Authors: Paul Sussman
It was a clear night, cool bordering on cold, the moon now fully risen, the desert an expanse of icy silver. Terrified of being seen, she moved only when the helicopter was going in the opposite direction, sprinting from one piece of cover to the next – boulder to dune to rock formation to bush – before cowering down again. A couple of times she heard gunfire, and once the helicopter came out beyond the oasis, flying almost directly overhead as she curled herself into a ball beneath a thin rock shelf. It seemed the pilot was only chancing his arm, taking pot luck that he might spot her, and after flying round for a while the chopper turned and
headed back. After that there were no more signs of pursuit.
She continued south for almost two hours, cautiously at first, then with more confidence as the oasis dropped out of view behind her, lost among the dunes and gravel hills. The air turned bitterly cold and she removed her fleece from the knapsack and pulled it on, breaking into a jog every now and then to keep herself warm. She tried to go over events in her head, searching for answers, but she was in shock and everything was confused and jumbled and meaningless. Beyond the fact that someone had killed her sister, and had tried to kill her, and that it was all tied up with the objects the Bedouin man had brought to the house that afternoon, she could make no sense of it whatsoever.
She covered about five kilometres, then judged it was safe enough to turn east back towards the distant glinting lights of Dakhla proper. It took her a further hour to reach the first outlying fields, and another forty minutes beyond that to navigate her way through a maze of reed banks, fish ponds and irrigation canals. Eventually, more by luck than design, she emerged from a field of densely packed sugar cane and found herself on a tarmacked road, the main thoroughfare through the oasis.
Lights were approaching from her right. She hesitated, then stepped back among the cane stems, peering nervously out, fearful it might be her pursuers. Only when she saw that the lights belonged to a large oil tanker did she emerge again and frantically wave her arms, flagging the vehicle down. A horn sounded, and there was a wheeze of hydraulic brakes as the tanker slowed and came to a halt beside her. The driver wound down his window and leant out.
‘Please help me,’ she pleaded. ‘I need to get to Mut. To
the police station. Someone’s trying to kill me. Please, I need to get to the police station. You understand? Mut. Police station. Mut. Mut.’
The words spilled out of her in a garbled rush. The driver – a plump man with a whiskery, oil-smeared face – shrugged and shook his head, clearly not understanding.
‘
El-Qahira
,’ he said. ‘Go
el-Qahira.
Cairo.’
He seemed to think she was a hitch-hiker and was thumbing a ride. Clenching her fists in frustration, she started to repeat herself, only to fall silent. El-Qahira. Cairo. Yes, she thought, maybe that would be better. Get out of the oasis altogether, as far away as possible, back up to Cairo where she could go to the Embassy, or call Molly Kiernan – fellow Americans, people who could speak English. People who could help her.
‘Yes,’ she said, throwing an anxious look over her shoulder. ‘Cairo. Yes, thank you. Cairo.’
She hurried round to the passenger side, climbed in and slammed the door.
‘They were trying to kill me,’ she said as they started moving, her voice shaky, disbelieving. ‘You understand? There were these men and they were trying to kill me.’
As before, the driver just shrugged.
‘
Ingleezaya
?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘
Ingleezaya?
Een-gleesh?’
She shook her head.
‘American. I’m American.’
He grinned.
‘
Amreeka
good. Boos Weelis. Amal Shwassnegar. Very good.’
She so desperately wanted to explain, to make him understand – that they’d tried to kill her, and had killed her sister, and that she’d only just managed to escape and had been walking across the desert for hours and was cold and thirsty and frightened and exhausted. But it was pointless. She nodded at him, then brought her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and leant her head against the window, gazing out.
‘Yes, yes, very good,’ chuckled the driver, patting his palms appreciatively against the steering wheel. ‘Boos Weelis. Amal Shwassnegar. Very, very good.’
As they picked up speed, the white dot of the helicopter’s searchlight was briefly visible out across the desert before it dropped away behind them and they were rumbling off into the night, heading north.
The girl was young. Fifteen or sixteen, no more, drugged up and dressed in a school uniform. She sat on the bed, eyes glazed, bewildered, not quite sure what was happening. To murmurs of approval, the Ethiopians came in, strutting about a bit, doing some comic stuff with their penises, emphasizing their size and girth, before getting down to the serious business. They stripped the girl, slapping her about, forcing themselves into her mouth. The businessmen grinned and puffed on their cigars while the girl gagged and wept, pleading to be left alone.
In the next-door room Girgis watched through the one-way
mirror, nodding in satisfaction. Not at the rape itself – he didn’t care for such things; didn’t particularly care for sex full stop – but rather at the deal that had preceded it. Everyone knew that if you did business with Romani Girgis he’d look after you, put on a good show, and that in turn meant business always went smoothly. As it had this evening. Almost too smoothly, if anything. Knowing the sort of entertainment that was being laid on for them, the North Koreans hadn’t been able sign the contracts quick enough: fifty FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, at $205,000 each, with Girgis taking a twenty per cent commission on the sale as middleman. He smiled, thinking maybe he ought to give the girl a cut, reward her for her exertions. But then the girl would most likely be dead by the end of the night, her body dumped in the Nile or somewhere out over the desert, so he might as well keep all the money himself. The thought made him smile even more.
He watched on for a while as the rape became increasingly frenzied and bestial. Then, glancing at his watch, he turned away and left the room, walking across the marble-floored hallway and up the grand staircase towards his study on the top floor. There’d be more shows after this one – young boys with an older woman, three girls together, a girl and a dog – after which his guests would be shown to private bedrooms, supplied with hookers, drugs, porn, whatever they wanted, the entertainment continuing well into the early hours. His people would see to it all. He had other business to attend to. More important business. Even more important than twenty per cent commission on $10.25 million.
At the top of the staircase he stooped to flick a crumb off the carpet – bloody cleaners, no attention to detail – before walking down a corridor and unlocking a door at the far end. He stepped into a large, wood-panelled study. A bank of closed-circuit television screens was arranged along one wall, each tuned in to a different room within the house. Crossing to his desk he sat down and, glancing at his watch again, lifted the phone, jabbing the loudspeaker button and placing the receiver on the desktop.
‘Everyone there?’
Murmurs of assent as those at the other end of the line confirmed they were indeed present and ready to begin the conference call: Boutros Salah, his right-hand man; Ahmed Usman, his antiquities expert; Mohammed Kasri, his lawyer and link-man with the police and security services. The inner circle, his closest confidants.
‘OK, let’s get started,’ said Girgis. ‘Boutros?’
There was a cough as Salah cleared his throat.
‘It’s definitely the co-pilot,’ came his voice, hoarse and wheezy – the voice of a heavy smoker. ‘We’ve checked the details from the wallet and they tally. Looks like he was trying to walk his way out of the desert.’
‘And he was coming from the oasis?’ asked Girgis. ‘We’re certain of that?’
‘Oh, no question about it,’ came another voice, this one hesitant, slightly bumbling: Ahmed Usman. ‘Really no question at all. We knew that’s where the plane came down from the final radio message, of course, but the artefact confirms it beyond any doubt. A votive obelisk with the
sedjet
sign, found that close to the Gilf – it could only be Zerzura. Absolutely no question.’
Girgis nodded, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him.
‘What about the camera film?’
Another cough as Salah again cleared his throat.
‘The map should be all we need,’ he wheezed. ‘The twins are out looking for the co-pilot’s body now. They got a good description from the Bedouin leader and the camel tracks are still visible so it shouldn’t be that hard to trace. Once they’ve found it they just reverse the compass bearings on the map and follow them back to the Gilf. In theory they should lead us straight to the plane.’
‘Theory?’
‘Well the guy must have been in a pretty bad state by the end, so it’s possible he didn’t get the bearings exact. Either way they’ll get us close, and once we’re in the vicinity it should be easy to find with the helicopter, even in the dark. If everything goes smoothly they should have it in a couple hours, maybe less. If they end up having to go back to Dakhla to refuel, four or five. By dawn. We’ll definitely have it by dawn.’
There was a knock on the door and a white-jacketed servant entered, carrying a glass of tea. Girgis waved him forward without looking up. The man placed the glass on the desk and left, all the while keeping his eyes firmly on the floor.
‘What about the military?’ Girgis asked. ‘The Gilf’s a security zone. I don’t want any trouble.’
‘All covered,’ replied a third voice. Smooth, oily – Mohammed Kasri. ‘I’ve spoken to the people who need to be spoken to; they’ll give us a clear run. General Zawi was extremely helpful.’
‘He bloody should be, given the amount we pay him,’ said Girgis with a snort, raising his tea and taking a sip.
There was a pause, then Usman’s voice came in again.
‘May I ask about safety? I mean, we don’t know what state it’s going to be in after all these years, how the crash might have affected it. We really are going to need specialist equipment, people who know what they’re doing.’
‘It’s in hand,’ replied Girgis.
‘Because this isn’t just a consignment of guns we’re talking about here. We can’t simply box it up and fly it out. We’re dealing with things …’
‘It’s in hand,’ repeated Girgis, firmer this time. ‘All necessary technical back-up will be provided.’
‘Of course, Mr Girgis,’ mumbled Usman, sensing that he had overstepped the mark. ‘I didn’t mean … I just wanted to be sure.’
‘Well now you are,’ said Girgis.
He sipped again, his lips barely touching the liquid, then set the glass down and dabbed at his mouth with a handkerchief.
‘Which just leaves the girl,’ he said. ‘I take it we haven’t found her yet.’
Salah acknowledged that this was the case.
‘We’ve left five of the guys in Dakhla. And we’ve got local friends. If she’s there we’ll track her down.’
‘The police?’ asked Girgis. ‘
Jihaz amn al-daoula
?’
‘I’ve alerted our contacts,’ said Kasri. ‘If she shows up they’ll let us know. I’m assuming our American …’
‘Alerted,’ said Girgis.
He continued dabbing at his mouth before neatly folding his handkerchief and returning it to his pocket.
‘I want her found,’ he said. ‘Even if the map gives us everything we need, I want her found. I haven’t waited twenty-three years to see this whole thing screwed up by some little slut blabbing her mouth off. I want her found, and I want her removed. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ answered all three voices in unison.
‘Call me as soon as you have news.’
The line clicked as one by one the other three rang off. For a moment Girgis was still, gazing across the room at the bank of closed-circuit television screens – a grainy mosaic of sex and violence – then he leant forward.
‘Did you get all that?’
A barely audible murmur of acknowledgement emanated from the telephone. The tone was fractionally higher than those of the speakers who had just rung off; it was impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
‘I’m going to need your help on this,’ said Girgis. ‘If the girl contacts the Embassy …’
Another murmur and the line went dead. Girgis stared at the phone, eyes narrowed, tongue flicking in and out of the corner of his mouth. With a nod, he replaced the receiver, stood and, taking his tea with him, wandered through onto the balcony where he gazed out over the ornamental gardens that ran down to the Nile at the back of the house.
Twenty years he’d lived here, a sumptuous colonial mansion right on the Zamalek waterfront. Even now it still amazed him: that he, the son of rubbish collectors, grandson of
Saidi fellaheen,
should live at one of the most exclusive addresses in Cairo, find himself hobnobbing with the elite. From Manshiet Nasser to this, from street-corner dope
deals to a multimillion-dollar business empire – he’d certainly come a long way. Further than even he could have hoped or expected. Only the Gilf Kebir fiasco had marred an otherwise glittering career – a deal that should have been his crowning glory, audacious even by his standards, and all fucked up because of a freak weather event.
He frowned, his mouth tightening into an angry grimace. The expression only lasted a moment before rearranging itself into a smile.
Because the deal wasn’t fucked up. Delayed, yes. But not fucked up. Far from it. The crash had, in the end, done him and his clients a favour, transforming an already ambitious venture into something even bigger. It had taken its time coming to fruition, but now, finally, he was poised to reap the rewards. Every cloud has a silver lining. Or in this case every sandstorm.
He sipped his tea and gazed across the Nile to the Carlton Hotel and the light-covered towers of the Egyptian National Bank building opposite as the sound of screams echoed up from below, pained and helpless. His smile broadened and he let out a chuckle. Say what you like, Romani Girgis always put on a good show.