Chasing the Storm (18 page)

They landed twice on the way to Cairo for refueling. The first time was inside Russia, the second in the Ukraine. After the second refueling, the door came open as they were jolting down the runway. Marin struggled to close it, but the latch must have jammed, because it kept swinging open again. He called to the pilot, who came back and took off his shoelace and tied the door closed. Rygg pointed to the empty cockpit, but the pilot, a friendly walrus-mustached man, just patted his shoulder and nodded comfortingly. He sat with them for a while, taking a few swigs from the bottle as the plane flew itself, before moseying on back to the cockpit.

The last four hours they were flying in darkness. At one point, Rygg saw amoebas of lights in the field of black below. And a minute or two later, Marin leaned over the back of his seat and pointed out the window. “Look,” he said. “There is Paros – like a drop of water.”

Rygg remembered the Valley of the Butterflies. He wondered where Ann was and what she was doing. Although it was part of the deal, he felt a bit wrong about enticing her in and then leaving so abruptly.

Within an hour they were over Egypt. Below them was the dense winding cord of light, with plumper nodes here and there that were the towns and cities along the Nile. In the desert to either side were a few sparkles, but almost everything was concentrated around the river. After a few minutes, Cairo, like a vast fallen Milky Way, loomed on the horizon, the lights of vehicles coursing along the roads like slender rivers of fire. The Nile was a black swath in the midst of the lights as if someone had moved through them with a huge eraser. “It is enormous!” Lena exclaimed.

Rygg nodded. “Greater Cairo, what you are seeing here, is in fact about the population of Australia, if you can believe it.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time here?” Lena asked.

Rygg shrugged. “Several years, off and on.”

“When was this?”

“Back in the mid 90s. I haven’t been here for a few years now. I always look forward to returning. Well, I look forward to it and I dread it. Cairo is an experience. Ah, look! The pyramids. They are having the sound and light show.”

The lights played on the triangular faces of the pyramids, and they could see the Sphinx, crouching just beside them.

The plane veered to the right, out over the desert, and they left the lights of Cairo behind. They peered into the darkness ahead, but could see nothing. Only their popping ears alerted them that they were descending.

Rygg fastened his seatbelt, but still saw nothing out the window until they were almost down. Then he spotted two minuscule specks of light, which grew rapidly larger. They went past the first one – some sort of burning material on a stake. The landing was very rough. The plane slewed left, then right, and the pilot shouted. They put their heads on their knees and clutched their arms around their legs. The plane swerved. Suddenly, with a tremendous grinding noise, it tipped forward and came to a halt. The lights went out. They sat up cautiously. The engines shut off abruptly.

“Are we okay?” Rygg asked. His voice seemed very loud in the sudden silence.

“Okay,” Lena replied faintly.

The pilot was groaning.

“
I
am okay,” Marin said. “I’m not so sure about the airplane, however.”

A flashlight shone down the aisle from the cockpit. The pilot called to them. Marin, Rygg, and Lena made their way to the front of the plane. The plane was canted at a thirty-degree angle, and they had to clutch the seat backs to steady themselves. Lena took Marin’s arm. She was shaking. Smiling ruefully, the pilot kicked open the door behind the cockpit, and they now saw that half the left wing of the plane was buried in sand. The blades of the exposed propeller were bent back like wilted flower petals. Rygg jumped down into the sand, giving Lena, Marin, and the pilot a hand. The air outside was warm and dry. A man in a loose turban came running up to them with a flashlight, shouting in Arabic.

“Marwan!” Rygg embraced him, then introduced Marin and Lena. Marwan took Rygg’s arm and led him away from the wreck. The pilot was already sitting in the sand, chin on his knees, looking sorrowfully at his plane. Marin knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder, murmuring something, and the pilot gave a short laugh.

“Where are we?” Marin asked Rygg.

“Fifty kilometers southwest of Cairo,” Rygg said. “In the desert west of the Nile.” He spoke to the turbaned man for a minute, then turned to Marin and Lena. “Our ride should be here within twenty minutes.”

Chapter 16

Cairo

The ride was
a Toyota pick-up that had a steel cage welded over the bed. Marwan sat up front with the driver. Marin, Rygg, Lena, and the pilot sat in back. They bounced and skidded over dunes, careering side to side alarmingly, for half an hour, until they reached a paved road. Here the driver sped up to 140 kilometers per hour. The engine howled. “So why is the hurry?” Lena shouted.

“Welcome to Egypt,” Rygg said. “You’re not a real man if you don’t have the accelerator pushed to the floor.”

A car whipped by them in an abrupt burst of light and noise.

“You see?” Rygg said. “For our driver, we are going slowly.”

But soon, though it was getting close to midnight, they were in the middle of a traffic jam. The noise was phenomenal. Every driver blew his horn every few seconds, and two drivers ahead of them were shouting at each other, leaning halfway out of their windows and making obscene gestures.

They crawled along with the other cars, past palm trees and brick houses festooned with laundry. After Lena saw the third family picnicking along the side of the road, she asked Rygg if it was some sort of holiday.

“No, just an ordinary day in Egypt.”

“But the small children out with their parents? It is midnight. Past midnight, I think.”

“This is normal dinnertime. And when the weather turns warm, Egyptians will stay up most of the night.”

“When do they sleep?”

“In the afternoon. Or at work.”

They crossed the Nile, the shores of which were bejeweled with floating restaurants and pleasure boats, and entered a snarl of roads and overpasses. Huge neon signs and banners and billboards overlapped against sky. Shops were open and pedestrians milled, eating cotton candy and nuts and huge wheels of some sort of pastry. All the men were either eating or smoking. Most of the women were ensconced in veils that left only their faces and hands exposed, though there were a few young beauties in jeans. Snatches of wailing Arab music wafted in the air as they passed by.

The pick-up swung to the left and, after a brief episode of veering around pedestrians on the sidewalk, got onto a wider road, completely packed with crowds, donkey carts, and honking vehicles.

“This is Shubra,” Rygg said. “One of the most densely crowded areas in the world. Our hotel is here, but I think we will walk. It is faster.” Leaning forward, he shouted to Marwan and then handed him a sheaf of notes. Marwan grinned at them and nodded.

They had a brief conversation in Arabic, pointing to the pilot and talking expressively. Marwan kept grinning and nodding the entire time.

“What are you saying?” Lena asked.

“Marwan is going to take care of the pilot and getting him the parts he needs for his plane; then will take him back to the runway for take-off. He has the connections to help.”

“Oh, this is safe?” Lena asked.

Rygg shrugged at Marin, who in turn, told the pilot in Russian what was going to happen. He nodded his head and eyed Marwan suspiciously, then decided he must be okay to trust. He gave a thumb up.

With that, Rygg, Marin, and Lena left, weaving among the vehicles on foot toward the hotel. The smells of incense and exhaust fumes and rotting garbage, combined with the incessant noise, were almost overpowering.

Rygg led them through a couple alleys and into a filthy entrance. Their hotel was on the seventh floor, up stairs that seemed to have been laid without a level: they canted this way and that, and Rygg called back from time to time if he encountered one that had crumbled entirely away. He stopped in front of a door that had “New Cleopatra Ramses Five Stars Luxury Hotel” painted on it, and pressed the buzzer.

Rygg’s room overlooked
an intersection, and he spent a few minutes leaning on the railing of his tiny balcony, looking down at the melee. There were traffic lights, and they seemed to work, but there was also a traffic cop, who joined in the general commotion, getting into two arguments in the five minutes Rygg watched him. One of the arguments was resolved when the driver of one of the cars slipped something into the cop’s pocket.

Rygg closed the balcony shutters and doors, turned on the fan, and lay back on the bed. The fan stirred the air, raising a little eddy of dust and making him sneeze. Remembering his sumptuous room at the Odessa Korona, he gave a short laugh. A miniature black-and-white television stood on the dresser. He turned it on. There seemed to be only one channel, on which Oum Koulsoum sang, backed by a full orchestra. Her voice was rich and mournful, and the crowd sighed and bellowed in ecstasy at the end of every line.

Rygg must have dozed off. He woke with the light still on and Oum Koulsoum still singing. He assumed that he’d slept for a couple minutes. He looked at his watch. It was six in the morning. He’d been asleep for hours. He turned off the television and the light and took off his shoes. But the instant he closed his eyes, a tuneful roar swelled from outside, rolling toward him: the dawn mosque call, sounding from hundreds of minarets across the city. The calls rose to a grand hullabaloo, then tapered until a lone latecomer in the distance warbled his last “…
la ilaha ila Allah
.” Rygg slept again.

May 11

Rygg woke to a tap on the door and got up groggily. It was Lena. She looked sleepy, too. “Where’s Marko?” he asked.

She shrugged. “He left me a note saying that he is to meet someone. We meet here at the hotel at three in the afternoon.”

“What time is it now?”

“Ten in the morning.”

“Okay. Okay, give me a couple minutes, and I’ll be right with you.”

He took off his shirt and splashed his armpits at the sink, then gingerly scrubbed around the bandages on his face and forearm. The bandage around his lopped little finger had a stamp-sized patch of blood fringed with yellowish fluid. He thought he should probably get it checked out, but was afraid to take off the bandage for fear of what he might see. At least it didn’t hurt anymore. He wished he had a toothbrush or a comb, but made do with rinsing his mouth out and running some water through his hair.

He opened the door again. “So,” he said. “Breakfast?”

“Marko left me some money.”

“Excellent.”

It was midmorning – breakfast time in Egypt. They found a little three-cornered restaurant on a side street near the hotel. Rygg called a waiter over and haltingly summoned a few words in Arabic. A minute later, the table was filled with battered tin bowls. There were fava beans, huge falafel, a cucumber and tomato salad, pickles, white cheese, tahini, and fried eggplant. The waiter banged down a stack of pita bread and shouted at them to enjoy their food. He turned away, but Rygg grabbed his sleeve. “
Ahwa
,” he said. He turned to Lena. “Coffee?”

“Do they have tea?” she asked.

“
Shai
,” Rygg said, pointing to Lena, and the waiter nodded.

“
Shai
!” she exclaimed. “Is same word in Russian.”

The food was excellent. They ripped off scraps of the pita and dipped them into the various dishes. The coffee, when it arrived, was about the consistency of tar and fantastically sweet. Lena’s tea was dark and sweet and had a delicious scent of mint. Rygg had forgotten about Egyptian coffee. “Well, that’s got to do something to me,” he said. “It’ll either wake me up or kill me. If I have a heart attack,” he told Lena, “just toss my body in the Nile, all right?”

After breakfast, which cost them, Rygg calculated, the equivalent of half a euro, they wandered the streets for a while. They found a big clothing store and Rygg bought some shirts, pants and underwear. In a pharmacy, they bought toiletries. Also at the pharmacy, Lena pointed to Rygg’s bandages and asked if there was a doctor nearby. The pharmacist shrugged. “I can assist,” he said. So Rygg sat on a stool behind the counter while the pharmacist took off the bandages on his cheek and forearm, cleaned the wounds with hydrogen peroxide, dabbed on antibiotic ointment, and taped on fresh gauze. He tackled the chopped-off finger last. The pharmacist drew in his breath sharply as he pulled off the bandage.

“Is it bad?” Rygg asked. The tip of the finger was blackened and puffy, but there was no pain.

The pharmacist shrugged. “You have small infection,” he said. He poured some hydrogen peroxide into a glass and had Rygg soak the finger in the glass for a couple minutes, then scraped at the wound with cotton. He put on a fresh bandage and gave Rygg a course of antibiotics. “You must clean every day,” he said.

“How long will it take to heal over?” Rygg asked.

“One month, because of infection.”

A little before three, as Rygg and Lena were drinking coffee and tea in a café below the hotel, a taxi pulled up. Marin got out with Sasha. Sasha looked, if anything, a little paler and skinnier.

“Sasha!” Lena cried, grabbing his arm and kissing him on both cheeks. Sasha grinned uncomfortably and gave Rygg a little wave. He and Marin took seats, and Rygg called the waiter over and released a volley of Arabic. The waiter bowed, muttered, “
Hadr, ya effendim
,” and scurried away.

He returned with a Pepsi for Sasha, two coffees, a tea, and a water pipe. The waiter took the perforated tin cap off the pipe and adjusted the ember, blew through the mouthpiece, and handed it to Rygg, who pushed it toward Marin.

“What’s this?” Marin asked.

“
Sheesha
,” Rygg told him. “With apple tobacco. Suck on it.”

Marin sucked on the nozzle and the water in the bowl gurgled and clouded. Eyes closed in bliss, he released an expanding plume of fragrant smoke before passing the nozzle along to Lena. He nodded. “Very, very nice,” he said. “The smoke is cool.”

“The water cools it. And cleans it,” Rygg said. “Or that’s the theory, anyway.”

Lena wanted to try the sheesha. She coughed. “Not bad. It is a bit sweet. If I was smoker, I would smoke this, not cigarette.” She took another puff and released the smoke, and when Marin made a grab for the nozzle, she held it away from him and laughed.

As they sipped their drinks and smoked the apple tobacco, Marin and Rygg discussed what should happen next. “First, of course, is the spectacles,” Marin said. “Sasha will have a look this afternoon, and we will analyze what we have. This information will point us in the direction we need to take.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent in Sasha’s room. Sasha took from his backpack a thick battered laptop, set it on the bed, and opened it. One corner was duct-taped together and the screen looked as though it had been stuck into the frame with tile grout. A fat cylinder was attached to the hind end. To start it, Sasha had to twist two wires together and tape them. But he assured Rygg that the innards contained the most powerful components on the market: “I made it myself,” he said proudly. “Quad core, thirty-two gigs.” He tapped the cylinder. “Twenty-eight hours of battery life.” Rygg raised his eyebrows. He’d bought a few laptops in his life, and had never heard of anything approaching this beast.

As reverently as if it were the communion host, Marin took the glasses case out of the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it over. From his backpack, Sasha removed a tool set cased in orange plastic and extracted a minuscule Philips screwdriver. Using that, he gingerly unscrewed the right-hand earpiece. It was joined to the frame by a slim black wire. Sasha snipped it with the scissors on his multi-tool. Then, using the needle-nosed pliers on the tool and a screwdriver, he pried at the earpiece. The plastic stem broke away into two hollow sections, revealing, nestled in the tab that hooked around the ear, a tiny chip. With great care, using a cotton bud, Sasha teased this out and laid it on a square of toilet paper. He took an object that resembled an old-school Walkman out of his bag. Lifting the lid, he settled the chip into place before sealing it once more. He plugged the “Walkman” into the computer.

“Three minutes, then we see,” he said. A program with a dozen, mainly numerical, interfaces sprang up. The numbers tumbled, green on a black background. And in precisely three minutes, a checkerboard of thumbnail images filled the screen. There were seven altogether. Sasha brought them up one by one. The first three were of Marin in the dacha. There was a slight fisheye effect, and Marin’s nose looked far too big. Lena snorted with laughter. To one side of the third picture, Valentina stood with her arm around Oleg, and Rygg saw in his mind’s eye his last image of her, face-down in the pool at the resort. He wondered if he’d killed her with the blow to the throat – and felt a little lurch of something inside him. Sometimes death was necessary, but killing a woman still felt off limits and was something he’d promised himself he’d never do.

Swiftly, Sasha flicked through the pictures of Marin. He brought up the first of the images from the room in the Ministry of Defense, expanding it so it filled the screen. And instantly Rygg was back in the room. He could taste the adrenalin like a bitter spice.

Marin and Sasha bent to the screen and peered at the image for a long time. Then they moved through the other three. The first and last ones seemed the most fruitful. The second was tilted, and just caught a corner of the whiteboard. The third, for some reason, was blurry. They returned to the first one. Marin circled three areas: the whiteboard at the back of the room, a pad of paper under one man’s elbow, and a computer screen. They flipped over to the last image. Here, Rygg had caught what looked like a television screen on the left side of the room. Marin tapped that. Bringing up a graphics program, Sasha moved the images over, chopped out the sections Marin desired, and blew them up.

For the next couple hours, Marin and Sasha pored over the images. On the whiteboard were numbers and a few diagrams. It looked like algebra to Rygg. He’d never been good at algebra. For a while, he watched their discussions. They brought up various internet sites – Sasha had somehow hooked into a nearby net café, bypassing the password – and peered at numbers. Finally, Rygg went and got
Anna Karenina
and took it to the balcony of Sasha’s room. He’d read a chapter when Lena dragged a chair out to the balcony and sat reading her own book. “How you like
Anna Karenina
?” she asked.