Aggressor (26 page)

Bookerman tightened his grip on the cyclic and felt the sweat ooze between his gloved fingers.

‘Thirty seconds to target,' Karanski said.

‘He's going past us now,' Leiffer said. ‘I'm losing him.'

‘I've got him,' Sweet said, as the Hind slid alongside his position. ‘Easy as you go, skipper, this guy's in the fucking hair-cut business. His rotor's about three feet from ours.'

The Hind started to pull past them.

Karanski: ‘Twenty seconds to target.'

Knowing he had been beaten, Bookerman chopped power and pulled up out of the wadi. ‘Fuck the SAMs, this guy's trying to get us all killed.'

The Hind filled Bookerman's FLIR picture. Beside him, Karanski cranked up the magnification on his FLIR scope so that he had a clear view into the Mil's cockpit. He fully expected to see the Russian gunner looking over his shoulder and giving them the bird. What he saw instead was pandemonium. The pilot, in the raised rear seat, was crouched over his instruments, hands darting left and right, as he threw switches and checked dials. When the gunner did turn, he was craning for a view of his pilot. Karanski saw that his eyes were wide with fear. The blaze of warning lights across the instrument panel told him why. Suddenly, the Hind pulled up like a striking cobra, its nose pointing towards the stars. Bookerman didn't even have time to exclaim his surprise. He thought momentarily that the Hind was trying to follow him up into the sky, although later he realized that no helicopter pilot would have tried such a manoeuvre.

Travelling at close to two hundred miles per hour, the Hind had almost nine times the force of gravity driven through its airframe. Its five blades sheered off at the hub as one, sending the helicopter into a ballistic arc that was cut short by a rock stack jutting out of the desert floor. For some reason, it did not explode, despite the cascade of sparks that lit up the night sky. The impact broke the fuselage in two, the tail boom burying itself in the desert floor of the wadi amid a cloud of dust, the cockpit and cabin flying on another hundred feet before being crushed against the unrelenting face of the wadi's sides.

Inside the Sikorsky, nobody spoke for a long time. Bookerman had seen enough to know that there were no surviviors. He pulled the Sikorsky into a turn that would take it back over the crash site.

Karanski's burst transmission to Wadi Qena was succinct. They had a helicopter down in the desert.

Girling walked briskly along the street known as Al-Mu'izz, a lone focus among the traders and the faithful. He was the only foreigner in the street, the sole ‘agnabi.

It was a little before nine. In the distance, he could just hear the muezzin calling from his platform high above the Mu'ayyad mosque. The street traders were already into their stride. Girling tucked his head down and tried to mingle with the droves of men heading for the prayer meeting, but it was impossible to escape the attention of the shopkeepers for long.

They dangled wares of leather, cotton, silver, and gold before his eyes. Despite their persuasiveness, he steadfastly but politely refused them.

As he pressed further into the heartland of the old quarter, he began to sense a new mood. The traders looked at him with deepening suspicion. It was as if they knew he had not come to their street to buy. For all his attempts to appear like an innocent tourist - guide-book in his hand and camera round his neck - Girling knew he was fooling nobody. As more and more shopkeepers retreated into the shade of their stalls, their overtures rejected, he imagined he heard the rasp of their curses behind him.

When he thought about Lazan's warning and what Mona's father had told him, he tingled with the realization that the street could swallow him in a moment and no one on the outside would be the wiser, except, perhaps, Sharifa. He had phoned her first thing that morning to tell her he was heading for the Mu'ayyad mosque. When he explained about the Guide, she begged him not to go. But he had made up his mind the previous night and nothing was going to deter him, not even the Mukhabarat. He had slipped from the apartment via the fire escape, neatly avoiding his two minders out the front.

From the moment he arrived, Girling had known that time was running out, as if Stansell was being kept in a sealed box with a finite supply of air. If the Guide was as powerful as his father-in-law claimed, one word, should he choose to give it, would be enough to secure Stansell's release.

Girling raised his eyes to his surroundings. Al-Mu'izz was caught like a trapped nerve between the affluent bustle of the Khan, a few hundred yards away, and the grinding poverty of the City of the Dead, a stone's throw to the south. The necropolis sprawled somewhere beyond Bab Zuweila, the southern gates of Cairo's medieval wall. The Mu'ayyad mosque, the Guide's open prison, nestled in the shade of the gates. On hot days like this, Al-Mu'izz festered like an open sore.

Years before, when Mona had brought him here, showing pride in the craftsmanship paraded in these shops, it had seemed a different place. But that was before the Gulf War and before he had even heard of the Brotherhood.

Upon its foundation in the late 1920s, the Brother-hood's twin aims had been the eviction of the ruling British elite and the establishment of a fundamental Islamic state. It took them just two decades to realize the first goal and, although a comparatively quiet period followed, it never lost sight of the second. A vivid reminder of their presence hit the world between the eyes when a breakaway group, the Partisans of Allah, assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981. Sadat had been trying to woo the Brotherhood into mainstream politics, recognizing that it was gaining strength daily, that it was wresting the country from him inch by inch. But the Brother-hood could not negotiate with a man who had sold the Arab birthright for peace with Israel, its sworn enemy. And so one day it rose up and killed him.

He rounded a bend in the street and saw the two minarets of the mosque. The sunlight soared between them, refracting off the dust and the flies that swirled in the air.

As the faithful tramped through the doors of the mosque, Girling scouted for guards. He soon spotted them, two policemen squatting beside a small gas burner in the shadows at the top of the steps.

Girling adjusted his camera, making sure it hung obviously by his side, and nipped into the midst of a group of prayer-goers as they marched up the marble steps. At the top, a column of warm light hit him in the face. He squinted past the turbaned heads of the people in front of him and caught a glimpse of trees and ornate ponds in the open courtyard. The people were already sitting on the floor, ranged in lines before the miqra, the pulpit where the Guide would make his speech. Girling was inside and looking for a place to sit out the service, when a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round.

The policeman shook a finger in his face. ‘Entry mamnoo'a,' he said in hybrid English-Arabic.

Girling's brow furrowed in confusion.

‘Forbidden,' the other guard explained.

Girling produced the guidebook and began to thumb through its pages. ‘This is the Al-Mu'ayyad mosque?' he asked, his eyes wide in innocence. He pointed to a page for emphasis.

‘No speak English,' the first policeman said. He pointed down the steps. ‘Go.'

Girling laughed disarmingly. One of them smiled back. ‘I just want a few pictures,' he said, lifting his camera.

The first policeman shook his head. ‘For-bid-den during prayers.'

‘I see,' Girling said, pretending to understand only then. ‘OK, no pictures. I just look, yes?'

The guard remained unmoved until his gaze dropped to the open guidebook and rested on the eighty Egyptian pounds protruding from the pages. There was two months' salary for each man there. ‘One hour,' Girling said firmly.

The guards looked first at each other, then down the street. The older one grabbed the money and gave a shrug of resignation. ‘OK,' he said.

Girling slipped off his shoes and entered the cool tranquillity of the mosque. He crossed the great sahn, the courtyard, and proceeded into the gardens on the other side. He found a bench among the trees and sat down. No one paid him any attention, for prayers had already begun. The sea of bodies moved as one, rising and falling with the exhortations of the prayer-leader.

Girling began to gather his thoughts, to prepare himself for the encounter ahead. But in the stillness that followed, he became conscious only of the depth of his hatred. He told himself over and over that this was not the time or the place for his anger, that he had to forget this man's deeds. His first duty was to break Stansell out of captivity. The Guide offered a chance. But first he had to put Mona behind him. He held his head in his hands, but like a migraine it would not leave him.

When Girling looked up, the people had turned their faces to the pulpit. An air of expectancy filled the mosque. Across the courtyard, a slight figure was climbing the steps to the miqra. The Guide was older than Girling imagined; his face weather-beaten, skin sallow from a life of asceticism. His hair was hidden by a turban; his cheeks and chin by a patchy grey beard. He wore the long flowing robes of all clerics.

The Guide's address rang out across the courtyard. Girling listened, trying to understand, but all he caught were snatches of meaning. The Guide was using classical Arabic, the language of literature, and vastly different from the colloquial patois he had taught himself. The Guide's address was inspirational; an appeal for patience, a reminder of rewards to come. His people listened thoughtfully and every so often there were waves of assent.

When it was over, the crowd rose suddenly, much more quickly than Girling had expected. He leapt to his feet and rushed forward, but the Guide was already half-way from the miqra to a door in the far wall. He battled against the tide of people heading for the street, ignoring their cries of indignation. Girling burst through them just as the Guide was almost through the arch.

Girling shouted in English.

The silence began with those closest to him. They stared accusingly as if he had uttered some deep profanity. Like concentric ripples in a pond, the silence emanated outwards, until it reached the Guide and his entourage. When it touched him, the Guide hesitated, then turned.

‘Do I know you, ‘agnabi?'

Girling tried to speak, but could not find the Arabic.

‘Do you come as a friend?' the Guide asked. His voice rang clearly across the courtyard.

Girling's awkwardness had turned his curiosity to concern. He felt the crowd's hostility at his back.

‘Who are you?' the Guide asked.

The words came suddenly. Girling spoke the local dialect of a Cairene. ‘I am a journalist, an English journalist. My name is Tom Girling. I have come a long way to see you, Sheikh.'

‘A journalist? What could I possibly have to say to a journalist?' The Guide waved his hand in a gesture that indicated the high walls of his prison. He took another step towards the door.

‘I did not come here to write down your words. I have come here with an appeal. An appeal for a life. For a man named Stansell, a writer, like me. Have you heard of this man?' The Guide stopped.

‘Do you know this man?' Girling repeated. ‘Should I, ‘agnabi?'

‘He has been kidnapped by the Angels of Judgement, or people acting in their name. Here, in Cairo.'

The Guide turned again. ‘What has this to do with me?'

‘I think you can help.'

‘Why should I help you against the noble soldiers of Islam?'

‘What nobility is there in the death of innocents, Sheikh?' As he spoke, Girling heard Mona's cries echoing across the courtyard. ‘Stansell's only crime was that he did his job. He published a name, the name of the Angels of Judgement. Nothing more. Surely - ‘ He stopped, searching for the merest sign of assent. ‘A word from you would spread through the mosques, the bazaars and the streets. They listen to you...'

The mosque was silent once more.

‘And why do you assume I might have influence in this matter?' the Guide asked.

‘Because I know who you are. I know they look up to you, Sheikh.'

There was a murmur from the crowd.

The Guide straightened his back and lifted his face to the sky. ‘Your friend's fate was determined by God. What has happened was written. I cannot change that.' He reached for the door.

Girling shook his head. ‘That's bullshit,' he said in English. Then in Arabic: ‘I was in Asyut. Three years ago. The riots, Sheikh, I was there...'

The Guide stopped walking, but he did not turn.

Girling fought for space. The crowd had almost surrounded him. ‘I saw a young Egyptian girl stoned to death on a patch of dirt road. Like Stansell, she had done nothing. But that didn't stop the mob. They rained the rocks on her until her body was so badly broken even her husband could not recognize her. Could such a death be pre-ordained?'

The Guide faced Girling once more. His eyes were bright, but there was a tremor in his voice. ‘More than likely she was unclean,' he said. ‘An adulteress.'

‘Then I of all people should have known,' Girling replied. ‘For this woman was my wife.'

The Guide's shoulders rose as he drew breath. The crowd quivered in anticipation.

‘Only God can save your friend, ‘agnabi,' the Guide said. Then he stepped through the arch. The door slammed behind him, the noise echoing across the sahn.

Girling pounded the wood with his fists. On the other side, he could hear the Guide's steps retreating down the corridor. ‘You murdered her, Sheikh, you killed her, you and Abu Tarek,' he shouted. Before he could put his shoulder to the door, there was a howl of rage from the crowd. It surged forward. Girling felt himself being picked up like a swimmer in the grip of an immense rolling wave. He tried to grab hold of something, the door handle, the balustrade of the miqra, but they were too many. They dragged him to the top of the steps where he had entered the mosque. He knew this crowd. He had seen it at work before. Once outside the sanctuary of the mosque he was as good as dead.