Firebird (28 page)

‘Wiggle my toes?’

‘Yes. Wiggle your toes. And only tap
lightly
with the camel stick or she’ll be off like a gazelle. She’s old but she’s still got plenty of fight in her!’

Ross picked up his camel stick and slipped on to the back of his she-camel — the signal to start. I vaulted into the saddle. Rusasa roared and lurched to her feet with the explosive power I remembered so well — she would have taken off, too, if I hadn’t pulled back heavily on the rope. ‘You’re right,’ I told Ahmad, ‘she’s still got the old fire.’ He grinned and swung on to his own saddle. All around us camels snorted, spat and groaned as the troop mounted up. Then the
amnir
wheeled and led us at a fast trot out of the last vestige of the settled world and into the heart of the Red Land.

37

I will never forget that night’s march. It was a chance to reacquaint myself with the desert in a way that was impossible in a motorcar. The day’s heat had dissipated by the time we left al—Manakh, and the sun was already hovering above the western horizon, fusing serenely into sheepskin cloud laced with long sets of matching colours — burgundy, quince, chrome yellow, magma orange — building up in stacks and galleries as the sunlight grew more diffuse. There was a stillness to the air that you only hear in the deepest desert, a silence so deep there was almost a music to it — a bass resonant harmonic that reverberated like percussion deep down in your psyche. We rode at a brisk walk as the Hawazim always did in the desert, and the camels’ shadows were grasshopper creatures on the screen of the surface. As Rusasa swayed with her rollicking, easy gait, my eyes worked over the surface, picking out the signs of tiny dramas — the scuffle marks where a camel spider had fought and killed a scorpion, the carcase of a quail which had fallen out of the sky exhausted on its migration south, the imprint of coils and foot pads, where a snake had swallowed a lizard. I rode in silence reading these surface marks, lulled into a trance by the rocking motion of the camel, the crunch of camel pads in the gravel, the familiar slosh of water in the drippers, until the cloud finally absorbed the sun’s colours and the night unwrinkled like the folds of a great turtle skin, enshrouding us in darkness. By then, though, the moon was up and the stars were out in their full imperial majesty, undimmed by the lights of the city. Daisy rode beside me silently, nursing her thoughts, staring at the great panoply of the sky or watching me and copying the way I handled the camel, mouthing the same glottal clicks to urge the beast forward. She learned fast, and she was a natural, I thought, not sitting stiffly in the saddle but letting her body roll and flop with the camel’s jerky stride. We didn’t speak much. The night was a blue dome weighed down with a billion billion stars that sparkled like diamonds, rubies and sapphires — a glimpse of a cosmos so vast and unfathomable that Daisy gasped in awe and our camels pressed together shoulder to shoulder as if to remind themselves of their own existence.

It was midnight before we came to al-Bahrayn and by then it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. The place was an uninhabited oasis in the Western Desert containing two lakes and hundreds of acres of wild palm trees, that no one had tended for years. The main body of the Hawazim was encamped here, hidden under the palms, but all we could make out in the starlight was the glow of a few scattered cooking fires. As we came into the palm groves someone shouted a challenge. ‘Rein in!’ Ahmad whispered urgently. ‘We’ve posted a machine gun on the approach.’

Ross shouted back and a moment later we were couching our camels among the palms and the familiar smells of woodsmoke and uncured leather that I always associated with desert life. Dozens of shadows darted silently out of the palms, helping us off the camels, slapping me on the back, shaking my hand and calling my name. There was no accompanying ululation from the women, though, and I realized that this was an all-male camp — a
qom
or raiding party, without the black tents which were considered the property of the women. ‘We left the rest back in the Jilf,’ Ross told me, ‘we had to move fast and light.’

‘So you’re here, you city slicker!’ a voice cried in my ear, and I turned to see my third and eldest blood brother, Mansur, grinning all over his face and letting his boss eye roll maniacally. He shook my hand and hugged me, his one good eye blazing in the moonlight. ‘Welcome back, Sammy!’ he chanted. ‘Thank God for your safe return! Upon you be no evil! May the Divine Spirit grant you long life!’

‘No evil. May the Divine Spirit grant goodness to you and yours!’

He looked gaunt, I thought, but not as gaunt as his half-brother ‘Ali who was built like a beanpole. Mansur had none of Ahmad’s rope-like muscles, yet there was a sense of power about him, and he carried not a gram of spare fat. His body under the ragged
jibba
and
sirwal
looked all sharp angles, right up to his face, which was a nest of interlocking blades like a giant Swiss Army knife. His hair was a clotted mop of curls, thickly smeared with mutton fat. Ross was the
amnir
— the tribal leader, and held ultimate authority, but Mansur — ‘The One-Eyed Warrior’ — was the Water Master of the tribe.

‘I’ve a new son, now, Nawayr,’ Mansur said. ‘He’s called Mandi. That’s four I’ve got, thank the Divine Spirit. The wealth of the Hawazim is in their children, by God!’

‘The Divine Spirit grant them all long life!’

‘Amen. And who’s this angel of delight you’ve brought with you?’ he demanded, looking at Daisy. ‘You married secretly, you devil, without telling the tribe!’

I laughed, and Daisy pouted. ‘We’re not married,’ she said stiffly, shaking Mansur’s hand.

‘Not married!’ he exclaimed in mock astonishment. ‘What a fool you are, Sammy! You don’t find such a beauty as this every day. She has eyes prettier than a gazelle!’

Daisy couldn’t help grinning at the quaint compliment, and allowed Mansur to lead her to a roaring fire of dry bast the tribesmen were building up in a clearing between the palms. They laid out home woven rugs and embroidered leather saddle cushions for us to sit on. Daisy lowered herself down painfully. ‘God almighty!’ she said. ‘I feel stiff!’

‘Yeah, you get that the first time you ride a camel,’ I told her, ‘I did. You’re using unaccustomed muscles, that’s why. But it soon goes, and it never comes back.’

Ross sat down next to us and ‘Ali and Ahmad settled cross legged nearby. Mansur took up his place at the
amnir’s
right elbow, his blind eye glittering in the firelight. He opened an embroidered camel skin saddlebag and took out two bundles of russet coloured cloth, which he threw to me. ‘Proper desert clothes for you both!’ he said. ‘Stained it myself when the
amnir
said you were coming. I wondered about the girl, but he said she was
Afrangi
, so I put her down as an honorary man!’

‘You did right,’ I said, looking at Daisy, ‘she can move faster and shoot straighter than most men I know.’

I examined one of the bundles and found a Hawazim
jibba
and
sirwal
— the baggy pantaloons the tribesmen wore —and even a new checked headcloth and a pair of skin sandals. Daisy held her suit up to the firelight. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s an improvement on this old widow’s dress I’m wearing.’

We slipped off into the bushes for a moment to change and by the time we came back the camels had been expertly unloaded and turned into the shadows. Our double horned saddles had been laid in a neat row behind the rugs, and from the horns of each one were slung two drippers —goatskin waterbags — bulging like giant slugs. The mass of tribesmen were gathering around the fire in a huge circle — there must have been fifty of them, the finest warriors of the tribe. The Hawazim were an open community and had no sense of privacy — every one of them considered himself entitled to hear what they called
saqanab
— ‘the news’.

Daisy looked odd in her new desert hued outfit, which hung loosely on her, disguising her feminine contours. It wasn’t exactly a designer product — a poor match, I thought, for the Gucci handbag she carried her SIG in. But the value of Hawazim clothes lay in their comfort not their appearance, and they were far superior in the desert to anything outsiders had designed.

‘Ah,’ Ahmad commented as I took my place next to Ross, fitting my shoulder rig over the
jibba
. ‘Now you look your old self!’

‘I hope I never have to go back to wearing trousers,’ I said, ‘the Divine Spirit be praised!’

The One-Eyed Warrior grinned with pleasure, and I felt a flush of gratitude towards him when I remembered how he’d looked after me as a child. Ahmad had been devoted to Ross and had defended him against all corners, but he and ‘Ali had resented my presence at first, and called me a ‘town boy’ and a ‘fellah’, until I’d lost my temper and gone for them with my fists. I’d always been fast, but even as a boy Ahmad had been built like Hercules, and I’d usually got the worst of it. The Old Man had seen what was going on, but in his wisdom he’d let it take its course, knowing that their mockery would oblige me to learn quickly. He’d been right about that, and eventually Ahmad, ‘Ali and I had become close. But I’d never forgotten how Mansur — the eldest — had taken me under his wing, smoothed over the squabbles and made me feel part of the family. I’d had a special place in my heart for him ever since. It hadn’t been easy becoming a Hazmi — their margin of survival was tight and they made no allowance for outsiders. Apart from my mother, though, they were the only real family I’d ever known.

Half a dozen of the men had begun to make coffee, toasting fresh beans on long spoons in the fire, then smashing them in brass mortars. Each mortar had a different tone, and each tribesman his own rhythm, so that the sound rang out like a peal of bells. Soon the delicious scent of fresh coffee filled the night and the coffee servers were working their way through the tribesmen, each with a brass tray and a hornbill spouted coffee pot. The servers carried only one cup each — a dish a little bigger than the bowl of an egg cup — and no more than a few drops of coffee were poured at a time. Each drinker was expected to drink three cups, and as new arrivals we were served first. The coffee was strong, spiced with ginger and cinnamon, and tasting nothing like the anaemic stuff I’d had in the city. By the time I’d drunk my third cup I’d begun to wake up, and I watched Daisy sipping hers experimentally. ‘Drink it all in a swallow,’ I told her, ‘and take three cups. Any more is considered greedy, any less an insult.’ When she’d finished I showed her how to waggle the cup from side to side in Hawazim fashion before replacing it on the tray. There was a bass murmur of voices from the assembled men, almost like a meditation, and the flames flickered in the hearth, playing patterns across the faces, illuminating some and obscuring others. They sat proudly upright, with their rifles nestling in the crooks of their elbows, each awaiting his turn at the coffee.

Ross put his cup back on the server’s tray and removed his glasses, rubbing them on the sleeve of his
jibba
. He took five slow breaths and replaced them, then he turned to me. ‘Elena told me to salute you from her,’ he said, ‘and from our son Risaala. He’s four years old.’

‘The Divine Spirit salute them,’ I answered. Ross’s son hadn’t yet been born when I’d left the desert, and I was tickled to find out he had named him Risaala, ‘The Message’.

‘Now let’s get down to business,’ he said, ‘
saqanab
. What is the news?

Saqanab
was a ritual acted out whenever two or more Hawazim encountered each other after an absence, and it had nothing to do with the townsman’s concept of news — politics, disasters and international events. It was a sort of exchange of consciousness — a detailed description of everything the tribesman had seen, heard or experienced. Through
saqanab
the Hawazim built up a complete mental map of everything that had occurred or was occurring in the desert around them.

‘
Amnir
,’ I said to Ross, ‘I never found the creature’s hideout. I followed up every story, investigated every lead. It all came to nothing. Last night, and the night before I got near enough to touch it, but both times it gave me the slip. It has killed twice in two days —’

‘Two days!’ Ross cut in. ‘It hasn’t killed so frequently since it left the Fayoum. This means it’s building up to something — getting ready for a big move.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘the problem is that it has to be well camouflaged now. It’s inhabiting someone high up in society — could even be a face we know.’

Daisy listened with her mouth open. ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘Hell, we’ve been attacked by a hit squad and fought a running battle with the police and God knows who else, and you’re talking about some
creature
! I may be ignorant of your ways. I’m sure I’m behaving like an impatient asshole in your book. But I’ve been shot once and shot
at
a dozen times in the past twenty four hours, and before it happens again perhaps some kind soul would tell me just what the hell is
going
on
!
’

38

Ross sat up straight and his eyes emerged from the darkness, his face reflecting the light in a warm, earth coloured glow. There was a murmur of disapproval from the watching tribesmen. Daisy was right: to them she was an ignorant outsider and she’d broken protocol. The Old Man would have given her short shrift, I knew, but I wondered how Ross would react. He took a series of deep breaths and relaxed. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘it’s not our way, but you’ve risked your life for one of us, so maybe you have a right to know.’ He paused and contemplated the situation for a moment. ‘I’ll make you a bargain,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you the whole story, as long as you level with us.’

‘All right,’ Daisy said, ‘it’s a deal.’

Ross pulled a skin bag from nearby and rummaged in it, bringing out two carved wooden pipes with brass stems, and a small pouch of tobacco. ‘Smoke?’ he asked Daisy. She wrinkled her nose and Ross passed one of the pipes to me. He took a handful of tobacco, then gave me the pouch, and we both filled our pipes. All around the fire the tribesmen were doing the same, I noticed, and the fragrance of tobacco was added to the coffee scented air. I handed the pouch back to Ross and he took a long spill from the fire, lighting first my pipe, then his own. Bending over in the firelight, with his pipe, beard, and spectacles he looked like some time ravaged but erudite college professor, I thought. Then he sank back, and only a net of dark, angular lines was left on his face. He took a deep take on the pipe and let the smoke out slowly. I did the same, and coughed: it had been a long time.

Ross composed himself, blew out smoke, and glanced at Daisy. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘what you’re about to hear might sound crazy. You might think we’re a pack of screwballs, but I can assure you it’s all absolutely true, so please just hear me out.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It began four years ago,’ he said, ‘with a bad miscalculation on my part. In fact, it was almost my first act as
amnir
of the tribe, and I botched it. I had a very dangerous creature in the palm of my hand and I let it escape. This desert is the most arid tract of land in the world, and I thought the desert would do the dirty work. That was stupid. We had no knowledge at all of how this creature was made up, though we knew it was capable of changing form. I thought it would soon die of dehydration. I was wrong.’

Daisy stared at Ross, her eyes picked out in a ray of moonlight. ‘What was this creature?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘A ghoul,’ Ross said.

The matter-of-fact way he said it sent a shiver through me. Daisy looked shaken, and there was a mutter of ‘The Divine Spirit protect us’ from the ranks of tribesmen. I saw many of them making the sign for defence against the evil eye.

‘Of course,’ Ross went on, ‘that’s what we Hawazim call it. Actually it wasn’t from this world at all. It probably came from somewhere in Canis Major — possibly from a planet that orbits the white dwarf Sirius B.’

‘You mean an
alien
?
’

‘Sure, but the Hawazim don’t know that term. The creature had been here for decades — perhaps centuries. It’s a shapeshifter, able to “cross over” — to take on the appearance of human beings and assume their memories and personalities. It’s not the first of its kind to visit our planet.’

‘You mean it’s still alive?’

‘Unfortunately yes. Only a few months after I last saw it running off into the desert, there were reports of attacks by a ghoul in the Fayoum Oasis. We were across the border in the Sudan at the time, but I sent ‘Ali and Ahmad to find out what was going on —’

‘The boy!’ Daisy said, looking at me, ‘the Muslim boy buried in a Christian graveyard at the Fayoum! The old Arab there said he’d been attacked by a ghoul!’

‘Yes,’ Ahmad said, ‘one of the victims was taken to St Samuel’s Monastery and died there. The
amnir
sent me to look into it because I’d been there with him when we let it go. I remember it well, because I had a slug in my thigh at the time, and but for Omar and Elena I might have bled to death. Well, it was winter, and by God it was cold! ‘Ali and me left our camels with relatives at Sohaj and went to the Fayoum disguised as fellahs. We talked to the Bedouin there — the Harab — at least they call themselves Bedouin, but they aren’t really. Most of them live in mud houses, and they have more cattle and water buffaloes than camels. We talked to folk who’d actually seen the ghoul. Said it was a hairy beast with a goat’s head and bandy legs, exactly like the thing I’d seen running off into the desert that summer. And that was incredible, by God, because we’d last seen it somewhere near the Jilf, which meant it had made a distance of ten camel days on foot and without water. No human being could have done that.’

He drew on his pipe again, and ‘Ali interrupted him. ‘You sound like you’re in love with it!’ he said, and the tribesmen chortled. ‘Perhaps you should make it your second wife!’

‘My wife would never stand it!’ Ahmad rejoined instantly. ‘She’d make its life a misery!’

There were more bursts of laughter from the tribesmen, but Ahmad blew out smoke and adopted a serious tone. ‘The beast had struck at least four times in the Fayoum area,’ he said, ‘and the attacks had all happened in the space of a month. The victims were young Arab boys or girls out in lonely places herding camels or sheep, so there were no witnesses to the attacks, only people who arrived just afterwards and saw the creature disappearing into the distance. After that month, the attacks suddenly stopped. We even visited the Cave of the Owls where the Harab claimed the ghoul lived, but we found no sign of it. It was clear that it had moved on. Our visit to the Fayoum was worthwhile, though, because we found out something we didn’t know — that the creature hunts human beings and drinks their blood.’

The tribesmen muttered darkly, holding up their fingers against the evil eye.

Daisy stared at him aghast. ‘So Sanusi wasn’t such a fruitcake after all,’ she said, ‘there
was
a ghoul in Cairo.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and I spent more than three years trying to track it down.’

‘When the attacks stopped in the Fayoum, they started up in Khan al-Khalili,’ Ross said, ‘and we realized the ghoul had shifted to the city. I sent Sammy there to find it, posing as a cop. He was the only one apart from myself who could pass as a townsman, and Hammoudi helped manufacture a cover. Hammoudi hadn’t seen the creature and was dubious, but he agreed to help. In fact Sammy’s cover was Hammoudi’s idea, and it was a good one, because as an SID man he would always have his ear to the ground. The problem is that the creature is tremendously powerful. It has some kind of hypnotic ability, and it’s capable of getting people under its control. In its last life —’

‘You mean it’s happened before?’

‘Yes, and last time it cost me the death of my best friend Julian Cranwell. My wife and I only escaped by the skin of our teeth, thanks to Hammoudi and some good friends here. That time it had spent years building up massive support — it’d resurrected a secret society called “The Eye of Ra” — the new incarnation of an ancient brotherhood going back to pharaonic times that was originally set up to make sure no “uninvited guests” got control of the planet.’

‘Are you saying these creatures have been visiting earth for thousands of years?’

‘Yes. I discovered that there’s a whole secret history surrounding human civilization that you won’t find in any history book. Over the centuries, the purpose of the brotherhood got perverted, and instead of defending earth against the aliens it started dealing with them to its own advantage. The alien’s objective was to send some kind of message across 8 light-years of space to its home planet, and it had the patience to develop all the resources it needed to do that. The Eye of Ra organization was one of those resources, and in this century it has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of people who came near to finding out the truth. The creature had even created another organization in your country, composed of some of the top men.’

Daisy went very still suddenly, her eyes glued to Ross’s face. ‘What was the name of this organization?’ she enquired.

‘It was called MJ—12 — codenamed Majesty.’

For a moment Daisy looked completely disoriented. Her eyes started out of her head, and she seemed to be having trouble controlling her breath. Her eyes remained riveted on Ross, as though she’d seen something terrifying there. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she stammered.

Ross smiled at her, the light of the flames glinting dimly on his teeth. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said, ‘you’d be justified in thinking we’re a bunch of looneytunes.’

Daisy shook her head and shifted her gaze to the fire. ‘I don’t think you’re a bunch of looneytunes,’ she said slowly, ‘because I know all about M J—12. It was supposed to have been formed in 1947 by President Truman in response to the Roswell Incident, when an alien spaceship crashed in New Mexico. Actually it existed long before that under the name of the “Jason Scholars”, whose function was supposedly to assess any threat to earth from extra-terrestrial life forms. Most Americans believe it’s a myth, but it’s not — it has twelve members, and they include among others the chiefs of the FBI and the CIA.’

‘So what don’t you believe? That the creature exists?’

Daisy laughed tensely. ‘I believe the creature exists,’ she said, ‘because one of my first jobs was to infiltrate a place called Area 51 in the Nevada desert. It’s a test site for aircraft, and was within the same area as the Roswell Incident. I saw things there I didn’t want to see. Bits of alien spacecraft, ancient teleportation devices — even the mummified bodies of the aliens themselves.’

Ross was gazing at her stiffly now. ‘Who sent you to investigate Area 51?’ he asked. ‘The FBI ?’

She raised her eyes and looked at him. ‘My orders come directly from the White House. My assignment is to monitor the activities of MJ—12.’

There was a stunned silence, while we let the words sink in. Ross whipped off his glasses and glared at her. ‘Ali and Ahmad put their pipes down and sat up.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘the FBI role was my deep cover, but I was recruited by the White House before I even went to Berkeley. A lot of people in the U S government have been suspicious of MJ—12’s activities for a long time, but they mostly keep quiet. Those who meddle have a habit of disappearing. They’re convinced that Majesty has been dealing with aliens for years to get a handle on their technology. All that would be dandy if it wasn’t that there are close links between MJ—12 and the military industrial complex. What I can’t believe is, you just confirmed that an alien is controlling MJ—12. Shit! I had to come all the way to the desert on a camel to find out.’

For a moment there was absolute silence, but for the crackle of the palm bast in the fire. From somewhere behind us the camels spluttered and groaned ominously. Ross replaced his glasses. ‘So who chose you for this...assignment?’ he asked.

Daisy pursed her lips. ‘That’s the one thing I can’t tell you. I was selected on the recommendation of backers who have to remain anonymous. But I swear I’m on the side of the angels. You have to believe me.’

‘Someone once told me there are three kinds of creatures,’ Ahmad commented, ‘Human beings,
Jinns
and angels. The ghoul is a kind of
Jinn
, so being on the side of the angels can’t be bad.’

‘So how come you
are
here?’ Ross asked.

Daisy grinned palely in the darkness. ‘It was a spin off from my operation inside Area 51. The place has become a sort of museum of weird material, and I discovered some ancient Egyptian artefacts— a thing called the Akhnaton Papyrus, and the original Pin Reis Portolan — a map of the world made on some stuff so light it can be carried in your top pocket. That’s what put me on to Doctor Adam Ibram. He’d been at Area 51 researching the Egyptian material, and I found out he was a member of MJ—12.’

‘God help us!’ I said. ‘Ibram was mixed up with Majesty?’

She smiled. ‘Not mixed up,’ she said, ‘he was a fully-fledged Klansman. It wasn’t on his FBI security file, though. I followed him here to Cairo and a week after I arrive the guy’s been stiffed!’

‘So Firebird’s an M J—12 project?’

‘You can bet on it. All the stuff about Militants was dust in our eyes, Sammy. Whoever was behind the Ibram killing deliberately planted the Sanusi amulet to lead us up the garden path. Might have been Van Helsing — he’s in this up to his eyeballs. Maybe he was the Sayf ad-Din character who stole it from Sanusi. He could even be your ghoul.’

‘Shit!’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before? It would have made things one hell of a lot simpler!’

‘Trust works two ways, Sammy. I kept on dropping hints right from our first meeting but you didn’t confide in me, you just retreated into your shell.’

Ross removed his glasses again, and wiped the lenses on his
jibba
carefully. He replaced them and the firelight caught them, turning his eyes behind them to flecks of orange flame. ‘I’ve heard of Adam Ibram,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you ought to tell me about Firebird!’

‘The Firebird Project was a plan originated by the Shemsu-Hor in about 10,500 BC ,’ I said, ‘a plan that included the construction of the Great Sphinx and the Giza pyramids, and culminated in some kind of ritual about eight thousand years later. The central role in the ritual was played by the Benben Stone. It was the capstone of the Great Pyramid, but later vanished.’