Whiplash River (30 page)

Chapter 47

N
ext time we come up roses,” Shake said, “let's make sure we've really come up roses.”

“Zip it,” Gina said. “You're getting blood and spit all over yourself and I can't even understand you anyway. It just sounds like ‘honka honk honkhonk.' ”

She held a cold wet towel to his nose. Shake didn't know if his nose was broken or not. He wasn't about to complain either way.

They'd found a room in a cheap hotel not far from the Coptic quarter. It was a shitty room, the AC barely panting along and big fat flies bouncing drunkenly off the windowpanes. They weren't staying long, though, just long enough to clean up. They had to head down to the river five minutes ago.

“That little girl,” Quinn said. “My goodness gravy. I don't think I've encountered anyone or anything so ferocious in my entire life.”

Shake could hear Quinn telling the story, far off in the future, cornering some poor innocent victim in a bar or restaurant somewhere.
Let me tell you about this one time, buddy of mine from Belize and I were in Cairo . . .

But Shake couldn't argue his point about Freckles. Freckles had pointed a gun at him twice now, and twice now Shake had come out of it alive. He figured that must have used up about three or four lifetimes' worth of good luck.

“I'll tell you what,” Quinn said, “if it had been her and not Terry who'd come after me, back at the Shake's restaurant in Belize? I can tell you this story would have had a different ending. This story would have been over a long time ago.”

“For better or worse,” Shake said.

“Honk honka honk honk,” Gina said.

“I know what the Shake said,” Quinn said. “And he doesn't mean it.”

Gina smiled and tossed the bloody towel across the room, into the sink. It was the kind of shitty hotel room that didn't have a separate bathroom. The sink and the toilet were right next to the TV.

“I kind of liked her,” Gina said. “Meg. Zowee. That girl doesn't take any shit.”

It was almost six o'clock. “We have to go,” Shake said.

They took a cab back toward the center of town. Traffic was balled up, as usual. Quinn told the cabdriver to cut over on the first bridge to the island, run up the island where the traffic might not be so bad, and then cut back over on the second bridge. They could save time that way.

Shake didn't love the idea. He preferred a straight line when he could get one. But the cab had been barely creeping for ten minutes, and this definitely wasn't a time for creeping. He told the cabdriver to go ahead and cut over.

Traffic on the island wasn't bad. They made good time. When they got to the second bridge, Shake told the cabdriver to take them back over. He said they wanted to take a sunset cruise on a felucca, just drop them off at one of the piers along the river on the other side, it didn't matter which one.

“No,” Quinn said, interrupting. “Pull off right here.”

“Here?” Shake said.

“On this side of the river, that pier down there.” Quinn pointed to a pier just down the slope from the hotel where they'd stayed their first couple of nights in Cairo. “That's the pier we want.”

They got there and got out of the cab. Shake looked at Quinn. Quinn was pink and beaming.

“What's going on?” Shake said. He'd started to tense. His nose throbbed. He wished Quinn wasn't pink and beaming. “You said we could hire a fishing boat anywhere.”

Because that was the plan. The plan was, they'd steer clear of the airport and train station, anywhere that Devane might be looking for them. Devane was more connected, through his former SSI guys, than Baby Jesus back in Belize could ever dream to be. But Devane couldn't watch the whole river. The plan was, Shake and Gina and Quinn would hire a felucca or fishing boat in Cairo to take them up the Nile to a place called Beni Mazar. From Beni Mazar, Quinn said, they could catch a bus or taxi to Luxor. Devane would have no idea where they were. From Luxor they could take a direct flight to London.

“I've got a surprise,” Quinn said.

Those were just about, at this or any point, the last four words Shake wanted to hear.

“Harry,” Gina said. She was starting to tense too. “Tell us what's going on.”

“Sure we could,” Quinn said, “hire a fishing boat to take us up the river. Which is south on the Nile, an interesting tidbit,
up
on the Nile is
south.
Sure, we could hire some fishing boat that smells like fish and we're sleeping on hard planks, roasting in the sun. Or we could take a nice luxurious
dahabeah
. The most luxurious boats on the water, private, Cleopatra would feel right at home. Don't you think, after all we've been through, we deserve a little luxury? I had Mahmoud set it up for us, he's coming along too.”

Mahmoud, who was supposed to be in the wind already, because it wouldn't take Devane long to figure out who the inside man had been.

Mahmoud, who would crack in half the minute Devane squeezed him.

Mahmoud, who wasn't supposed to know where Shake, Gina, and Quinn were.

Shake's nose throbbed. He was so mad at Quinn he felt dizzy.

“What?” Quinn said, and then the first bullet hit a wooden piling a few feet away, tearing it to splinters. The second bullet hit Quinn and dropped him where he stood.

The fishermen on the pier started to shout and scatter. Devane and his bodyguards, three of them, four, were a hundred yards away, running toward the pier. Shooting.

Gina helped Shake drag Quinn behind a felucca bobbing at the pier. The felucca, the way it was angled in the water, the distance from the bank, made for poor cover. The three of them had about a square foot each where a bullet wouldn't find them.

“We can't stay here,” Gina said, crouched down. “We have to run.”

Quinn was breathing rough and fast. He was still holding the leather attaché case. Shake saw a hole near the center of the case and couldn't believe it. Teddy Roosevelt's long-winded speech had stopped another bullet.

“Takes more than that,” Quinn said, grimacing, “to kill a Bull Moose.”

Then Shake realized that Teddy Roosevelt's speech had not stopped the bullet after all. The bullet had punched through the case, the speech, and Quinn's thigh. Out Quinn's thigh. Bullets were more powerful these days.

“Leave me,” Quinn said.

“You don't have to ask,” Shake said. “Damn it.” But he looped Quinn's arm around his neck and heaved him up.

“Go,” Shake told Gina. “The hotel.”

She hesitated, nodded, took off. The girl could fly. Shake took off after her, dragging Quinn along with him, Quinn a couple of hundred pounds of dead dragging weight.

“Just leave me!” Quinn said. “God Almighty, Shake!”

A couple of bullets snapped past, wide. And then the shooting stopped. Devane and his goons had realized how easy this was going to be, catching Shake and Quinn.

Shake and Quinn made it about halfway up to the hotel. A couple of the goons got around in front and aimed their guns at them. Shake was out of gas anyway. He and Quinn went down in a pile.

Devane walked over and yanked the attaché case away from Quinn. When he saw the bullet hole punched through the case, through and through, he flinched like someone had slapped him. Devane ripped open the case. He was hoping, Shake supposed, that maybe the new bullet had passed miraculously through one of the existing holes in the speech. It hadn't. There were three holes now—two historic and the third one not at all.

“You fucking idiots!” Devane screamed at his goons. “It's ruined! I told you to hold your fire!”

He pulled a gun. Shake thought that Devane might actually shoot his own goons, he seemed that mad. That would have been Shake's vote. Instead Devane stalked over and jammed his gun against Shake's cheek.

“There!” Shake heard Gina yell, off somewhere in the distance.

Devane and his goons turned. Shake turned. Running toward them were three soldiers in dark green uniforms. The soldiers from the hotel lobby. They had their guns up and were yelling in Arabic.

Devane's goons yelled back in Arabic. There were four goons with guns and only three soldiers, but the soldiers had better guns, automatic rifles, and they seemed very young, very excited. Devane's goons dropped their guns. Devane dropped his gun. He started screaming at the soldiers in Arabic. Shake didn't speak Arabic, but he was pretty sure that Devane was saying something like “Easy, easy, take it easy.”

“That man is in possession of stolen property that belongs to the people of Egypt!” Quinn yelled. He pointed at Devane, who was still holding the attaché case. “Arrest that man!”

Devane really started screaming at the soldiers now.

One of the soldiers spoke English. He translated for the other soldiers what Quinn had just said. The soldier who spoke English pointed at the attaché case.

A world of trouble,
Meg had said about that case.
I don't want nothing to do with it.

Devane dropped the case. “It's not mine!” he screamed at the soldiers. Screaming in English now, he was so worked up.

“Arrest that man!” Quinn said. The soldiers didn't hesitate. They grabbed Devane, jerked him around, zip-tied his hands behind his back. They grabbed, jerked, and zip-tied each one of Devane's goons, one by one.

“Bravo!” Quinn said. “Let me shake your hands, boys!” He stuck his hand out. One of the soldiers punched him in the sternum with the butt of his rifle.

And then the other soldiers zip-tied Quinn. They zip-tied Shake. They zip-tied Gina too.

Chapter 48

S
hake had expected an Egyptian jail to be bad. It was, but not worse. The jail where the soldiers took him and Quinn was grim and filthy and hot. But so were the American jails, in Louisiana and California, that Shake was familiar with. This jail was hotter and filthier but not quite as grim. At least here there was more light, with windows high up on the stone walls.

The stink was almost exactly the same. The stink of a jail must be universal.

Shake was in one cell and Quinn was in the cell across from him. Shake's had a bare mattress on the filthy floor, Arabic graffiti scratched into the walls, and a brand-new gleaming stainless-steel toilet that only flushed intermittently.

A nurse had dressed and bandaged Quinn's thigh when Shake and Quinn first arrived at the jail. She'd given him a shot of antibiotics. Every morning she came back to change the dressing and give him a new shot, but after the first day she hadn't given him anything for the pain. Quinn had started to turn a little green around the gills.

The soldier who brought the meals spoke some English. He told Shake and Quinn they were lucky to be in a military jail. You didn't want to find yourself in a jail run by state security.

The food wasn't bad. It was the glop made of tomatoes, onions, rice, and chickpeas. The food, like the jail, could have been worse.

The mess they were in could have been worse. They could be dead. That's what Shake kept telling himself, anyway. Trying to stay cool.

Shake didn't know what had happened to Gina. That was the worst part. The soldiers, when they arrested her, had put her in a separate truck from Shake and Quinn. They'd put Devane and his goons in a third truck. Shake didn't know what had happened to Devane and his goons either. He didn't give a shit about them.

Mahmoud was in a prison hospital, laid up with the broken jaw and ruptured spleen that Devane's goons had given him. He'd held out as long as he could before they cracked him, Shake gave the guy a lot of credit for that. The nurse had told Quinn that Mahmoud was going to be fine. Shake wondered if that was what Mahmoud would call it.

Shake didn't know what he and Quinn and Gina were charged with, or if anyone, other than the nurse and the soldier who brought the food, even knew they were here. He didn't know how long they'd go ripe in this jail before someone in charge came to talk to them. It was going on four days now.

“You all right?” he asked Quinn.

“I'm all right,” Quinn said. “I've been better.”

“I plan to cooperate fully with the authorities.”

“Good idea.”

“They have to let the State Department know about us, don't they?”

“Of course,” Quinn said.

“They can't just throw us in here and forget about us.”

“What worries me,” Quinn said, but then stopped. Shake didn't ask him to continue. He didn't want to hear it.

A couple of hours later, just after the midday call to prayer, the soldier who brought the food showed up with another, older soldier. The older soldier, Shake could tell, was someone in charge.

He looked in at Shake. Shake was sitting on his mattress, his back against the wall.

“Mr. Bouchon,” the soldier in charge said.

“That's me,” Shake said.

“Permit me, if I may, to ask you a question.” His English was excellent. He had a crisp accent that sounded vaguely Scottish.

“Okay.”

“Does Egypt not have already enough problems of its own?”

“Without us coming over here and creating more, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“I would do it differently,” Shake said, “if I could do it again.”

He flicked his wrist at Shake. A weary, contemptuous flick.

“You have a visitor,” he said.

 

EVELYN HAD BEEN ABOUT TO
board her flight from Cairo to Amsterdam when her phone rang. She stepped out of line to take the call.

“You'll be glad you didn't go to Cairo,” Cory had said.

An announcement in Arabic started to play over the public-address system. Evelyn covered her phone with her hand until the announcement was over.

“Like I would have ever gone to Cairo, Cory,” she said. “Yeah, right.”

“You considered it. Don't lie to me, Evi.”

“Okay. Maybe I considered it. Why am I glad I didn't go to Cairo?”

“It would have been a waste of time,” Cory said.

She wondered what he was getting at. He seemed to realize something.

“If I tell you,” he said, “promise me again you won't go to Cairo.”

Evelyn had to put her hand over her phone again. Another announcement in Arabic.

“I promise again,” she'd said. “Tell me.”

That was two days ago, when Cory told her that Shake and the others had been arrested by the Egyptians. Now Evelyn sat in a small hot room with no windows, a card table, a few metal folding chairs. She could hear the midday call to prayer off in the distance, faint.

A few minutes later a guard and the military official who ran the jail led Shake into the room. Shake had his hands cuffed in front of him. The military official pointed to the metal folding chair across the table from Evelyn. Shake sat down.

“Can we have some privacy?” Evelyn asked the military official.

“No,” he said. He sat down in another chair, by the door. The guard kept standing, right behind Shake.

Shake didn't look so great. Evelyn had expected even worse.

He managed, somehow, to give her a wry smile. “We seem to keep running into each other, don't we?”

“How are they treating you?”

“Fine.”

He'd picked up on her mood, but she knew he had to take the shot anyway.

“You know,” he said, “I may be reconsidering my policy.”

“Shake.”

“About never diming out Armenians. I'm thinking there might be an exception, in light of recent developments.”

“It's a no-go,” she said. Because there was no point in dragging it out. The only point would be pointless cruelty, and Evelyn wasn't in the mood for that. “There's nothing I can do.”

He nodded. “I didn't really think so.”

“I tried.” And she had. Without caring, really, whether Shake had reconsidered his policy on diming out Armenians or not. She'd never tell him that, of course. Or anyone.

She'd spent the last two days on the phone. Calling anyone and everyone who might have some torque with the Egyptians. Pulling every string. Evelyn had even fought back the poisonous bile and asked her asshole ex-husband if he could help, asked him if he knew of any other strings to pull.

He couldn't, he didn't.

Cory Nadler, after Evelyn's third or fourth call to him, stopped answering them.

Nobody had torque with the Egyptians, not the kind Shake Bouchon was going to need.

Evelyn, after two full days on the phone, torquing like crazy, was only able to get five minutes in a windowless room with the prisoner. And the guy who'd made that happen, a high-level congressional staffer Evelyn knew from college, who she'd probably have to boink after this, said it was a miracle she even got the five minutes.

“I appreciate it,” Shake said. “You know anything about Gina?”

“They told me she's just next door,” Evelyn said. “The facility for women. It's supposed to be not too bad down there.”

“So.”

“Yeah. You're in deep. You stole a priceless Egyptian antiquity?”

“It was already stolen. And it wasn't priceless. The guy we stole it from, he was trying to unload it for eight million.”

“This Devane guy?”

“Yeah. And it wasn't Egyptian, the antiquity. It wasn't really even an antiquity. The Egyptians just used to have it in one of their museums.”

She knew he knew, as he said it, that the last part was the salient part.

“Devane's in deeper shit than you are,” she said. “If that makes you feel better.”

“It gets deeper?”

“He's in just as deep. How about that?”

“One minute remaining,” the military official said. He was studying his fingernails, intrigued by them.

“It was damaged beyond recovery,” Evelyn said. “The antiquity or whatever it was. So, not a great development for you.”

“No.”

“I'll see if I can check on Gina for you.”

He nodded. “I owe you one. Two. Three. I lost count.”

“Are you counting the scar?”

She turned so he could see the lobe of her ear, where the gunshot splinter of painted coconut shell had dinged her, back at his restaurant in Belize.

“I don't see a scar,” he said. “It's all healed.”

“It's an emotional scar.”

“I'll make it up to you. If I ever get out of here.”

There was nothing else to say.

“Time,” the military official said.

Evelyn followed him back through all the winding corridors. He dumped her, without a word, outside in the parking lot. She stood in the dazzling sunlight for a second. Going from dark to light, in this country, it felt like you'd been clubbed.

She didn't feel bad for Shake. She guessed she felt as bad for him as she'd ever felt for a shithead. But shitheads made their choices. Evelyn had never met one who hadn't. There was nothing else to say.

She walked across the lot to the Mercedes. Her driver, Mohammed, sat waiting on the hood, smoking his unfiltered Camels. “I do not like this place, Evelyn,” he said. “This is a dark place.”

She didn't answer because a black SUV with tinted windows was pulling into the parking lot. And another black SUV with tinted windows right behind it.

Two guys, they looked American, got out of the first SUV and started scanning. They wore badass sunglasses and clear plastic earpieces.

Evelyn couldn't imagine who they could be. They aimed their badass sunglasses at her, so she walked over. “Hi,” she said. “You guys American?”

“We'll have to ask you to clear the area, ma'am,” one of the guys said. American for sure, and young.

Evelyn showed him her creds. “FBI. Who are you?” She thought she saw the corner of the guy's mouth twitch, a little smile. He was not terribly impressed by her creds.

“We're nobody, ma'am,” he said. “Now, if you don't mind. Agent Holly.”

Nobody.

Evelyn knew she could push it, or not. She saw nothing to gain by pushing it. And a lot to lose. That was the message the guy had sent her when he said her name, the way he said it.

Do you like your job, Agent Holly? Do you like your career?

Evelyn didn't see anything to gain by pushing it, or she would have.

“Fair enough,” she said, and walked back to the Mercedes.

 

THE GUARD LED SHAKE BACK
to his cell. Quinn asked him what had happened. Shake told him. Quinn, Mr. Optimism, didn't have anything to say.

A few minutes later the guard returned.

“Up, up, up,” he said. “Both of you.”