The Witness (15 page)

“You’re on, Tariq Jameel,” Dalia said at last. “Let’s play tourists.”

Despite having lived in the Cairo area for almost a year, Dalia had never taken the time to see the city. Tariq was new in town. (He had been to Cairo several times with the Lebanese prime minister, but he’d never had any time for himself.) So after quick showers and a buffet breakfast at the Sheraton Royal Gardens, the two took a taxi to the Khan Al-Khalili bazaar, where they spent the morning like a newlywed couple on their honeymoon. They strolled the aromatic alleyways, browsed in shops filled with jewelry and antiques and various Oriental curiosities, and sipped Turkish coffee at the Naguib Mahfouz Café.

“Have you ever read any of Naguib Mahfouz’s novels?” Dalia asked as they nestled together in a private little booth whose walls were covered in sheets of bright red cloth, making it feel as though they were hiding in a tent.

“Only one,” Tariq answered, munching on a small pastry. “
The Day the Leader Was Killed
.”

“That one was sad,” Dalia said.

“Aren’t they all sad?”

“Not all,” she said. “But regardless, I read them for the love stories. ‘My sweetheart pulls the hook out of the water; it is empty but the hook pierces my thumb which leaves an indelible mark, one that has remained to this very day. On the banks of the River Nile in front of our home, I told her that she was no good at fishing but that she had hooked me all the same, and I have bled.’”

“I’m impressed,” Tariq said.

“My father got me ‘hooked’ on Mr. Mahfouz, pardon the pun. When I was a little girl, he used to read his novels to me every night before I went to bed, at least a chapter but sometimes more if I could beg persuasively enough. And when I got old enough, I began reading them myself.”

“Have you read them all?”

“Not all his plays, but all of his novels and most of his short stories. They’re magical, like escaping my life and entering another world. For a long time, I thought I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, until the day Mr. Mahfouz was attacked by that maniac with the knife. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news.”

“Really? That was a long time ago—’95 or ’96, wasn’t it?”

“October 14, 1994,” Dalia said.

“Wow, you really do remember.”

Dalia stared into her coffee. “It was my thirteenth birthday. I had just gotten home from school and my mother told me. I didn’t believe it at first, so I called my father on the phone and he said yes, it was true. I ran to my room and locked my door and started crying, and I didn’t come out until the next morning. No one I had cared about had ever died before. It was like losing my own grandpa, even my own father. I can’t even explain why. But then I heard that he would live, and I felt so happy, so relieved, like a big burden had been lifted off of me, and I began to cry again. My friends thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I was just glad Mr. Mahfouz was still alive and I prayed that he would one day be able to write again, and he did. Have you ever felt like that, Tariq? Have you ever lost someone close to you? or thought you did?”

Tariq’s instincts told him to lie again, to keep his distance, to give her nothing that could ever let her get close enough to him that she might discover his real identity. But his heart said just the opposite. True, they barely knew each other. They had met less than forty-eight hours earlier. But he heard himself say, “My parents. They died when I was fifteen. It was a car bomb. My brother and I both saw it happen. A few meters closer, and we would have been killed as well.”

“Oh,” Dalia gasped. “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t know . . .”

“It’s okay,” he said gently. “It was a long time ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

There was a moment of awkward silence.

“You’ve seen a lot of death, haven’t you, Tariq?”

He didn’t nod. He didn’t speak. He wanted to, but for the moment, he couldn’t.

Dalia reached out and touched his hand. He felt the urge to pull away. He didn’t want to be pitied. He had never wanted that. But neither did he want to offend this girl. And besides, her skin felt warm and soft and reassuring, and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had even cared what he thought or felt, much less asked.

“Maybe we could go and do something else,” he said after a while.

“Sure,” Dalia said. “I’d like that.”

32

An hour later they were strolling hand in hand through the cavernous Egyptian Museum, trying to absorb four thousand years of history in about four hours, while Dalia read snippets from a guidebook she had bought in the gift shop.

“Guess how many artifacts are housed here,” she said as they admired the limestone statues of Prince Rahotep and his wife, Nofret, then turned to wind their way through the treasures of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Tariq replied, never a big fan of museums but trying to enjoy it because Dalia obviously was.

“Come on, just guess.”

“Fine, a million.”

“Be serious. How many?”

“Okay, half a million.”

“Very funny. It’s 120,000 on display—and they say there’s another 150,000 in the basement.”

“That’s it?” Tariq quipped. “And they call this a museum? What a sham!”

“You’re hilarious,” she said, playfully elbowing him in the ribs. “You should have been a comedian.”

“That’s right,” he said. “The world’s first computer consultant comedian. Now why didn’t I think of that?”

“Come on,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm, “let’s see the treasures of King Tut.”

They took the stairs to the second floor and entered the Tutankhamen Galleries. They began by studying the two life-size black and gold statues that once guarded the entrance to his tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. Soon they were peering into the massive glass cases containing the gold-painted wooden burial vessels found by the famed British archaeologist Howard Carter back in the 1920s and still intact after so many centuries.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Dalia said. “Look. Inside this big gold chamber fit this smaller one, and inside that one fit this even smaller one, and so on.”

A few minutes later they entered a special, darkened, climate-controlled gallery in which a small tour was being held.

“And look—inside of all that fits this solid gold sarcophagus,” she continued in a whisper, “with a smaller gold and wood sarcophagus inside that, and an even smaller one inside that and so forth until Tutankhamen himself was sealed inside, behind this gold mask.”

They stopped in front of a glass case, lit from within, surrounded by museum guards, containing the most remarkable artifact Tariq had ever seen.

“Is this it?” he whispered back. “Is this the real thing?”

“Absolutely,” she replied. “Look at the colors and the craftsmanship. It’s extraordinary.”

She was right. The life-size burial mask was made of solid, burnished gold and painted with brilliant blues and yellows and reds in a stunning likeness of the face of the boy king who once ruled the Nile and all who lived within its care and keeping. What was more, in glass cases all around them were other priceless gold and silver objects and precious gems and jewels that had been found buried with Tutankhamen as well.

“Can you imagine having so much wealth?” Dalia asked as she gazed around the room at what had to be hundreds of billions of pounds’ worth of treasures, if they could even be priced at all.

“Can you imagine having it all buried with you, thinking that you could take it with you and use it in the afterlife?” Tariq asked.

“You’re right. That is kind of sad.”

“But all the ancient Egyptian kings believed it,” Tariq added. “Look at the pyramids. That’s why they were built—to store up riches for heaven, riches that were ultimately looted by bandits and grave robbers.”

A guard asked the two of them to please be quiet, and they decided to continue working their way through the museum. But soon they were walking through room after room of additional treasures that Tutankhamen had insisted be buried with him—his spears and his bows, game pieces he liked to play with, gold fans he must have used to cool himself in the sweltering summers, even the actual golden throne from which he once ruled his mighty empire.

Thirty minutes later they paid a small fee and entered the Mummy Room. The first mummy they saw was King Ramses II, and Tariq couldn’t help but think of Rafeeq Ramsey, whose body no doubt still lay cold in a morgue back in Monte Carlo. They leaned in and stared at the gaunt face and the bony fingers and the dark brown wrappings that still covered most of the ancient king’s body.

“Dalia?” Tariq whispered, glancing around to see if the guards were close enough to hear him.

“What?” she whispered back.

“Do you believe in heaven?”

She turned and looked at him with a quizzical expression. “Of course. Don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“No, I do—I . . . I don’t know. . . . Never mind.”

She suddenly straightened up. Her expression changed and she whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I wasn’t thinking. All this celebration of death.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” he said. “I’m fine. I just . . .”

“Just what?”

“I don’t know. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens after we die. All these pharaohs thought they could take their wealth with them, but here it still is. I’ve always thought that if I was a really good person—you know, the good stuff I’ve done outweighs the bad stuff—I’d make it to heaven. But what if I’m wrong?”

Dalia was silent for a moment, then said, “You know, if you were to ask my dad, he would tell you that no one could be good enough to get into heaven.”

Tariq shook his head, not liking that answer. “So what you’re saying is that we’re all out of luck. What good is heaven if no one can get there?”

“I didn’t say that no one could get there. I said you can’t work your way there. According to my father, only through believing in Jesus can someone get to heaven. It’s a gift, not a payment for what you’ve done.”

“You say that’s what your father believes. What do you believe?”

Tariq could sense Dalia’s discomfort with the conversation and was about to change the subject when she said, “I don’t know anymore. I grew up believing what my parents did. But then I moved away from home, and their beliefs seemed so provincial, so antiquated when compared with the modern new world I was living in. Now, honestly, I just try not to think about it.”

Tariq took her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s keep looking around. By my guess, we’ve got eight more hours of things to see and less than two hours to do it in.”

But as they continued their tour, Tariq couldn’t keep his mind off their conversation. Despite what he had said to her, he knew that he wasn’t a good man. He had shed too much blood and caused too much pain to too many people to feel that he had any possible shot at making it into heaven.

Yet she had given him a possible alternative.
“It’s a gift, not a payment.” I’ve got to process that. But not now. I’m in a room full of priceless antiquities with a beautiful woman on my arm who thinks I’m a pretty special guy.
There would be plenty of time to think about those things later.

33

The cell phone buzzed, and Inspector Goddard grabbed it.

“Colette, please tell me you’ve got a lead on Kadeen al-Wadhi,” he said as he stood in line at the ticket counter in the Beirut airport, trying to get a ticket that could get him to Morocco by the end of the day. “Anything I can go on.”

“Actually, I do,” DuVall said.

“Yes!” Goddard nearly shouted. “He’s in Casa?”

“That he is. And I’ve got a home address for him.”

“Really? Give it to me.”

Goddard scribbled down the address in his notebook.

“Do you have a photo yet?”

“Just got it.”

“E-mail it to my phone immediately.”

“Will do.”

“Excellent work, Colette. Really sharp. You didn’t contact the Moroccan police yet, did you?”

“No, I figured you’d want the information first.”

“Brilliant. How did you find him?”

“The phone company,” DuVall said, the pride in her voice evident. “The hard part was simply finding the right manager who could authorize a search of their records and, of course, convincing them that I was who I said I was. After that, it went quite quickly.”

“Well done,” Goddard said again, not believing his sudden good fortune. “All right, I want you to learn everything you can about Kadeen al-Wadhi. Track down every person he’s called in the last few days, who his neighbors are, what kind of car he drives—everything. And let’s try to keep the Moroccan police out of this as long as we can. I don’t want any jurisdictional skirmishes slowing us down. In the meantime, I’ll call the Skeleton.”

* * *

Inspector Lemieux hung up with Goddard and checked the text message that had just arrived on his cell phone. Goddard and his little blonde deputy had come through after all. Imagine that.

It could hardly be more perfect, Lemieux thought. Either Accad was at al-Wadhi’s house, hiding out—a high probability—or else this al-Wadhi knew where he was and could lead them to him. Either way, he had to get to him fast. He stormed out of the Hyatt Regency and jumped in his car.

The sun was just starting to set when Lemieux pulled up outside the gate of the al-Wadhi villa. He inspected the fence and saw what could have been the remnants of blood by the front gate. If it was blood, it wasn’t fresh.

Next he went to the gates in front of the carport. There was one car parked there, and he could see oil stains on the cement next to it.
Interesting. Looks like either Mama or Papa isn’t at home. That could prove beneficial.

Walking back to the front gate, he looked for movement in the house. Not seeing any, he pulled his weapon, chambered a round, then tucked it back in its shoulder holster with the safety off.
You just never know what kind of people you’re going to run into,
he thought with a smile as his hand reached for the buzzer.

34

Kadeen was sitting at the desk in his office. His eyes were getting tired from staring at the computer screen. His time spent caring for Marwan had put him behind in his work, and he still wasn’t completely caught up. He needed to get these reports in by tomorrow. Unfortunately, the numbers were just not adding up.