Authors: Paul Sussman
Sprinting on along the corridor, they barged through another fire exit and clattered down an external staircase to a courtyard beneath.
‘Late for lectures again, Flin?’ cried a familiar voice. ‘Deary me, even the ancient Egyptians were better at timekeeping than you are!’
‘Very funny, Alan,’ Flin muttered, hurrying Freya past his colleague and into the campus canteen. They ran across the room, diners staring in astonishment as they slalomed between the rows of metal tables and chairs and through another doorway at the far end, back out into the university grounds. They slowed and stopped, heaving for breath. Almost immediately there were shouts to their left as three figures came charging round the side of the building, and more shouts behind as the twins burst into the canteen, bulldozing through the furniture, plates and cups cascading to the floor, diners yelling in protest.
‘Christ, they’re everywhere!’ cried Flin, waving Freya down a trellis-covered walkway between tennis and volleyball courts. They jinked right, then left along a broad
alleyway lined with noticeboards and out through a tall iron gateway. They were on a street at the side of the university, cars and taxis rushing past in front of them.
Their pursuers had yet to turn into the alley, and for a brief moment Freya thought they would be able to lose themselves in the crowds thronging the pavement. Then, away to her right, she saw a gleaming black BMW parked up against the kerb. Two figures were leaning against it, both with the same menacing, rough-face appearance as those who were chasing them. An identical car sat directly opposite, outside a McDonald’s; another two men were standing beside it, while a hundred metres to their left, loitering around a traffic light at the end of the street, were a further three heavies. A rush of feet, and their pursuers came in behind them, blocking the alley, slowing to a walk as they realized their quarry was trapped. Flin wrapped an arm protectively around Freya, drawing her into him.
‘Bugger,’ he said.
At the beginning of Dakhla Oasis, to either side of the main desert highway, stand a pair of tall, rather crude metal sculptures in the shape of palm trees. Apart from a line of telegraph poles and a couple of road signs, they are the only man-made features in the otherwise empty landscape.
It was here that Zahir waited for his brother Said, his Land Cruiser parked up in a slim strip of shade at the foot of one of the sculptures, scrubby fields the only thing
between him and the rolling dunes beyond. Ten minutes passed, then, in the distance, its shape warped and twisted by the heat, a motorbike appeared. The road along which it was travelling had dissolved into a glassy mirage so that it looked as if the rider was speeding across water. Closer and closer it came before suddenly tightening into clear focus, covering the last few hundred metres and skidding to a halt beside the Land Cruiser.
‘Anything?’ asked Zahir, leaning out of the window.
‘
Mafeesh haga
,’ replied Said, cutting the engine and brushing dust out of his hair. ‘Nothing. I’ve been all the way down to Kharga and no one knows anything. Did you go to
el-shorty
? The cops?’
Zahir gave a dismissive snort.
‘Idiots. They said she must have run off with Mahmoud Gharoub. Laughed in my face. They think because we’re Bedouin we’re fools.’
His brother grunted.
‘You want me to keep looking? I could go up to al-Farafra, talk to people there?’
Zahir pondered a moment, then nodded.
‘I’ll keep asking around Dakhla. Someone must know something.’
His brother kick-started the bike, a battered Jawa 350, and, with a nod, roared away northwards.
Zahir watched him go, then started up the Land Cruiser. He didn’t engage the gears immediately, just sat there with the clutch depressed and the engine running, gazing out across the desert. Fumbling in the pocket of his
djellaba,
he pulled out a green metal compass. Resting his wrists on the steering wheel he opened it and gazed at
the initials scrawled on the inside of the lid. AH. He fiddled with the magnifying lens and rotating bezel, ran a finger down the taut brass sighting wire, murmuring to himself. Then, with a shake of his head, he pocketed the compass, selected first and moved off, the Land Cruiser’s wheels skidding and churning on the gravel verge, dust billowing behind it.
‘What do we do?’ asked Freya, looking desperately around.
‘I’m really not sure,’ said Flin, his fists clenched, his head turning this way and that as he assessed the situation. Two men leaning against a BMW along the street to their right; two directly opposite, beside a second BMW; another three at the traffic lights; and, coming up behind, five more, led by the identical twins in their Armani suits and red-and-white football shirts.
Their pursuers came to the university’s gateway and stepped through, stopping two metres away, separated from Flin and Freya by a jostling eddy of pedestrians. They pulled aside their jackets, revealing a glimpse of Glock pistols. One of them pointed at Freya and grunted something in Arabic.
‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.
‘He told you to take off your knapsack and throw it over to him,’ replied Flin.
‘Should I?’
‘Seems we don’t have much choice.’
The twin repeated his request, louder this time. Threatening.
‘Take it slowly,’ said Flin.
As Freya began to remove the knapsack, a taxi – a battered black-and-white Fiat 124 – pulled up at the kerb behind them. She got the bag off, clutching it in her hands, reluctant to let it go.
‘Yalla nimsheh!’
called the twin, waving at her to throw the knapsack over.
‘Bisoraa, bisoraa!’
The taxi driver had now got out of the car, leaving the driver door open and the engine running as he helped an elderly woman out of the back seat and onto the pavement. Flin’s eyes jinked in that direction, as did Freya’s.
‘Bisoraa!’
shouted the twin, losing patience: both he and his brother were opening their jackets right up, grasping their pistols.
‘Better give it to them,’ said Flin, turning to Freya and reaching for the knapsack, his eyes again flicking towards the taxi as the driver moved round to the boot, opened it and started heaving at an enormous suitcase.
‘Come on, Freya, this isn’t a game!’ Flin’s voice was unnecessarily loud, exaggeratedly so. ‘Just give them the bag.’
He tried to pull the knapsack from her grasp. Freya sensed what he was doing and held on to it, buying them a few extra seconds as the driver manhandled the case onto the tarmac and slammed the boot shut. As he did so Flin gave the knapsack a yank, bringing his face right up against Freya’s.
‘Back seat,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll drive.’
He pulled away again, shaking the bag and remonstrating
theatrically before suddenly letting the bag go and barging to his right, sending a man balancing a large tray of
aish baladi
on his head sprawling backwards into the twins. There were shouts, flailing arms and a loud clatter as the tray hit the pavement. In that brief instant of confusion, Freya dived headlong into the back of the taxi. Flin threw himself into the driver’s seat. He didn’t even bother closing the door, just flipped the knapsack over his shoulder to Freya, slammed the car into gear and thumped his foot down on the accelerator. The taxi’s owner gazed on in mute bewilderment as his livelihood screeched away in front of him.
‘Hold tight!’ yelled Flin, his tall frame crushed into the limited space behind the steering wheel. He swerved round a bus, its right rear corner clipping the taxi’s two open doors and slamming them shut. Yanking the gearstick into second and then third, he wove through the traffic, picking up speed, the taxi’s meter ticking madly on the dashboard.
Freya scrambled into a sitting position, looking back. The twins were at the kerbside frantically waving at one of the BMWs while across the street the other was already moving off, smoke bursting from beneath its skidding tyres.
‘They’re coming!’ she cried.
The taxi was now almost at the traffic lights at the end of the street, the vast chaotic expanse of Midan Tahrir opening up in front of them. The signals were on red, cars idling at the stop-line, a white-uniformed policeman standing in the middle of the road with one arm raised. Flin veered left into an empty lane and mounted the kerb, scattering the three heavies who were standing there and flying straight
through the lights. There was a cacophony of hooting and a series of shrill blasts from the policeman’s whistle as they slewed round the corner and into the traffic running up the side of the square. They skidded, straightened, skidded again, slamming into the flank of a pick-up truck which in turn cannoned into a minibus, forcing it off the road and into a fruit stall. Pedestrians leapt out of the way, shouting and gesticulating; oranges and watermelons cascaded across the ground like giant marbles.
‘Anyone hurt?’ called Flin.
‘I don’t think so,’ replied Freya, staring back at the mayhem, her stomach lurching.
He nodded and sped on, feet dancing a mad jig across the brake, clutch and accelerator pedals, right hand ricocheting back and forth between the steering wheel and the gear-stick. Behind them one of the black BMWs came tearing around the corner. The second followed a moment later, the two cars slaloming through the traffic in fierce pursuit, other vehicles swerving out of their path, beeping furiously. More powerful than the old Fiat, the BMWs rapidly gained on Flin and Freya, closing to within twenty metres. Flin braked and wrenched the steering wheel to the right, skidding them out of the square and onto a broad street of what must once have been ornate colonial buildings. Signs flashed past – Memphis Bazaar, Turkish Airlines, Pharaonic American Life Assurance Company – as the taxi’s speedometer strained to the limit of its gauge before Flin again stamped on the brakes, wheeling them around a large traffic island with a statue of a man in a fez at its centre and off along another street. The BMWs disappeared for a moment, then swept back into view.
‘They’re too fast,’ cried Flin, shooting another look into the mirror. ‘We’re never going to outrun them.’
As if to emphasize the point the lead BMW put on a sudden burst of speed. Surging forward it slammed into their rear bumper, catapulting a screaming Freya into the back of Flin’s seat.
‘You OK?’ he called.
‘OK,’ she said, tapping him on the shoulder, trying to sound less shaken than she was.
The BMW dropped back, sped forward and shunted them again, then swung out into the empty oncoming lane and moved in alongside them.
‘He’s got a gun!’ she warned Flin as the man in the front passenger seat aimed a pistol through the open window: his face was close enough for her to make out his yellow teeth and a mole beneath his right eye.
‘Hold on!’
Flin hit the brakes, the BMW flying ahead as he spun the Fiat into a side street. Swerving to avoid a group of schoolgirls, he smashed through a nut vendor’s trolley – showers of nuts and seeds clattering down onto the windscreen like hail – before straightening and speeding on. There was a blare of sirens, although in the confusion it was impossible to tell from which direction it was coming.
‘The other one’s still with us!’ cried Freya as the second BMW roared round the corner. It raced towards them, the twins leaning out of the windows and shooting. Pedestrians scattered along the pavements, screaming and diving for cover. One bullet punched out the taxi’s back window, showering Freya with glass. Another whizzed past Flin’s shoulder and shattered the dashboard meter.
‘Guess I’ll have to give you this ride for free,’ he joked grimly, fighting to control the vehicle as it careered over a crossroads directly in front of an oncoming bus. Freya reeled across the back seat, glass crunching beneath her; cars dominoed into each other as the bus braked sharply to avoid a collision.
‘At least we’ve lost the other one,’ she shouted, righting herself again, her hair whipping madly in the wind.
‘If only,’ growled Flin, veering as the first BMW came flying back into view out of a side street, tyres screeching as it swept across the dusty tarmac and fell in behind the twins’ car. The wail of sirens suddenly grew louder as first one, then two, then three police Daewoos joined the chase.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ cursed Flin as a police motorcycle also locked onto their tail before almost immediately skidding, tumbling onto its side and crashing into a stack of wooden pigeon cages. Freya caught a brief glimpse of the rider clambering dazedly to his feet, feathers swirling around him like dirty snow, and then they rounded a corner and he was gone.
They were now speeding away from the centre of the city. Turn-of-the-century European architecture gave way to ugly concrete blocks interspersed with mosques and medieval-looking buildings with chunky masonry and intricately arched windows. The traffic started to grow heavier, choking itself into ever-tighter jams and tailbacks and forcing Flin into constant changes of direction as he struggled both to keep ahead of their pursuers and to avoid hitting pedestrians and other vehicles. Two of the police cars collided while trying to overtake the rear BMW, drinkers scrambling aside as one of them spun into the
furniture at the front of a café sending tables and chairs cartwheeling in all directions. The other hit the kerb and flipped over onto its roof, gliding down the street in a shower of sparks before thudding into a lamppost. The third Daewoo managed to keep up with them for a few turns longer before it too crashed out of the chase, misjudging a corner and ploughing into the back of a stationary cattle truck, terrified cows stampeding over the truck’s tailgate and off down the road. Other police vehicles took up the pursuit, sirens blaring, lights flashing, but the pace was too intense and one by one they also dropped away and were lost. The BMWs alone stuck with Flin and Freya, remorselessly, mirroring their every twist and turn, refusing to be shaken off.
They hurtled into a square beneath a wall of towering ramparts and from there into a perilously narrow side street, crowds parting in panic as they bounced along the street’s potholed surface. Shops and stalls rushed by to either side, a butcher’s kiosk piled high with a mound of slippery pink offal, enormous sacks exploding with fluffy white cotton. The street got narrower and narrower, clogging them in, making it impossible to dodge the gunfire crackling from the BMWs behind.