Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

You barely make a sound when you close a door. Why is that?

Bletchley stirred.

What? Oh habit, I suppose.

Joe nodded. He looked back at the dark buildings and the empty streets and whistled softly.

What's that? asked Bletchley.

Just me whistling in the dark, said Joe. This looks like the kind of place where a man might be taken to walk the plank, but of course you didn't bring me out here for that, at least I don't think so. . Are we going to be here for a bit, do you suppose? I'd like to sit down. I'm exhausted.

Of course.

Joe sighed wearily and sat down on the end of the pier with his legs dangling over the edge. Bletchley sat down beside him and took a flask from his pocket. He drank, swallowed, wiped the corner of his mouth with his hand. He held out the flask to Joe.

Brandy.

Thanks.

Joe took a drink, coughed, took a longer one.

Not only brandy but the real stuff for a change. Not that I'm complaining about the Arab variety, you understand. Any oasis in a sandstorm, as we bedouin say. But the real stuff does have a way of not slashing your throat on the way down. Smooth is what it is, like a trackless path in the desert. Or like a felucca coming around in the wind on a clear night on the Nile. A reassuring motion after all. See that one out there?

He drank again and handed the flask back to Bletchley, who put it down on the worn boards between them.

And it is a clear night too, said Joe. Ahmad used to find it amusing the way I mention the weather. It's always the same here, he used to say.

Bletchley stared straight ahead. Abruptly, he passed his hand over the side of his face, as if brushing something away.

I'll give you the important details first, he said.

Joe nodded, then all at once sagged forward.

Are you all right? asked Bletchley.

Yes. Exhausted, that's all. Tired deep down.

Bletchley looked at him again, quickly, a nervous motion. He spoke in a low voice.

You'll be leaving by plane tonight for England. You won't stop there. You'll be put on another plane for Canada and when you get to Canada you'll disappear. But there's a proviso.

Only to be expected, said Joe. If there weren't, we'd be in a better world. What's the proviso?

Bletchley stared straight ahead. You're dead, he said in a quiet voice. A. O. Gulbenkian is dead, which means the agent who was using that cover is dead.

Joe fumbled for a cigarette.

Forever, added Bletchley, officially and unofficially. So far as the Waterboys and the Monastery are concerned, so far as London is concerned, so far as everybody is concerned.

Joe's hands were trembling. He gripped his knees and looked down at the water.

How'd I die, did you say?

In a fire. There's been a fire.

Oh.

Bletchley reached inside his jacket and pulled out several sheets of folded paper. He handed them to Joe, who leaned over to peer at them. With the moon and the reflections off the water, there was just enough light to make out the typed words.

***

At the top of the first sheet of paper there was a printed heading, the name and address of a Cairo news agency. The typed copy was in the form of a news story, marked for immediate release.

A fire had broken out in the Coptic Quarter of Old Cairo, destroying a small run-down hotel, the Hotel Babylon. The fire was thought to have started in the tiny cluttered courtyard behind the hotel, where the desk clerk, neighbors reported, had recently been in the habit of sitting up late at night beside a small campfire, along with the only guest who had been staying in the hotel during recent weeks.

The courtyard had been strewn with old newspapers and other inflammable debris. It was assumed a spark had settled into the debris and caused it to smolder until after the desk clerk and his guest had retired for the night, when a fire had broken out and ignited the decaying old structure just before dawn, quickly raging out of control and burning the hotel to the ground.

Fortunately, no other buildings had been damaged due to the alarm sounded by an alert neighbor, a retired belly dancer up the street who for the last thirty years or so had risen every morning before dawn to go in search of fresh chickens, which she roasted and sold locally to support herself.

Two men had perished in the fire, the desk clerk and his solitary guest, both of whose bodies had been recovered.

The desk clerk, a longtime employee of the hotel and an astute observer of the Cairo social scene, had been known as Ahmad the Poet on his little street, itself known colloquially as the rue Clapsius, a mere shadowy byway of an alley and a short stroll to nowhere. Yet although it led nowhere, it was also the place where a good part of nineteenth-century Cairo was said to have acquired an incurable dose of nostalgia during the long lazy siesta hours of yesteryear. This desk clerk's finely tuned social sense was the result of a thoughtful scrutiny of the Cairo scene over the years, particularly on Saturday evenings, which Ahmad the Poet was known to have devoted to undisturbed meditations on the roof of the Hotel Babylon. There in the darkness he had studied the city through a spyglass, aided by melancholy surges of music conjured up on an ancient dented trombone.

It was further recalled that the poet, Ahmad fils, had been a fiercely loyal supporter of Ahmad père's idealistic nineteenth-century political cause, the Movement, a loosely spun Old World organization which had fearlessly advocated social progress from the there and the then, defying all opposition, in the general direction of the here and the now.

And although Ahmad fils had been in seclusion for decades, maintaining his privacy over bouts of solitaire and infusions of opera, he had once enjoyed a stunning reputation as a wildly charismatic figure in Cairo society, both in his professional duties as an interior decorator and in his more unpredictable role as an all-around boulevardier and dandy.

In particular, the poet was remembered for having served as the powerful stroke, and captain, of a racing crew of Cairo dragomen who had triumphantly swamped a racing shell rivered by the British naval establishment back before the First World War, the only time that astounding feat had ever been accomplished by an all-Egyptian crew, in what had been known in those days as the Annual Battle for the Fleshpots of the Nile.

In addition, Ahmad the Poet had once been famous for having introduced the racing tricycle to Cairo, around the turn of the century.

Sadly, it was Ahmad the Poet's fondness for recalling the remarkable exploits of his past glories, in the form of old newspaper stories, that had probably caused the hotel to ignite so quickly. Reference was made to a large closet just off the hotel lobby, a small room really, which had been heaped from floor to ceiling with dusty yellowing newspapers, none of them less than thirty years out of date.

This closet had become a brilliant torch when the fire reached it, causing the hotel to consume itself instantly in a towering pillar of the purest white smoke.

Little was known about the other victim, the lone guest in the hotel at the time of the fire. Through information routinely filed on all foreigners at local police stations, he was identified as a commercial traveler of Armenian extraction, a dealer in Coptic artifacts by the name of A. O. Gulbenkian, who had worn false teeth.

There was no further mention of the commercial traveler. But it was noted that an anonymous group of public-spirited Cairenes, calling themselves the Friends of Ahmad, had taken up a subscription to provide their once-renowned social leader with a proper funeral and full memorial services.

The former belly dancer up the street was acting as director general, coordinator, and secretary-treasurer of this anonymous ad hoc group.