Firebird (12 page)

‘Nothing,’ I said, soothingly, cursing Daisy’s impetuosity. I knew we’d have to tell him the full works now, or he’d clam up. ‘It’s just that “Firebird” might have been Ibram’s last word. It may mean anything or nothing, and it might not even be what he said at all.’

Sanusi’s screwed-up features had disbelief written all over them. He seemed calmer now, though, and I guessed he was torn between total denial and the desire to play the great authority. At last he sighed and eased himself to his feet. He put on his glasses and pulled a leather-bound volume from the nearest shelf, flipping through the pages and muttering. ‘Here,’ he said eventually, ‘take a look at this.’

He laid the open book on a table and we crouched around to peer at it. Sanusi pointed a spiky finger at a full page engraving of a heron with a human eye, perching awkwardly on the very apex of a cone. ‘This is the Firebird,’ he said, ‘also called the Bennu Bird, or Phoenix. The ancient Egyptians often envisaged it as a grey heron, probably because herons were common in the Nile marshes in the summer and migrated somewhere else in winter, but always returned.’ He paused suddenly and cocked an ear, listening. A faint scratching noise seemed to be coming from the walls. ‘What’s that?’ he said, almost to himself. I listened. The scratching sound came again.

‘Rats,’ I said, ‘you’re bound to get them in old houses.’

He cocked his ear once more. ‘No, not rats,’ he whispered. He turned on us accusingly, with round eyes. ‘Are you sure the
Jinns
never followed you?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But even if they had, how could they get into your walls?’

He ignored me and turned to listen again. The scratching was getting louder, and I had to admit that if it was rats they must have been monsters. Sanusi’s eyes were almost popping out of his head.
‘Jinns
,
’
he hissed. ‘Every time I have company they come to haunt me. I’m sick, sick, sick of this accursed torment!’ He turned and began banging on the wall with the side of his fist, so hard that the oil lamp wobbled in its cavity. ‘You hear me,’ he bawled suddenly, ‘get out! Get out I say! I’m sick of your lousy persecution! Get out this minute! I seek refuge in God from the stoned Devil!’ He paused, his fist held ready to hammer again, but the scrabbling had ceased. He stood listening for a moment, then, seemingly satisfied, he turned his attention back to us. ‘The swine!’ he said. ‘They always try to make a fool of me. I’ve exorcized them more times than I can count, but they follow my visitors and when the door opens they take advantage and sneak in. It’s not the scratching and scrabbling I mind so much as when they start throwing things about. They even trip me up, can you imagine that? I’ve been black and blue before now thanks to those accursed creatures.’ His eyes suddenly filled with fury again and he glared at the wall shaking his fist. ‘Get out and don’t come back!’ he yelled. ‘You hear me!’ I suppressed a grin. Since arriving we’d had ghouls,
Jinns
, and ghosts — what Hammoudi would have called ‘the full head-banger’s repertoire’.

‘Now, what were we saying?’ Sanusi said, looking round at us.

Daisy shifted nervously and rearranged her hands on her lap. ‘Why was the Firebird central to ancient Egyptian cosmology?’ she asked.

Sanusi chewed the end of his glasses, put them back on, and cocked his head to one side, as if pondering the question carefully. ‘When the Firebird cranked things up on the first morning,’ he said, ‘the era known as Zep-Tepi — the First Time — started with a bang. That was when gods like Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Horus and Set walked the earth as real beings. Afterwards the bird returned to its home in the Isle of Fire — a place among the stars, where gods were born and regenerated.’ He pointed at the engraving again. ‘Now, you see this cone thing the Firebird seems to be perched on?’ he enquired. ‘That’s the Benben Stone, which was closely linked with the Bennu Bird — Benben-Bennu — the words come from the same root, meaning “to procreate”. The Stone was the most sacred relic in ancient Egyptian mythology — it was thought to have cosmic origins. They said it had fallen out of the sky and thought of it as the Firebird’s “Egg”. The Benben Stone was the central artefact of the whole ancient Egyptian religion and the cult symbol of the Ra Brotherhood.’

‘The what?’ Daisy asked.

‘The Ra Brotherhood — an order of high priests initiated into all the secrets of their culture. The Brotherhood goes way back, probably under different names, to the First Time, Zep-Tepi — a kind of secret college working behind the pomp and circumstance, giving form and continuity to a culture that remained basically unchanged for thousands of years. The Egyptians believed that their civilization had been created by a small group of gods — the Neteru —who arrived on earth in the distant past, and whose age culminated in the rule of Horus. This era was succeeded by that of the Sages, the so-called Shemsu-Hor, or Horus-Followers, half-divine beings who transmitted the secrets of the gods across time to the fully human pharaohs. The Shemsu-Hor were probably the original Ra Brotherhood, who initiated the first historical pharaoh, known to us as Menes, Narmer or “King Scorpion”. Thereafter it was the Brotherhood who kept the whole thing on the rails. They were the most powerful men in Egypt, and they were the guardians of the Benben Stone, which was originally kept on top of an obelisk in the Temple of the Firebird at Heliopolis — a temple that no longer exists.’

‘I’d love to take a look at the Stone,’ Daisy said. ‘Where is it now?’

Sanusi beamed at her coldly. ‘I wish I knew, Miss Brooke,’ he said. ‘It went missing about 2000 BC. No one has seen it for at least four thousand years.’

12

When Sanusi escorted us to the yard door it was already night. Someone — probably the maid — had hung another oil lamp in the musty corridor, and our shadows were pallid ghosts lurching along its walls. We shook hands at the street door. ‘What about the amulet?’ Sanusi said. ‘It is a valued part of my psychic defences and I should like it back.’

‘Right now it’s police evidence,’ I said.

‘But what will you do with it?’

‘We still haven’t explained how one of Ibram’s killers came to be wearing it,’ I said. ‘With all due respect Doctor Sanusi, I’ve got to check your story out. It’s a sensitive case, and I have to make sure you’re really what you seem.’

It was provocative, I knew, and I didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. His eyes turned to ice and tiny pink circles appeared in the centre of both pallid cheeks. He snatched off his glasses and I saw that his tic had gone berserk. His hands shook slightly. ‘Nothing is ever quite what it seems,’ he said. He drew in a deep breath, trying to hold himself in check. ‘The world is full of shapeshifters. Ghouls disguised as men, men disguised as women, people who appear to be something but are really something else. Take you, Lieutenant Rashid, what are you really? A police officer? And who is she?’ He pointed his talon finger suddenly at Daisy. ‘A faceless woman! A lurker in the shadows!’

A shiver ran down my spine suddenly and I broke out into a sweat. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. The old man turned his hawk-like gaze back to me.

‘I’ve met plenty of policemen in my time,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never heard of a Hawazim detective. The Hawazim have too long a history of persecution by governments for that.’

‘I never said I was Hawazim.’

He snorted and put his glasses back on. ‘No, you didn’t,’ he said, ‘but the upper right fold of your ear tells a different story. It’s pierced, and the Hawazim are the only tribe I know of who have their ears pierced in that place. Now, didn’t the Hawazim have a lot of trouble with the police a few years back? I heard police troopers were killed. Curious that they should accept a member of a subversive group in the SID .’

So that was what the veiled comments were about, I thought. All that talk of appearances and underlying form, the rubbish about removing my shoes, which was a Bedouin custom, and his comment about the tea being up to ‘desert standards’. I should have been on my guard. I fixed the old man with my most intimidating stare, suddenly aware that Daisy’s eyes were glued to my face. ‘I don’t know anything about the Hawazim,’ I said, ‘I grew up as a street kid in Aswan. The gang I ran with all had their ears pierced there.’

‘Ah,’ Sanusi said, ‘is that so? Then what’s that lump under your jacket on your left arm? Eh? You are wearing a blade. I never knew a policeman to wear a knife, but I do know the customs of the desert Bedouin well, Lieutenant. Many of my ancestors were Bedouin. Now, the only tribe I know who wear blades on their left arms are the Hawazim. A coincidence, perhaps? Your street gang happened to have had that little quirk too!’

Daisy was laughing to herself quietly when Sanusi closed the door behind us, and I wondered if the old man had blown it. ‘What was all that stuff about Bedouin tribes?’ she asked me.

‘Guy’s as nutty as a fruitcake,’ I said.

‘Maybe, but did you see the way he jumped when I mentioned Firebird — nearly had kittens. Then he realized it was a question about Egyptology and calmed down. The guy is scared.’

‘Yeah, scared of ghouls and
Jinns
.
’

‘Didn’t Abd al-Alisay that Ibram had asked the doorman at the Mena about ghouls? Fawzi mentioned it too.’

‘Look, I know all about that stuff. It’s peasant superstition. Sanusi lives in cyberspace — he probably just imagined it.’

‘That why you went so quiet when he was talking about it?’

‘I’ve had to live with this kind of trash since I was a kid, that’s all. Ghouls, ghosts and things that go bump, and all that bullshit about knowing who you are. I know who he is, he’s a bloody sicko.’

‘Yeah, but those were pretty damn big rats we heard. Or was that a figment of the imagination too?’

***

In darkness the Khan felt humid and oppressive. Heat radiated from the ground and the stonework, unleashing smells of stale urine and uncured hide. We walked in silence along an endless series of dark tunnels where sandpaper voices followed us, mingled with demonic laughter, and mysterious, disjointed groans. Shadows drifted past in long caravans like chains of slaves. Lights flickered momentarily from high windows, and the yellow eyes of cats seemed to glare malevolently from every cranny. ‘I hope you know your way out of this place,’ Daisy whispered.

‘Why the hell are you whispering?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. It just feels like I should.’

At the corner of an alley a crabbed old man with a face like Mr Punch was cooking sweet potatoes on a contraption that looked like a miniature locomotive mounted on a barrow. An oil lamp hanging from the barrow cast a radius of yellow light, like an island in the darkness. ‘Watch out!’ the man told us as we passed, ‘there’s a ghoul about. Killed a boy near here only a couple of weeks ago.’

We left him cackling in his little circlet of light. ‘How come you didn’t know about that?’ Daisy asked. ‘OK, it’s got to be a serial killer, but isn’t that scary enough?’

‘Not when you’re packing a .380 Beretta and you’re a crack shot,’ I said, ‘or when you’re with a Special Agent who passed top of her class at Quantico which was ninety per cent men. Why should Egypt fear?’

‘Leave it out,’ she said, but I noticed she was giggling now.

‘As it happens I did know about the kid’s death,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t want to contradict Sanusi at the time, but I read the autopsy report. The boy died of some rare blood disease, and the scratch marks on his body were probably caused by street dogs, cats and rats, that chewed the stiff before it was found.’

Daisy shivered, and I hoped she was satisfied, even if I wasn’t. What I didn’t tell her was that I knew every inch of this bazaar from the hundreds of hours I’d put in over the past four years, trying to track down a monster that left its victims mutilated and drained of blood.

We passed through an arch that looked like the open jaws of an enormous lion, and beyond it we found ourselves in tomb-like silence. Beams from high latticework windows fell across our path in dapples and brindles. We passed under another series of moresco arches that faced each other at such regular intervals that you felt like you were walking inside the ribcage of a giant beast. Occasionally we caught glimpses of side alleys illuminated for a moment in ghastly fluorescence. In one of them a hooded figure sat motionless on a chair, apparently staring at some grotesque stains on the wall as if trying to read them. In another I glimpsed two nun-like women gliding away from us, carrying in their arms dead chickens whose limp, severed throats dripped blood. Human shadows passed briefly behind shutters like cinema screens, and disjointed human eyes seemed to leer at us from high niches in the walls. In one place a giant fan set into the wall creaked disturbingly as it revolved, and in another I made out a set of lifesize murals — rat-headed Set, hawk-headed Horus, jackal-headed Anubis — the Guardian of the Underworld. We walked in silence for what seemed like hours, then Daisy whispered, ‘You sure this is the right way?’

‘You’re whispering again,’ I said.

‘Yeah, so what?’ She stopped suddenly. ‘What’s that?’ she hissed. A cat yowled. Flying shapes flitted past, and I felt the waft of their wings against my face.

‘Bats!’ I said, now whispering myself.

‘It’s not that,’ she said, ‘someone’s following us. I swear it. Someone who’s stopping every time we stop.’

I heard nothing, but I looked around. The street was a tunnel of blacks and greys, with the occasional spangle of illumination, and I had a sense of sheer ebony walls reaching up on either side like enormous cliffs, and of some malign presence crouching there in the darkness. We inched forward, and now I could hear it too. Soft footfalls behind us, keeping pace.

I jerked on Daisy’s arm and we both stopped abruptly. The footsteps halted. I turned and looked behind again, and my scalp prickled. I had a momentary sensation that we were being followed by some huge, dark, spidery creature whose giant body reached up into the night.

At
night
he
roams
the
alleys
,
looking
for
helpless
men
and
women
to
prey
upon
.

Then the sensation passed, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure dodging into a doorway. We started up, and I listened intently. There was the soft pad of feet again. I felt for the pencil torch I kept in my pocket, whipped it out and spun round, screaming, ‘Stop! Police!’ as loudly as I could. For an instant the feeble beam pinpointed the head and torso of a Bedouin woman — an exceptionally tall Bedouin woman — in dark robes and a vampire-like mask.

He
could
be
the
man
standing
next
to
you
in
the
bazaar
,
the
man
—
even
the
woman
—
walking
behind
you
on
the
street
.

The woman stood petrified in the light for a moment before she turned and bolted into the shadows, her rubber sandals making an eerie slop-slop sound as she ran. I exploded forward gripping the flashlight in my hand. She was surprisingly fast, but there were no convenient side turns. She made for a covered entrance way, tried the door without success, then turned to face me snarling. I closed in recklessly, going for my Beretta. Before my hand connected with the handle, though, something that felt like a battering ram crashed into my jaw, and I staggered, seeing a host of red planets whizzing round inside my skull. I struggled to stay on my feet, putting up a hand to defend myself, when another battering ram — even harder than the first — slammed into me just below the ear. A comet with a fiery tail blitzed across my vision and I felt myself falling down a deep ravine into gentle dark waters that closed above me like curtains.

When I opened my eyes it wasn’t night any more, and although I was still in a dimly lit alley it wasn’t the same one, in fact it wasn’t even in Khan al-Khalili. It was the Aswan bazaar, and I was a ten-year-old kid dressed in a torn T-shirt, hand-me-down jeans and flip-flops, slapping a baseball bat nervously against my palm, and pressing myself into the shadow of an archway. Across the alley, Furayj and Mikhael were almost invisible in the shadows — all I could see of them were the whites of their eyes, almost popping with tension. There was an old man sham—bling towards us, and though he was dressed like a townsman you could tell a mile off he was Hawazim. They sometimes came into the souk, exchanging their russet-coloured
jibbas
for long
gallabiyyas
, but they couldn’t disguise their walk — that springy cameline gait, full of vitality — or those drill bit eyes that seemed to look right through you. I didn’t want to rob a Hazmi. I knew they were poor and they were supposed to be good fighters. But Furayj and Mikhael were watching me, and I knew I would be the butt of jokes for ever if I didn’t have a go.

The old man was almost up to us now, and giving no sign that he’d spotted anything. Then suddenly he halted in his tracks — just stood stockstill. I saw his lean face come up, sniffing the air like a hunting dog, and in that moment I noticed that he was wearing a tiny silver earring on the upper lobe of his right ear. I stepped out in front of him with the baseball bat raised, then I froze. The old man’s eyes seemed to burn into me like lasers, and I suddenly recalled that I’d seen him before. It was the strangest sensation I’d ever had — a feeling that I really
knew
this guy, that I’d been here before many times, standing in front of him like this. It was more than the ordinary sensation that you’ve seen or done something before — more like an absolute blinding certainty that this had all been meant to happen — that the old Hazmi had actually come here
looking
for me.

The next instant Furayj and Mikhael came hollering out of their corner with big butcher’s knives, and suddenly a stiletto appeared like magic in the old guy’s hand. He seemed to erupt into a blur of movement you’d have thought impossible for such an old fellow. The stiletto flashed — only twice or three times — and I saw blood splash across the ground. There were sickening screams from Mikhael and Furayj, and I saw their knives drop into the dust as they fled down the alley, holding their arms, crying like babies and dropping big spatters of blood behind them. The old Hazmi turned slowly back to me, his eyes blazing, gripping his little stiletto and I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes rolling, my breath coming in great gasps. It wasn’t because I was afraid, but because I suddenly remembered where I’d seen him before. Ever since I could remember I’d been dreaming about him — always the same dream of myself standing in a featureless desert with the wind spinning ghost-devils along the emptiness. In the dream I’d see a figure riding towards me on a camel — just a black exclamation mark at first, with shimmers of light playing around it — but becoming more and more distinct as it drew near, until at last it stopped, and I saw this dark figure slip out of the saddle. Then the dark figure would pull the
shamagh
off his face, and it would be this old guy.