Tales of the Red Panda: Pyramid of Peril (7 page)

“And once again, sir,” said the manager of the Imperial Hotel
, “let me apologize for the dramatics of last night.”

The Cairo police had been through the upper floors of the hotel for hours, searching for the room from which a mysterious man in black had fallen, without a great deal of success. It had been a long night for the manager, but he seemed most anxious to soothe his wealthy young guest who had taken the entire top floor.

The young man, for his part, seemed remarkably undisturbed by the entire affair, and certainly bore no indignation toward the hotel. He dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. “The police have come to no conclusions, then?” he asked casually.

“None
, sir,” the manager said sadly. “They have been through every room and found only one that was suspicious.”

August Fenwick raised an eyebrow and it seemed clear that he wished to hear more. The manager silently wished that he had said nothing, but he obliged. “A room on the floor below yours, sir,” he said
, “occupied by a young Italian woman. The room was quite empty, and no one has seen the Signora since she checked in. The police found only an empty suitcase.”

“Oh dear,” Fenwick said with a shake of his head
, “that is most unusual.”

The manager shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

“I do hope nothing has happened to the poor lady,” Fenwick said, “but I don’t suppose it has much to do with our mysterious caller of last night.”

“No
, sir,” the manager smiled, relieved. “I imagine, sir, that when all is said and done, police will conclude that the unfortunate man was climbing the building from the outside, attempting to gain entry.”

“Like some sort of human fly?” Fenwick asked, amused
. “Why the devil should he do that?”

“Robbery, sir,” the manager said sadly. “The security in the building is far too good for an intruder to gain access to the upper levels from within
.” He continued, blissfully unaware of the fact that this was profoundly untrue, “So he tried another route.”

Fenwick nodded and sipped coffee from his cup. “It would seem, sir, that the Hotel Imperial is just as unassailable from without as within,” and he raised his cup slightly in a small gesture of salute at which the manager took exceptional pride.

“I thank you, sir,” he bowed his head, “and for your patience through all of this.”

Fenwick waved his hand again. “A few minutes of wakefulness is a small pri
ce to pay for law and order,” he said. “If the police should require anything further for the next several days, my staff will be happy to assist you.”

The manager blinked. “You are travelling, sir?”
he asked.

Fenwick nodded. “Just a bit of a jaunt,” he said
, “up to Alexandria to visit some old friends. Shan’t be more than a couple of days. Perhaps three.”

The manager bowed his head again. “Then I wish you good journey, sir,” he said, backing toward the door.

“Thank you again,” Fenwick said graciously, allowing the manager to leave before casting aside his smoking jacket and moving back toward his chamber with a burst of energy the manager would never have expected from his laconic guest.

“Weston,” Fenwick called as he moved
, “is there any more coffee?”

“There is indeed, sir,” the butler said, emerging from the closet with an armload of shirts
. If you will allow me just one moment, I shall-”

“It’s all right,” Fenwick said, pouring it himself from a beautiful silver service
, “I’ve got it.”

“Yes
, sir,” Weston said, his arms still full of his burdens.

“What are you doing with all of those?” Fenwick asked.

Weston blinked. “I am packing them, sir,” he said.

Fenwick looked bemused. “I’ve already packed my bag, Weston,” he said. “It’s over there.”

The bag that Weston saw when he turned was not exactly small. Indeed, it was larger than Fenwick would have liked to travel with, were it not necessary to bring as much of the Red Panda’s gear as possible. Still, the sight of it seemed to give Weston pain. “Oh, sir-,” he protested.

“I told you, Weston, Colonel McElroy’s
household is not a large one,” Fenwick said. “I shan’t be doing anything terribly formal while I’m in Alexandria. The Colonel is very outdoorsy. I expect there will be a good deal of hiking. And I promise I won’t let Miss Baxter come along unless she wears a big hat.”

Weston’s moustache moved, and Fenwick knew the man had smiled, if only for a moment.

“Weston?” he asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing at all, Master Fenwick,” he said.

“You’re troubled about the trip?” Fenwick asked. “About Miss Baxter driving me to Alexandria?”

“No
, sir,” Weston lied.

“This is the job, Weston,” he said. “She is my driver. I am going to Alexandria and she is driving me
.”

“I have no concerns of my own, sir,” Weston said. “There will be a certain amount of talk, and I shall deal with it. It would be simpler if she were plainer,” Weston said.

“We aren’t going to be alone, Weston,” Fenwick said. “She will be with the McElroy’s staff and I will be with the Colonel and his wife. And there could be no more effective chaperone than Lady McElroy, let me tell you.”

Weston smiled again.

“You’d be perfectly welcome to come along,” Fenwick said. “I’m sure they could find room for you somewhere.”

Weston bowed his head. “I thank you
, sir,” Weston said, “but since it is a small household, I should rather not be a burden. And I do much fear the idle hands of the rest of the staff, left behind with nothing to do.”

“Yes, I take your point,” Fenwick smiled. “Well, keep them busy, Weston. Take them to the
pyramids and such, this is their chance for a bit of a holiday.”

“Sir?” Weston seemed surprised.

“You’ve got the household money I left you, yes?” Fenwick asked.

“Of course, sir,” the butler replied.

“Well then, run through that in the next few days keeping that lot out of trouble,” Fenwick said, “while I fulfil obligations to an old friend. I’ll wire you before we leave Alexandria – you’ll have plenty of time to whip everyone back into action stations before I cross the threshold. All right?”

The moustache moved again, more broadly th
an before. “Yes, sir,” Weston said. “That is most kind, Master Fenwick.”

There was another burst of giggling from the hallway, and several sets of excited footsteps on the run.

Weston closed his eyes in frustration, just for a moment. Fenwick looked quizzical. “Weston?” he asked. “Is it just possible that there is something… going on with certain members of the staff?”

“There are any number of things going on, sir,” Weston said
, “about which, I promise you, you do not wish to know.”

“I expect you’re right,” Fenwick said, picking up his bag. “You deal with it, I’ll see you in a couple of days
.” He paused as the two men neared the door. “And if there is any chatter, you might remind some of these gigglers that they have no business casting aspersions upon my very well-behaved driver, even if she isn’t plain. I don’t object to a certain amount of… enthusiasms, but I won’t stomach hypocrisy.”

“I quite agree, sir,” Weston said gravely, and stepped out to call the elevator for his master.

Fenwick bounded through the lobby of the hotel and emerged to find Kit standing in front of a large and serious-looking vehicle. She seemed quite pleased with herself.

“Where’s the car?”
he asked.

“Traded it in for this baby,” she grinned. “It was good for city driving
, but this is for rough terrain. The man called it a lorry.”

“That’s what the British call all trucks,” Fenwick said.

She nodded. “That explains where they put the steering wheel,” she said, opening the front passenger door for him. “I’m on the other side.”

They piled into the truck and he looked around as if he had settled in
to quite an alien environment, but he seemed to like it well enough. She wondered if being on the left side was enough to keep him from noticing that she had worked him up into the front seat with her.

“Right,” he said
, “to Luxor.”

“Roger that,” she said, putting the car in gear. “I wonder if something has occurred to you.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“If we had thought of just
lying
about where we were
going
back in Toronto, we wouldn’t have had to bring all those birds along in the first place,” she beamed at him.

He enjoyed the smile too much to argue with it.

“It’s an interesting point,” he said.

The moon seemed enormous in the desert night, and the field of stars above seemed to roll on forever. The night hung close to the low rooftops of Luxor, and put on a more breathtaking display than they ever could over a big city like Cairo. Or Toronto, for that matter. A girl who had spent almost every night of her young life deep within a city could sure get used to stars like that, Kit Baxter reflected, not for the first time. As the night wore on, the Flying Squirrel found her eyes drifting to the heavens on display more often than perhaps they should have, but she was certain that the Boss had things under control.

“Anything yet?” she asked at last.

“Our playmates haven’t so much as shifted in their seats for an hour,” the Red Panda replied gravely.

“You sure they’re not dummies?”
she asked helpfully.

“Thanks,” he said wryly
. “I have them on infra-red.”

“Not gonna be easy tracking them when they do move,” she offered, still not looking. “Rooftop density ain’t what it could be, and we don’t know the terrain.”

“I think we’ll make out all right,” he said.

“Which you’re basing on
…?”

“An abiding faith in the power of dumb luck,” he offered.

She smiled and looked away from the stars toward the shadows where he crouched, watching. She shifted her ground and leaned around him to gain a better view of the street below. The maneuver brought her body closer to his that she usually allowed herself to get, but she resisted the impulse to correct this, in part because she didn’t want to draw attention to this sudden proximity, and in part because she wondered how long she could get away with it. They watched in silence like that for several minutes until she had to admit that she was not focused on the task at hand in the least but simply on the sheer nearness of the Red Panda, and as such she was actually slightly less help to him than during the time she had spent looking at the stars.

She shifted away and gave her head a little shake. From the moment they had arrived in Luxor they had been aware that they were being watched. They had checked into their hotel under a new pair of assumed identities, supposedly as brother and sister, which was visually unlikely and disturbed Kit Baxter on a number of levels but she supposed they didn’t really need to be fooling anyone. Apart from perhaps the desk clerk, and even he had looked suspicious when he had assigned them adjoining rooms on the hotel’s top floor. Night had quickly fallen
, and they had put on their work clothes and stepped out into the darkness to watch the watchers. The Flying Squirrel had been delighted at the prospect of a little action at last, except that three hours later they still hadn’t budged.

“Think they’ve got someone on the back door?”
she asked.

He nodded. “I imagine they would have to,” he said. “I
also don’t imagine there’s much use in splitting up. Wherever they make their move from, these two mugs will know about it.”

Her face broke into a wild, toothy grin. “Say
these two mugs
again,” she said breathlessly.

“No,” he protested. “Will you cut that out?”

He didn’t sound like he really wanted her to. In fact, if he had really wanted her to stop, he wouldn’t have said anything at all, just allowed a blanket of silent disapproval to settle over their little corner of the rooftop. So obviously, she pushed things a little further. “I can’t help myself,” she said. “It’s like a Cagney movie up here. Did you sneak out to the pictures behind my back?”

He said nothing to that and for a moment Kit thought she might have carried the act too far, but then she noticed the coiled tension creeping into his muscles as he waited, preparing him for action in an instant.

“We’ve got movement,” he said.

She leaned around him, close to him again
, but this time neither of them noticed. This was business. A tall, dark man in a fez was running down the steps of their hotel toward the parked car they had been watching all this time.

“Looks like the man in the back was the one that went in,” she said.

“I don’t know what they were waiting for,” he said disparagingly.

“Well,” she offered
, “the last one that surprised you in your hotel room got thrown from the top floor.”

“
Yes, but this hotel is only four stories high,” he said with mock sincerity.

“Ah,” she said sagely, as if thi
s were a very interesting point.

The two men in the car got out as their confederate approached and there was a hasty
discussion in the street.

“You’re right about the rooftops,” he said, never taking his eyes off the men
. “Not sure a run is going to work, and we can’t afford to miss this lead.”

“So what do we do?”
she asked. “Dive in and pound some truth out of them?”

“We can’t run the risk that they’re just hired muscle,” the Red Panda said
, “and I don’t want to tip our hand if we can help it. They were sent here for us, either to watch us, or something more serious. In any event, they’ve lost us. What will they do?”

“Go home and get a good night’s sleep?”
she said brightly.

“They’ll go report to their boss,” he said
, “the menace in back of this.”

“And that’s our best chance of finding Max, I get it,” she said. Sometimes she was not entirely certain that he knew when she was kidding. “So what do we do?”

He was already on the move, slipping into the shadows along the side of the building. “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,” he said. “Keep your Radio Ring open, one of us ought to make it where we’re going.”

“Roger that,” she said, extending her arms and flexing her hands in a very particular manner. As she did so, she triggered the controls that released the remarkable gliding membranes
concealed beneath the arms of her costume. They made a very slight flapping noise in the breeze. Kit pulled her arms in tightly against her body to restrain them and yanked down the flying goggles built into her cowl as she watched the men look hastily up and down the street, as though on the off-chance that they might find their missing targets out for an unexpected stroll.

The men ran back to the car. This wasn’t going to be easy. She was only six stories up, which was not a lot of altitude for a long flight
, even if you were very good at this sort of thing. Parts of Luxor would lend themselves to a run-and-glide style, but there were other long stretches where she would be in the middle of nowhere, with only the strategic firing of her Static Shoes to keep her aloft. Just like gliding across the Don Valley at night, she supposed, except there she knew the terrain and wasn’t in a
de facto
foot race with the Red Panda, one which she was quite determined not to lose.

She decided to give the stooges below the benefit of the doubt and suppose that they had their getaway car pointed in the right direction
. She stepped off the edge of the building and into the night air. She fired the Static Shoes to repel her upwards away from the rooftop and arched her back to pull up, fighting for all the altitude she could get. A crosswind bucked her backwards like a mule, but she wrestled with it for a moment and mastered it, using it to lift her still higher as she circled around.

She turned her body back toward the now-moving car, and the race was on. The Flying Squirrel could not afford to lose any altitude to
slow down, and she was grateful that her quarry seemed to be in a tremendous hurry to get home and report the bad news. The car whipped through what traffic it encountered, and Kit kept pace well through the twists and turns of downtown. Focused entirely upon the task at hand, the Flying Squirrel had no time to wonder what had become of the Red Panda, but with the getaway car travelling at close to top speed, she had good reason to believe that she was winning the race.

After t
en harrowing minutes of bobbing and weaving around buildings and over rooftops, she could see a long, dark stretch coming up ahead, and knew that if the car did not change its course, it would soon leave the lights of town behind and plunge into that unknown blackness. If only there were some way of activating the nightvision setting in her flight goggles without folding her gliders and losing both speed and altitude. She almost never used it when she was gliding, as it felt unnatural to her and made her question what she was seeing while making split-second decisions, but she had to admit that they would make a long flight through pitch darkness less disconcerting. Still, there was nothing for it now.

The Flying Squirrel pushed for every iota of speed and felt the wind whipping past her as she
closed the distance between herself and the fleeing car. She knew that in an instant she would have only the headlights of the car she was following, not only to track her quarry’s progress, but to judge her own distance from the ground and to define the road itself, as the space immediately above it would be the only known obstacle-free path through the darkness. 

Just moments before they left the lights behind, she actually began to overtake the automobile, and she noticed with surprise that the car’s rumble seat was open. She was fighting
a tailwind for control, but she couldn’t help a curious glance down, where she saw in amazement that there was a man’s shape lying prone on the open seat. It took her an instant to realize that it was the Red Panda, lying comfortably as the car raced ahead to its destination. He smiled and waved his hand at her slightly, keeping it below the level of the car’s rear window. She began to mouth an epithet at him, but at that moment the car was swallowed up in blackness, and the Flying Squirrel with it.

The journey through the
almost-utter darkness was not more than another six minutes, though to Kit Baxter it felt like a harrowing eternity. She was determined not to fall behind. In the end, the car stopped so suddenly that Kit had to veer off hard to the right to avoid sailing clean over it and landing neatly in the headlights. She was already low by this point but still moving fast, and there was little time for her to repel herself with the Static Shoes to soften her landing. She rolled as she landed and the dry scrub rustled as she passed through it before throwing herself flat against the hard earth.

The three men paused as they stepped from the car, and Kit could see them considering the space where the slight sound had come from for a moment before dismissing it and heading for their destination – a run-down but still stately home far from any neighbours and surrounded by a stone wall. It looked like the sort of building that was sometimes built by
British officials far from home. Clearly some money had gone into its construction, but it felt out of place here, and when its original masters had left it, it appeared no one had wanted it. Until now. There were lights in the windows of the lower levels, and the men were making for the door with urgency but with the ease of familiarity. Jackpot.

She tapped the side of her goggles
quickly to activate the nightvision setting. Better late than never, she supposed, if only just. But she was more or less in one piece, and she would have won the race if the Red Panda hadn’t cheated. The lenses flashed to life illuminating the world around her in shades of grey. The surrounding landscape looked deserted for miles. Where was the Red Panda?

One look at the car through the grainy imaging of the nightvis
ion goggles confirmed that the rumble seat was now stowed, which meant that he had safely left his perch before the car’s occupants had opened their doors. She tapped the goggles again and the settings changed to infra-red. It was only then that she could see him, already almost up to the darkened second story of the old house.

She raced across the empty road and through the dusty front yard and was at his side in moments. He did not turn, but held his right hand up at his side as if to instruct her to slow down and be silent. She had any number of quips to make about his method of travel, not least of which were some unsubtle suggestions that the next time he stretched out in a rumble seat, he ought to let her squeeze in
with him. She particularly longed to watch his ears turn red when she said
squeeze
, but it seemed like it would have to wait. A moment later he had jimmied a window and they were standing in a darkened room on the building’s second floor.

He touched the side of hi
s mask and the blank white eye-lenses flashed with a faint glow, just for an instant. She knew that he had switched to nightvision, and she adjusted her goggles to match. The room was empty of furnishings but appeared to have once been a sizable study. There were a number of bedrolls on the floor and it seemed as if it were now in use as a barracks of sorts.

He nodded to her and opened the door, exposing a length of blackened hallway with some spill of light from a staircase at the far end.
They moved out into the hall and could hear an angry voice berating the men who had just returned. The words were indistinct, but the meaning was clear, as was the identity of the speaker. Kit reached out and touched the Red Panda’s arm and he turned and nodded to indicate that he had heard. It was their old friend, El-Nemr.

There were four more doors on the upper level, all
of them between the searchers and the stairs. They moved to each in turn and scanned the darkness within for signs of Maxwell Falconi. One room held several more bedrolls, more privacy than the first chamber to be sure, but not that much. Another was a bathroom which had the general appearance of having been shared by a large group of men for a number of days. The other two were set up for single occupancy, and each contained an actual bed. Hardly the Ritz, but comparatively speaking it wasn’t hard to guess that these chambers belonged to Pavli and Thatcher, if two such people actually existed. The masked heroes searched each room quickly, but found them devoid of any papers or possible clues.