Shooting the Sphinx

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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This book is dedicated to those courageous people in Egypt who faced down tyrants twice, then were so cleverly tricked out of democracy. May they find it again some day.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For a debut novelist, the excitement that comes with seeing your first advance check, your first uncorrected proof, your first blurb, your first book cover, and your first encounter with a pleased reader fills you with a childlike glee and a deep sense of gratitude to everyone who believed in your book.

First and foremost, I have to thank Bob Gleason, my editor, who agreed to read this manuscript unsolicited over a glass of wine at a book signing and ten days later told me he wanted to buy it. I have to thank Margaret Mclean, one of Bob's authors, who introduced me to him, and Megan Carroll, who introduced me to her. Bob's capable editorial assistants, Elayne Becker, Kelly Quinn, and Paul Stevens, at Tor/Forge shepherded me through the process of publication. Elisa Pugliese helped me with an initial cover design, and Dan Cullen designed the final cover. Ed Chapman and Meryl Gross copyedited the book. Eftihia Stephanidi took my author photo. My agent, Richard Abate at 3 Arts, handled the negotiation. And finally I have to thank the founder of Tor/Forge, Tom Doherty, an old-school publisher who decided to take a chance on an unknown author.

The idea for this story was born at the Sundance Film Festival, where I saw the Oscar-nominated documentary
The Square,
about the Egyptian Revolution, by my friends Jehanne Noujaim, Karim, and Dina Amer. That film took me back to Cairo and started my mind churning over old memories of making movies there. My old friend and partner in crime, director Doug Liman, first sent me to Cairo to shoot a helicopter shot of the Sphinx for his movie
Jumper
and again to do more filming for the political thriller
Fair Game
. My gratitude also goes out to William Martin, Ambassador Joe Wilson, Whitley Strieber, Geraldine Brooks, and John Gill for their words of encouragement. And I must credit Fred Gilbert for a stanza of his old British music hall song “I'm the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” which some may remember from
Lawrence of Arabia
.

My life has had various other directions than novel writing, yet I've always craved to write and be read. It's taken thirty years to get to this point. Many people have aided me in that quest and helped me to get ready to write this work.

Naomi Wolf edited my writing before this. Her rigorous notes made me a novelist. Malaga Baldi was my first agent and believed in me professionally before anyone else. Patricia Marx, Adam Langer, and Jane Rosenman taught writing classes that I took at the 92
nd
Street Y, as well as all my classmates there who edited my earlier work.

Thanks to my friend Mary Frances Young, who was the first person to read
Shooting the Sphinx
and encouraged me by asking again and again for more chapters, spurring me on to completion even as the end of the book was being written. She told me that the ending was not right and had to be redone. Finally, this story started out as a play and might have stayed that way but for film director Oday Rasheed, who read it and told me he wanted to make a movie out of it. He worked with me as I wrote a film script, but there was just more to this story than a movie could hold.

 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Ari Basher,
a film producer

Charley Foster,
an aerial camera technician

Sal Montevale,
a helicopter pilot

Don,
an aerial cameraman

Frank Solomon,
a top Hollywood director

Elizabeth Vronsky,
an executive producer

Tom Cucinelli,
a movie teamster

Hamed,
Ari's driver in Cairo

Farah Aziz,
a graduate student and revolutionary

Samir Aziz,
Ari's fixer

Rami,
a popular singer and revolutionary

Walid,
a fixer at Cairo International Airport

Mohamed,
a street urchin at the pyramids

Glenn,
Elizabeth Vronsky's husband

General Hanawy,
president of Petroleum Air Charters

Mustapha Shawky,
his number two

Farouk,
an archaeology student and guide

Dr. Hamoud Nesem,
minister of archaeology

General Moussa,
chief of customs at Cairo International Airport

Omar el Mansoor,
the head of Studio Giza

Ali,
ticket taker of the Sphinx light show

Major Horus,
a helicopter squadron commander

Khaled Nahkti,
the biggest movie star in Egypt

Leela,
Samir's wife

Yasmine,
Samir's daughter

Mahmoud Abbas,
president of the Palestinian Authority

Sharif,
ex-minister of tourism in Jordan

Prince Amir,
brother of the King of Jordan

Princess Jala,
his wife, an ex-journalist

Wael,
a driver

Detective Kek,
of the Cairo police

 

PART ONE

Allah has not promised us tomorrow.

—Old Arabic proverb

 

Chapter 1

Ari Basher hopped out of a van into a blast of rotor wash at the Thirtieth Street Heliport. He hiked up his jeans and tried to keep the grin from devouring his face as he let himself into the gate through a tall chain-link fence. He loved to fly.

A sleek white corporate Sikorsky S-76 had just touched down, the rotors still spinning overhead. A bored CEO in a business suit stepped out of the aircraft. He cast a grim dry glance right through Ari, who politely held the gate open for him. Ari wanted to ask, “Dude, why so serious? You get to soar over all the bus riders on your daily commute.”

Instead Ari called out, “You're welcome!” The businessman faltered, dazed by the radiance of Ari's confident exuberance.

“Thank you.” He cracked back a wan creaky smile of his own, rusty from disuse. Ari knew that he'd won the CEO over as he disappeared into his typical black SUV.

On the other side of the large corporate Sikorsky, Ari found his ride, a smaller Eurocopter, and his team: Don, Charley, and Sal, the pilot.

Charley Foster, a gruff, elfin ex-Navy F-16 mechanic, who had worked on aircraft carriers for years, was threading film into a special aerial camera inside a gray three-foot ball mounted on the nose of the chopper.

Sal Montevale, a compact, bushy-white-haired Vietnam vet, who had been an air cavalry pilot and was now the dean of New York aerial photography, sat in his cockpit waiting. Ari waved. Sal had flown on Ari's first job in the film business, twenty years prior, in the Hamptons. The star of the picture was supposed to steal a helicopter and buzz a crowd of extras at a lawn party. When the star stepped into the chopper, they had called “Cut” and slapped a curly blond wig on Sal's head; Sal was the one who'd taken off, buzzing the crowd with low, shaky moves as if he didn't know how to fly. The result was some great acting as the extras had run for their lives like Viet Cong in a village about to get hit.

Don, the cameraman, sat in the backseat, a monitor and camera control console in his lap. Mellow and unflappable, Don was an Australian surfer who had somehow risen to become the top aerial cameraman in the world. They would all be spending a lot of time together in the coming weeks, so Ari expected that life story to come his way over a beer—or ten—in the hotel bar.

“How we doing, Charley?” Excited to get in the air, Ari walked around to the front of the chopper and peeked over Charley's shoulder at the camera.

“I said we'd be ready by the time you got here, and we're ready, so back off.”

“I love you, too, Charley.”

Charley shut the round three-foot SpaceCam housing, then grabbed his fist with his hand, a signal to Don that the camera was ready to fly. Don moved his controls up, down, left, and right. So did the ball on the nose of the chopper—like a giant eye with a tiny pupil. Ari spun his finger in the air as a signal to start the engine, but Sal was already flipping switches and easing the throttle in. The whine of the turbines spooling up and the smell of jet exhaust put the grin back on Ari's face. He opened the door and stepped up into the right-hand seat beside Don so they both could see the monitor.

“Can you believe they pay us for this?” Ari winked at Don.

“Don't tell the studios how much we dig it.” Don put his finger to his lips. “Or those greedy buggers might just start charging us to come to work.”

Sal pulled on the collective and the rotors bit into the air, lifting the chopper off the ground. Ari hadn't been in a chopper in a while, and the first sensation of helicopter flight always startled him a little. As a private pilot, he was used to flying a plane and feeling like he was sitting on top of something. A helicopter always made him feel a different center of gravity, a different weight, like he was hanging from a coat hanger stuck in the back of his jacket. Ari pulled a rough sketch of their flight path out of his pocket.

“Sal, the director wants us to try this. To loop around over the middle of the George Washington Bridge.”

“Sure.” Sal studied the drawing for a second. “Got it.”

Don, too, memorized the pattern and nodded. Then he focused the camera downward, practicing moves: zooming in and out on moving cars below on the West Side Highway.

They flew over tiny little people jogging in the park, biking on the streets, coming and going. Not one of them having as much fun as I am right now, thought Ari. Ain't my life cool?