He was working in a tomb in the hills above Old Qurna, was walking back through the village one evening, saw her being slapped about, intervened. In the ensuing brawl he had punched one brother so hard he had knocked him out (Mary Dufresne’s voice echoed in Khalifa’s head, as clear as if she was sitting there beside him:
he got in a fight with some Qurnawis once, laid one of them out cold
). Later the girl discovered Pinsker had been watching her for over a year, too ashamed of his appearance to make any sort of approach.
‘Foolish man!’ she chuckled. ‘What difference could it have made to me? What I see is inside. And inside he was the handsomest man in the world. Never has anyone treated me with such respect. With such dignity.’
The two of them had started to meet – the blind peasant girl and the faceless Englishman. Snatched moments of togetherness in which friendship had swiftly blossomed into romance. All in utmost secrecy, of course. Even today a relationship between a
hawaga
and
fellaha
would be frowned upon, if not condemned outright. In 1931 it was unthinkable. On several occasions Pinsker had said it must end, fearful for her safety. Their feelings were too strong, though, their love too great, and the meetings had continued.
‘He was in his thirties, I was nineteen,’ she said. ‘But this was no young girl’s flirtation. I was wise for my years, knew exactly what I was doing. He may have been my elder, but here –’ she touched a hand to her head – ‘and here –’ the hand came down to her heart – ‘we were equals. Here too, in the burdens God had seen fit to lay upon us.’ She touched her eyes and her face, the gesture speaking for her blindness and Pinsker’s deformity.
‘It hurt him so much the way he looked,’ she said sadly. ‘He was strong, but sometimes strength is not enough. The whispers, the looks, the comments. It wore him down. Once a little girl, a
hawagaya
, saw him in Medinet Habu. She screamed and ran away, like he was some sort of monster. He cried when he told me about it. Curled up in my arms and howled like a baby.’ (Mary Dufresne’s voice again:
I remember him suddenly appearing, me screaming and running away, him following me in that horrible mask of his. I had nightmares about it for weeks
.)\
Sometimes Pinsker would go away, out into the desert, disappearing for weeks on end (Khalifa wanted to push for more information on this, but held his counsel). Always he would return, though, and the two of them would pick up exactly as they had left off.
‘He was so kind. So gentle. Never took advantage of me. Had he wanted to I would have allowed him, but he was too decent. Said it would not be right. I felt so safe in his presence. So . . . complete. As though for my whole life up to that point I had not even been half a person.’
The courtship had continued for a year. Clandestine trysts in fields and among the ancient ruins strung along the base of the Theban massif. Then, one night, after an even longer absence than usual (how Khalifa wanted to push!), the lovers had met at their favourite spot on the banks of the Nile, and Pinsker had asked her to be his wife.
‘I could not believe such happiness was possible. I thought he must be teasing, begged him not to hurt me, not to play with my emotions, but he just laughed, told me not to be so foolish. Even now I can hear his voice, smell the leather of his coat as he held me, the oil on his hands. I wept with joy.’
She had wanted to elope there and then, but Pinsker had insisted on doing things properly. He would go to see her father the next morning, he told her, ask for her hand officially. Until then she must keep their betrothal a secret, tell no one of it.
‘I was scared,’ she said. ‘I knew what my family were like, knew there would be trouble. But he was honourable. The most honourable man I ever met. Had he been less so, he might have lived.’
That night she had returned home and laid out her finest
djellaba
in preparation for the following morning. Then, elated, she had gone to bed and dreamt of
Sam-oo-el Peens-ka
and the joyous life they would now share together.
In the still hour before dawn she had woken with a start, a terrible pain in her chest.
‘I knew immediately something had happened to him,’ she said.
‘Something dreadful. It was like my heart was screaming.’
Shortly afterwards her brothers had rattled home in their donkey cart. She had confronted them, demanded to know where they had been, what they had done. The
hawaga
had been dealt with, was all they would tell her. She would never see him again. No one would ever see him again. The will of Allah had been enacted, justice served.
‘Justice!’ she spat. ‘They knew he hadn’t raped me. Knew it full well, even before I screamed the truth at them. It was just their excuse. For a year they had bided their time, waited for an opportunity to avenge themselves on him for standing up to them that day. When the boy came running with his story, they seized their chance. Evil men, they were. Cruel. Venomous as snakes.’
She had wept, cursed her brothers, threatened to go to the police. For which they had dragged her inside by her hair and beaten her. Beaten her so badly it had been a month before she was able to walk again.
‘I was glad of the pain. Grateful for it. It allowed me to share something of what
Sam-oo-el
had gone through. In pain we were together.’
She had been kept a virtual prisoner for the next forty years, rarely venturing from the family house, rarely speaking. Like the living dead. And then they had found Pinsker’s body and she had died all over again.
‘Why Holy Allah should allow such a thing to happen I cannot begin to understand,’ she said. ‘Such a terrible crime, such un bearable cruelty. And for my brothers to get away with it. Although a sort of justice
was
done, for none of them were able to sire offspring. All three died childless. Such is the mystery of His ways. It brings me little consolation.’
With the passing of her last brother she had left the village, moved south, started a new life. Worked to bring others the happiness that had been denied to her.
‘I have never visited his grave,’ she said. ‘Have never wanted to. He still lives here –’ she touched her heart. ‘And for me, that is all that matters. His name is on my lips when I wake in the morning, and when I go to bed at night, and a million times in between. The most beautiful name in the world. My husband. My darling husband. The finest man I ever knew.’
She ran a withered knuckle beneath her eyes as if to wipe away tears, although the eyes were dry.
‘Such,’ she said, ‘is the story of Iman and
Sam-oo-el
.’
Beside her Khalifa’s head had dropped. He didn’t know what to feel, let alone what to say. All he could think of was the image of Pinsker’s mummified body lying slumped at the back of the tomb. And, also, his son Ali, pale and still on the hospital bed after they had turned off his life support. The ways of Allah were indeed mysterious. So mysterious that not for the first time these last nine months he found himself wondering . . . not if Allah existed, that was beyond dispute, but rather what sort of Being He was. So much pain, so much tragedy, the balance seemingly weighted so heavily away from light towards darkness . . .
‘It’s about the mine, isn’t it?’
He looked up.
‘The reason you’re here.’ Her eyes rolled towards him. ‘The woman in Jerusalem. The connection with
Sam-oo-el
. It’s the mine, isn’t it? The gold mine he found.’
Yet again she seemed to be way ahead of him.
‘We think so,’ he replied.
‘
Sam-oo-el
always said no good would come of it. If word got out. For him, the gold meant nothing, but to others . . . There is much greed in the world.’
A cat came stalking into the room from the rear of the house. It leapt on to the couch beside the old woman and curled up against her leg.
‘He was so excited,’ she said, reaching out and running a hand along the cat’s spine. ‘That last night, when he came back. Years, he’d been looking for it. Month after month, alone out in the desert. And then, finally, on that last trip . . . Three months he was down there and he told me he hadn’t even explored a half of it. Like an underground city, he said. An underground
world
. He was so happy. We were both so happy.’
She smiled sadly and fell silent. There were so many questions Khalifa wanted to ask, so much he needed to know, but after everything he’d heard tonight he couldn’t seem to find his voice. The cat purred; the kerosene lamp hissed; almost a minute went by.
‘What was her name?’ she asked eventually. ‘The woman who was killed.’
Khalifa told her.
‘She was a good person?’
He confessed he didn’t know much about her. ‘I think she was. I believe she tried to help people. Expose wrongdoing.’
‘And the mine – it is important? Knowing about it will help you achieve justice for her?’
Again, Khalifa couldn’t say for certain. ‘I think so,’ he repeated.
There was another silence, the old woman’s eyes seeming to pull back into themselves as if she was pondering something. Then, slowly, she withdrew her hand from the cat’s back. Feeling within the folds of her
djellaba
, she pulled something out. In the darkness it wasn’t immediately obvious what it was. Only when she handed it up to Khalifa did he realize that it was a notebook. An old notebook, its leather cover creased and stained, its pages dog-eared and yellowed with age.
‘
Sam-oo-el
gave it to me,’ she said. ‘That last night, the night he proposed. He told me he hadn’t had time to buy a ring, so instead was leaving me the most valuable thing he possessed as a plight of his troth. It is his notes from the mine. Eighty years it has rested beside my heart. No one has ever seen it. Myself included.’
Khalifa looked down at the book, his pulse pumping suddenly, his breath coming in short excited bursts. Then, standing, he crossed to the kerosene lamp and thrust the book into its light. Carefully he started to turn the pages.
There was writing – faded, spidery – and lists of numbers, which he guessed must be measurements, and drawings. Page after page of drawings: sketches of ancient tools and votive objects; copies of inscriptions and hieratic graffiti; an elaborate fold-out plan of the layout of the mine, or at least that part of it that Pinsker had managed to navigate. A bewildering matrix of tunnels and corridors and chambers and ventilation shafts, all fanning out from a broad central gallery like some vast subterranean vascular system.
And right at the back of the book, glued to the inside of its rear cover, another fold-out sheet. This one a map. Of the Eastern Desert. Not as detailed as the one his friend Omar had shown him that morning, but detailed enough: Nile, Red Sea,
wadis
, mountains. And there, in a small, sickle-shaped
wadi
tucked under the western flank of the Gebel el-Shalul, a tiny pencilled cross, with beside it the legend:
L of O
.
‘
Hamdulillah
,’ Khalifa whispered.
He folded the map back and closed the book.
‘It is a lot to ask,
Ya Omm
, but would it be possible . . .’
‘Take it,’ said the old woman. ‘With my blessing. And with
Sam-oo-el
’s as well. It is what he would have wanted. Justice was important to him. As it is to me.’
‘I’ll guard it with my life,’ said Khalifa. ‘Bring it back as soon as we have finished with it.’
She nodded. He weighed the notebook in his hands. Then, going over to her, he bent and kissed her on each cheek.
‘
Shukran giddan, Ya Omm
.’
‘
Afwan
.’
He started to straighten, but she took his hand. Her face turned up to him. A face that, despite her great age, still carried echoes of an earlier self beneath the lines, like a young woman dimly glimpsed through a sheet of crumpled baking parchment.
‘He is at peace,’ she said. ‘There is a golden light, and Ali is at peace within it. Never forget that.’
She released his hand and motioned him towards the door. Khalifa just about made it outside before the tears started to come.
R
AS AL
- S
HAITAN
, G
ULF OF
A
QABA
, E
GYPT
‘Which one is it?’
‘That one. At the end.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘See for yourself. They’re secret agents. I’m telling you.’
The boys flitted along the row of chalets, feet sinking soundlessly into the sand. Waves hissed and slapped on to the beach to their right; behind them a faint hum of music was just about audible from the resort’s main building. Otherwise everything was quiet. A huge orange moon dangled above the sea like a medallion.
They reached the last chalet in line – the only one at this end of the holiday village that was occupied – and crept round to the back. Two Land Cruisers were sitting side by side on the concrete parking bay.
‘They arrived this evening. Four of them. They’ve got loads of spy stuff. Look.’
The chalet’s windows were tightly curtained. By climbing on to the air-conditioning outlet, however – carefully, so as not to make any noise – they were able to peek through a narrow gap between the top corner of one of the curtains and the window frame. Inside, through the cramped triangle of uncurtained glass, they could see a bed, some bags, a pile of metallic cases and a table. Two people were sitting there, a man and a woman, staring at an opened laptop. Both wore headphones. Another man was kneeling on the floor, fiddling with some sort of electronic device. A fourth person – a woman – was lying on the bed reading a magazine. A handgun lay on the pillow beside her.
‘What did I tell you?’ whispered the boy. ‘Spies.’
His voice was louder than he intended. The woman on the bed looked up, said something. Her companions swung. Terrified, the boys leapt down from the unit and sprinted away among the chalets, too scared to look back.
When they returned an hour later, their inquisitiveness getting the better of them, the Land Cruisers were gone and the chalet was empty, as if no one had ever been there. They debated whether to tell the resort management what they’d seen, but decided against it. Tourism was down as it was, and they’d just get blamed for driving away customers. And anyway, they probably wouldn’t be believed. So they kept it to themselves. Their secret.
J
ERUSALEM
When Ben-Roi arrived at Kishle at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, he was in a good mood. Better, certainly, than he’d been in the previous day. He’d slept well, it was a beautiful morning, and that night he was going over for dinner at Sarah’s, the first time she’d cooked for him since they’d split, which had to be a good sign.
The mood soured the moment he walked into the station.
First he bumped into Yigal Dorfmann, the investigator on the
yeshiva
student stabbing. Short, weaselly, snide, Dorfmann was an insufferable twat at the best of times. He was even more so this morning when he threw an arm round Ben-Roi’s shoulder and cheerfully informed him that the student murder was now case closed.
‘Arab kid confessed a couple of hours ago,’ he boasted, chomping on a celebratory cigar. ‘Iron-clad forensics. Commissioner a happy chappie. Back-slaps all round. But enough of that: how’s
your
case going?’
The none-too-subtle subtext being: not half as well as ours.
A few minutes later, still smarting, Ben-Roi had been summoned into Chief Gal’s office and given a fierce dressing-down for his handling of Nathaniel Barren the previous night. Barren’s representatives had been on to both the Justice Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office the moment the interview was over, and lodged a formal complaint about the tenor of Ben-Roi’s questioning.
‘You can’t just bulldoze in and insult these sorts of people,’ Gal stormed.
‘But Barren are dodgy, sir. The company
and
the family. They’re all over this case.’
‘They’re also best buddies with half the bloody Knesset! You got any evidence?
Real
evidence?’
Ben-Roi admitted that he hadn’t.
‘Then lay off till you have. Understand? I’ve taken a lot of heat for this and don’t expect any more. Now get out.’
When Khalifa called just before eight, Ben-Roi’s good mood was a distant memory.
‘Please tell me you’ve got something for me,’ he said, swivelling on his chair so as not to have to look at fellow detectives Yoni Zelba and Shimon Lutzisch, both of whom were supping Goldstars and crowing at the successful conclusion of their own investigation.
‘OK,’ came Khalifa’s voice. ‘I’ve tracked down your mine.’
Ben-Roi had been slumped in the seat. At the mention of the mine, he jerked bolt upright.
‘You’re joking.’
‘The Egyptian police never joke.’
The Israeli smiled at that. Suddenly he could feel the mood-tide turning again.
‘How did you find it?’
Khalifa filled him in on the meeting with Iman el-Badri.
‘I’ve been up half the night going through Pinsker’s notebook,’ he said. ‘It’s incredible, absolutely incredible. The mine’s main gallery is almost a mile deep. And there are literally hundreds of shafts and tunnels and sub-tunnels running off that. And that’s just the part of the mine Pinsker managed to explore. “Labyrinth” doesn’t even get close to describing it.’
‘Any gold?’
Annoyingly, that was the one question Pinsker’s notes didn’t answer. He’d recorded taking some rock samples from the mine, but obviously he’d been murdered before he’d had a chance to get the samples properly analysed. Other than that, there was no mention of the stuff.
‘Which doesn’t mean there isn’t any down there,’ said Khalifa. ‘The guy I spoke to on the boat a couple of days ago, the Englishman, he told me Pinsker wasn’t interested in gold, he just wanted to find out about the ancient workers. So it’s possible the mine’s still full of the stuff. We won’t know till we actually get out there.’
‘Today?’
Unfortunately not.
‘A find as big as this, there are a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through,’ explained Khalifa. ‘I’ve informed the ministry and they’re sending someone down tomorrow to look at the notebook. And I’ve got a meeting this afternoon with a Supreme Council of Antiquities representative. Realistically it’s going to be the end of the week at the earliest before everyone gets their act together.’
‘You can’t move any faster?’
‘Trust me, by Egyptian standards the end of the week would be the speed of light.’
Ben-Roi grunted. It was frustrating, but couldn’t be helped. At least they’d actually found the mine. That was a big step in the right direction. In the meantime, there was plenty of other stuff to keep him and Zisky occupied. The whole Vosgi thing still needed to be resolved, and William Barren could probably do with a closer look. And there was that list of Egyptian companies the Nemesis woman had given him – that might throw up some new angles. In fact, while he had him on the phone . . .
‘Listen, Khalifa, you’ve already done more than enough, but could I pick your brains on just one more thing?’
‘Of course. Anything.’
Ben-Roi told the Egyptian about his experiences the previous afternoon.
‘This woman gave me a list of companies in Egypt that Barren have dealings with. We can do all the spadework at this end, but I was wondering if any of these leapt out at you. Just to try and narrow the field down a bit.’
Pulling the sheet from his pocket, he swivelled and flattened it on the desk. There were about forty names, arranged in alphabetical order.
‘Ready?’
‘Fire away.’
‘Adarah Trading.’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘Amsco.’
‘Nope.’
‘Bank Misr.’
‘Of course. They’re one of our biggest banks.’
‘Above board?’
‘So far as I know. The service is notoriously slow.’
Ben-Roi smiled, pushed on.
‘Delta Systems?’
‘Nope.’
‘Durabi.’
‘Nope.’
‘EGAS.’
‘That’s the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company,’ said Khalifa.
‘They’re a big state-owned conglomerate, control all our gas reserves.’
That would tie in with Barren’s Saharan gas field tender. Ben-Roi scribbled an asterisk beside the name, thinking it might be worth a delve.
‘Fawzer Electronics.’
‘Nope.’
‘Fuzki Metals.’
‘Nope.’
‘Gemali Ltd.’
‘Nope.’
And so it went on down the list. A few names Khalifa had heard of, most he hadn’t. None of them rang any bells in terms of dodgy dealings.
EGAS remained the only one against which Ben-Roi put an asterisk.
He reached the bottom of the page and turned over. There were three more names on the other side.
‘Ummara Concrete,’ he read.
‘No.’
‘Wasti Logistics.’
‘No.’
‘Zoser Freight.’
Silence.
‘Zoser Freight,’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, I have heard of them.’
The Egyptian’s voice seemed suddenly distant. Like his mind had veered off in another direction and he was no longer fully engaged in the conversation.
‘And?’ asked Ben-Roi.
Again, he had to repeat the question before he got a response.
‘They’re a transport company,’ mumbled Khalifa. ‘Big. Very big. Road, rail, river, that sort of thing. Lot of government connections.’
‘That it?’
‘Pretty much. Although there’s one thing.’
‘Go on.’
The sound of a breath being drawn.
‘It was a Zoser Freight barge that killed my son Ali.’
L
UXOR
Once Ben-Roi was off the line, Khalifa sat for a long time gazing into space, tapping his cigarette pack on the desk.
It was a coincidence, of course. Zoser were a huge company, there was nothing unusual about them having dealings with another huge company. And yet . . . and yet . . .
From the outset, he’d felt something about the Rivka Kleinberg case, some aspect of it that was calling to him, drawing him in. Something beyond the mere desire to help a friend, or get to the heart of an intriguing mystery. Something that had made him stick with the investigation, keep digging, not let go. Something . . . inescapable. And now, suddenly, this.
He flipped the pack lid, pulled a cigarette out with his teeth, left it dangling unlit.
He’d never consciously blamed Zoser for the accident. Not outright, at least. Yes, the barge had been out of its river lane, the forward watch not doing his job properly. But then Ali and his friends should never have been on the river in the first place. There was no clearly attributable burden of culpability.
And yet now he thought about it – and curiously he hadn’t thought much about it; had just accepted it, like Egyptians accept so many inequities and injustices, as if unfairness was somehow hardwired into their DNA – now that he thought about it, it struck Khalifa that he
did
blame Zoser. Blamed them in the same way he blamed the local governorate for bulldozing half of Luxor, and the whole system for turning its back on people like the Attias and the crippled boy at Demiana Barakat’s children’s home. Not for the accident per se, but rather for their arrogance. For not caring. For the fact that five boys had died beneath one of their barges and the company hadn’t even seen fit to hold an internal inquiry into the collision. Had shrugged the whole thing off and carried on as normal, in the way the rich and powerful always seemed to shrug off the wider human impact of their actions.