The Hidden Oasis (34 page)

‘There are rats!’ Freya shrieked, sensing something – lots of things – scurrying round her feet and ankles.

‘Ignore them!’ ordered Flin. ‘Just keep going.’

They ploughed on through the murk, moving more by instinct than sight, the glow of the street lamps behind doing little to dispel the enveloping gloom. Flin tripped, fell, clambered upright again, sputtering in disgust; Freya’s foot sank deep into something that felt horribly like a dead animal. She kept moving, the darkness growing ever more intense, the smell ever more unbearable until suddenly the alley took a sharp turn to the left and began to slope steeply downwards. There was light ahead, framed by the narrow slit of the alley’s lower end. From behind, round the corner, came the sounds of pursuit: curses and yells and a bark of gunfire. They stumbled on, moving as fast as they could, the rubbish gradually petering out in a slide of old cans and paint pots. The opening drew nearer and nearer until the walls to either side fell away and they emerged on top of a vertical, three-metre embankment. Grim tenements pressed in all around; a floodlight mounted on a pole to their left cast a fierce, icy glare. From below they heard a muffled grunting, accompanied by a powerful waft of faeces.

‘Jump,’ cried Flin.

‘It’s a fucking pigsty!’

‘Jump!’

He nudged Freya in the back and she dropped down, sprawling in a viscous soup of mud and straw. Her hands sank into the filth almost to the level of her elbows, the grunting gave way to alarmed squeals as slithery black shapes scattered around her. Struggling to her feet, she turned and looked up, slapping at a slime-covered snout as it butted into her thigh. Flin was still on the embankment, pressed against the wall just to the right of the alley mouth, his left arm soaked with blood, his fists clenched. The clatter of cans grew louder as their pursuers charged down after them, their descent accompanied by the sporadic crackle of gunfire.

‘Over there!’ hissed Flin, nodding towards a heap of straw bales on the far side of the sty. ‘Go! Quick!’

‘What about—’

‘Just go!’

She waded through the mire, reached the bales and clambered over them, crouching down as the first of their pursuers burst from the alley, some way ahead of his companions. He started to turn, shouting back. As he did so Flin fell on him, unleashing a flurry of punches and pitching him head first into the sty where he landed with a squelch and a sharp crack as of something snapping.

Flin leapt down into the mud. Yanking the pistol from the man’s limp grasp he swiftly frisked his pockets. He pulled out an extra ammunition clip, then stumbled across the sty and threw himself behind the straw bales, dragging Freya’s head down out of sight just as the rest of Girgis’s
men came barrelling out of the passage. They skidded to a halt and looked around, seeking out their quarry in the glare of the floodlight. Unable to spot them, the Egyptians started shooting indiscriminately, raking the enclosure with deafening volleys of gunfire. Bullets whizzed and thudded around the two westerners, kicking up explosions of mud and straw; pigs stampeded in all directions, squealing in terror. On and on it went, Flin holding Freya close with one hand while with the other he fumbled with the gun, waiting for the barrage to ease off. The moment it did, without hesitation, he forced Freya’s head down further, scrambled into a kneeling position and unleashed a volley of his own, his finger pumping rhythmically at the trigger, his arm tracking left and right as he sighted different targets. He emptied the ammunition clip, slotted in the new one and cracked off a few more rounds. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun. There was no return fire. He reached out and squeezed Freya’s arm, breathing heavily.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

For a moment she remained where she was, curled in the mud, the echo of gunfire gradually fading, leaving just the whimpering of injured pigs and the domino-like clack of shutters as around and above them people opened their windows to see what was going on. Then she unravelled herself and moved into a kneeling position, looking out over the straw bales. In front of her, splayed across the top of the floodlit embankment like corpses on a stage, were four crumpled bodies.

‘Jesus,’ she said, trembling. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

There were voices now, and shouts, and the distant wail of a siren. Flin gave it a few more seconds, scanning
the alley mouth in case any more pursuers should emerge. Then, jamming the gun into the back of his jeans and covering it with his shirt-tail, he pulled Freya to her feet.

‘How did you do that?’ she mumbled, her voice hoarse, disbelieving. ‘All those men. How did you … ?’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Come on.’

He helped her through the sty and over a low breeze-block wall, people shouting at them from above, gesticulating. The wail of the siren grew louder. They kept moving, skirting a rubbish tip and setting off down a dark narrow street, both too shocked to speak. After fifty metres a sound of running feet from around a corner ahead forced them to duck into a fetid doorway. A group of children scampered by, chattering excitedly, wanting to see what was happening. They waited for them to disappear, then hurried on, the road sloping downwards, twisting and turning, getting steadily wider. They passed a brightly lit shop, and then a fruit stall hung with fairy-lights, and then a café, more and more people materializing around them, more light and bustle, the street seeming to come alive the further down the hill they went. They knew from the way eyes bored into them that the gun battle had been heard, and that with their mud-caked clothes and Flin’s bloody shirt they were being connected with the commotion. They quickened their pace, desperate to get away. Fingers pointed at them, voices jabbered, twice men came up and tried to stop them. Flin pushed them off, clutching Freya’s arm and steering her through the crowds until at last the street dropped down a final steep slope and flattened out into a patch of waste ground. There were parked cars, a row
of giant rubbish bins, a railway line and beyond that – like a roaring river dividing that particular corner of Cairo from the rest of the city – a busy three-lane highway with traffic careering past in both directions. They broke into a sprint, getting up onto the highway’s verge and frantically flagging down a taxi.

Initially the driver was reluctant to take them. The car had just been cleaned, he explained, the seats only recently re-covered, he didn’t want them getting everything dirty. Only when Flin produced his wallet and counted out a fat wad of notes did he relent and wave them in. Flin took the front passenger seat, Freya – pale, hollow-faced, exhausted – the back.

‘Where you go?’ asked the man.

‘Anywhere,’ replied Flin. ‘Away from here. Just drive. Quickly.’

Throwing another glance at his passenger’s bloodstained shirt, the driver shrugged, started the meter and pulled out into the traffic. Flin craned round and looked at Freya, their eyes meeting briefly before he turned away. Grabbing a handful of tissues from a box on the dashboard, he pressed them to his arm and sank back into the cheap plastic upholstery. As he did so he felt Freya lean in behind him, her face coming up close to his ear.

‘I want to thank you for saving my life,’ she said, her voice numb, subdued.

He gave a dismissive grunt, started to mumble that he was the one who ought to be thanking her.

‘I also want you to stop bullshitting me,’ continued Freya, cutting him off. Reaching down, she yanked the pistol from the back of Flin’s jeans and pushed its muzzle
into his kidneys. ‘I want you to tell me who you are, what’s going on and what the fuck you got my sister involved in. And so help me God if you don’t the driver’s going to be cleaning a lot more than pig shit off his new upholstery. Now talk.’

The twins weren’t happy when they got the call from Girgis, not happy at all. The game had just gone into extra time after Mohamed Abu Treika’s 88th minute wonder goal had brought El-Ahly level at 2-2 and there were still three more scores to come, including Osama Hosny’s winning header. And now they were being ordered to drop everything and get themselves over to Manshiet Nasser without delay. If it had been anyone else they would have told them to fuck off. But Girgis was Girgis, and although they didn’t like it – they hated being interrupted during football, hated it – he was still the boss. Grumbling, they packed away the DVD and covered their mother with a blanket. Checking there was food and drink left out for her when she woke in the morning and money on the kitchen sideboard, they got on their way.

‘Wanker,’ muttered one of them as they trudged down the tenement stairs to the street below.

‘Wanker,’ echoed his brother.

‘We’ll give it a few more months …’

‘Then set up on our own.’

‘No more bosses.’

‘Just the two of us.’

‘And Mama.’

‘Of course Mama.’

‘It’ll be good.’

‘Very good.’

They reached the bottom of the stairs and set off along the street, arms linked, discussing
torly
and food concessions and Mohamed Abu Treika and where on earth they could get plastic sheeting and a nail gun at this time of night so they could do what Girgis had instructed them to do once they’d tracked down the two westerners.

‘Freya, I don’t know what you think …’

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ she said, leaning right into Flin’s ear and keeping her voice low so the driver couldn’t hear what she was saying. ‘I think it’s a bloody strange Egyptologist who knows how to handle a gun like you just did. Get a Cambridge Blue in that as well, did you?’

‘Freya, please …’

He started to turn towards her, but she pushed the pistol harder in under his ribs.

‘I haven’t met many Egyptologists but I’d lay good money there aren’t a lot of them like you, Professor Brodie. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but I want to know who you are and what’s going on. And I want to know now.’

He craned his neck round further, trying to meet her eyes. Then, with a nod, he shifted in his seat and faced forward again. He seemed suddenly weary.

‘OK, OK. Just put the gun down.’

She sat back, laying the pistol on the seat beside her, her hand still on its grip.

‘Talk.’

He didn’t, not immediately, just sat staring out of the window as they motored along. The gloomy shadow of Manshiet Nasser slowly dropped away behind them, a wedge of darkness thrust up underneath the floodlit wall of the Muqqatam cliffs. The driver lit a cigarette and slotted a cassette into the taxi’s dashboard stereo, filling the car with the sound of a wailing female voice accompanied by discordant bursts of violin. A motorbike drifted by on their inside, a sheep slung across the saddle behind its rider, a bored, resigned look on its face. Almost a minute passed and Freya was on the point of reminding Flin that she wanted some answers when he reached out towards the dashboard, picked up the driver’s mobile and asked if he could use it. There were negotiations – his wife was ill, the driver explained, they were behind with their rent, calls were expensive. In the end Flin had to count out another large wad of banknotes before he was given the go-ahead. He keyed in a number and placed his thumb on the call button, only to lift it again.

‘Who knew you were coming to see me?’ he asked, staring down at the phone.

‘What?’

‘At the American University. This afternoon. Who knew you were coming to see me?’

‘It’s you who’s answering the questions, remember?’

‘Come on, Freya.’

She shrugged.

‘Nobody. Well, Molly Kiernan. I left a message on her voicemail. You’re not saying she’s involved in all of this, are you?’

‘Not in the way you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Molly and I go way back.’

‘So what
are
you saying?’

Again he didn’t answer her, just continued staring at the phone, then pressed Cancel, wiping the number he was about to call. Instead he keyed in a text message, thumb bouncing over the pad. Freya craned forward, trying to see what he was writing, but the phone’s display was in Arabic and she couldn’t read it. He finished tapping and pressed Send, murmuring
‘Shukran awi’
to the driver and replacing the mobile on the dashboard.