Mummy Dearest (30 page)

Clad in a T-shirt and boxers, I forced myself out of bed and ran my fingers through my hair before opening the door.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Malloy,” Samuel said. “This is a gawd-awful hour to disturb you, but I couldn’t wait any longer. As soon as it started getting light, I had to come. I hope you’ll understand.”

“This better be good,” I said.

“It’s—uh, well, kind of complicated. Can I come in?”

He had not changed clothes since I’d seen him on the
terrace. His cheeks were stubbly, his hair sticking out at angles, and his eyes bloodshot. I was afraid he might collapse at my feet and begin to sob at any moment. I did not want to be caught in the scene by some bushy-tailed tourist with a perverse desire to be the first in line at the breakfast buffet.

“Come through here,” I said, “and go into the parlor. Call room service for coffee and whatever else you want. Keep your voice down; the girls are sleeping in the other bedroom. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

“I knew you’d understand,” he said with such intensity that I flinched.

“I can assure you, Samuel, that I do not.”

I dressed as quickly as I could and did the minimum required in the bathroom to make myself remotely presentable. I went into the parlor. Samuel had pulled back the drapes and opened the doors to the balcony. His back was to me as he stared at the mountains to the west. He looked more like a construction worker than an architect, but I’d met librarians built like grizzly bears and truck drivers no sturdier than fashion models.

“Okay,” I said. “Explain.”

He stiffened, and his hands tightened on the railing. “Buffy called late last night, maybe a couple of hours after midnight. I could barely hear her voice. She said she was at the Kharga Oasis, locked in a windowless room in a hotel. I told her to call the police, but she wouldn’t. She’s terrified that if the police show up, her captors will kill her.”

“And this room has a pay phone?”

“She said she managed to steal a cell phone from one of them. It went dead before she could say any more.”

There was a more civilized tap on the door. I admitted Abdullah, who merely raised his eyebrows when he saw Samuel. He put the tray on the coffee table and gazed stonily at me.

“That will be all,” I said. “Thank you for coming so promptly. If we need anything else, I’ll call. Run along and gossip about me.”

Once Abdullah was gone, I poured myself a cup of coffee and went out to the balcony. “Did you believe Buffy?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I mean, we all saw those men grab her and gallop away. She must have been going through hell since then. They could have done”—he gulped—“anything to her. She was almost hysterical when she called. Why don’t you believe her?”

“I didn’t say that.” I took a sip of coffee and waited for the caffeine to jolt some neurons into activity. It was not my best time of day for keen insights and ruthless analysis. “There’s just been too much going on around here. Maybe aliens did build the pyramids. It’d make as much sense.”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Malloy.”

“And don’t patronize me. You’re the one who came bursting in here at five thirty in the morning with some wild story about Buffy in a hotel in an oasis.”

“Does that mean you won’t go with me?”

I nearly choked on a mouthful of coffee. I managed to put the cup on the table before it sloshed all over me. “Me? That’s absurd. Chief Inspector el-Habachi will make an ideal companion. He can wear a burqa. Those things are voluminous. He could have an arsenal strapped to his body. Once he sees the situation, he can decide how to get Buffy out intact.”

Samuel slumped back in the chair. “Regulations. He’ll have to tell his superiors where’s he going, and then the whole thing will escalate like a sandstorm. Buffy made it clear that the men’ll kill her if they panic. I thought we could go get her, and then deal with the authorities.”

“How are we going to do that? I’m not a commando, Samuel. I don’t watch war movies, and I’ve never read a book about paramilitary raids. You need Tom Clancy, not Agatha Christie.”

He began to pace within the confines of the balcony, which limited him to about four steps in any direction. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. We’ll drive over and start nosing around like ordinary tourists. This hotel is
near the town center. Nobody will suspect us. That’ll give us a chance to have a closer look and see if we can figure out which room Buffy’s in.”

“And waltz out with her. Don’t you think that might attract a little attention?” I shook my head as I refilled my coffee cup. “If these men are as desperate and trigger-happy as she claims, what’s going to stop them from… stopping us? I can’t imagine them politely requesting that we mind our own business.”

“All I’m asking you to do is drive over to the oasis with me, Mrs. Malloy. If I go alone, I’ll stand out. Someone may remember seeing Buffy and me there a couple of weeks ago. They won’t notice the two of us, if we’re merely having lunch and buying postcards.”

I considered ordering another pot of coffee. “Having lunch and buying postcards does not equate with breaking into a locked room in a hotel.”

“So we drive over and assess the situation. If it looks impossible, we’ll go to the police. It’s only a hundred miles. We’ll be back here in time for tea.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I know a place where I can rent a car. I’ll meet you outside in an hour.” He left without waiting for my answer.

I wondered how many pots of coffee I could drink in an hour. Two, even three, I concluded. And then I would go downstairs and tell Samuel as nicely as possible that he was out of his mind and that I had no intention of driving out to a desert oasis in order to have my head blown off by maniacal kidnappers.

Not on my honeymoon, anyway.

The road twisted through the mountains and into the desert. I’d expected gold-flecked dunes shifting in the winds, but this desert lacked grandeur. Stretches of sand were marred by jutting rock formations. The car was cramped and ancient; the glove compartment was apt to contain the remains of Napoléon’s lunch (pâté de fois gras sandwiches). Wind whistled through holes in the floorboard. The cracked upholstery
was held together with duct tape. Each pothole we hit sent both of us bouncing high enough to brush the interior roof. Rust had resulted in a jagged sunroof of sorts.

“I thought you said a hundred miles!” I yelled over the roar of the strained engine.

“I did!” He yanked the steering wheel but was too late to avoid a particularly treacherous pothole. The car landed with a whomp, as did I. “I’m afraid to drive any faster. The tires are already shot. A blowout will send us off the road.”

“Then slow down!” I closed my eyes and asked myself for the hundredth time what I was doing. I’d tried to call Peter, but since I didn’t know where he was staying, the best I could do was the American Embassy. It did not seem discreet to leave a message on the answering machine there. I could easily believe the CIA tapped every foreign embassy’s telephone system in D.C. It was likely that other governments reciprocated in their own countries.

“Another hour and we should be there,” Samuel said encouragingly.

“I can hardly wait to get myself shot.” I resettled my sunglasses on my nose and tried to distract myself with the hostile landscape. Although I knew that deserts were home to rodents, snakes, and insects, we seemed to be the sole indications of life as far as I could see. Why all the invading armies over the millennia were bent on capturing the land was hard to understand. I would have handed it over without a quibble.

Kharga was not a picturesque village with waving palm trees and lush gardens. The rough streets were crowded with donkey carts, decrepit trucks, and dark storefronts. Many of the buildings were constructed of concrete blocks, the walls covered with Arabic graffiti. Tour vans were parked in the weeds of vacant lots.

“What’s the name of the hotel?” I asked as I peered out the window.

“The Desert Inn. Not terribly original, I’m afraid. When Buffy and I were here, I was warned not to stay there. Small, airless rooms, communal bathrooms, brackish tap water. It
wouldn’t have bothered me, but—well, we found someplace a little bit better.”

Traffic stopped as a herd of camels ambled into the street. A dozen Arab men in long robes and sandals gathered to shake their fists and berate one another. The camels ignored the minor uproar, but bystanders were entertained and egged on their factions.

“This could take forever,” Samuel said as he turned onto a side street and parked. He put the car key under his seat, then twisted around and took a bottle of water from the backseat floor. After offering it to me, he took a deep drink. “If I remember, the hotel’s three blocks away.”

“How far is the police station?”

“If we tell the police, we’ll be risking Buffy’s life. You don’t know these people as well as I do. They’re excitable and passionate. Any small-town cop is going to go berserk at the opportunity to be a hero by rescuing the blond American girl. He and his fellow cops will snatch up weapons and storm the hotel, shooting everything that moves. The kidnappers will kill Buffy in retaliation. Tourists will get killed, as well as the hotel staff and kids in nearby houses.” He clutched my knee. “Please, Mrs. Malloy. We’ve come all this way. Let’s at least check out the situation before we do something rash.”

I removed his hand. “All right, but I still don’t understand what you think we can do. Presumably, Buffy is being held by heavily armed guards. They may be tired of her, but they’re not going to unlock her door and stand back while we hustle her out of the hotel. They’re more likely to shoot us, as well as her.”

“Don’t you care about her?” he said, his voice breaking.

“No,” I said, “not especially. It would be a tragedy if she were killed—as it would be if any innocent party were. I’d feel bad about it. Then again, I’d feel worse if I were killed trying to rescue her.” I looked at him. “I didn’t realize the two of you had any emotional entanglement. I still don’t understand why you brought her along with you to Egypt. Did you honestly believe there was a hardy, adventurous
traveler buried under all that makeup? Weren’t you just a bit worried when you saw her matching Louis Vuitton luggage that she might not be a backpack girl at heart?”

“She insisted,” he said lamely. “I warned her that we wouldn’t find four-star accommodations at these places. How do you know about her luggage?”

“I must have seen it somewhere.” I got out of the car and breathed in the exhaust fumes from the traffic jam at the corner. “Let’s go find the Desert Inn.”

Instead of going back to the main street, we went down an alley that seemed to run parallel with it. As we stepped around garbage bags and construction debris, I thought about Caron and Inez’s harrowing story in Gurna. They thought they’d seen Samuel in the hotel nightclub, along with their stalker.

“Do you ever go to Gurna in the evenings?” I asked him as we ducked under a clothesline.

He pulled me away before I stepped in a pile of a redolent reminder of the presence of dogs. “A couple of times. The bar at the Winter Palace is too refined for my taste. You know, I thought I saw your daughter and her friend about a week ago. The place was packed, and I wasn’t sure since I’d only just met them. Buffy had a headache, she claimed, but she was upset because she’d gotten a pedicure that wasn’t up to her standards. Instead of listening to her complain, I went out on my own.”

His response had been quick and overly detailed, as though he’d rehearsed it. Or he was nervous, I thought, and blathering to hide it. We both had every right to be nervous, since we were walking into a potential disaster. We turned back toward the main street. Traffic was now backed up in both directions, and horns were blaring. Unhappy camels brayed loudly. It might have been the most exciting thing to happen in this remote town in a long time. I hoped we weren’t about to instigate a much more memorable event.

The hotel was on the next corner. It was a two-story structure made of uninspired concrete blocks, and the sign was weathered almost to the point of illegibility. An old
man squatted beside the doorway, glowering defiantly at anyone who approached.

“We may have a problem,” Samuel murmured as we walked across the street and sat down at a table outside a café.

“You’re just now realizing that? Have you forgotten you’re the one who mentioned guns and people getting killed? That old man isn’t the problem, for pity’s sake. The worst thing he might do is pinch you when you walk by him, or spit on your shoe.” I studied the building, feeling like a bank robber determining when the armored truck made its daily pickups. “We’ll be conspicuous, though.”

A waiter came out and put down a menu. After a moment, he shrugged and went back into the café. The cacophony from the traffic jam was getting louder. The old man across the street stood up and shaded his eyes. I willed him to go join in the fun, but he took only a few steps and stopped.

Samuel pushed back his chair. “We can’t stay here all afternoon. I’m going to see if there’s a back entrance into the hotel. Order coffee or something so the waiter doesn’t shoo you away.”

“The waiter will not shoo me away,” I said, “unless I choose to be shooed. Go on and have a look.” I opened my purse and took out a tissue to blot my damp face. It was much hotter than in Luxor. Deserts are like that.

Samuel made his way through the donkey carts and cars blocking the street. I settled back to watch and wait, although I doubted any armored trucks would drive up in the next decade or so. The closest thing to a bank guard was the old man. I checked my watch. Women with their heads wrapped in scarves peered out of the window in a house next to the hotel, curiosity overcoming modesty. The waiter and another man came out of the café and stood behind me, guffawing as a cart tipped and spilled hundreds of cabbages onto the street. The driver began to scream at the donkey, who took it stoically.

Samuel had not returned after thirty minutes. I was less concerned about him than I was about a certain sensation
that required a ladies’ room. The café did not appeal. If it had a rest room, it would be primitive and less than sanitary. After another five minutes, I realized that I had a perfect excuse to go inside the hotel.