Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Jack
The midday sun blazed down on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel, bleaching the marble columns and glinting off the crystal stemware and teacups on the tables.
Waiters in crisp white jackets moved between the tables with silver trays balanced high, the terrace thick with the crowd here for midafternoon tea.
Jack preferred the American bar inside, but it was a cherished location for military officers and diplomats to convene, and here he was less likely to be interrupted.
He sat at a corner table, back to the wall, where he had a good view of the entire vicinity.
His sleeves were rolled, collar unbuttoned just enough to thumb his nose at the dress code—nicer dress hat replaced instead by the trusty fedora his grandfather had given him so long ago.
Around him, the clientele was a theater of empire: khaki-uniformed officers, American and English tourists, baronesses and countesses gossiping with their ilk.
Cigarette smoke hung like a cloud above the whole affair.
Cairo’s elite and misfits drifted here for respite—or reconnaissance.
For Jack, who’d kept a room at Shepheard’s for almost fifteen years now, it was the closest thing he had to a home in Egypt.
He recognized plenty of the people around him: Inspector Fouad el-Serafi with the Cairo police—who he’d helped with a smuggling case a few years earlier.
A Russian friend of Alastair’s named Vladmir Chertoff, an ex-pat and literature professor who’d come to Egypt after the war.
German Baroness Helga Koenig, who seemed to be entertaining some Nazi officers.
And others. All part of a world to which he’d once belonged. A world he’d turned his back on years before.
The tablecloth fluttered gently against Jack’s trousers, and he flattened his hand on the edges of the notepaper in front of him.
Jack’s drink sat untouched, beads of condensation rolling down the sides of the glass and soaking into the unfolded telegram that he’d placed under the edge of the glass.
He’d scrawled half a dozen lines of cipher decryption on the notepaper in front of him, pausing every so often to glance across the terrace.
The code had been recognizable—Noah’s. With a cipher key only the two of them knew. That he’d taken the trouble to send a message in code meant one thing for certain: he wasn’t coming.
His message, once decoded, had been even more concerning:
Going to Jerusalem. Don’t trust Roche or MI5. Gopher.
He tapped his pencil against the table.
Dammit, Noah.
Always the cryptic one. God forbid he send a normal message like help.
Whatever trouble Noah had run into, Jack shouldn’t have left him to fight it alone. Things must be bad. And if he said not to trust Roche, Jack wouldn’t waste time second-guessing it.
Alice and Kit were still missing. His allies were dwindling.
He was running out of options. He’d considered going to Alastair again—but that was a last resort.
Every time he reached out, he risked dragging his friend into Prescott’s crosshairs.
And Alastair didn’t deserve that. He had too many people who depended on him—young orphans who needed him. Alastair had saved countless lives.
And, truthfully, Jack shouldn’t even be in Cairo. He needed to go to Baghdad and look for Gretchen Herbert.
But the path to Baghdad was made even more difficult by that one little word at the end of Noah’s message: gopher.
They’d been friends long enough that they had their own code words, and gopher was one of the ones they’d come up with during the war. It meant go underground, out of sight, without using official channels or checkpoints.
It meant that if he was going to get to Iraq, he’d need to sneak into the country.
Which meant he needed resources. Unscrupulous contacts—ones willing to break the law.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Prescott’s silence hung over Jack like a lightning storm ready to strike. He wasn’t foolish enough to think Prescott had simply slunk off silently and let Jack go his separate way.
Wherever Prescott was, whatever he was planning, he was smarter than anyone Jack had ever met.
He may have reached out to Jack in desperation, but he’d done it knowing he could spur Jack into action.
If Jack had any hope of finding Alice and Kit and not alerting Prescott to his success, he had to be extremely careful about whom he trusted now.
Sighing, Jack pulled his hat down further onto his forehead, shading his eyes with the brim.
Wouldn’t surprise him if Prescott was the one snipping the strings behind the curtain.
Isolating Jack. Starving him of options and pushing him toward the one thing he swore he’d never do—play by Prescott’s rules.
“I’ve always dreamed of seeing Luxor by riverboat.” The familiar female voice drifted to him from below the terrace, in the garden below. Softly Southern.
And then he saw her.
Ruby Wilkerson—if that was her name—in a sky-blue cloche and matching gloves, all sunshine and misdirection and cozied up beside a sweating businessman as they strolled in the gardens below the terrace, near a palm tree.
Either she’d dyed her hair black or wore a wig.
Scammer. The man—American, by the looks of his god-awful seersucker suit—gave her a lusty smile, not even remotely noticing her hand drifting toward his jacket pocket.
Damn, she’s good.
Not just a thief but a pickpocket with quick, skilled hands.
She smiled at the man as if they were old friends.
That sort of talent shouldn’t be wasted on crime. At least not petty crime. She had the hands of a concert pianist and the morals of a drunk raccoon.
Jack narrowed his eyes.
Of all the places.
Shepheard’s wasn’t just a hotel. It was the hotel. The place diplomats dined, journalists traded lies, and spies passed coded messages to contacts over gin and lime. Its grand facade was a symbol of everything colonial, with bellboys who carried more secrets than luggage.
Her being here was even more bold than grifting at Mena House Hotel.
And, clearly, Ruby and her ilk were still at their little con games.
Jack would have laughed if it weren’t for the memory of that gun at his back and the humiliation that had come with it.
He scanned the immediate area, spotting the man she’d called her brother, Theo, a few moments later. He sat on a bench on the sidewalk, reading a newspaper, face partially obscured. The other man—the one who’d pretended to be Roche—was nowhere in sight.
But that didn’t matter.
This could be an opportunity he hadn’t expected. He needed someone with talent on his side—someone whose help, if not given by mutual trust, could at least be ensured with good old blackmail.
A half-harebrained idea started to form in Jack’s mind as he folded the telegram, then placed it and the notepad in his breast pocket.
Jack flicked his gaze toward Inspector Fouad el-Serafi. Holding back a smile, Jack stood and strolled across the terrace to where he sat at a table alone, keeping company with a book.
“Fouad,” Jack said with a charming smile as his shadow crossed the table. “I didn’t expect to see you here at Shepheard’s.”
Fouad stood, his thick black eyebrows drawing together as momentary confusion crossed his face. Then his gaze brightened. “Mr. Darby. How delightful.” The man stood, holding out his hands warmly.
They exchanged quick greetings and Jack straightened, not wanting to linger here on the terrace for too long. “I have someone I’d like to introduce you to—would you do me the honor?”
“Of course,” Fouad said, lifting a silver-handled cane from its resting place against the table. “Any friend of Jack Darby’s is a friend of mine.”
Jack nearly chuckled, then led Fouad down the main steps from the terrace onto the sidewalk. They went just beyond the terrace, passing Theo along the way. As he passed, Jack smirked at the man.
Theo paled.
Jack continued, then opened the gate to the garden. Ruby was still there, arm in arm with the American. She must not be finished robbing him yet.
“Ruby, darling,” Jack said in a voice loud enough that the pretty thief lifted her chin sharply.
Her eyes went wide as they locked with Jack’s.
A mischievous thrill energized him.
He breezed up to her with a smile. “There you are. I was beginning to think you had gotten lost in the city.” He strode up to her, then set his arm around her waist. Without an ounce of decorum, he leaned down and dropped a quick kiss to that pretty red mouth, nearly laughing as her body went rigid against him.
The American at her side sputtered. “I-I—I say—”
Jack flicked his gaze at the man, then looked back at Ruby, who was quickly going as red as her name. “Friend of yours?”
Ruby’s long lashes fluttered as she tried to recover, the wheels of her mind obviously spinning ferociously. Then anger flashed in her eyes. Her gloved hand whipped against Jack’s cheek before he could catch it, and a bright burst of pain flashed through his skin.
“You scoundrel!” she gasped. “You think you can come up to me like this after leaving me stranded for months!” She pulled away from the American, crossing her arms. “I’ve moved on, Jack.”
Jack smiled, then set his arm around her shoulder, shaking his head at Fouad. “Women are so difficult to keep happy, aren’t they, Inspector? I leave for three months to toil in the Kharga, and this is what I come back to.”
He brushed away Ruby’s indifference with a grin, then his gaze sobered.
“Anyhow, Ruby, this is Inspector Fouad el-Serafi of Cairo’s Criminal Investigation Department.
Before I left, Ruby and I were ruthlessly robbed by some thugs—a Theo Wilkerson and a couple of others.
Ruby hesitated to make a report—she was too embarrassed.
But that’s just the sort of criminal investigation you handle, isn’t it, Fouad? ”