Dr. Badawi glanced to Ghalid. “True?” he asked.
Ghalid handed him an envelope containing several official documents. “True,” he answered.
The doctor glanced quickly at the documents and nodded.
“All right,” he said softly. “This would seem to be in order. Will you call for the proper van to transport her?” the doctor asked.
“Already done,” Rizzo said. His eyes were moist.
“Under the circumstances then,” the doctor said, “I’ll see that the body is ready to move today.”
“Grazie,” Rizzo said. “Choukrn.”
“Âfowan,” the doctor answered.
“I’ll remain with the body,” Rizzo continued.
“You do not have any reason to think-,” the doctor began.
“I have every reason to think something could happen,” Rizzo retorted sharply. “I said I’d stay with the body! What language do I have to say that in so that you’ll understand?”
“Very good, ya-effendim,” the doctor said. “If it pleases you, you may wait here in this chamber. Over there, perhaps.”
Dr. Badawi nodded to an array of wooden chairs ill-arranged against the wall. Then he took his leave.
Rizzo turned back to Ghalid and Amjad.
“Should we wait with you?” Ghalid asked.
“No.” Then with an angry nod, Rizzo indicated Amjad. “Get him out of here before I shoot him. We’re already in the morgue, and I’m starting to think it’s just too convenient to pass up.”
Amjad looked to Ghalid. Ghalid interpreted. Amjad shot Rizzo an angry glance and headed to the door.
“I’ll be at the embassy if you need anything else,” Ghalid said to Rizzo. “Be advised, transport for the body back to the US will probably have to go to Frankfurt first, then New York or Washington.”
“Just get the paperwork done,” Rizzo said, exhausted.
Ghalid nodded. Amjad was already out the door.
The two men who remained exchanged an extra glance. Then Ghalid turned to follow Amjad and start the trek back to Cairo.
Left alone in the room, Rizzo exhaled long and low. He let himself calm slightly. His sweat glands were in overdrive, but he felt them slowing down now. He went to the door where Amjad and Ghalid had exited. He opened it, looked out in both directions to make sure no one was returning, then he closed the door and bolted it from within.
He walked back to the body bag, his steps falling heavily on the concrete floor. He stood above the body bag for a moment. He placed a hand on the bag and gave it an affectionate touch, almost a caress, on the shoulder of the body. Then he reached to the zipper and pulled it down again.
With a stoic expression, he stared down at the closed eyes of Alexandra LaDuca.
TWO
TWO MONTHS EARLIER
Hand in hand, Carlos and his fiancée, Janet, walked the streets of the Egyptian capital, the most densely populated city in the world. They were on what they called their “pre-honeymoon.” They had been working together in Washington, DC, for more than two years as techies for one of America’s more nefarious national security agencies. They had also been living together for a few months, though Janet still retained her own apartment. But this one-week trip to Egypt and the Holy Land was something special, their first trip together out of the United States. So far, it was going just fine.
They would visit Egypt and see the Great Pyramids and antiquities of the Nile, then the ancient cities of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Palestine. They had always wanted to take this trip together ever since they had discovered a joint interest a year earlier. Their plans for a honeymoon, the following year, would be more prosaic: sun and surf in Maui. What was not to like?
Today was their first full day in Egypt. They visited the ancient quarter now known as Old Cairo, which had grown up around the Roman fortress of Babylon. They wandered through the old town, a largely Christian neighborhood of narrow, winding streets bordered by low beige buildings of sandstone. They passed quiet homes and shops and the occasional café filled with Christian Arabs sipping walnut-colored tea and eating small sandwiches and pastries. They came to the Coptic Church of Saint Sergius, one of the oldest houses of Christian worship, which was built like a fortress, and paid the admission to enter and admire it from within.
When the old church had been built, three centuries after the time of Christ, churches were exactly that-fortresses. Entrances were often walled and bolted against attack. There was no large entrance door like modern churches have, just a small door in a bare façade. In the Middle Ages the Coptic Church of Saint Sergius had been a destination for many Christian pilgrims because of its association with the flight into Egypt.
Steps within the church led down past the altar to a refuge and a crypt where, according to legend, the Holy Family found shelter after fleeing from Herod. Christianity had been the religion of most Egyptians from the third to the tenth century after Christ. Egypt had settled into the Muslim world thereafter.
Carlos and Janet continued their walking tour in the afternoon and visited the ancient Synagogue of Ben Ezra. It bore a resemblance to the Coptic Church because it had once been one too. The Church of St. Michael had stood here during the first ten centuries after Christ, but the Copts sold the structure to the Jews to pay a tax by Ibn Tuylun for the erection of a mosque.
The building, which contained some of the original structure from almost two thousand years earlier, remained a temple, but its parish had long since dispersed. Most of Cairo’s Jews had been forced out of the country after the modern wars with Israel. Today, the building remained a historical oddity, a reminder of the two pasts, near and distant.
In the late afternoon, exhausted and with feet sore from their first day of sightseeing, they went back to their hotel and refreshed themselves. Then they settled into the hotel bar and restaurant.
It was a very comfortable modern bar in a splendid hotel, the Grand Hyatt of Cairo, a towering modern edifice located at the edge of the old city where the fortress of Babylon had once stood. But there was one problem. Right now, all that was on Carlos’s mind was that they were in the capital of a Muslim country and the bar served no alcohol, even though alcohol was readily available at other locations in the city. At the end of a hot day, Carlos would have chucked the whole journey to be able to knock back a couple of cold brews.
“Who ever heard of a bar with no booze?” Carlos grumbled. “That’s like an airplane with no wings.”
Janet laughed slightly.
“You know that Bon Jovi song ‘Dry County’?” he continued. “That should be the national anthem here. It’s like driving through western Kansas, only worse.”
“Carlos,” she said, “zip it, would you? There’s beer in the cafés. We’ll go to another place, okay?”