Firebird (17 page)

19

It was only a few minutes back to my apartment block on the waterfront, but I was still wired up and every shadow had me jumping for cover. I cased the alley behind the block steadily, then worked my way to the basement door. My flat was on the top floor and I’d chosen it because it had two entrances, one approached by the lift from the front and the other by the fire stairs to the back. Like I’d told Daisy, it always helped to have a back-up, and I used the front entrance so rarely that I’d have sworn the
ghaffir
hardly knew me. I closed the outer door, locked it, and let out a sigh of relief. It was good to be out of the cold and in the safety of the familiar. I lurched down the dank corridor to the steel fire door, which for security reasons could only be opened from the inside. Whenever I went out this way I left it jammed open with a wooden wedge, knowing by experience that none of the residents used this exit but me. As I bent to remove the wedge, though, a warning bell jangled in my head. The wedge was still there, but it wasn’t in the exact same place I’d left it, I was certain. Someone — or something — had come in, removed the wedge to close the door, then thought better of it and put it back. A new burst of adrenaline washed through my blood and I grasped my Beretta. I thought of the ghoul, and for a moment I considered bugging out. Then I set my teeth and climbed the stairs unsteadily until I came to my back door. I put my ear to the wood. I heard nothing so I drew my keys, unlocked it and pushed it open.

There wasn’t much to see in the kitchen — the contents of a couple of packets of cereal tipped out over the table, cutlery drawers open, the fridge door ajar — but enough to tell me that the place had been breached. In the living room, though, it was mayhem, as if it had been searched with increasing rage and frustration. My computer had been booted but was thankfully intact: the speakers of my stereo had been ripped open, pictures had been torn off the walls, chairs and cushions slashed open with a blade, books pulled out of shelves, ripped and scattered in pieces across the rug. I didn’t go in much for personal knick knacks, and Hammoudi always said my place was so impersonal that it was like someone was camping out rather than living there permanently. It wasn’t that I felt any attachment to the pad, but the idea that I’d been compromised made me livid. I heard a scuffle coming from the bedroom. For a moment I stood listening, then I moved forward silently, nudged the door open with a trainer and eased myself into the room.

The mattress on my bed had been pulled up and cut open, and stuffing was strewn across the floor. There were only two possible hiding places — either the walk-in cupboard or the full—length curtains I’d left closed that morning. I went for the cupboard, and I lucked out. As soon as I turned, a dark figure exploded from behind the curtains, a black vortex of movement. For a split second I was certain it was the ghoul, but then I saw the long knife that flashed down on my gun hand. The blade clanked against gunmetal and I dropped the weapon, seizing the black draped wrist that grasped the knife and yanking it down so that there was a shriek of pain. The knife fell, and turning I saw that I was wrestling with a hooded figure — the same veiled Bedouin woman who’d laid me out in the Khan the previous night. She was big — bigger even than I remembered — and I could feel the powerful muscles moving under the robe. I dodged a roundhouse punch that might have knocked me down, let go of the wrist and delivered five or six Hammoudi-style smashes to the jaw, one after the other. There was a lot of pent up anger behind those punches. The woman staggered back drunkenly, and I did something I’d been itching to do for a long time — I tore off the veil.

I suppose I’d known all along what I would find. Not many women have a punch that powerful, and few Bedouin women are that tall. If this was a woman, she was one hell of a dyke, with a two day shadow on a square chin, now bloody from my punches, to go with iron pectorals and biceps, and size eleven hands and feet. The guy was still staggering when I picked up my Beretta. I levelled it right between his legs and smiled. ‘Stop it right there,’ I said, ‘or you really will find out what it’s like to be a woman.’ Without taking my eyes off him, I tipped a wooden framed camp chair upright. ‘Sit down,’ I said.

The man looked at the gun sullenly as if trying to gauge the distance between us. He didn’t sit down. Blood dripped out of his nose and he put up a hand to touch it, then looked at the blood on his fingers. ‘I ought to rip you apart,’ he said, the voice coming out bass and slightly hoarse. He made a sudden move towards me and I raised the gun a little and squeezed the trigger. There was a deafening thunk, and the guy ducked. The round whanged into the wall behind him — it must have missed his ear by about a millimetre. He put a shaky hand up to feel if his head was still in one piece, and then abruptly sat down on the chair.

‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Believe me, the next one really will be in your
cojones
.’

‘I know what you did to Ibram,’ he said coolly, wiping blood off his chin, ‘and sooner or later you’re going to pay.’

He was scared but in control, I realized. He had the same sort of quiet power Hammoudi had — a power that came from physical strength and the ability to handle oneself. He wasn’t in much of a position to rip me apart right now, but I’d actually felt the power of those ham like fists, and I didn’t underestimate his ability to do it if given the ghost of a chance. He looked fit and alert, his blue eyes clear, watchful and full of hate. He spoke Arabic almost perfectly, but he certainly wasn’t a Bedouin — not even an Arab, I thought.

‘I think we’ve got our wires crossed,’ I said. ‘Last I heard I was the one investigating Ibram’s death.’

‘You cops are mixed up in this — right up to the elbows.’

I wondered how much he knew, and looked him up and down. Beneath the woman’s robe he was wearing rubber sandals made out of the inner tubes of motorcar tyres —the Arabs called them
tamut
takhalli
— ‘die and leave them’ — because of their legendary inability to wear out. I distinctly remembered their eerie slapping on the flagstones of Khan al-Khalili.

‘You’ve been following me, I said. ‘You followed me to the US medical facility. You were there at the Mena Palace and in the alley last night coming back from Sanusi’s. You must have followed me here, too, and found your way in. I want to know why.’

He folded his big hands in his lap with a show of complacency. ‘Because Ibram’s dead.’

‘And you think I did it?’

‘Maybe you didn’t gun him down yourself, but you and that big detective and the girl — you’re in it up to the eyes. You SID are just another death squad when it comes down to it, there to protect the establishment.’

‘Turn out your pockets,’ I snapped. He literally turned them inside out, but there was only a wedge of Egyptian money and some keys — no credit cards or ID .

‘Why are you wearing drag?’ I asked.

‘I had to stay alive long enough to get even with those who did it. I know I’m on the hit list and it seemed a good disguise.’

‘Hit list,’ I said, turning his words over in my head. ‘I talked to someone else today who claimed to be on the hit list, only this guy was convinced it was drawn up by the Militants.’ His eyes were full of interest now I noted. ‘Guy called Andropov — a former member of the Millennium Committee — like Ibram. He told me a great deal. Said there was another potential member of the committee who vanished. Maybe he didn’t vanish. Maybe he was just going round in drag.’ He opened his eyes wide, knowing I’d got him, and that slight flicker told me all. ‘Christian Monod,’ I said.

He winced. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’re probably going to kill me anyway, so what the hell.’

‘Doctor Ibram called you on the phone just before he was shot,’ I said. ‘I hope it was worth it, because it cost him his life.’

‘You should know.’

‘Look, why would I or my people want to take out Ibram?’

‘Because he was on to it. He was on to the whole thing.’

The whole thing? I decided to risk it. Maybe Daisy’s shock tactics were best after all. ‘You mean Firebird?’ I said. The word dropped into the room like a mortar bomb and his face crashed shut.

‘You tell me,’ he said, ‘the only Firebird I know is an American car.’

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Monod stared back at me uneasily. ‘You’re in a great deal of trouble,’ I said. ‘Assault on a police officer — twice — once with a deadly weapon. Attempted murder. Aggravated burglary. You could be inside for a long time. Ever been in an Egyptian jail?’

‘It won’t come to that, will it? A bullet in the skull down a dark alley is more like it.’

‘Why were you following me?’

He went silent, but he’d already revealed too much. ‘All right,’ I said, let me tell you why. Since you took the trouble to trash my place, you must have been searching for something. What was it? Not my silverware or my set of rare postage stamps, I’ll bet. No, you think I have something that belonged to Ibram. A map, perhaps? Or should we say, half a map?’

I knew by the slightest flutter of his eyelids that I’d been right.

‘Where is it?’ he said.

‘It’s in a place you’ll never find it, not unless I want you to that is.’

‘You bastard!’

‘Why are you looking for the map?’

‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘I’m not talking.’

For an instant I saw red. I squeezed the trigger and a round banjoed between Monod’s legs, only just missing the groin. The big man flinched and half stood, and in that second I switched the pistol to my left hand, whipped out my stiletto and took two paces over to him. Before he could stop me I slashed his bunched right fist across the knuckles with my blade and pistol whipped him across the jowls with the butt of the Beretta. He screamed and sat down heavily, clutching his injured hand. I poked the muzzle of my pistol right into his ear and held my blade across his Adam’s apple. ‘The next one is your throat,’ I said. ‘Now who are you, Monod?’

‘All right! OK!’ he stammered. ‘I’m an engineer, that’s all. I worked on a project in the Great Pyramid with Ibram. Then I got warned off by some shits who told me they were police officers. Said they’d kill my wife and kids, so I disappeared and disguised myself as a woman.’

‘You sure these guys were police?’

‘They had official ID, but they could have been anything. They were done up in these long black raincoats with black hats, like characters out of a “B” horror movie.’

I let the blade drop and shifted the the muzzle of my handgun out of his ear. I took a step back. ‘Whoever those guys were,’ I said, ‘I’m not one of them.’

Monod wiped blood off his knuckles. ‘You do a damn good impersonation,’ he said.

I picked up a clean handkerchief from the laundry he’d scattered over the floor. ‘Just hold this over it.’

He covered the wound carefully, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘You’re a cop,’ he said, ‘and the cops are mixed up in this. You’re all in on it — the SID, the uniforms, the FBI — even the CIA .’

I sighed. We were at an impasse, I could see that. Monod could have been involved in Ibram’s murder, but my instinct told me otherwise. I could have forced the information out of him, but that might have ended up being very messy and even counterproductive. He thought I was lying, and to get him to tell me of his own volition I’d have to prove I wasn’t.

‘I’ll tell you what, Monod,’ I said, slowly, ‘I think we have a bunch of things to talk about, things that would be of mutual benefit. I need to know about the map and Firebird.’

He watched me silently, biding his time. ‘I’m not going to make you talk,’ I said, ‘I want you to talk to me of your own free will. I’m ready to stick my neck out to show you I’m on the level. I’m letting you go.’

His eyes were heavy with disbelief, and I knew he scented a trap. ‘What for?’ he asked.

‘To show you I’m telling the truth. Think it over and we’ll meet up in a couple of days. Whatever you think, I’m not one of them.’

‘It’s a set up.’

‘Consider it,’ I said, ‘it’ll take you about three minutes to get into the street from here, and not even Clark Kent could get a hit team together that fast. It’s night and the moment you get out there, I’ve lost you. Like I say, I know I’m sticking my neck out and I might never see you again. But if I’m really a state assassin like you’re suggesting, I could easily pop you right here and no one’d say a dickybird.’

‘You want information.’

‘Sure I do. I want to know what the map is, and what Firebird is, but if I was what you say I am I’d know already. And believe me, if it was something else I wanted I could call the persuaders in and have your balls grilled right now. Why would I take the trouble of letting you go just to set you up?’

I could see from his eyes that he was wavering. It might be a trick, he was thinking, but even if it was, what did he have to lose? If he stayed here there was a good chance I’d rub him out anyway. And there might be the ghost of a chance I was telling the truth. I let the Beretta drop all the way to my side and Monod watched it. He wanted to believe me, but like all the hardest things in life it required a leap of faith. As Sanusi said, faith is what counts. The difficult part would be getting from the chair to the door. At last he stood up shakily, never taking his eyes off the Beretta. I handed him a blank card with Hammoudi’s number on it.