He began to advance back up the hill, one hand thrust into his jacket pocket where it held on to the reassuring grip of Al-Qadi’s pistol. A hundred yards from the car, Girling glanced back to see it sur-rounded by a crowd. He pressed on, anxious to regain the airport road, where he could find a taxi that would take him back to the Israeli Embassy.
As he proceeded up the track, he saw a figure in the distance, moving down the hill towards him. It drew closer and he realized it was a boy, probably no more than ten years old, dressed in a traditional jellaba, which was dirty enough to indicate he possessed no other garment. The boy skipped down the hill seemingly without a care. He appeared to pay Girling no attention until he drew level. Then he stopped, just as Girling stopped, and studied him, head inclined over one shoulder to exaggerate the act of contemplation.
‘‘Agnabi,’ he said. ‘I have a message for you.’
Girling thought he misheard. He was convinced that this boy would ask him for money.
‘A message? Who from?’
‘From Sheikh Youssef, our Guide.’
Girling felt his pulse quicken. ‘What does he say, ya walad?’
‘If you come with me, I will show you the house of Abu Tarek. You want him, don’t you?’
Girling fingered the butt of the automatic. ‘Why should the Guide do this?’
‘He did not tell me.’
Girling stared up the track. He could hear the traffic at the top of the road.’
‘Do you come, or not?’ the boy asked impatiently.
Girling’s every nerve ending tingled. To be so close to Mona’s killer and not see where his house was…
‘How far is it, ya walad?’ he asked.
The boy pointed down the slopes of the wooded grove beside the road. ‘He lives just beyond these trees.’
Girling looked from the trees to the road and back. He gripped the gun more firmly in his pocket.
‘Well, ‘agnabi?’
‘Come on.’
The boy stopped him with a hand on his jacket. ‘First, you must pay.’ He held his hand out.
Girling actually allowed himself a smile. Somehow this simple act of enterprise made him feel better. He handed over a few piastres, notes which amounted to little more than a few pence, but were enough to sustain this artful boy for a week. They were bundled quickly into a pocket in the lining of his jellaba.
He followed the boy as he skipped nonchalantly between the trees. The sun broke through the branches and the boy used the shadows for a game, jumping from each of them, humming happily as he went.
And then they were out of the trees and moving through a cemetery. Girling slowed as he weaved between the headstones, but the boy waved him on. Finally they sat at the wall of the cemetery, the boy pointing at a collection of tombs across a clearing, the nearest of them about a hundred yards away. Girling crouched breathlessly, cradling Al-Qadi’s automatic in his lap.
The boy looked down at the gun. ‘Are you a policeman, ‘agnabi?’
‘No.’
‘Then why do you have a gun?’
‘It makes me feel safer. Which is the house of Abu Tarek?’
The boy pointed to the largest of the mausoleums, the one capped by a small, crumbling dome. ‘In there.’
Girling studied it for a few moments, then turned to his small guide. But the boy was already weaving a path back through the graves. ‘How many people are inside?’ Girling hissed after him.
The boy stopped. ‘He is alone,’ he said, before proceeding on his way.
Girling knew he should turn back. Before good sense could get too firm a hold, he darted across the clearing, gun in hand, and pressed his back against the nearest wall. He stopped still and listened. The place was perfectly quiet. He could hear nothing, not even so much as a dog’s bark. He edged along the wall, stopped at a low gate and was over it, heading down a narrow passage, the tomb supposedly occupied by Abu Tarek straight ahead. He could see inside the mausoleum now. There was no door. Light streamed through a latticed window in the roof. There was a kind of raised platform in the centre of the room, beneath the dome. It looked like the sarcophagus in which he had seen Stansell at police headquarters.
His heart in his mouth, Girling twisted through the doorway. There was no stopping him now. He felt that every minute he had been in Egypt had been in preparation for this moment. He stopped and listened again. His gun was ready, he had cocked it in the cemetery, and he held it out before him with both hands. The tomb was quiet. There was nobody there.
When he turned to the door, he caught only the merest glimpse of the figure inside as it turned and coshed him in the face. At the moment Girling fell, he saw others. They were dressed in black, heads covered, moving into the room as nimbly as spirits. Girling rolled across the floor, coming to a halt against the sarcophagus. The figures advanced towards him. One of them held something in his hand.
Just before the cloth was clamped over his face, Girling asked the question to which his delirious mind thought it already knew the answer.
The mask moved. ‘We are the Angels of Judgement,’ it said.
CHAPTER 20
Girling awoke with a start. He sat up, trying to focus his eyes beyond the sunlight streaming through the window. The floor of the cell was of loosely raked earth, so cold he was shivering convulsively.
He tried to move towards the window, but his legs gave way. He lay with the chilled earth against his cheek and as the light started to fade drifted back into unconsciousness.
He dreamt he had fallen into a deep well shaft and that there was someone there, framed in the circle of light far above him. He began climbing. The sides of the well were smooth, but somehow he forced his way upwards. And then he was at the top, clawing his way out. As his tired muscles began to fail and the weight of his body dragged him back, he looked up to see Mona and Stansell watching him, their faces impassive. He reached out to them, trying to find the strength to cry, but neither moved. It was as he slid inexorably down into the pit that he woke again.
This time he managed to stand.
As dusk fell, he groped for clues to his surroundings. The smell of the earth confused him. He was sure he remembered the rise and fall of a ship at sea, the smell of tar and salt spray.
Then he was running once more through the graveyard, Al-Qadi’s gun in his hand, trying to keep up with the Sheikh’s messenger.
Girling brought his hand up to his face and felt the bruise above his eye. He remembered rolling towards the sarcophagus, Al-Qadi’s gun skating across the floor. Figures, too. Dressed in black. A smell of ether in the air and a voice from behind a mask.
‘We are the Angels of Judgement…’
Girling swayed. He felt pain and swelling in his upper arm. Whatever it was, it had been a powerful anaesthetic. The hollowness in his stomach told him that he had been unconscious for a day, maybe two.
Before he made it to the window, a crude hole in the door criss-crossed by bars, a cool wind brushed his face, and brought with it the smell of cooking.
He grasped the bars and looked outside.
His prison lay now in the shadow of a high-sided rock face, at the end of a wadi. As his eyes adjusted to the light he made out a white crenellated building shimmering in the distance like a mirage.
‘A caravanserai… a sacred place,’ Abdullah had said, before the helicopters swept over the wadi to destroy it.
Girling let go of the bars and teetered backwards. He tried to regain balance, but fell against the far wall of the cell, cracking his head against the stones.
There was a scuffle outside the door and he looked up to see a man’s face at the bars. Girling could not speak. He watched as a slice of unleavened bread was thrown to the floor. By the time he reached it, the face was gone and he was alone again.