Pharaoh (24 page)

‘Mr Maddox, I’ve already communicated with the so-called outside world when you weren’t here and, as you see, nothing has happened.’

‘Well, how—’

‘Let me in, please, and I’ll explain everything.’

Maddox stepped aside, grumbling, ‘Pollock will pay for this.’

‘As I say, nothing has happened. I’m a man of my word and I made a deal with you that I intend to keep. It was just about a hieroglyphic text that I needed some help interpreting. I received the help shortly afterwards, once again by email, and it enabled me to continue my investigations. Listen, Mr Maddox, just think if I were able to identify the actual person buried in the tomb at Ras Udash. The value of those artefacts would triple, just like that. Doesn’t that interest you?’

‘Come on in,’ said Maddox, ‘but I’m going to stay here while you send the email. I’m sorry, but I have no choice.’

‘That’s fine. Pollock did the same thing: he checked the attachment to make sure that the text was really a hieroglyphic inscription. I have a special program. Watch.’

He sat down at the computer, turned it on, loaded the writing program with a couple of diskettes and then started to compose a text of hieroglyphic characters.

‘Extraordinary,’ muttered Maddox, watching from over the shoulder of his unexpected early-morning guest as the ancient language of the Nile began its dignified procession across the screen of this new-fangled electronic contraption.

O
MAR AL
H
USSEINI
went into the apartment, poured himself a coffee and sat down at his desk to try to correct the first-term exams of the few students he had, but he couldn’t concentrate and he couldn’t help but look at the picture of the little boy on his desk. The picture of his son. His name was Said and his mother had been a girl from the village of Suray. He had met her on the day of their wedding, after his family had successfully concluded lengthy negotiations with her family to establish an adequate dowry. He had never really loved her, which was only normal, since he hadn’t chosen her and didn’t find her all that attractive, but he was fond of her because she was a good, devout woman and because she had given him a son.

He had mourned the death of both of them when the house they were living in was hit by a mortar. He buried them in the shade of the village cemetery, surrounded by a few carob trees, on the top of a rocky hill parched by the sun.

His wife had been hit by a piece of shrapnel and bled to death, but the boy, they said, had been hit directly and was unrecognizable, so he wasn’t even allowed to see him one last time before putting him in the ground.

That very same evening, while he was still weeping for his loss in front of the ruins of his house, a man came up to him and offered him a chance to get even. He was around fifty, with a full grey moustache, and told Omar he wanted to make him into a great warrior for Islam. He wanted to offer him a new life, a new reason for living and new companions with whom he could share the dangers and ideals of this glorious new life.

He accepted and swore to serve the cause to the death. They took him to a training camp near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley. There they trained him how to use a knife, a machine gun, grenades and missile launchers. They rekindled the hatred he already harboured for the enemies who had destroyed his family and then they deployed him in a series of increasingly daring and destructive missions, until he had become a ruthless, unassailable fighter, the legendary Abu Ghaj. Then the day came when he was deemed worthy to meet, face to face, Islam’s greatest fighter, the arch enemy of the Zionists and their supporters: Abu Ahmid.

They had been years of hard combat and impassioned dedication, during which he felt like a true hero, seeing and actually meeting very highly placed people, sleeping in expensive hotels, wearing fancy clothes, eating in the best restaurants and enjoying the company of the most glamorous and obliging women. Abu Ahmid knew how to treat his boldest, most intrepid fighters very well.

Then suddenly, one day, all the bloodshed and the constant danger started to get to him and he just couldn’t take it any more. He had made a pact with Abu Ahmid: that he would continue fighting only as long as his strength and courage lasted. So one night he boarded a plane and, equipped with false documents, went first to Paris, where he completed his studies in Coptic, and then to the United States. Sixteen years had passed since then and during that whole time he had heard nothing from Abu Ahmid. He had disappeared completely from his life.

Omar himself had managed to forget about everything, cancelling his entire previous existence as though it had never taken place. He no longer kept up with the politics and actions of his former movement, nor did he even take much interest in what was going on in his native country. He blended into his new surroundings, immersing himself in his academic responsibilities and the quiet, peaceful lifestyle of a respectable upper middle-class American. He had a girlfriend, cultivated various hobbies, played golf and took a lively interest in following basketball and American football.

The only memory that had remained alive all this time was that of Said, the son he had so tragically lost. His portrait had always been there on his desk and every day he imagined him growing, sprouting his first manly hair and taking on the deeper voice of an adult. At the same time, he continued to consider himself the father of the little boy in the photograph who had never grown up, and this somehow kept him feeling young. That was why he had never wanted to remarry or have any more children. Then, one day, all the skeletons in his closet came tumbling out with that photograph of the young man he immediately recognized as his son. He still couldn’t quite believe it.

As he was on the way to the medicine cabinet to get a tranquillizer, his mobile phone rang. He went to answer it.

‘
Salaam alekum
, Abu Ghaj.’ It was that same metallic voice, slightly distorted by the poor reception. His caller was also using a mobile phone. ‘All the donkeys have been saddled. We are ready to go to market.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ answered Husseini. ‘I’ll transmit the message.’

He waited a few more minutes, thinking about how he could get out of this situation, wipe away all of it, past and present, and return to his peaceful existence in America as a professor. No matter how hard he tried, though, he just couldn’t think of any way out. Not even death was an option now. Would he ever see the columns of Apamea, pale in the dawn light and red at sunset, like flaming torches? The sky outside was grey; the street was grey and so were the houses, just like his future.

And then the doorbell rang, startling him. Who could it be at this hour? He was a nervous wreck and could hardly keep a handle on his emotions; and to think that once, for a long time, he had been known as Abu Ghaj, a killing machine, a ruthless robot.

He went to the door and asked, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Sally,’ an almost childish voice answered timidly. ‘I was just going home and noticed your lights were on. Can I come in?’

Husseini let out a sigh of relief and let her in. She was his girlfriend and he hadn’t seen her in several days.

‘Sit down,’ he told her, ill at ease.

Sally slipped past him, then turned around. She was blonde and buxom with two big, rather perplexed, blue eyes: ‘I haven’t heard from you for quite a while,’ she said. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘No, Sally. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s my fault. I’m going through a really rough time.’

‘Don’t you feel well? Can I help you?’

Husseini was very nervous. He knew he should have made the call immediately and without meaning to he looked at his watch. The girl felt humiliated and tears started welling up in her eyes.

‘It’s not like you think, Sally. I have to take medicine at regular intervals and that’s why I was checking my watch . . . Really, I’m not well.’

‘What’s the matter? Can I do something for you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t do anything. No one can do anything, Sally. It’s something I have to resolve by myself.’

She drew close to him, stroking his cheek tenderly. ‘Omar . . .’ But Husseini stiffened.

‘Really, I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel . . .’

She lowered her head to hide the tears.

‘I won’t be calling you for a while, Sally, but don’t blame yourself . . . I’ll get in touch as soon as I’m better.’

‘But I could—’

‘No, it’s best this way, believe me. I have to find some way

out of this mess by myself . . . Why don’t you go on home now? It’s getting late.’

The girl dried her eyes and left. Husseini stood in the doorway watching her as she walked to her car, then closed the door, picked up his mobile phone and rang. An answering machine responded and so he left a message: ‘All the donkeys are saddled. The drivers are ready to go to market.’

He kept looking at the boy’s face in the photograph and at that moment it felt like the mortar that had destroyed his house all those years ago was exploding again in his heart, tearing it to pieces. He no longer knew who he was or what he was doing. All he knew was that he had to keep moving forward, no matter what. Sooner or later the real man would re-emerge and he would be ready to fight again. On one side or the other.

His glance fell on the computer and he thought of William Blake. He turned it on and hooked up to the Internet so he could check his emails. He found a couple of messages from colleagues and then, the last one, was a message from Blake.

In hieroglyphics.

The most accurate translation would probably have been:

It was a precise appointment and Husseini checked his watch. The message had been sent at 6 a.m. Israeli time, so the next message would arrive the next day before noon, local time in Chicago. He should be ready and waiting at the computer on line in case Blake needed an immediate response. In the meantime he composed a message confirming receipt, hoping that Blake would be able to interpret it as:
I’ll be here in twelve hours. Am looking for the lost papyrus.

He sent the message, turned off the computer and tried to get back to his work, but he couldn’t manage to concentrate. When he finished he realized that it had taken him twice as long as usual to correct half a dozen papers. It was nearly eleven and he still hadn’t eaten. He took two antacid tablets instead of dinner and swallowed a tranquillizer, hoping he’d be able to fall asleep.

He slipped into a troubled sleep as soon as the medicine began to take effect and remained in that sluggish state for almost five hours. Then he went into a sort of half-slumber, tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable position. But every time he seemed to be about to settle a message from the dream world thwarted him: someone seemed to be ringing the doorbell. He couldn’t tell if the sound was really part of a dream, as he hoped, or real.

It finally stopped and he imagined that Sally was on the other side of the door, waiting for him to let her in. He thought it would be nice if she crawled into bed with him. It had been a long time since they had made love. But it wasn’t the doorbell, the doorbell didn’t have that off-and-on regular sort of pattern. It was something else . . .

He sat bolt upright, squeezing his temples between the palms of his hands. It was his mobile phone. He answered it.

At the other end he could hear the usual metallic voice: ‘Orders have arrived. The attack begins in thirty-four hours, by night. An unusually violent sandstorm is expected in the area . . . Look in your mailbox. You’ll find a package with a video cassette that contains the message. Deliver it in exactly nine hours. Have a nice day, Abu Ghaj.’

He got up, threw his dressing gown over his shoulders and went out to the mailbox, trudging through the snow. He found the package and went back into the house to fix himself some coffee.

He sipped on the boiling brew, lighting himself a cigarette, all the while eyeing the package wrapped in plain brown paper that was sitting on the kitchen table. He wanted to open it and see what was inside, but he realized that if he did so his anxiety would soar, and he had a class to teach at nine. He had to force himself to appear absolutely normal.

He left home at seven thirty and by eight was walking into the Oriental Institute. He picked up his mail and university bulletins from his pigeonhole and read them, killing time until he had to start teaching. There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in.’

It was Selim, Blake’s assistant.

‘I have to speak with you, Professor Husseini,’ he said.

‘Come in and sit down. What do you have to tell me?’

‘My friend Ali from El Qurna has contacted me.’

‘The one with the papyrus?’ asked Husseini.

‘That’s him.’

‘What’s the news?’

‘He says that he still has the papyrus.’

‘Great. But can he be trusted?’

‘I think so.’

‘What do you suggest we do?’