T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

“So what happened to change things for you?”

She looked at him then, really looked. And smiled for the first time since their arrival. “Om Kalthoum.”

He searched his memory. “She was a singer, right?”

“They called her Qal-Kab Al Sharq . The Planet of the East. Life was very hard back then, not just for the poor. There was so little of anything, rationing and lines everywhere. Mother and I used to spend hours preparing lists of things for people to bring from the States-toothpaste, Kleenex, medicines. Our second Christmas someone brought over a canned ham. I remember Daddy made Momma let him open it; she was crying so hard he was afraid she’d cut herself.”

She stopped then. Staring out beyond him. Softly he reminded her, “The singer.”

“She gave a concert every Thursday night. The entire city stopped. There was no traffic. No people. Cairo was completely dead. People who didn’t have radios gathered with family or friends.” The smile was still there. “One of Daddy’s students was Nasser’s youngest daughter, Mona. She heard that I liked the music and gave us two tickets. They were like fairy dust, those tickets. Impossible to find. I remember how Momma spent hours getting ready, dressing me and then making me sit without moving while she got herself ready. And the servants were all racing about, beside themselves with excitement. Not that we would be sitting with Nasser’s family. That meant nothing. That we would be in the box closest to the stage and Om Kalthoum.”

“I don’t get it,” Wynn said. “You grew to like it here because of a concert?”

“Of course not.” Sybel was a striking woman in a knife-edged way. Intensity ran through her as naturally as blood. “That was the first time I began to see the beauty of this place. I learned that to be happy here, I had to look beyond all the grit and the grime and the sadness. To see the wonder of these people, their resilience in the face of crushing hardships. To accept that life here was hard and often dangerous, but still could be very precious, full of joy and beauty. Daddy always called Egypt the land of thyme. It was a quote from Plato. ’Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences.’ ”

He sat across from this woman whom he had never understood, the rock of his early years. He wondered if it would have been possible to have grown up more like her, had he been older when they came, or known his parents longer. The threat that he might have failed to meet her standards left him so hollow the night breeze off the balcony wafted straight through him. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“No.” She rose to her feet, scarcely looking his way as she crossed the room. As though she finally recognized just how little there was to her brother. “We leave for Wadi Natrum at dawn.”

Thursday

Three cobblestone lanes descended away from the Hassler and the Spanish Steps, and at the juncture of two stood Jackie’s café. Thursday morning it was full of light and old men enjoying the springtime freshness. They murmured greetings as she entered, and eyed her appreciatively. The young waiter was already busy preparing her cappuccino. He remained standing there, polishing the bar’s gleaming surface, calling the day bella . Finally she opened her Herald Tribune in defense, and the waiter retreated.

There were no other English speakers in the café at that hour, so when the voice came from behind it was more startling than the hand on her arm. “Don’t turn around, Ms. Havilland.”

She watched a second hand slip about her other side and set a file upon the counter. Instantly she flattened down her paper, covering the folder. “Who-”

“You wanted information.” The voice whispered an uncertain tenor. “Now you have it. Good-bye.”

All Jackie saw of him was the back of a brilliantined head, a jacket, then nothing. She reached beneath her newspaper and drew out an old-fashioned cardboard folder of forest green. She unwound the string catch and flipped through the documents. She felt another hand then, this one imagined but still capable of gripping her throat and squeezing fiercely.

She glanced around. The café was now filled with Roman statues, men well trained in the art of seeing nothing untoward. Even if she had spoken their tongue, she knew they would not have told her a thing. Jackie scanned the pages again, struggling to fit the answers around the tumult of questions and mysteries.

She flung down a bill, bundled up the folder and paper both, and hurried back into the hotel. Back in her room, she first tried to call Cairo. But what telephone lines there might have been did not open for her. She checked her watch. Three o’clock in the morning, Washington time. Even so, she had to wake Esther Hutchings. But the phone rang and rang.

Jackie booted up her computer, waited impatiently for the internet connection, went straight to the Trastevere site. This time the screen was not blank. As soon as she came on-line, the message shone Incoming direct coded signal. Will you accept? Go/NoGo .

Go.

A message drifted out of the white nothingness. Did your requested data arrive?

She hammered the keys instead of screaming out loud. WHO ARE YOU?

She watched the message fade, wondering how long she would have to sit and wait this time. Days, she decided, if need be. But the response was as swift as it was strange. No words. Just a cartoon figure of a gondolier paddling a boat.

Jackie watched as over and over the clumsy stick figure came to the brink of falling overboard. And whispered, “Boatman.”

She typed back, I need more. Can you help?

Every time we connect, it puts us both at risk.

I was told this site was safe.

Lesson one: Nothing is totally secure. Witness this conversation. I tapped into the detective’s request for funds. Others might have done the same. Contact me only in dire emergency.

Like now, she wanted to write, but could not.

When she did not respond, another message appeared. Have you come across the code name Tsunami?

Negative, she replied.

Then you are looking in the wrong place . A momentary fade-out, then the final words bloomed like a poisonous monochrome rose.

Welcome to the war zone.

When the Cairo phone lines remained blocked, Jackie wrote a fax to Wynn, left it at the front desk, then exited the hotel. Across from the Monti church rose a waist-high concrete balustrade carved in Roman arches and curves. She leaned over the barrier and stared down at all the carefree people thronging the Spanish Steps and the Via Condotti. She was utterly alone among lovers exchanging wet kisses and musical endearments. Jackie wished their ardor did not mock her so, or speak of a man she did not know well enough to miss as she did. She felt separated by a lifetime’s distance from all the easy laughter. She raised her face to the sky and whispered the single word “Hayek.”

The detective’s evidence was utterly clear. Valerie Lawry had departed the previous morning at seven-twelve local time from Aeroporto Roma-Fiumicino, a half hour after Wynn’s Cairo flight. She had traveled via private jet leased to Bank Royale, Liechtenstein. The file contained a photocopy of the flight plan. Nonstop trans-Atlantic, destination Orlando. There Lawry had checked into the airport Hyatt. She had placed one call. A copy of the hotel bill showed the call had been to the Hayek Group’s organization.

The data on Hayek himself had been interesting, informative, and old hat. Preston had regaled her with these details and many more. Everyone who had ever worked for the group knew the stories. The prince, the King. The menace.