The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (38 page)

“Kat, have you been sick a lot lately?” John asks.

“I… well…” I stammer, and I am crying. “I have been sick every day lately. Do I have it, John? Do I have the same cancer?”

John wags his finger in mock scolding. “Doctor, you should know better,” he says, and the smile upon his face is sheer agony.

“No, no, my dear, you don’t have cancer. You, my lady, are going to have my best friend’s baby.” His eyes well up with tears again.

It is our third date, and Jeff takes my hand across our dinner table.

“I have no children,” he says, “although…”—he pauses for a moment—“I would have liked to, I think…”

“Where is it?” I ask. “Did I lose it?”

“
Laa, ya sayeedatii
,” says the nurse. “You’ve not lost it.”

“Then where is it?” I repeat again.

I am crying, and I am laughing. No wonder they thought I was delusional. I had been talking about a plant.

I
am
delusional.

Oh Isis, thou great enchantress, heal me, deliver me from all evil, bad, typhonic things, from demoniacal and deadly diseases and pollutions of all sorts that rush upon me, as thou didst deliver and release thy son Horus!

-
The Ebers Papyrus
, ca. 1500 BCE

Chapter Twenty-Five

John and I step out of the hospital onto a busy street, and the infernal Egyptian heat engulfs us. The air has a familiar sweet, thick scent. Pedestrians rush through converging lanes of traffic, and none of them look like tourists. The men wear long pants and long sleeves. The majority of women are in hijab or niqab.

I am wearing a new pair of jeans and a new long-sleeved T-shirt, clothing brought to the hospital by John to replace articles that had been shredded and soaked in a crocodile attack and then cut from my body by doctors.

“Where are we?” I ask, but I already know.

“Cairo,” John says. “I had you airlifted here, to a better hospital.”

“I don’t have any ID…”

John raises an eyebrow and smiles sardonically. “This is Egypt. I forked over some money to get you patched up, and nobody cared who you were. But they did a nice job. I watched.”

I turn and smile gratefully at my husband’s best friend.

The crocodile had grabbed me by the upper leg. Its teeth had, fortunately, missed major arteries, and the wounds were mostly superficial. But I still feel like I’m walking in skinny jeans made of fish hooks.

John wraps a supportive arm around me. We begin slowly down the street, when a woman in a black galabia and niqab shoves her way rudely between us and whispers urgently into my ear, “Get out of sight! Right now!”

As if to reinforce her statement, a bullet whizzes within feet of my head and smashes into the stone wall behind me.

Whether by instinct or weakness, I am not sure, but I hit the ground. John falls as well, almost on top of me, shielding my body with his own. Another gunshot rings out, and we crawl behind a large dumpster in the street.

I do not need to guess the identity of the woman who lunges behind it with us. “Can you walk?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say, “but I’m not sure how fast or how far.”

“This way,” she says, and I am relieved to remember that Alyssa Iacovani knows Cairo as well as she knows Naples. She was educated here.

I stand again, grimacing from the pain in my leg. I reach into my purse and withdraw the pistol still in my possession. It is a model similar to my own.

The gunshots assaulting my ears, even through thick, protective earmuffs, used to startle me. Now, they do not.

My five-year-old son is dead.

Some of the men at the gun range used to make me uneasy. Now, they do not. I know many of them by name.

My son was shot through my living room window by a gangster named Lawrence Naden. It was a stray bullet, the by-product of a drive-by shooting aimed at another gangster. I don’t feel safe anymore. In fact, I never did.

Without taking my eyes off the target before me, I reach down and feel for the lever that will move it swiftly backward. The target flutters, and the concentric circles on the generic figure’s chest become smaller and smaller.

Naden is in prison. But this fact provides no comfort.

When I am satisfied with the distance, I release the lever and train the pistol on the center circle. I imagine the face of Lawrence Naden as I begin rapidly pulling the trigger.

The metal is familiar in my hand. I hold onto John’s strong shoulder for balance with one arm as I pivot on my good leg and begin shooting.

Ducking as frequently as possible behind whatever cover we can find, the three of us flee down the street. I can see nobody behind us, only transient flashes of clothing and steel as our pursuers also take cover behind various objects. At the corner, we turn and begin making our way down a cross street. Gunshots continue to ring out, and, with each, I cringe and look at Alyssa and John. Nobody is hit.

John is still supporting me like a human crutch.

“Can you run for a moment?” Alyssa asks.

“For a
moment
,” I reply.

“You will need to. Because there is no cover in the alley we need to go through.”

“OK,” I say and take a deep breath of the hot, sweet, cloying smog of Cairo. “Let’s go.”

We enter the alley Alyssa spoke of. She was right. There is no cover; the alley is not even wide enough for a single car. I let go of John, and the three of us run blindly toward the other end of the alley.

Behind me, I hear hurried footsteps. Then I hear another gunshot and a scream. I turn just in time to see Alyssa fall to the ground.

I halt in my tracks. At last, I am able to make out the shooter. It is not Dante. It is not Rossi. I don’t care. I take aim and shoot, and he falls.

Alyssa is lying on the ground. She clutches her shoulder and moans. John looks hastily from her to me, and back again.

“Help her,” I say. “I can run.”

The alley is short, and we have almost reached a corner where it merges with another street. I can hear commotion beyond, and I realize that Alyssa was leading us directly into a dense, massive crowd.

Good move
, I think.

I prepare myself for the pain in my leg and then make a last mad dash through the alley. I can hear John following, slowly, with the weight of Alyssa in his arms.

We emerge into pedestrian chaos. Both sides of the narrow, crooked street are crammed with haphazardly erected vendors’ tents. The aromas of spices, tobacco, and other goods mingle into a scent as familiar as it is centuries old. Within the never-ending jumble of tents, I see jewelry, hookahs, clothing, foods, and trinkets of every kind. Men in galabias and children in blue jeans reach toward me, motioning for me to come closer, beckoning me into their shops like clowns enticing me into a circus funhouse. A woman in a brightly colored hijab darts into the street to display a rich fabric for my eyes and hands to explore.

The gunshots have ceased.

I turn to Alyssa, who is still in John’s arms. Her eyes are half open, and she smiles wearily.

“
Khan al Khalili
,” she says. “This market is as old as Cairo itself.”

She looks to the woman beside us still holding a fabric for sale, and the two exchange a few hurried words in Arabic. Then the vendor leads us into the back of her shop.

John sits Alyssa down on the stone floor of the fabric shop. A broad, angry red oval marks the area of John’s tan shirt where Alyssa’s left shoulder had been. The shop owner pulls a curtain around us, and the light of the Cairo sky is gone.

“Ask her for a light,” John says, and Alyssa addresses the shopkeeper again. The woman disappears.

“I need to take this off,” John says, tugging gently at the front of Alyssa’s black galabia. She gives him a look.

“I’m a doctor,” John says. Alyssa looks at me.

“He is,” I assure her. Alyssa finally concedes to allowing John to remove her galabia, wincing as he pulls it over her wounded shoulder and then her head. Blood is pouring from the bullet hole through the hollow just beneath her collarbone. Her once white bra is now bright red.

John pulls Alyssa’s upper body toward him and examines the exit wound in her upper back. Then he rips the galabia into two pieces. He wads them up and holds one piece firmly against each side of the wound.

A moment later, the shopkeeper returns with a flashlight. John uses it to peer into the depths of Alyssa’s eyes.

“You’re lucky,” he says. “All they hit was some muscle. Your biggest concern right now is bleeding, but later it will be the risk of infection.”

“
She
is lucky,” Alyssa says and cocks her head almost imperceptibly toward me. Her voice is fading, and her eyes are mere slits. She says something in Arabic to the shopkeeper. Then she grimaces as she turns back toward John. “They were aiming for Katrina when the crocodile got her. They shot the croc instead.”

“Who?” John asks.

“The people who want the nardo.” I look into John’s eyes. “They killed Jeff. And they killed Alyssa’s entire family.” I blink and then wipe a tear from one eye.

Alyssa motions for me to draw closer, and I lean in to hear her barely audible words.

“You can make them kill each other,” she says. And then she is gone.

John leans over Alyssa and listens to her chest.

“She will be OK,” he says, “if she gets to a hospital quickly.” He stood to look at me. “These are the decisions doctors hate having to make. We need to prioritize the many over the one. There is nothing more I can do for her here in this market. And you and I need to go, right now. Because there are thousands of others whose lives also depend on us.”

He reaches into a pocket and withdraws a wad of cash, which he hands to the kind shopkeeper guarding over Alyssa. Then he takes my hand, and we quickly slip out the rear entrance of the shop.