Daniel Silva - Prince of fire

Gabriel had never been able to sleep before an operation, and his last night in Jerusalem was no exception. And so he was pleased to hear, shortly before midnight, the distinctive grumble of Shamron’s armored Peugeot pulling up outside in the street-and to glimpse Shamron’s bald head floating up the garden walk with Rami at his heels. They passed the remainder of that night in Gabriel’s study, with the windows open to the chill night air. Shamron talked about the War of Independence, his search for Sheikh Asad, and of the morning he had killed him in the cottage outside Lydda. As dawn approached, Gabriel felt a reluctance to leave him, a sense that perhaps he should have taken Lev’s advice and allowed someone else to go in his place.

Only when it had grown light outside did Shamron talk about what lay ahead. “Don’t go anywhere near the embassy,” he said. “The Mukhabarat assumes, with some justification, that everyone who works there is a spy.” Then he gave Gabriel a business card. “He’s ours, bought and paid for. He knows everyone in town. I’ve told him to expect you. Be careful. He likes his drink.”

An hour later Gabriel climbed into an Office car outfitted as a Jerusalem taxi and headed down the Bab al-Wad to Ben-Gurion Airport. He cleared customs as Herr Klemp, endured a mind-numbing security examination, then went to the departure lounge. When his flight was called he set out across the bone-white tarmac toward the waiting jetliner and took his seat in the economy cabin. As the plane lifted off he looked out the window and watched the land sinking beneath him, gripped by a perverse fear that he would never see it or Chiara again. He thought of the journey ahead, a weeklong Mediterranean odyssey that would take him from Athens to Istanbul and finally to the ancient city on the western edge of the Fertile Crescent, where he hoped to find a woman named Madeleine, or Alexandra, or Lunetta, the Little Moon, and her friend named Tony.

The gentleman from Munich was a guest the staff at the Inter-Continental Hotel would not soon forget. Mr. Katubi, the well-oiled chief concierge, had seen many like him, a man perpetually ready to take offense, a small man with a small man’s chip balanced precariously on his insignificant shoulder. Indeed, Mr. Katubi grew to loathe him so intensely that he would wince visibly at the mere sight of him. On the third day he greeted him with a tense smile and the question: “What is it now, Herr Klemp?”

The complaints had begun within minutes of his arrival. Herr Klemp had reserved a non-smoking room, but clearly, he claimed, someone had smoked there very recently-though Mr. Katubi, who prided himself on a keen sense of smell, was never able to detect even a trace of tobacco on the air. The next room was too close to the swimming pool, the next too close to the nightclub. Finally, Mr. Katubi gave him, at no additional charge, an upper-floor suite with a terrace overlooking the river, which Herr Klemp pronounced “hopelessly adequate.”

The swimming pool was too warm, his bathroom too cold. He turned up his nose at the breakfast buffet and routinely sent back his food at dinner. The valets ruined the lapels of one of his suits, his massage at the spa had left him with an injured neck. He demanded the maids clean his suite promptly at eight each morning, and he remained in the room to supervise their work-his cash had been pinched at the Istanbul Hilton, he claimed, and he was not going to let it happen again in Cairo. The moment the maids left, the DO NOT DISTURB sign would appear on his door latch, where it would remain like a battle flag for the remainder of each day. Mr. Katubi wished only that he could hang a similar sign on his outpost in the lobby.

Each morning at ten Herr Klemp left the hotel armed with his tourist maps and guidebooks. The hotel drivers took to drawing straws to determine who would have the misfortune of serving as his guide for the day, for each outing seemed more calamitous than the last. The Egyptian Museum, he announced, needed a thorough cleaning. The Citadel he wrote off as a filthy old fort. At the pyramids of Giza he was nipped by a cantankerous camel. Upon his return from a visit to Coptic Cairo, Mr. Katubi asked if he enjoyed the Church of Saint Barbara. “Interesting,” said Herr Klemp, “but not as beautiful as our churches in Germany.”

On his fourth day, Mr. Katubi was standing at the entrance of the hotel as Herr Klemp came whirling out of the revolving doors, into a dust-filled desert wind.

“Good morning, Herr Klemp.”

“That is yet to be determined, Mr. Katubi.”

“Does Herr Klemp require a car this morning?”

“No, he does not.”

And with that he set out along the corniche, the tails of his supposedly “ruined” suit jacket flapping in the breeze like the mudguards of a lorry. Cairo was a city of remarkable resiliency, Mr. Katubi thought, but even Cairo was no match for a man like Herr Klemp.

Gabriel saw something of Europe in the grimy, decaying buildings along Talaat Harb Street. Then he remembered reading, in the guidebooks of Herr Klemp, that the nineteenth-century Egyptian ruler Khedive Ismail had conceived of turning Cairo into “Paris by the Nile” and had hired some of Europe’s finest architects to achieve his dream. Their handiwork was still evident in the neo-Gothic facades, the wrought-iron railings, and tall rectangular shuttered windows, though it had been undone by a century’s worth of pollution, weather, and neglect.

He came to a thunderous traffic circle. A sandaled boy tugged at his coat sleeve and invited him to visit his family’s perfume shop. “Nein, nein,” said Gabriel in the German of Herr Klemp, but he pushed past the child with the detached air of an Israeli used to fending off hawkers in the alleys of the Old City.

He followed the circle counterclockwise and turned into Qasr el-Nil Street, Cairo’s version of the Champs-Elysees. He walked for a time, pausing now and again to gaze into the garish shop windows to see if he was being followed. He left Qasr el-Nil and entered a narrow side street. It was impossible to walk on the pavements because they were jammed with parked cars, so he walked in the street like a Cairene.

He came to the address shown on the business card Shamron had given him the night before his departure. It was an Italianate building with a facade the color of Nile mud. From a third-floor window came the strains of the BBC’s hourly news bulletin theme. A few feet from the entrance a vendor dispensed paper plates of spaghetti Bolognese from an aluminum cart. Next to the vendor a veiled woman sold limes and loaves of flat bread. Across the cluttered street was a kiosk. Standing in the shade of the little roof, wearing sunglasses and a Members Only windbreaker, was a poorly concealed Mukhabarat surveillance man, who watched as Gabriel went inside.

It was cool and dark in the foyer. An emaciated Egyptian cat with hollow eyes and enormous ears hissed at him from the shadows, then disappeared through a hole in the wall. A Nubian doorman in a lemon-colored galabia and white turban sat motionless in a wooden chair. He lifted an enormous ebony hand to receive the business card of the man Gabriel wished to see.

“Third floor,” he said in English.

Two doors greeted Gabriel on the landing. Next to the door on the right was a brass plaque that read: DAVID QUINNELL-INTERNATIONAL PRESS. Gabriel pressed the bell and was promptly admitted into a small antechamber by a Sudanese office boy, whom Gabriel addressed in measured German-accented English.

“Who shall I say is calling?” the Sudanese replied.

“My name is Johannes Klemp.”

“Is Mr. Quinnell expecting you?”

“I’m a friend of Rudolf Heller. He’ll understand.”