The Illusion of Murder (14 page)

I know I was attacked and nearly killed for the key but even I find holes in my story because I can’t reveal possession of the key to fill the gaps. There is nothing I can say, nothing I can do, to repair my reputation. All but the man who attacked me are convinced that I have a weak female constitution that drives me to hysterics.

I’m so angry I need to blow off steam, I need a good scream, but that would really seal their opinion of me. If they knew that in New York I once actually convinced a host of doctors that I was hopelessly insane …

We’re approaching the dock to board the steam launch for the trip back across the delta when an eerie sound floats in the night air to us … not one from an animal, but a deep, steady rhythmical chant that pierces my soul like sharp daggers.

“What’s that horrible noise?” Lady Warton asks Von Reich.

“Ababdehs,”
Von Reich says. “Nomads who wander through the desert, always on the move. They have been around forever, long enough to have witnessed the rise and decline of ancient Egypt. It’s said the proof of their existence over the millennia is written on the sands. Every night the men sing and dance by their fires, chanting praises to Allah. If memory serves me correct, they dance in a great circle, moving incessantly from left to right, to the faithful moon of Shawwal. They believe the chant presages success for the sword of the Prophet.”

“What about the sword of the Prophet?” Lord Warton asks.

“They’re chanting about how much blood of infidels will be on it.”

“Look … there they are.” Lady Warton points off to our right.

In the distance a group of people are chanting and swaying under the light of the full moon. Dressed in flowing garments of white, they appear ghostly as they lift their arms at the moon.

“Are they pointing something at the moon?” she asks Van Reich.

“Yes, curved palm stalks, just part of their ritual.”

It makes no difference that their eerie howls and ghost dancing send cold chills down my back and up my legs. It doesn’t matter if they are putting a curse on me. I don’t care if the sphinx gets up from where it’s crouching and runs down the Nile, turning the waters red with the blood of foreigners.

All that matters to me at the moment is that someone had tried to kill me, another stain of blood on my great adventure around the world.

A morbid sense of dread follows me back to the ship because I know I have not left danger back at Tanis.

16

I
am a messenger of the Father of Terror.

Ahmad Kamil bows his head to Allah one more time before slipping into the still dark water of Port Said Bay.

His time has come. Tonight he becomes a warrior for Allah.

I am a messenger of the Father of Terror.
He repeats the phrase as a mantra while he slowly swims, cloaked by the dark of night and careful not to draw attention by splashing. His instructions are to board the steamship
Victoria
unnoticed and before the ship leaves the port.

His objective is the bow of the ship, which he has been told is the best place to avoid detection because the area is crowded with anchor hoisting and other machinery and equipment. He has been warned to stay away from all other areas even late at night since many passengers sleep on deck instead of in their cabins because of the oppressive heat.

I am a messenger of the Father of Terror,
Ahmad sings silently to himself.

While rumors race like wild fire that the sphinx itself will rise against the foreigners who occupy the land, it is not the powers of ancient Egypt that Ahmad has sworn homage to, but one that has flowed down the Nile River valley from the Sudan and ignited the minds and hearts of the people:
Jihad,
the Struggle, a holy war to rid the land of infidels and Egyptians who have sworn false promise to Allah.

The war against the Europeans and unfaithful Egyptians had been proclaimed by the Mahdi, the “Guided One,” whose appearance on Earth has ushered in the End Days and the Yaum al-Qiyamah, “Day of the Resurrection,” when the world will be rid of error, injustice, and tyranny.

Ahmad joined the battle by the faithful that will make the land pure for the return of the Mahdi because those who toil in the Struggle are to be among the Chosen.

To join the Struggle one must be a warrior for Allah, a
mujahid
, with a willingness to be a martyr for the cause.

A poor fisherman, death to Ahmad would be freedom from a harsh life of relentless desperation just getting enough food each day to stay alive. He has no wife or children because he cannot feed them, but his parents and the people of his village will honor his name when they are told of his deed.

Giving his life will be an opportunity to honor the will of Allah and receive the rewards given martyrs.

Ahmad knows he will not return from the task assigned to him. He will take a life and give his in sacrifice and receive his reward on the Day of the Resurrection—paradise for an eternity.

When he was told a woman must die, he was at first shaken, even frightened. Like all the men of his village, he was raised to protect women. But if her death is the will of Allah, so be it.

Reaching the thick, bow anchor chain, Ahmad mounts it, using hands and feet to pull himself up until he is able to belly over the bow railing.

On deck he crouches down, looking around to make sure he’s alone before he loosens the rope strapping down the canvas cover to a lifeboat and quickly slips underneath.

Peeking out from beneath the cover, he remembers as a boy standing on the river bank and watching crocodiles hiding in the murky waters, just their eyes and snouts above the water as they waited patiently for a victim.

Now, he will be that patient crocodile.

“The woman will come to you,” his leader told him.

Nestled inside the lifeboat, his mind swirls with what he had been told after he was named the chosen one:

My mission for Allah is to deliver a message in blood.

I will be blessed and enjoy the fruits of paradise for an eternity.

I am a messenger of the Father of Terror.

Allah Akbar!

PART II

Day 15

S
UEZ
C
ANAL

17

Getting a look at the Suez Canal dragged me early onto the deck when I would have preferred to stay in bed and bury myself under the blankets. Having no desire to be stared at or hear gossip about a young woman who imagines dark plots and cries “Murder!” I am at the rail when most of the ship is still asleep.

The famed canal is an enormous ditch with high sand banks that the ship moves through so slowly, no breeze is created over the deck. Even this early, the thick heat presses down, making it feel as if I’m standing on a hot plate.

The oppressive air puts me in a brown study. A normal reaction to seeing one of the greatest man-made monuments in the world would have put me into a high state of excitement, but my body is still sore and my anger still raw at being nearly killed.

“It’s really quite amazing, isn’t it?” The question gives me a start.

Frederick Selous edges next to me at the rail. This time he has obviously approached me when he could have avoided it.

Having such a gentlemanly air about him, I tell myself not to badger him further about what occurred between him and the ghost of Mr. Cleveland. It would be beating a dead horse.

“Yes, it is, though it’s really just a big ditch.”

“Quite, but it’s one hundred and twenty miles long and connects two great bodies of water. There were doomsayers who predicted that it would cause the Mediterranean to pour into the Red Sea with such force the entire planet would be thrown off kilter.”

He is fresh shaven and has had a haircut.

“Bath, too,” he says, amused by my examination of his toiletry. “I roused the ship’s barber early out of fear passengers who saw me would think I was a pirate who’d boarded the ship.” He leans beside me on the railing. “I was away from civilization for a week taking a look at Mount Sinai. ’Fraid what little water we had couldn’t be wasted on washing.”

“Did you find the Ten Commandments?”

“Actually, my friends were convinced Noah’s Ark was there, but we didn’t find it, either. See that caravan.” He points to my left at a camel caravan paralleling the canal. “They call camels ships of the desert, but that is no doubt what the caravanners are saying right now about this ship.”

“Why would they call our ship that?”

“Because the ship is lower than the sand banks of the canal, and from a distance you can’t see the water, making it appear that the ship is actually moving on sand. Truly a ship of the desert.”

“That must be a marvelous sight. Have you seen it?”

“Yes.” His eyes drift out to the desert and I feel like he’s looking past me to places no one else sees.

He is a striking figure of a man: tall, broad chested, with well-carved features that are both aristocratic and sensuous. I find few men able to convey both personal warmth and a strong masculinity, and Frederick Selous manages both.

While he impresses me as strong and assertive, I also detect a reserved side to his nature, perhaps even intellectual, not at all like most newspapermen I’ve met, and certainly a far cry from the boys in the newsroom back home who like to roll up their sleeves, put up their dukes, and wade into a story—when they aren’t spitting tobacco juice into a spittoon.

All those admirable qualities about him dim in comparison to the fact that I can’t trust him. His discussion on the beach with a dead man can be excused because anyone who had not met John Cleveland would have taken the man’s identity at his word. But Selous’s presence at the sheikh’s table, his suspiciously intense conversation with the marketplace magician, and his coziness with Lord Warton means I not only can’t rely on him to be an ally, I sense he is deeper into the quagmire than he puts on.

Not one to live in silence for long, I fill it with words. “It must be the greatest man-made construction project in history.”

“I suppose that’s true, since we really can’t count the Great Wall of China because it was built in segments over the centuries.”

“You’ve seen the canal before?”

“Many times.”

“On news assignments?”

He smiles. “I’m not actually a reporter, at least not a professional one and certainly not the caliber of one who is racing around the world on a story. I decided to take a sea journey and a Cape Town newspaper kindly asked me to send back observations of my trip. I’m a big-game hunter.”

“Is that a profession? Or a sport?”

“In my case, a profession.”

I had never met a big-game hunter, though I have read stories of men who explore trackless jungles on the Dark Continent in search of wild beasts and adventure.
*

“You should read
King Solomon’s Mines.
You’d probably enjoy it. It’s about a safari hunter, like you.”

Mr. Selous gives me a quirky smile, as if I said a joke and don’t know it.

“Yes … I should. Egypt’s quite a fascinating country, don’t you agree?” he asks. “So much colorful history and astonishing monuments.”

“I’ve seen little of it, but what I have seen has made a lasting impression upon me.” That is an understatement.

He looks away and then back to me with sympathetic eyes. “What happened in the marketplace was a terrible thing for any woman to witness.”

“For
anybody
to witness.”

“Quite so. Having the poor devil speak his dying words to you must have given you an even more significant connection to the tragedy.”

I nod. “Ah…”

“There is that
ah
again. What revelation have you received from the gods this time?”

“Lord Warton told you the man spoke to me. Or was it the magician who told you about Mr. Cleveland whispering to me?”

He appears at a loss for words for a moment. “You certainly don’t beat around the bush, do you? It was his lordship who told me you had held the man in his last moments. As for the magician, I told him about the snakes that have tried to put me in an early grave more than once.”

“Did Lord Warton attribute my belief that the murdered man was British to female hysterics?”

“Lord Warton was concerned for your female constitution under such trying circumstances, as any gentleman would be.”

“Mr. Selous, for your information, I have traveled without male protection across the American Wild West and untamed Mexico. Besides fighting my way up in a field dominated by men, I have gone into slums, prisons, and madhouses to cover stories, and have interviewed murderers, prostitutes, and thieves. Let me assure you that my female constitution is just fine. It is my sense of justice that is being trampled.”