facing a death sentence.’ I steeled myself before asking the next question, even though I already knew the answer. ‘Has either of them told you where Charlotte is?’

Robert shook his head. ‘She wasn’t in the villa, the police searched it from top to bottom. But there is some good news. They’ve called in some egghead from the Cairo Museum who thinks he s cracked the conundrum.’

We were at the Ambassador’s office now. Inside were the Ambassador, the Chief of Police and the professor. The professor was seated at a table by the window, surrounded by bibles and history books.

‘It was necessary to channel thoughts in a new direction,’ the Chief said, once the introductions were over. ‘My friend here has done that, and now, after a long process of elimination, we have the answer.’ The professor sat by, smiling benignly, as the Chief explained how the professor had come up with the solution. It was, like almost everything else I had encountered since I’d arrived in Egypt, bizarre in the extreme.

‘We merely used hieroglyphs,’ the professor explained, as if one might use hieroglyphs to solve any old problem. ‘First, we took the rod. Do you remember? Moses’ rod changed to a snake. It was God’s way of showing Moses he had the power of God within him. Here,’ he held up a piece of paper, ‘the hieroglyph snake. Do you see?’

Robert, the Ambassador and I looked blankly at a squiggle that vaguely resembled a snake. The professor merely shrugged at our lack of appreciation. ‘Then we considered the plague and how the children died. They were visited by the angel of death, yes? Flying like a bird by night over Egypt, yes? And the bird that flies by night? An owl. And the hieratic script for owl, see here?’

Again he showed us a piece of paper. On it was scribbled what looked to be the figure three.

‘This is the sign for the owl. And now see, if you put them together, the sign of the snake and the sign of the owl, this is what you have.’

He waited while we passed round the results of his efforts, then taking it back from Robert, and, hardly able to contain his excitement, he said. ‘This is the sign which is inscribed over a door in El Khalifa – the City of the Dead. It is the door of the Pasha’s mother’s house. I have no doubt in my mind that your daughter is there, so if you are ready, Mr Belmayne, we will go.’

I was too stunned by the tortured logic to do more than smile stupidly.

It was a long journey to the south-eastern outskirts of the city, and one I can barely remember now, for I spent the time praying that the Chief’s confidence was not ill-placed. As we drove into the City of the Dead Robert wound up the windows to block out the stench. We remained in the Chief’s car with the Ambassador while, surrounded by his men, the Chief made his way into the macabre town.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing as they stepped through the dust among emaciated animals, mud-fronted tombs and wretched, tired-looking old men. But it wasn’t that that shocked me, it was the brand new Mercedes, Jaguars and most incredible of all, Rolls Royces. Robert explained that even if they became rich, some people preferred to stay with their neighbours among the ancient tombs, where they had become used to living side by side with the dead. If I hadn’t already, then it was at that point that I gave up any hope of ever understanding this nation.

We had been waiting for ten minutes, maybe less, when the haunting cry of the muezzin drifted from distant minarets. Hunched and shrouded figures shuffled past on their way to prayer, and round brown eyes glanced furtively in our direction. A few minutes later the Chief came striding towards the car. Behind him an old lady, wailing loudly, was being escorted by two police officers. They bundled her into a car, and the Chief got back into his. There was no sign of Charlotte.