Chapter Fourteen
Ahmed was parked in the shadow of a slot canyon that was close to the Ras Ghareb Road.
He’d been following the woman with a drone.
Flying it high enough not to be noticed.
He’d watched her leave the dig and get driven to a hidden dump site.
She’d bypassed the trash and gone straight to what looked like a packing crate.
He’d continued to watch as everyone returned to the Jeep.
Time to bring the drone home, he thought.
He could keep up the surveillance by car.
He hesitated when he saw his mark open the door to the Wrangler’s cargo area and remove an assault rifle.
She turned, took aim at the sky, and bang.
Ahmed’s picture went whirling out of focus and a beat later the screen went black. No more drone.
Ahmed allowed himself a small smile. She could shoot. Something to remember.
Everyone piled into the Jeep, and Apis headed for the road to Ras Ghareb and Bani Mazar.
Gabriela searched her pockets and her pack.
She’d searched them before leaving the hotel, but she suspected she’d missed the obvious.
She emptied everything onto her lap and found three Egyptian pounds in a side pocket of her pack.
One of the coins was thicker than the other two and its edge markings were slightly off.
She stared at the coin for a moment and threw it out the window.
“There’s a story here,” Rafer said.
“Possibly,” Gabriela said.
“Now where are we going?” Jim asked.
“I’d like to talk to the assistant. Merrick gave me his photo and employment information. His name is Dodi Khabi and he gave an address in Bani Mazar.” Gabriela wrote the address on a scrap of paper and handed it to Jim.
Apis bypassed Route 75 north and crossed the bridge over the Nile.
Bani Mazar was on the west bank. It was a midsized town with a mix of modern high-rise buildings and older congested neighborhoods, surrounded by lush fields of vegetables, fruits, cotton, and wheat.
Apis drove into one of the older areas and stopped in front of a mud-colored town house with a bright turquoise door.
A woman and a toddler were sitting in front of the house.
The woman was wearing a pink hijab and matching abaya.
Gabriela went to the woman and introduced herself. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes. A little,” the woman said.
“I’m looking for Dodi Khabi,” Gabriela said. “I was told he lived here.”
“Yes, for a brief time he had a room, but he was killed in a motorbike accident,” the woman said. “Very sad.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriela said. “I didn’t know.”
“He was much to himself. He worked, and he came to his room that we rent out. He gave notice that he was returning to Cairo and then he had his accident.”
“Did he have friends?”
“Not many. I remember a man called Fooze.”
Gabriela felt a bunch of synapses connecting in her brain.
John Mackey and Leon Blake worked at the museum and became friends.
Shortly after Mackey was killed, Fooze visited Blake in Brixton, and then Blake disappeared for parts unknown.
And now here was Fooze paying a visit to Dodi Khabi just before he died on the road.
“That’s a strange name,” Gabriela said to the woman.
The woman nodded in agreement. “I remember it.”
“Was Fooze Egyptian?”
“Yes, I think so. I did not hear them speak English.”
Gabriela returned to the car. “Back to Cairo,” she said.
“What about Dodi?” Rafer asked.
“Dead,” Gabriela said. “Motorbike accident. Shortly after he quit his job at the dig. Also, shortly after he had a visit from Fooze. You remember Fooze? Fooze visited Leon Blake in London a couple days before Blake checked out of his rental.”
“People seem to be missing after a visit from Fooze,” Jim said. “I’m glad I don’t know him. What will we do now?”
“Merrick also had a previous address for Khabi in Cairo. We might as well try it out.”
“He will not be there, I’m thinking,” Jim said.
Apis turned onto Route 75 north, and they were once again in the desert.
“There’s a car that’s possibly following us,” Jim said. “He’s a good distance behind us and he might only be going to Cairo, but he’s been with us since Bani Mazar.”
“Let him stay with us,” Gabriela said. “I’ll take care of him when we get to the city.”
“Are you going to shoot him?” Jim asked.
“Not immediately,” Gabriela said.
She sat back and tried to relax. Difficult to do in the back seat of a Wrangler when you’re squashed between two men.
At least the road was smooth and traffic was moving along.
She closed her eyes and wondered about the wisdom of the project.
She’d been lucky at finding the Rosetta Stone.
Sometimes it was better to be lucky than good.
The search for Brendan’s coffin was turning out to be more complicated.
And she wasn’t feeling especially lucky.
There was another death under suspicious circumstances.
And there was Fooze. It seemed obvious to her that the thefts were related, and now she had Fooze connecting some of the dots.
Problem was that the dots weren’t coming together fast enough, and the expenses were adding up.
The adventuresome part of her wanted to find the golden coffin.
The practical part of her wanted to go back to New York, hire a high-powered lawyer for Harley, and take on a nice, straightforward job from a client who would pay.
Apis hit the outskirts of Cairo and slowed down to a crawl.
“Rush hour,” Jim said. “Not so bad today. It is moving a little.”
“Are we close to the address?” Gabriela asked Jim.
“Yes,” Jim said. “Maybe an hour away.”
“Would it be faster if we got out and walked?” Gabriela asked.
“Yes,” Jim said, “but you would most likely get mugged and then maybe run over by people who were angry because you were lying in the street. The address is in a section of the city that Apis and I are not so familiar about. Apis, as a guide, has a GPS app, but it is mostly wrong and frequently jammed. Still, we will do our best to not get too lost.”
The crawl came to a standstill, and Apis turned to his back-seat passengers. “Flapjack,” Apis said.
“No problem,” Rafer said. “I’m enjoying myself back here, pressed up next to Gabs. Take your time.”
After four blocks, Apis turned into a neighborhood of midrise apartment buildings. He was driving with one hand and holding his phone with his other. “Goody good,” he said.
“We are lucky today,” Jim said. “The GPS seems to be working. That is a wonderful thing because all of these buildings look the same, and there are no street markers.”
Ten minutes later, Apis stopped in front of a six-story apartment building.
“Is this the address?” Gabriela asked.
Apis shrugged.
“My leg is cramped, and my backside cheeks are asleep,” Jim said, “so I think we should investigate this building because I cannot sit any longer.”
Everyone but Apis got out of the car and stretched. Gabriela and Jim went into the building and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Harley and Rafer stayed with the Wrangler.
There were eight apartments on the fourth floor. Gabriela knocked on 4B and a woman wearing a cranberry-colored hijab, floral blouse, and tan slacks answered. Jim said something to her in Arabic and the woman nodded.
“We are in the right place,” Jim said to Gabriela, “and she speaks some English.”
“I’m investigating a motor scooter accident that involved Dodi Khabi,” Gabriela said to the woman.
“The brother of my husband,” the woman said. “We are not responsible for the payment of the scooter. Enough that we had to bury the body. They brought the scooter here. What am I to do with it? New and now broken.”
“I completely understand,” Gabriela said. “I’m not here about the scooter. I’m trying to gather facts about the accident itself.”
“We were told he was on the highway late at night and ran into something. Or maybe fell asleep and ran off the road. No one knows. He was found in the morning.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“He was coming here. He quit his job. Always the same. He doesn’t keep a job.”
“He was working at an archaeological dig,” Gabriela said. “Did he often do that sort of work?”
“Yes. From time to time.”
“Did he have a friend named Fooze?”
“I didn’t know his friends.”
Gabriela and Jim returned to the Wrangler.
“How’d that go?” Rafer asked.
“Big zero on new information, but she reinforced what I already thought.”
“I need food,” Harley said. “I never know when it’s lunch or dinner here.”
“My cousin’s restaurant is always open,” Jim said. “He cooks all day and most of the night.”
Gabriela finally had cell service, so she texted Marcella for information on a guy named Fooze.
He’s probably Egyptian and had an attachment to Leon Blake and Dodi Khabi, she wrote.
She included Khabi’s address in Cairo and asked Marcella for whatever she could find on him.
And she asked Marcella to run a profile on Mausud Freight Forwarding.
Apis parked on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.
“Do we still have our tail?” Gabriela asked Jim.
“I think yes,” Jim said. “It was hard to keep sight of him in the city traffic, but I saw a black SUV pull to park at the corner.”
“Everyone go inside and order food,” Gabriela said. “I’m going to say hello to our friend. It’s the least I can do. He’s put in a long day.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rafer said.
“No. Not necessary. I’ll only be a couple minutes.”
Gabriela walked down the block to the corner where the SUV was parked. She rapped on the passenger-side window and the doors clicked unlocked. She opened the door and slid onto the seat next to Ahmed.
“It wasn’t nice of you to shoot my drone,” Ahmed said.
“It’s not nice of you to keep breaking into my room,” Gabriela said.
“It wouldn’t be necessary if you would stop throwing my devices out car windows.”
Gabriela was having a hard time keeping a poker face.