Chapter Eighteen
Jim’s cousin Souki was waiting outside the arrivals exit. He was driving a silver Kia Cerato. Not new but not terrible either. Introductions were made, and everyone got into the car.
Souki and Jim had a short conversation that Jim translated for Rafer and Gabriela. “Souki says that he needs his car tonight at seven o’clock. He is a very good bartender, and he is working tonight. Souki will drive to his flat and then give the car over to us.”
“Are you familiar with Luxor?” Gabriela asked Jim.
“Yes,” Jim said. “I spent several years here, working for a tour bus company. It is possible to get these jobs if you speak English.”
“Why did you leave Luxor?”
“I missed the bigger city and my family. Souki is here, but most of my family is in Cairo.”
“I’ve never been to Luxor, but I studied the map last night,” Gabriela said. “It looks like we’re going to the northern part of the city.”
“Yes,” Jim said. “Souki lives near Karnak. It is a wonderful place because you can look across the river and see the Valley of the Kings and the Theban Mountains. The Karnak Temple Complex is very famous. It was the epicenter of ancient Egyptian religion and power. I know this from when I was Jim of the bus tour.”
Souki drove down residential streets that were laid out in no particular order. He stopped at a traditional mud-brick, three-story house and said something in Arabic.
“This is Souki’s house that he shares with his mother and father and three brothers,” Jim said. “He tells me that everyone would be happy to have us as guests if we have the time later today.”
Souki got out of the car, and Jim got behind the wheel. Gabriela moved to the front passenger seat.
“You have the address where Fooze is supposed to be working today,” Gabriela said to Jim.
“Yes,” Jim said. “It is not far from here. I know the area. It is a desirable place to live. And it is near the Sphinx Avenue and many restaurants and shopping bazaars.”
“What’s the plan?” Rafer asked Gabriela. “Are you going to snatch Fooze? Waterboard him? Seduce him into talking?”
“I haven’t got much of a plan,” Gabriela said. “I’m just putting one foot in front of the other. See what turns up.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She’d texted Marcella and asked for two tracking devices. They’d been waiting for her at the hotel front desk this morning, delivered earlier by a messenger.
Jim drove parallel to the Sphinx Avenue and turned into an area of midrise apartment buildings. The roads were maintained but unpaved and pedestrians mingled with car traffic.
“The street is in here somewhere,” Jim said. “This car does not have a map system in it, and my phone is not helping me. I will ride up and down streets until we find something.”
Ten minutes later, Jim stopped beside a van that was parked in front of an apartment house. The writing on the van was in Arabic.
“Here!” Jim said. “This van says ‘Freight Forwarding,’ and it is in front of a nice building with balconies. Someone living here would be able to pay to ship goods overseas.”
“Is there a place you can park without drawing attention to us?” Gabriela asked.
“It would be best if I drop you off, and you can mingle somewhere here. There is a takeout café and some street shops and a little green spot with some seating. I will go to find a place to leave my cousin’s car.”
Gabriela and Rafer took an outdoor table at the takeout café across from the apartment building. Minutes later, Jim joined them.
“At some time, the packing men will break for lunch, and we will be able to see them,” Jim said.
“This is a good choice for lunch. It does not serve any Egyptian food. It was a stop on my tour bus for people who were not loving falafel. You can get a burger here that is a very thin patty of mostly meat. It will come topped with fake yellow cheese, onions chopped into smithereens, paper-thin pickles, and a special sauce. And it will be on a roll with no nutritional value.”
“I’m all about it,” Rafer said. “Do they have fries?”
“Yes, of course,” Jim said. “They are very skinny and greasy and salty. And you can get a milkshake that is very thick, and the ingredients are forbidden to be published.”
Rafer and Jim went to the takeout window and ordered food while Gabriela kept watch for the workmen. She was still watching when Rafer and Jim returned.
“They are speedy here,” Jim said. “They do not wait for orders to come in. They make the food ahead and it is already sitting under the heating lights, waiting to be stuffed into bags for the customers. It is very efficient. Only several times did I get bad poo poo, but it might also have been from other sources.”
Rafer unwrapped his Double McPharaoh burger. “Oh man, this looks great. I feel like I’m back in high school in Scoon. This is a Saturday-date-night burger.”
Gabriela examined the innards of her McPharaoh burger. No mold. No roaches. No mouse legs or snouts. She reassembled it and dug in. Rafer was right. This was a Saturday-date-night-in-Scoon burger.
The burgers and fries went down fast. The shakes took longer. Gabriela was still working on hers when the ground-floor door to the apartment building opened and three men walked out. Gabriela recognized Fooze from his picture.
“Here we go,” she said.
The men walked down the street to a vendor, got boxes of food, and went to the benches in the small park. Fooze was wearing a T-shirt with writing on it and jeans. He’d paid for his food with money taken from a wallet he kept in his jeans pocket.
No place to drop the tracker, Gabriela thought. No man purse. No backpack. No fanny pack. Not even a jacket. She didn’t want to consider getting it into his jeans pocket.
“I need information,” Gabriela said. “I’d like to know how much longer they’re going to be working here. When is Fooze going back to Cairo? Is he taking the van?” She turned to Jim. “I can’t talk to him. It would be weird. Can you talk to him?”
“I can do it,” Jim said. “Jim Bond can do anything.”
Rafer and Gabriela watched Jim walk over to the Mausud guys.
“I wasn’t sure about Jim in the beginning,” Rafer said, “but I’m really liking him now. Maybe we should adopt him.”
Gabriela nodded. Jim had become part of the team. “What do you think of Egypt?” she asked Rafer. “Could you live here?”
“I like Egypt,” he said. “I like the people. I like the sand not so much. The traffic not at all. Not so crazy about Cairo, but I’ve been to some of the resort towns on the Red Sea and I could easily live there.
The reef is unbelievable. The snorkeling and diving are an eleven on a scale of one to ten. ”
“I didn’t realize you spent time there.”
“I’ve taken dive parties to Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada.”
“When we were together all we did was have arguments about ridiculous things like which brand of ketchup to buy,” Gabriela said. “It turns out that once we separated our world got a lot bigger and better.”
“Bigger,” Rafer said, “but I’m not sure mine’s better. It’s just different.”
“You seem to like your new world,” Gabriela said.
“I do,” Rafer said. “I like the island. I have good friends, a successful business that I enjoy, a hammock on my front porch, and I have a cat and a chicken.”
Gabriela smiled. “I’m jealous. I don’t have a cat or a chicken.”
“Actually, I share them with my neighbor, but I think they like me best.”
The Mausud guys left the park and walked back to the apartment. Jim returned to the table.
“It is definitely Fooze,” he said. “He is the leader, and the other two men are local. They have been packing up the owner’s belongings and tomorrow morning Fooze is driving the van back to Cairo.
I found this out by asking for a job. I said I saw the van and I was looking for work and I would be very good at moving heavy things around and packing things that are delicate.
Fooze said they didn’t need anyone, but he was polite about it. ”
“Did they say if they would be working much longer?”
“It sounded like an hour or two,” Jim said.
“I’m going to plant a tag in the van,” Gabriela said, “and then we’ll wait to see where it takes us.”
Gabriela strolled across the street and looked into the back of the moving van.
It was filled with boxes and furniture draped in blankets.
The boxes had international labels pasted on them detailing their contents and destination.
They were going to Tours, France. Nice move, Gabriela thought.
She’d spent some time in Tours a couple years ago, searching for an emerald necklace.
The city was charming and cosmopolitan. She’d found the necklace and stayed an extra two days.
It was snowing in New York, and the weather had been lovely in Tours.
Gabriela stuffed a tag under a blanket-wrapped chair that was closest to the back door and a second tag went into a small chest of drawers. Just in case the truck made an interesting detour on the way back to Cairo.
An hour later, Jim followed the moving van to a congested neighborhood in east Luxor. The streets were unpaved and narrow. Small mud-brick houses were mixed with four- and five-story apartment buildings with tiny balconies and tinier windows.
“Where do you park a car?” Gabriela asked Jim. “I see some motor scooters, but I don’t see any parked cars or garages.”
“Not everyone has a car,” Jim said. “Parking is a problem. Some of the apartment buildings have garages on the ground floor. And some of the houses are built around courtyards. You can see there are alleys leading to these courtyards and a car might be parked in an alley.”
“I haven’t seen anything that could accommodate a moving van,” Gabriela said.
“I know this area,” Jim said. “After another block there will be a street of businesses and some parking for trucks to service those businesses. The street will end in a bazaar with excellent Om Ali.”
“Om Ali is a dessert,” Gabriela said.
“Yes,” Jim said. “It is the queen of desserts.”
There were several cars between Jim and Fooze.
The moving van was much larger than the cars and easy to keep in sight.
It approached the street with the businesses and the bazaar, pulled into a dirt lot, and parked next to an ancient pickup truck that was selling bananas off its tailgate.
By the time Jim reached the moving van, Fooze had vacated the truck and set off on foot.
“Is it important that we find the precise location of Mr. Fooze?” Jim asked. “I can also park here.”
“Not necessary,” Gabriela said. “I’ll track him tomorrow through the tags. It’s too late for us to get a flight back to Cairo tonight. We can leave first thing in the morning.”