As the Nile Valley swept below the belly of the aircraft, Girling settled back into his seat for the landing.
Five minutes later the wheels greased the tarmac at Cairo International Airport, sending a shimmer through the aircraft. Behind him a group of Egyptians cheered.
He descended the airstairs and shivered. Thanks to the six-hour delay, the aircraft had landed during the small window of time when the chill of the night had sucked the last warmth from the land. He looked to the eastern horizon, but the sun was a half-hour away yet.
The journey through customs and immigration was the usual maze of triplicate forms and rubber stamps. The massed ranks of officialdom were painstakingly breached. Now he had arrived, he felt every delay counting against Stansell’s life. He looked at his watch a third time in five minutes. An immigration officer watched him with suspicion.
Reunited with his bags, he headed out of the terminal, through Cairenes crammed around the exits searching for friends and relations. He looked briefly for Sharifa, but she wasn’t there. They had arranged to meet at Dispatches’ offices if his plane arrived late.
He dropped his cases to the pavement. The sun had started to climb over the eastern desert accompanied by the odours of humanity that had been suppressed by the dew of the night. A swirl of choking dust blew in his face, bringing with it the distant cry of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.
As Egypt stirred it offered sights, sounds, and smells that he remembered so well.
A Mercedes, sporting the familiar black and white paint scheme of Cairo cabs, pulled alongside. The driver leant across the passenger seat and waved him in.
Girling told him where he wanted to go. Dispatches’ offices were located on the fifth floor of a tall building overlooking the Corniche, the long road that ran almost the length of the Nile’s east bank in Cairo.
The driver turned to compliment him on his Arabic and the Mercedes swerved across the carriageway. The closer they drew to the city centre the greater the bustle and the noise as ten million people went about the day’s business. Ahead, the twin minarets of the Muhammad Ali mosque, a soaring nineteenth-century edifice built atop Saladin’s medieval citadel, swung into view. Girling glanced to his left and saw smaller, less elegant minarets, scattered like rocky outcrops in a plain of whitewashed graves and crumbling mausoleums.
The City of the Dead stretched away from the highway until its edges merged with the long shadows of the Muqattam Hills.
As the car sped on by, he watched a little boy, one leg amputated at the knee, hobble from the doorway of a requisitioned mausoleum and disappear down one of the myriad alleys that criss-crossed this sprawling sub-city.
Once located beyond the walls of the capital, the City of the Dead was now one of its largest suburbs. The million people living here were from the lowest walks of life; mostly peasants who had teemed into the city to find work but who quickly ended up picking through the rubbish dumps in search of food.
The City of the Dead attracted every kind of criminal. From the lowest thief to powerful, Mafia-style gangleaders. A virtual no-go area for the regular police — the ‘Askary — the City of the Dead was a hot-bed of Islamic fundamentalism. If Stansell was anywhere in Egypt, there was a better than even chance he was down there, Girling thought, perhaps a few hundred yards from his speeding Mercedes. It was a notion that both exhilarated and depressed him.
Twenty minutes later, he paid the driver and stood with his bags on the kerb opposite Dispatches’ building. He crossed the road, avoiding the wildly converging traffic on the Corniche to reach the sanctuary of the building. In the comparative cool and silence of the lobby he glanced at his watch. It was six thirty. He decided to go upstairs and wait.
He rode the lift to the fifth floor and found the door to their offices ajar. He swung it gently and peered inside. Never a tidy place, the room looked like it had been turned upside down. Files littered the floor, back issues of the magazine were scattered across tables and desks, there were endless boxes filled with papers and several filing cabinets with their drawers hanging open. Then he noticed the policeman in the corner, his white summer-issue fatigues sullied by dust and soot. He was sitting on a tea-chest brimming with documents and looked like he had spent the night chain-smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes, judging from the butts littering the floor by his feet.
Girling coughed and the corporal roused himself self-consciously, anxious to prove he had been doing anything but sleeping. He fingered his 1940s-vintage rifle anxiously, until Girling explained who he was. Girling took his seat in the opposite corner and for the next forty minutes they watched each other uneasily, neither saying a word.
Presently, Girling heard footsteps in the corridor. He smiled in anticipation of seeing Sharifa again. He wondered, as he rose to his feet, how kind the last three years had been to her.
Girling turned to find himself confronting a short man in his early fifties, his face built around small features. A wispy moustache, hairs glistening with droplets of sweat, sprouted from his upper lip. The suit, expensive by Egyptian standards, was ill-fitting, the buttons straining against an extensive belly.
The militiaman was on his feet, hand locked in salute. The fat man waved him to a post by the door.
‘You are Mr Tom Girling, the unfortunate Stansell’s replacement.’ It was presented as a statement of fact, not a question. He took a step forward, hand outstretched. ‘Captain Lutfi Al-Qadi of State Security.’ Al-Qadi lisped each s, leaving Girling with a fleeting impression of something reptilian. The Mukhabarat was welcoming him back.
Al-Qadi left a thin film of sweat on Girling’s palm.
‘You are not well, Mr Girling?’
‘It was a long flight, Captain.’
‘You must be tired.’
‘You try to get used to it in my business.’
‘And mine also.’ Al-Qadi gestured to the mess around him. ‘Not the best greeting, I’m afraid, Mr Girling. Our forensic people, you understand.’
‘Actually, I’m impressed, Captain.’
‘The Mukhabarat does not take its work lightly, Mr Girling. We are making progress.’
‘Oh?’
‘We have recently recovered his contact book,’ Al-Qadi said. ‘I believe it will answer many of our questions.’
Girling had hoped Sharifa might have salvaged the book. It would have been an admirable start to his own efforts. Doubtless, Stansell’s contact book would give the Mukhabarat a sober insight into a first-rate journalist’s penetration of the establishment, both in Egypt and in neighbouring countries.
‘I am afraid your Stansell did not believe in personal security,’ Al-Qadi said, shuffling to the large desk in the corner of the office. ‘In his apartment, he has a piece much like this, only oak, good quality.’ He rubbed the surface to prove the point. ‘We found his typewriter, with paper in it, just here. There were signs of a struggle — a broken lamp, an overturned chair.’ He pointed to the corresponding positions of each item.
‘Had he typed anything?’ Girling asked.
‘On the paper? No.’
‘Did he leave behind any notes?’
‘I remind you there is a news black-out, Mr Girling.’
‘Stansell is my friend, Captain. I think I have a right to know.’
Al-Qadi removed a silk handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘There was the note from his abductors, but that was all. Both his apartment and this office have been thoroughly searched, I can assure you.’
‘Could I see it?’
‘What?’