They found him some dry clothes and left him alone.
The current had pulled him well to the west, and it took them almost an hour to reach the mouth of the Nile. He sat on a pile of nets, chain-smoking cadged cigarettes, gazing at the shoreline, cradling Samuel Pinsker’s ruined notebook in his lap, its pages reduced to an indecipherable pulp by the seawater. He should have felt guilty about it. He should have felt a lot of things. He didn’t. Just empty. Like someone had taken a wire brush and scoured out his insides.
Only one thing remained. An absolute, unwavering certainty of what had to be done.
I’m reminding you how things are in this country, Khalifa. Revolution or no revolution, there are people you don’t touch.
He’d be seeing about that.
They reached the Nile estuary and turned south, holding a line up the middle of the river. The Zoser dock was clearly visible on its promontory on the western shore. No sign of the cargo ship. Instead a pair of Nile barges were now pulled up along the wharf front, the giant gantry cranes slowly loading them with barrels. He watched a moment, curiously detached from the whole thing – Luxor, that’s where he needed to be. He borrowed one of the crew’s mobiles and made three calls.
Zenab first, to let her know he was OK. Her voice conveyed both fury at the way he had treated her, and relief that he was safe. He couldn’t tell which was the dominant narrative, didn’t bother finding out. He told her he’d be home later that evening and rang off.
Second call, anonymous, to the Israeli Embassy. One of their nationals had died in an accident, he informed them. A policeman by the name of Arieh Ben-Roi. From Jerusalem. He’d left it at that, would call back at a later date to furnish more details.
Third and final call to Corporal Ahmed Mehti at the Luxor Police shooting range. He explained what he needed, said he’d drop by as close to 7 p.m. as he could make it. If Mehti could supply some sort of carry bag, all the better,
After that he sat in silence running everything through in his head, trying to picture the maps Chief Hassani had been showing them these last few weeks, the precise deployments. There was a blind spot, he was sure of it. Up by Tuthmosis III. And a way to it as well, coming round from the south end of the massif. It was possible things had been tightened last minute, the gap closed, but he’d just have to risk it.
The law doesn’t touch companies like Barren. Or Zoser. Any of them. The only way to bring them down is to play as dirty as they play.
Bring it on.
They docked in Rosetta shortly before 3 p.m. Keeping just the shoes they’d lent him, he exchanged his borrowed clothes for his old ones, now dry, and went ashore, not even bothering to thank the crew. Running on autopilot. He bought Cleopatras from a street vendor, marched into the centre of town, picked up a service taxi into Alexandria. An hour later he was at the airport. Three hours after that his return ticket had got him back to Luxor.
All the way he thought about Ali, and Ben-Roi, and the mine full of arsenic waste, and the blind spot up near Tuthmosis III. The pivot on which his entire world now seemed to balance.
He was at the police firing range by 7.20.
‘Strictly speaking this shouldn’t be leaving here without official authorization,’ admonished Corporal Mehti, handing over a bulky canvas carrier. ‘But seeing as it’s you . . .’
Khalifa accepted the carrier, slipped Pinsker’s notebook into one of the zip pockets, signed the relevant release forms. He didn’t offer an explanation, Mehti didn’t ask for one. They’d known each other long enough; the corporal trusted him. Khalifa hoped it wouldn’t get the old trooper into trouble, but if it did . . . well, it couldn’t be helped. Nothing could be helped any more. Nothing mattered any more. Except the blind spot. Please God, don’t let them have tightened the cordon.
Clutching the carrier, he took a taxi down the river, then a motorboat across to the West Bank, then another taxi up to the base of the Theban hills. On the far side of those hills, curving into the massif as though gouged with some enormous fork, the Valley of the Kings. With tonight’s VIP museum opening, every path over to the valley was floodlit and closely policed. By tracking south along the foot of the range, however, out past Medinet Habu, the pottery-strewn ruin-field of Malqata, the Deir el-Muharrib monastery with its beehive domes and mud-brick walls, he calculated he should be able to flank the cordon. As proved to be the case. He picked up a little-known track on to the back of the hills, circled around, crept his way through the net and down towards the cliffs at the head of the valley. Towards the cleft in which was secreted the tomb of Tuthmosis III. And just to the left of that cleft, jutting out from the cliffs like some enormous stomping elephant’s leg, a high, flat-topped promontory with a direct and unimpeded view down the valley to the museum at its centre. The weak point. The blind spot. The place no one had thought to worry about because with all the paths over the hills covered, no one could get to it. But he had got to it. And now he was going to make use of it.
He held back a moment, surveying the slopes, satisfying himself the promontory wasn’t being watched, then moved forward. A low rock-wall curved around the promontory’s rim – a three-thousand-year-old windbreak used by the ancient valley guards. He crouched down behind it. In front of him, less than three hundred metres away, an array of floodlights illuminated the glass and stone front of the new museum. The Barren Museum of the Theban Necropolis.
And in front of the museum, clearly visible, the wooden platform on which the assembled dignitaries were gathered to witness the building’s inauguration ceremony.
And somewhere among those dignitaries . . .
Ducking down, he unzipped the carrier and eased out the rifle. The Dragunov SVD 7.62mm sniper rifle. Russian-designed, Egyptian-made. Effective range of 1,300 metres. A thousand more than he needed. Mechanically he slotted in the ten-round magazine – nine more than he needed – came up again and found his position, left arm resting on top of the wall, the gun’s skeletonized wooden stock settled firmly into his right shoulder. Curling a finger round the trigger, he pressed an eye to the sight. Suddenly the intervening distance was gone and he was right there with the dignitaries on the platform.
Chief Hassani, that was the first person he saw. Bullish and sweating, perched on a seat at the back of the platform, his neck rolling out over the collar of an overly tight white shirt. With a humourless grunt Khalifa wondered if perhaps he should pop him off as well, while he had the opportunity. He eased the rifle to the right, scanning the platform. He recognized a few faces from the Antiquities Service – Moustapha Amine, Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities; Dr Masri al-Masri, the long-time Director of Antiquities for Western Thebes. A few local government officials as well. It was the front row that really interested him, and that’s where he allowed the sight to settle, tracking down the line of faces. The Interior Minister; the Regional Governor; the Mayor of Luxor; the ubiquitous Zahi Hawass; a couple of foreigners, one of whom he thought might be the American Ambassador.
And there in the middle of the row, huge and glowering and hunched over, dressed in a heavy tweed suit despite the evening heat, his oxygen mask clamped limpet-like to his face, Nathaniel Barren.
Fixing the white-haired head in the cross-hairs, Khalifa tightened his finger, drawing the trigger back.
He’d be caught. No question about it. The moment the gunshot sounded, a four-hundred-strong ring of policemen would draw tight around him like an executioner’s noose. If they didn’t shoot him on sight, he’d be dragged away and shot or hanged later. Either that or sentenced to a lifetime breaking rocks in the Tura quarries, which amounted to the same thing. His family too – Zenab, Batah, little Yusuf – they’d catch the blowback full-on. Thrown out of their apartment, ostracized, their lives blighted as the relatives of a high-profile murderer.
He didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about it. All he was thinking about was killing the man who’d killed his son. And his friend. And himself, too, in a way. The man who had come to stand for all men of his sort – the oblivious rich, the corrupt untouchables, the privileged abusers, the generators of misery. Like a drug-addict about to shoot up his next fix, the prospect of comedown meant nothing to him. Didn’t even register. All his focus was on the moment of release – the pull of the trigger, the prick of the needle, the moment when the blackness would be gone and everything in the world would be all right again.
This, Yusuf, this . . . It comes from anger, and hatred, and pain, and nothing can come of that but more pain.
But there couldn’t be any more pain. He was in so much of it already. A labyrinth of pain. And this was the only way out.
. . . play as dirty as they play.
His finger tightened another half-notch, cajoling the trigger back, the cross-hairs centred bang in the middle of the Barren’s oversized head. He could hear music playing, ‘Biladi Biladi Biladi’, the Egyptian national anthem. And from the front of the platform, someone speaking into a microphone, praising Barren Corporation, extolling the company’s virtues, thanking them for their wonderful generosity to the people of
Misr
.
Allah will be their judge. It is with Him that their punishment lies, not you
.
It wasn’t true. It was a lie. Even Almighty Allah was powerless in the face of the likes of Barren. The law certainly was. The Barrens of this world always came out on top. Trod the Khalifas and the Ben-Rois and the Rivka Kleinbergs – the Attias and the Helmis and the Samuel Pinskers and the Iman el-Badris – into the shit, while they marched on regardless. What else could he do? How else could he make things right?
I’ll fight if I have to. I might be poor, but I am still a man.
He blinked away a bead of sweat, took the trigger another quarter millimetre, right to the very brink of firing. It was like he was standing before a wall of paper-thin glass, and the slightest breath would shatter it.
Now Barren himself was standing, cranking himself up on to bloated legs, shuffling forward to the front of the stage with the aid of his walker. There was applause, a rasp and a cough as the old man lowered the oxygen mask, a screech of static as he adjusted the microphone. And then he was speaking.
Except that he wasn’t speaking. Or at least it wasn’t Barren’s voice that Khalifa heard. Kneeling there with the gun pressed against his shoulder and his finger tight round the trigger and the cross-hairs filling his eye and his entire world condensed to the three-hundred-metre thread between gun and target, a fraction of an instant away from loosing the bullet, it was suddenly another voice that rang clear in his ears.
Catch me, Dad! Throw me up and catch me!
His eyes closed, sprang open again.
Swing me! Swing me round!
He shook his head, trying to block the voice out, hold his focus.
I’ll be in goal, Dad. You kick.
The voice wouldn’t be silenced.
Please can we go to McDonald’s? Please! Please!
His head dropped, his finger unwound. He gave himself a moment, sweat stinging his eyes, his heart thudding, his breath coming in shallow, rapid bursts. Then, looking up again, he re-engaged the trigger and re-sighted.
I won a prize at school!
His body seemed to spasm.
You’re the best detective in Egypt, Dad!
There was something in his chest and throat. A sound, coming up from deep inside. Not a sob, or a choke. Something deeper. Rising from right down in his very core. He fought it back, dragged his head up, locked on to Barren again. But now there were other voices. Crowding his head. Calling out to him.
I don’t recognize you. Twenty years and suddenly I no longer recognize my husband.
To protect my family, my children. It is a man’s greatest duty.
You’re the best, Dad.
My love, my light, my life.
Catch me!
The finest man in the world.
Swing me!
What you do comes from the goodness in your heart.
I can eat two whole Big Macs!
And then, loudest of all, cutting clear through the cacophony:
He is at peace. There is a golden light, and Ali is at peace within it. Never forget that.
Something lurched up from inside him. That sound again? Except that now it wasn’t just a sound. It was as much a . . . vapour. A blackness. As black as the inside of the Labyrinth. Surging up through him. His body heaved, his mouth levered open as though he was vomiting, although nothing tangible came out. At the same time, it felt like everything was coming out. On and on, more and more of it, an unstoppable flood of pitchy black, welling up like oil from a well.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over. He was kneeling there with the gun in his hand and his finger round the trigger and the cross-hairs centred on Barren’s boulder-like head. Everything as it had been. And yet at the same time nothing as it had been. Something had drained. Easing his finger away from the trigger, he carefully swung the gun around and laid it on the ground, blinking rapidly, like he had just woken from a particularly vivid dream, uncertain whether what he thought had happened
had
happened.
For several moments he knelt there, the fuzzy, amplified growl of Barren’s voice drifting up from the valley below, the moon seeming to balance on the peak of the Qurn high above. Then, slowly, he unscrewed the gun sight, clicked out the magazine and returned them and the rifle to the canvas holder. Zipping it, he stood.
Terrible crimes had been committed. Justice was unlikely ever to be done, unless Allah pulled something spectacular out of the hat. The world was as dark a place as it had ever been.
And yet from nowhere, like the raft of
ward-i-nil
that had bobbed up to save his life – although not that of his dear friend – it struck him that there
was
a glimmer of light. Of hope. A beacon to guide him through the night. And he knew where to look for it, too.