Mr Impossible (2 page)

She opened her
mouth to tell Leena the plan. At that moment, the courtyard erupted
in shouts.

An
anguished wail rose above the other voices.

Daphne bounded up
from the divan and hurried to the latticed window, Leena beside her.
Coming up the stairs from the courtyard was a group of Egyptian men.

They bore the inert
body of Miles’s servant Akmed.

The following
morning

IN A MANSION in
another part of the Esbekiya, His Majesty’s consul general was
reflecting with mixed emotions upon the prospect of Rupert
Carsington’s head parading on a pike through the city streets.

In the month and a
half since the Earl of Hargate’s fourth son had arrived
inEgypt, he had broken twenty-three separate laws and been jailed
nine times. For what Mr. Carsington had cost the consulate in fines
and bribes,

Mr. Salt might have
dismantled and shipped toEnglandone of the smaller temples on
theislandofPhilae.

He now knew exactly
why Lord Hargate had sent his twenty-nine-year-old offspring toEgypt.
It was not, as his lordship had written, “to assist the consul
general in his services on behalf of the nation.”

It was to saddle
someone else with the responsibility and expense.

Mr. Salt brushed
sand from the document before him on the desk. “One ought to be
grateful, I suppose,” he told his secretary Beechey. “The
soldiery might have used this as an excuse for slaughtering the lot
of us. Instead they merely demand an extortionate fine and twice the
usual assorted bribes.”

Amazingly enough,
the injured soldier’s comrades had not hacked Carsington to
pieces and let their superiors make up a law to explain it later.
He’d certainly tested their patience on the way to the city.
Though outnumbered twenty to one, he attempted escape three times,
inflicting many injuries in the process.

Yet the city
remained quiet, and Lord Hargate’s troublesome son was alive
and in possession of all his limbs, confined to a rat-ridden hellhole
of a dungeon inCairo’s Citadel.

Though this
conveniently kept him out of trouble, one could not leave him in the
cesspit indefinitely.

The Earl of Hargate
was a very powerful man who could easily arrange for Mr. Salt’s
exile to some godforsaken, antiquity-less corner of the globe.

But getting
Carsington out—Good God! The consul reviewed the figures on the
document in front of him. “Must we pay all these people?”
he said plaintively.

“
I’m
afraid so, sir,” his secretary said. “The pasha has
discovered that Mr. Carsington’s father is a great English
lord.”

Muhammad Ali was an
ignorant, illiterate man, but he was not stupid. After someone had
read to him Machi-avelli’s
The Prince
, the pasha
ofEgypthad said, “I could teach him some things.”

One thing Muhammad
Ali could do to admiration— besides lead an army of deranged
killers repeatedly to victory—was count, and he had counted up
a ludicrous sum to free the great English lord’s son.

If Mr. Salt paid
the sum, his rapidly dwindling funds wouldn’t cover his
excavation expenses—and the instant he abandoned a site, his
French competitors would move in.

If, on the other
hand, he did not arrange for Carsing-ton’s release, Mr. Salt
might easily end up as British am-bassador to theAntarctic Peninsula.

“
Let me
think,” said the consul.

The secretary went
out.

Five minutes later,
he came in again.

“
Now what?”
said Mr. Salt. “Has Carsington blown up the Citadel? Made off
with the pasha’s favorite wife?”

“
Mrs.
Pembroke is here, sir,” said the secretary. “A matter of
great urgency, she says.”

“
Ah, yes,
Archdale’s widowed sister,” said the consul. “Something
of earthshaking importance, no doubt. Perhaps he has discovered a
vowel. I can scarcely contain my excitement.”

Though Mr. Salt was
mainly interested in acquiring impressive Egyptian artifacts, he did
have a scholarly interest, and had made his own attempts at
deciphering the baffling code. But today he was not in the mood.

He’d returned
from a too-short holiday in the suburbs to the Carsington fiasco.
Swiftly sinking into the gloom of his perpetual money troubles, he
could not view Mrs. Pembroke with scholarly detachment.

The deep mourning
she wore, head to toe—and her elderly husband dead more than
five years!—did nothing to raise the consul’s spirits.
She always put him in mind of certain ghostly shadow figures he’d
seen on the walls of royal tombs.

On the other hand,
the late Mr. Pembroke had left his young wife everything,
and
everything
comprised a magnificent property and an even
more magnificent fortune.

If Mr.Salt could
feign excitement about whatever little squiggle she imagined Archdale
had deciphered, she might feel inclined to invest a part of her
wealth in an excavation.

As she entered, Mr.
Salt arranged his mouth in a smile of welcome and advanced to greet
her.

“
My dear
lady,” he said. “How good of you to call! What an honor
this is! Please allow me to offer you refreshment.”

“
No, thank
you.” She put back her widow’s veil, revealing a pale,
heart-shaped face. Shadows ringed the unnaturally green eyes. “I
have no time for social pleasantries. I need your help. My brother
has been kidnapped.”

AKMED WAS NOT dead.
He had been badly beaten, though, and when at last he reached the
Esbekiya, he’d collapsed.

It was long past
sunset yesterday by the time he regained sufficient strength to
speak, and then he was barely intelligible. By the time Daphne made
sense of his tale, it was too late to act. At night the streets
ofCairobelonged mainly to the police and the felons they hunted.

In any event,
Europeans in difficulties must apply to their consul, not local
officials. Mr. Salt and his secretary being away yesterday, Daphne
had had to wait through the long night.

Now, body and
spirit exhausted, she was on the brink of hysteria. She could not
succumb. Men merely humored emotional women. She needed to be
listened to. If she wanted men to take action, she must first make
them take her seriously.

After her initial
shaky declaration, she let Mr. Salt lead her to a shaded portico
overlooking the garden. She drank the thick, strong coffee a servant
brought. It restored her fortitude.

She told the story
from the beginning, as requested.

Her brother,
servants, and crew had returned fromGizaearly yesterday morning.
Shortly after Miles disembarked from the ferry at Old Cairo, some men
who claimed to be police took him away. When Akmed attempted to
follow— to find out where they were taking his master and
why—he was taken up, too. The “police” dragged
Akmed to a solitary place, beat him senseless, and left him.

“
I did not
understand why they beat Akmed and abandoned him,” Daphne said.
“He believes these men were not police, and logic compels me to
agree. If they truly were law officers, why did they not take Akmed
to the guardhouse with Miles? Moreover, it is impossible that my
brother committed any crime. No person of sound intelligence would
dream of running afoul of the local authorities. Everyone knows that
diplomatic conventions mean little here.”

“
It will turn
out to be a silly misunderstanding, I daresay,” said Mr. Salt.
“Some of these petty officials are over-quick to take offense
at trifles. They are not all as honest as one could wish, either.
Still, there is no need for alarm. If Mr. Archdale has been jailed,
you may be sure the authorities will inform me before the day is
out.”

“
I do not
believe he has been jailed,” Daphne said. Her voice climbed. “I
believe he has been kidnapped.”

“
Now, now, I
am sure it is nothing of the kind. Merely an official looking for a
bribe. An all too common occurrence,” the consul added
bitterly. “They seem to think we are made of money.”

“
If money was
all they wanted, why not send Akmed directly to me with their
demands?” Daphne said. “Why beat him senseless? It is
illogical.” She waved her hand, impatiently exiling all
disorderly thinking from the discussion. “I believe the servant
was beaten to prevent his promptly reporting the incident. I believe
that while you try to humor me with comfortable explanations, the
trail to my brother grows ever colder.”

“
The trail?”
the consul said, startled. “I hope you do not seriously
consider that Mr. Archdale is the victim of a plot of some kind. Who
would risk torture and beheading to make off with a harmless
scholar?”

“
If you, who
have been consul general inEgyptfor six years, cannot produce a
plausible motive, it is absurd to ask a woman who has been here
scarcely three months,” she said. “It strikes me as
illogical as well to debate villains’ motives. It would make
more sense to find the persons responsible and ascertain their
motives by interrogating them, do you not think? And this ought to be
done sooner rather than later, I believe.”

“
My dear
lady, I beg you to recollect that we are not inEngland,” he
said. “Here we have noBow Streetofficers to undertake an
investigation. The local police are no substitute, being for the most
part pardoned thieves. I dare not abandon my many other
responsibilities to search for missing persons, nor can I spare my
secretary. None of my agents is within a hundred miles ofCairoat
present. As it is, we are sadly undermanned and underfunded for the
work we are expected to do. We are all of us a great deal occupied,
with scarcely a minute to collect our thoughts.” He added,
after the briefest pause, “All of us, that is to say, except
one.”

Two hours later

ALTHOUGH DAPHNE WAS
covered from head to toe, her face veiled, she’d forgotten how
clearly her clothes proclaimed, “European, female.” Until
she entered the Citadel and became aware of the men staring at her,
then looking away and muttering to one another, she hadn’t
considered she might be unwelcome.

She told herself
that (a) women were unwelcome in all too many places, and (b) these
men’s opinions didn’t signify. In addition to her maid
Leena and the consul’s secretary Mr. Beechey, she had an
official escort, one of the district sheiks. They followed the prison
guard down a deeply worn stone stairway that grew steadily darker
while the air grew increasingly rank and oppressive.

By the time they
reached the bottom, the stench was making her sick, and she was
wishing she hadn’t insisted on coming. She might have left it
to Mr. Beechey to arrange matters. She didn’t need to be here.

But she hadn’t
been thinking clearly. She’d been too aware of time passing,
every minute taking Miles more deeply into danger.

She needed help,
and the only help available, apparently, was being held in a dungeon
deep enough to be flooded during the inundation. Was that one of the
tortures employed here? she wondered. Would they leave a man chained,
to watch the water rise until it drowned him? Was Miles in such a
place?

She gave one quick,
involuntary shudder, then firmly banished the image from her mind and
squared her shoulders.

Beside her, Leena
murmured a charm against evil.

The men waved the
odd torches that worked like dark lanterns, lightening the gloom a
few degrees. They could not lighten the air, which was thick and
unspeakably foul.

“
Rejoice,
Ingleezi
,” the guard called out. “See who comes. Not one but
two
women.”

Chains clanked. A
dark figure rose. A very tall, dark figure. Daphne could not make out
his features in the gloom. Surrounded by protectors, she had no
reason to be alarmed. All the same, her heart picked up speed, her
skin prickled, and every nerve ending sprang into quivering
awareness.

“
Mr.
Beechey,” she said, her voice not as steady as she could wish,
“are you sure this is the man I want?”

An impossibly deep
voice, most definitely not Mr. Beechey’s, answered with a
laugh, “That would depend, madam, on what it is you want me
for
.”