The Curse (19 page)

That was all the supervisor could or would tell me despite my fuming. I demanded to see his superior.

“He's not here,” he said. “You have to come back tomorrow.”

“I want to see the supervisor's supervisor.”

“Tomorrow.”

I was fuming. Short of being jailed or murdered, losing a passport had to be the worse thing that could happen to a traveler. Having it seized by a government agency in a third world country that was both inefficient and nightmarishly bureaucratic was light-years beyond simply losing it. When things got lost in Egypt they ended up buried in mountains of paperwork, desert dunes, or only God knows where.

It scared the hell out of me.

Still furious, when I came out of the airport to flag down a taxi, I almost ran into a young Egyptian girl holding up a piece of cardboard with “Madison Dupre” scribbled on it in pencil.

I guessed her age at about eleven or twelve, but she was thinner than the homegrown ones. A dark blue scarf covered her head and fell halfway down her back. Her shapeless white dress with long sleeves went all the way to her brown shoes.

She smiled shyly as I approached with a stern frown.

“Don't tell me,” I said, “you're the shortest cop in Egypt.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no, I'm not a policeman,” she said in a naïve and sincere voice. “But my father is. He's waiting over there.”

She looked to her left and pointed to where Rafi was leaning against a car parked at the curb with his arms folded.

He stood there with a grin on his face.

I had to fight my instinct to let him know exactly how I felt about my passport being seized in terms that would bring his manhood into question.

I kept my mouth shut because of his daughter.

He strolled over and extended his hand for my carry-on. “Let me take that for you.”

“I think you've already taken enough.” But I went ahead and gave it to him.

He loaded the luggage into the trunk and I got in the backseat with him. The little girl sat in the front seat with the driver, a woman who I immediately assumed was her mother and almost asked if she wouldn't mind breaking Rafi's nose again, this time for taking my passport, but his introduction to her proved I was wrong about the relationship.

“This is Lana, my deputy inspector, and you have already met Dalila, my daughter.”

The young girl turned back and smiled.

Lana shot me a cursory glance, but gave no greeting. I didn't offer her one, either. She was about thirty, not unattractive, and my immediate impression was that she had the hard edge some women get when they've had to fight for survival because of a tough life.

I didn't like her. Which was fair because something in her demeanor toward me immediately signaled that I wasn't on her favorites list.

“Are you mad at me for playing that joke with the sign?” Dalila asked, a little shyly.

Smart kid. She noticed the apprehensive look on my face.

“No, certainly not. But I'd like to poke out one of your father's eyes for taking my passport.”

That got a jaw drop from Dalila and a harsh burst of laughter from Lana.

“You're mean,” Dalila said.

“True … I get that way when someone goes out of their way to step on me.”

Dalila looked to her father and then back to me. “He has a hard job to do,” she said in a serious tone.

Cry me a river.

Her English was really good, without even the trace of accent that Rafi had. The girl was sweet and obviously loved her father very much. Which made her a poor judge of character.

I noticed that her face was paler than it should be and I couldn't see any hair where her scarf had pulled back a bit. She was bald underneath. Chemotherapy bald.

I immediately felt a pang for her. Children shouldn't have to fight for their lives.

“Dalila, I'm certain your father is a very fine policeman. However, police officers do make mistakes and he's made one about me. He's wasting his time harassing me because he's convinced that I know more about something than I do.”

I turned from the girl and spoke directly to Rafi, who had been keeping a blank face.

“Why don't you give me my passport, turn this car around, and take me back to the airport? I'll go someplace where I'm welcomed, and you'll have more free time to catch art thieves like you're supposed to do.”

“I didn't order your passport seized; my supervisor did.”

He said it with too much sincerity. He was lying, of course.

“But he might release it if we reached an accommodation.”

“I already told you. I won't disclose the name of my client. It's none of your business and the core of mine.”

“We know you're representing Mounir Kaseem. But what do you know about him?”

I shrugged. “He's a scholar of ancient Egyptian history. He told me he wants to make sure one of your country's prize treasures finds its way back here.” I gave him a look. “Are you going to tell me he wants the scarab for himself?”

“Not at all. He told you the truth about wanting the scarab returned to Egypt. And he wasn't lying when he said he was a scholar of our ancient history, though not a university one.”

“Great. Then we have nothing to argue about. Give me back my passport and I'll leave you and Kaseem to deal with the scarab.”

“What's more important is what he
didn't
tell you.”

Dalila turned around, sitting on her knees to face us, and held her chin with her hands. Her big brown eyes beamed with curiosity.

“There's always a catch, isn't there?” I told her.

She just stared at me.

I sighed. “Okay, what's the catch?”

“In a sense, Kaseem is an old Nazi, but one of the Egyptian variety. He was an army general, commander of a tank corps, and head of a military officers group who attempted to seize control of the country about fifteen years ago.”

“Islamic extremists?” I asked.

“No, quite the opposite. Just as Hitler had a fascination for the mystical part of German history—the knights and heroes of Wagnerian operas or Teutonic myth—Kaseem's vision of Egypt has to with the days of the mighty pharaohs. He formed a secret organization of military officers, high-ranking public servants, and some wealthy men.

“Called the Golden Nile, the group believed Egypt was crippled by the continuous struggle of extremist religious groups against a government that lacked a vision of Egypt's potential greatness. They hatched a plot to seize the government with a coup, stamp out the religious opposition, and lead Egypt's eighty million people into a golden age.”

“So, he's in exile because he's politically dangerous to the present administration?”

Rafi frowned. “He's politically to the right of Genghis Khan and dangerous to the world at large. He wants to make Egypt, the largest Arab country, a nuclear power and unite the entire Arab world. Your government fears that if he rose to power here, he would destabilize the entire region.”

“So what's the punch line to all this?”

“We believe Kaseem wants the scarab—not to hand over to the our museum—but to use it as a symbol of his quest for power. In fact, the Heart of Egypt is the emblem of his Golden Nile party.”

I could have told him that I had long ago been burned out, disgusted, and repulsed by politics and politicians so that I cared less about who ran Egypt or just about anywhere else in the world.

But I digested what Rafi had just told me.

Kaseem and his neo-Nazi Golden Nile movement wanted to use the scarab as their symbolic weapon of power. That didn't bother me much. I'm sure that if the present administration gets their hands on it first, they'll pose with it as a symbol of
their
power.

I didn't volunteer any of my cynical thoughts to Rafi.

“What do you want from me?” I asked Rafi, and then to Dalila, “You can interpret that as me asking your father, ‘How do I get back my passport?'”

“Your cooperation,” Rafi answered. “We believe Kaseem is in contact with the thieves who took the scarab and will be contacting you and giving you instructions. When he does, all you have to do is inform us. Agreed?”

“Of course.”

He gave me an appraising look and asked his daughter, “What do you think, Dalila? Do you believe her?”

“I like her. But she's lying.”

Sweet little child.

“Drop me off at my hotel. I need to get rid of an awful headache caused by jet lag … and police brutality.”

40

I entered through the front door of the Hyatt hotel and left from a side exit. I had no intention of staying somewhere that I could be found so easily. Besides, I was planning to take the next plane out of Cairo.

Nothing is impossible if you are clever enough, I assured myself as a taxi dropped me off at the American Embassy.

An hour later, after filling out enough forms to deforest Central Park, I was called into the office of Mr. Flem, the passport clerk.

He didn't bother turning from the computer screen he was staring at to say hello. I could see that he was involved in a very tense diplomatic situation—a game of solitaire.

He turned to acknowledge my presence on the planet after a notice popped up on his computer screen advising him that he had lost the game.

“One moment please,” he said.

His fingers flew on the keyboard for what I hoped was a printout of a new passport for me.

Earlier while I had waited to be called in, I saw him smile and fawn over an American in a much more expensive suit than he himself wore and sternly address an Egyptian clerk who no doubt used his small paycheck to support a family.

Obviously Mr. Flem was the kiss-up, kick-down type who kissed up to superiors and kicked the unfortunates below him.

I wasn't sure if I should intimidate the weasel-looking little bureaucrat or butter him up. I decided to try sugar rather than vinegar, giving him a seductive smile in the hopes that it might make the weasel really think he could actually appeal to a woman.

“I'm really grateful that you're acting so quickly on replacing my passport,” I said. “I have to get back to New York because of a family emergency. My little Morty is ill.”

He didn't look up from the computer screen as he spoke. “You reported your passport stolen.”

“Yes.”

“That is not the information we received. The foreign ministry has advised us that your passport has been seized by the government because you are on a watch list.” He looked up and said in a deliberate voice, “You lied on an official government form. That is perjury.”

So much for sugar.

“Excuse me, my passport was
stolen
by an inspector of the antiquities department in order to get me to do his bidding.”

He glanced back to the computer. “That's not the information I have.”

“Really? Did you get your information from reading the back of those cards you've been playing?”

That dropped his jaw and got his bureaucratic dander up.

“Miss Dupre, you are—”

“An American citizen and a taxpayer”—not completely true—“and my passport was taken illegally.” I leaned on his desk. “Tell me what reason that lying computer gives for seizing my passport?”

He read information I couldn't see and turned back to me.

“You are on a watch list.”

“Meaning what? Does it say that I'm a terrorist? Murderer? What are the legal grounds for taking my passport?”

“You are in a foreign country—”

“I noticed that the moment I got off the plane.”

“You don't have legal rights.”

“That's great. We spend billions of dollars on embassies and more billions on aid to Egypt itself so they can do what they like to Americans and you just sit around on your hands and let them!”

“Madam—you are being insulting.”

“No. I'm being desperate. I demand a new passport.”

“Regulations require that we review the basis for the seizure before issuing another.”

“How long will that take?”

“Seven to ten days.”

“That's insane.

“Those are the rules.”

“You can pick up the phone and call over to the foreign office. They won't be able to give you legitimate grounds for keeping my passport.”

“Those are the rules,” he repeated.

I could see that when he stood on the rules, he grew in stature—at least in his own eyes.

I resented the smug attitude of the bureaucratic little bastard.

“By the time you people get through screwing around with your book of rules, I might end up in the Egyptian version of a homeless shelter—the gutter.”

I could see from the glow in his eyes that he was about to play his trump card.

“Has it occurred to you, Miss Dupre, that even if you
were
able to bully a new passport from this embassy—which you will not—that it would be seized when you returned to the airport to fly out?”

No, it hadn't occurred to me.

“You have been a terrific help,” I said.

“I will be the one that has to clear the reissuance of your passport.” He smirked. “I can see right now that it's going to take much longer than the usual seven to ten days.”

I shrugged, defeated. “Great. My passport gets taken for an undefined reason by an unidentified foreign government agency and you are perfectly willing to put on your boots and jump on my battered body.”

I smiled down at him. “Why don't you look up Kafkaesque bureaucratic jerk while you're losing at cards?”

*   *   *

T
HERE IS NO QUESTION
about it—I have a big mouth and a habit of sticking my foot into it.

I could have sweetened Mr. Flem into helping me, but instead, I antagonized him.

Completely stupid.