The Eye of Ra Read online

  ‘I don’t know, but whatever is behind this doesn’t give two shakes of a monkey’s arsehole for Egypt. If I thought whacking you would serve my country, I’d do it willingly, Ross. But I’m not going to be a hit-man for my country’s enemies, that’s for sure.’

  He paused and stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. Elena stirred slightly and gasped in her sleep.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said suddenly, ‘they shouldn’t be knocking her out with tranquillisers. It’ll affect the foetus.’

  ‘How do you think the rest of her life’s going to be?’

  ‘Not while I’m around.’

  Hammoudi looked as if he’d made a decision. ‘I’m giving you a chance, Ross,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you’ll find a package outside the window of your bathroom. It’s all I can do for you. I’ll make sure the girl isn’t sedated. Take her and get out. If you ever mention this conversation to anyone, I’ll deny it, and whenever we meet again I’ll appear to be doing my damnedest to kill you. Go back now, and I’ll sort out our friend upstairs.’ The chair creaked as he stood up. ‘Oh and Ross, one more thing,’ he said, ‘I told you I was wrong about you three times — actually it was four.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘When I said you were nothing, I was wrong then, too. You’ve stood by your people, stood by what you believed, and in the end no one can do more than that.’

  55

  I awoke to bright sunlight, with a sense that something was terribly wrong. It was the same feeling I’d experienced the night Kolpos was killed. I felt panic symptoms. My heart pumped and my hands trembled. Suddenly, I remembered that this was the day Rasim said he’d have me wiped out, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was about to encounter the man who’d been sent here to kill me. I sat up in bed, put on my glasses and made a powerful effort to control my body. I spent almost twenty minutes at my deep-breathing exercises, clearing my mind of all thoughts, until my heart-rate settled. Then I stepped out of bed, put on my dressing-gown and went to the window. It was mid-morning and the sun was already high — I’d slept far more than I’d meant to. The beach of flints that spread as far as the escarpment looked like a field of jewels — emeralds, rubies, sapphires —sparkling in the raw sunlight. As I watched, a black insect detached itself from the background — a many-legged spider, which grew and grew until it became a dozen camel-riders, carrying spills of light that glittered on the stocks of holstered carbines. As they came closer, I recognised the brawny camels and khaki uniforms of the Hajana. They must have been out early, I thought, to be returning at mid-morning. Or perhaps they’d been out all night. There was a weariness about them. The patrol I’d seen the other day had ridden stiff-backed and in strict military formation, but this time the riders seemed to loll in the saddle, and the camels trotted at irregular intervals. Their uniforms were unkempt as if they’d been put on hastily — in fact there was a general air of untidiness about them that I found surprising. They came right up to the gate and I watched as the guards opened it to admit them. At that moment the sour-faced nurse marched into the room and distracted me. ‘You overslept,’ she said, ‘and that’s a pity because you have an important visitor today.’

  A pulse of fear swept over me again, and I turned away from the window.

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Who?’

  ‘Do you think they tell me?’ she said. ‘Come on now. Time for your shower — and be quick about it.’

  Outside in the corridor, I noticed that my sleeping guard had gone. He hadn’t been replaced, either. I thought about Elena —I’d seen her and she was alive. Hammoudi had said she was pregnant, but could I trust Hammoudi after all the things I’d seen him do? I knew he was right about one thing, though. Today was our only chance. Tomorrow they’d be moving her and besides, I might be dead by then. I closed the bathroom door, hung up my dressing-gown and reached to turn on the shower. It was then that I noticed the string. It was nothing remarkable, just ordinary cheap jute string that you might find at any stationers, but it had been deliberately trapped under the sash of the small window. Suddenly Hammoudi’s promise came back to me. ‘...you’ll find a package outside the window of your bathroom.’

  First I held the string tentatively between thumb and forefinger, then, with the other hand I began to lift the window-frame. One hand wasn’t strong enough alone, so I took the string in my teeth and shifted it up with both hands, then pulled at the string. At the end of about two metres of line there was a little brown paper package weighing a kilo or less. I hauled it in, laid it on the toilet seat and closed the window as cautiously as I could. There was a rap on the door, and I jumped. ‘All right in there?’ came the sour nurse’s voice.

  ‘Don’t come in,’ I said, ‘I’m not decent.’

  I undid the package as quickly and as quietly as I could. Inside were two smaller packages wrapped up in plastic bags. One contained my passport and Elena’s, and a thousand Egyptian pounds in twenties. The second was heavier, and I weighed it in my hand for a second before opening it. Inside was my khanjar with its sheath.

  ‘...your vicious little Hawazim stinger, which is now in a safe place...’

  I stared at it for another long second. It might be a trick, but Hammoudi had given me the means, and if I was fast enough, decisive enough, ruthless enough I still had a chance whatever the case.

  There was another knock on the door. ‘Just a minute,’ I said. I ripped the brown paper into shreds and flushed the pieces down the toilet, then coiled the string and put it in the pocket of my dressing-gown. I put the passports and money in the other pocket and strapped my blade to my left wrist. I waited ten more seconds, then flung open the door.

  ‘I did say be quick,’ the nurse said testily. ‘You’d better hurry. Your visitor will be here in a minute.’

  The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was that the telephone-bugging device was conspicuous by its absence. What was that about, I wondered? I went to the window and gazed out. The Hajana patrol had dismounted just inside the gate as if they were waiting for something. The camels were hobbled all over the place and were chewing the cud and leaving droppings like piles of smooth black balls. A uniformed sergeant was talking to a Hajana corporal and seemed to be remonstrating with him, probably about the mess. A gaggle of Hajana patrol-men had gathered around the sergeant and were watching him slightly menacingly, I thought. I had a momentary impression of unease about the figures. The gate, I noticed, was still open.

  I sat down at the table, and the chill feeling that had been waiting in the wings suddenly emerged and hit me like a cold wind. The man who was to kill me was on his way to my room at this very moment. He was stepping out of the lift. He was walking along the corridor. I heard soft footsteps coming closer and closer, and suddenly the door opened and I was looking into the face of the British Consul, Melvin Renner.

  ‘Ah, Ross,’ he said, ‘hear you’ve got yourself into a spot of bother.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve made a special journey here from Cairo.’

  ‘You needn’t have bothered.’

  He smiled blandly as if humouring a cranky old person, or someone not quite right in the head, slicking back his wayward lock of hair. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me to sit down?’

  ‘Why? I didn’t think you believed in such niceties.’

  He sat down on the upright chair opposite. He looked around with feigned interest, putting on his best boyish charm act. He was dressed immaculately in a tailored white suit, blue shirt, club tie, suede desert boots and held a panama hat — the perfect image of what imaginary British Consuls in the tropics were supposed to wear but never really did. ‘They’re looking after you, then?’ he said in that jolly-good-old-boy voice that was palpably false.

  ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘Well, I’m told you’re in quite a bit of trouble. There have been incidents in which police officers have been killed — oh, I don’t say you killed them, but you’re involved as an accessory, so to s
peak. They want certain information out of you, such as where the er...insurgents are hiding and other details.’

  I stared at him, noticing the intense eyes. A trickle of sweat ran down his brow. He was nervous despite the jolly tones.

  ‘I advise you to say nothing.’

  ‘You do?’ I said suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, I do. You have British citizenship and you’re not obliged to breathe a word. You’re entitled to Consular presence and a good lawyer as well as an interpreter...not that you need one, of course. By God, I wish I’d known about all this before. I mean, they haven’t even charged you with anything yet...’

  ‘So you think I should keep my mouth shut?’

  ‘Oh, quite definitely. At least to them. But between us, if you can give me an idea of what this is really all about, it’d put me in a stronger position. Just between us of course. No farther than these walls.’

  My eyes fell involuntarily on the place where the telephone had stood. His gaze followed mine. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’s all kosher. I insisted that they remove any bugs before I agreed to talk to you. Anything you say’s for my ears only.’

  For a moment I wavered, and he saw it in my eyes. All my childhood I’d wanted to be him — a Melvin Renner, or the sort of person I’d imagined he was. I’d never been accepted by them though — to the Renners of this world I’d always been a ‘bloody wog’.

  ‘I really am your friend, Ross. You can trust me. If I don’t know the story from your point of view, I can’t help you much. This is what HM government pays me to do. To look after the interests of British citizens like yourself.’

  ‘You mean like you looked after Doc Barrington?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘I was so sorry to hear about Evelyn,’ he said. ‘Such a tragedy — but well...everyone knew she’d always been slightly dodgy...’

  The image of Doc swinging from the ceiling struck me suddenly, and something inside me splintered like fragile wood.

  ‘You two-faced shit, Renner,’ I said, ‘you deliberately obstructed Doc Barrington’s enquiries about Julian Cranwell, and even if he’s not dead, Doc is, and so is her son David. You could have helped avoid the deaths of at least two British citizens, and probably a lot of others, so don’t come round here talking about people’s interests. I know what interests you’ve got. If they sent you to do their dirty-work for them they really must be scraping the barrel.’

  For a split second the boyish facade slid and I glimpsed beneath it a vicious, bigoted little toadie hanging on outdated imperial delusions. Another dribble of sweat ran down his fore-head. I looked at him closely. Why was his jacket so thoroughly buttoned? There was an almost imperceptible droop of the neck, a minuscule displacement of the shoulders forwards. I looked at his face again, the narrowed, beady eyes which betrayed the boyish laugh, then I reached across and ripped open the front of his suit.

  A small black tape-recorder hung round his neck on a string.

  ‘For your ears only, eh?’ I said. ‘What did they tell you to do? Find out where my relatives are then put a bullet through my head?’

  He pulled back powerfully, setting me off-balance, knocking my hand away with a snapping karate block and slid a Walther PP smoothly out of a holster at his waist with his right hand. ‘You fool, Ross,’ he said pointing the pistol at me with both hands, ‘you could have been one of us. You could have had it all. Now you’re dead meat.’

  I felt along my left wrist for my blade, but I knew it was too late. I’d save it for the very last resort.

  ‘You know, Renner,’ I said, ‘I grew up respecting people like you, or the people I thought you were. Now I realise all that hope and glory bullshit wasn’t worth tuppence. How much are they paying you to kill me?’

  ‘This isn’t about money, Ross. With their technology we could rule the world. No more wars, no more squabbling. No one could oppose power like that.’

  ‘Still the same old story, eh? Not developing human potential, but rule, control, power. Anyway I’m glad to say there is no technology. The ship’s gone.’

  ‘You poor bloody idiot. You think it’s to do with ancient history? Something that happened thousands of years ago? It isn’t — they’re still here, Ross...’

  ‘Shut up!’ a voice cracked out like whiplash, and I looked up to see two beefy police troopers with their AK-47s at the ready. Behind them, pistol in hand, stood Major Rasim. ‘That’s enough, Mr Renner,’ he said.

  ‘What does it matter now?’ Renner said.

  ‘It matters,’ he said, staring straight at me, ‘we can do this two ways, Ross. The hard way, or with dignity.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘That’s better. Follow me.’

  He led me silently along the corridor, with the guards and Renner following. I swung my arms loosely. At least I still had my khanjar — a small hope, perhaps, but battles had been decided by less. The door of the lift slid open and we entered. Rasim pressed a button and we lurched down to the ground floor. The door opened into a small lobby with automatic plate-glass doors, where a corpulent police-sergeant stood behind a desk. ‘Open the doors,’ Rasim commanded him. As we walked out into the blazing sunlight, I smelt camels and looked up to see the Hajana mounts hobbled around the gate, with their riders still milling about uneasily. Rasim looked annoyed.

  ‘Sergeant!’ he bellowed, and the guard-sergeant I’d seen arguing with the Hajana corporal came running up. ‘What are these Hajana doing here?’ Rasim demanded. ‘Why aren’t they in their quarters? And why is the gate open?’

  The sergeant began to explain, but Rasim cut him short, ‘Get them out of here now. I don’t want every Tom, Dick or Harry watching us.’

  The sergeant saluted. ‘Very good, Sir.’

  Rasim pointed to a high concrete wall like a triptych of panels with the wings folded slightly inwards, standing in a sand-bank about a hundred metres from the gate. It was a shooting-range, I realised. That was where they were going to kill me.

  ‘Let’s get it over with,’ Rasim said.

  As they marched me towards the wall, I glanced along the ground-floor windows, hoping for a glimpse of her. There was Hammoudi, standing in the shadows by an open window, his face pale, his eyes standing out like gaping sores. A little further along I caught a glimpse of Elena’s face for a fraction of a second, ghostly and drawn, before someone pulled her away. I had the fleeting impression of Mikhaelis’s face behind her. We were at the wall now, and I stood facing it. Who would do it, I wondered, Renner or Rasim? It was Renner. I felt the cold hard snub of his Walther suddenly in the back of my head. ‘Turn round,’ he said. I turned and faced him, unblinking. He was about a metre away, I judged. Too close for his own good.

  ‘Any last words?’ he asked, sneering.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, folding my arms, feeling for my blade. ‘You’re a traitor, Renner, and you make me ashamed to have English blood.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  The Walther came up and my blade came out in a sweep even faster. I lunged at him with all the power in my calves, caught his head in the crook of my left elbow and jabbed the knife into the cleft just below his right ear. ‘Drop it!’ I hissed. ‘This is your jugular. I’m sure you’ve read my C V, Renner! I almost killed a boy at school with a cricket bat. I can do even better with a knife.’

  The Walther tumbled into the sand. Rasim and the guards reeled away with their weapons up, ‘Shoot!’ Rasim said.

  ‘No!’ Renner screamed, and at that moment Rasim’s immaculately uniformed chest disintegrated into slivers of bloody flesh and he fell over like a wet sack.

  Everything went haywire. Hajana riders were racing towards us firing their carbines, not at me, I suddenly realised, but at the two guards who dropped their weapons and raised their hands frantically shouting ‘Don’t shoot!’

  ‘Always pulling your fat out of the fire, you pipsqueak city-boy!’ a bass voice said, and I glanced round to see my cousin Ahmad’s broad, laughing face, out of place in the khaki
uniform and camouflage headcloth of the Hajana.

  ‘Khaki doesn’t suit you,’ I said. No wonder the Hajana patrol had seemed so unmilitary — they were Hawazim tribesmen. I saw the slim, hard figure of Mansur behind him, his blank eye flopping comically to one side. ‘Peace be on you!’ said another voice — and I recognised my uncle, Mukhtar, advancing with his six-shot ready and a grim smile on his face. It was just then that Renner kicked me backwards in the groin with his heel, broke free of my grasp, snatched his Walther from the sand and fired point-blank at Mukhtar. The old man groaned and fell. I brought my blade down hard into the pit of Renner’s back, almost at the same time as Ahmad’s carbine cracked out, blasting him in the chest. One of the guards grabbed his AK-47, turning its muzzle on Mansur. I sprang on him, boiling with fury, wrenched the weapon from his grip and smashed his jaw with the stock so hard that the whole butt broke off. The trooper dropped and grovelled in the sand next to Renner’s inert body, sobbing, choking blood and teeth. Mansur and I had stooped to pick up Mukhtar, when there was a crackle of gunfire from the main entrance, and we looked up to see black-jackets pouring out of the doors with Hammoudi in the lead. He hadn’t yet twigged what was happening, I realised, because he was yelling at the Hajana to fire on us. Instead they let rip a ragged salvo at Hammoudi, their rounds smashing the glass door and tearing the woodwork to shreds. Hammoudi and his men retreated swiftly. We had my uncle on his feet now, and Mansur supported him while I picked up Renner’s pistol.

  ‘Elena!’ I shouted. ‘She’s still inside!’

  ‘Let’s get her out, then!’ Ahmad said.

  Suddenly the shooting stopped. I looked up to see that more figures had emerged on the steps outside the main door — one of them was the monk Mikhaelis in his white lab-coat. His arm was clamped tightly around Elena’s neck and he was holding a pistol to her head. At one shoulder stood the quiet colonel and at the other stood Hammoudi. ‘Drop your weapons!’ the monk shouted. Tut them down, or the girl dies.’