“Thank you, sir.” Bassir saluted stiffly and left the room.
“I want you to organize search parties, Major Farouk,” the field marshall continued as soon as the door had closed. “Speak to every informant. The girl must be in the city somewhere. Someone must know where she is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And do make sure you find her soon. If there is any further failure in this matter, I will hold you personally responsible.”
Farouk could barely speak. He spun on his heels and walked as quickly as he could out of the room.
Akkad continued working until twelve o’clock, when it was time for afternoon prayer. He didn’t need to look at the clock. He knew instinctively by the length and the position of the shadows. He got up from behind his desk and dropped to his knees. But he did not face east. He faced south.
Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad had once been a good Muslim. But the old religions were almost forgotten. Along with Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism they simply seemed … irrelevant. Akkad now prayed three times a day to his new master, to Chaos, the King of the Old Ones. And the best thing was that, unlike the old religions, his master answered back.
As Akkad muttered prayers of loyalty and devotion, the lights seemed to go out in the room. The shadows lengthened and dragged him in. The sunlight disappeared from behind the windows. Suddenly it had become very cold. Outside, there was the roll of a drum and a sudden blast of gunfire. And, almost at the same time, he heard the voice whispering in the room and he was aware that there was someone – or something – standing very close behind him.
“Find the girl,” it said. “I need her. I must have her. Find the girl and bring her to me. Find her now.”
FOURTEEN
“They’ve started fighting again,” Richard said, listening to the gunfire coming from the west of the city.
He had developed a sense of distance and direction so that he could more or less tell where a battle was taking place just by glancing at a map. He had not yet been allowed to leave the compound – it was considered too dangerous – and anyway, there would have been no point with the sandstorms blowing almost continuously, twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, turning every street into a dead end. He was puzzled about the storms. He’d never thought of Cairo as a particularly windy place and wondered if there had been a catastrophic shift in the weather patterns, perhaps a result of global warming. Was that another curse that the Old Ones had brought down on the planet? The strange thing was that nobody in the compound ever mentioned it. Like the war itself, the storms had been going on so long that they had come to be expected as a normal part of life.
“Maybe it’s Samir and his men,” Scarlett said.
“What time did he go out?”
“About six this morning…”
By now, they knew half a dozen of the commanders in this outpost of the rebel army. They were all young, in their twenties, and – unless they were on a special exercise – they dressed in ordinary street clothes, with a single red ribbon pinned to their top pocket. Red was the colour of the revolution. In ancient Egypt, it had been the colour of victory. The rebels all spoke a little English, although less than they might have done. With no television, there were no English-language programmes or films to learn from. There was no Internet either. For Scarlett, that was worse than almost anything, leaving her cut off and alone. But as Rémy had explained, it had simply disappeared one night a long time ago. Nobody could remember exactly when it happened, but then, Richard reflected, nobody had ever been quite sure when it had been invented either. It had just gone and that was that.
Two weeks had passed – but it was hard to keep track of time when every day was the same. And there was always the possibility that the Old Ones were still playing with them, that they might be jumping forward months or even years without even noticing it. Scarlett had been moved out of the hospital block and had a small room next to Richard, down in the basement, out of the way. They each had a bed, a basin and the use of a shower with only a trickle of cold water – although Rémy had told them to be grateful. There were now many cities within Egypt – and indeed many countries – with no water at all. At night, they looked out of small, barred windows that were half sunken below ground level so that their only view was of the boots of the guards on patrol as they walked past. The doors were unlocked. They were allowed to walk together around the compound. Otherwise, they might as well have been in jail.
At least Scarlett was well on the road to recovery. No matter what his own situation, Richard couldn’t hide his relief. She had lost weight, which, with the meagre rations in the compound, she wasn’t going to put back on, and the shock of what she had been through was still etched on her face. The surgeon had cut her hair short and there was an unpleasant scar from the operation, which wouldn’t disappear until the hair grew back. Glancing at herself in the mirror, Scarlett had grimaced. “God, what a mess!” She was quickly recovering her sense of humour along with her strength and her determination to fight back. She was glad to be alive.
Richard had liked her from the start. He was still sorry that he had been separated from Matt and worried about him all the time – but the two of them had quickly bonded. How could they fail to, thrown together like this? Scarlett was thin and small and, with her cropped hair, had the look of a child beggar on the streets of Bangkok. But Richard never forgot that she was one of the Five and that she had immense power if she chose to use it. He had seen it for himself in Hong Kong. For her part, Scarlett was relieved to have Richard with her and, as much as he denied it, insisted that he had saved her life by bringing her here. She liked him because he was scruffy and disorganized and pretended to be completely helpless, drawn into an adventure which he didn’t understand. At the same time, she saw his hidden strengths. He had been a good friend to Matt and would do anything for him, indeed for any of them. He would be with them until the end.
Richard had only recently told her what had happened to the world – her world, the one they had both known. He needed to be sure that she was strong enough to absorb it. He had briefly considered keeping it from her but had known at once that he couldn’t. After all, it was the reason she was here. And so he had told her everything that Albert Rémy had told him.
She hadn’t been shocked. It was all too much to grasp and – isolated, left on their own inside the compound with no newspaper or television images to make it all real – it had just added up to so many words. What proof did they have that it was even true? Rémy was as cut off as they were and had little information beyond what was happening in Cairo, and much of that was hard to prove. And yet neither of them had any doubt at all that the world was in chaos. That was the reason the Old Ones had broken through the gate at Nazca. From the moment they had returned, they had been swift and ruthless going about their work.
“I dreamt about London,” Scarlett said.
The two of them were sitting in the classroom where Richard had been brought when he first arrived. The buildings had indeed once been a school and were now divided between living accommodation, the hospital, storerooms and military command. This was a neutral area. Richard and Scarlett knew they would be left on their own.
Richard waited for her to continue.
“I can’t bear thinking about it, the idea that it’s not there any more.” She paused. “Do you really think there’s nothing left?”
“I don’t know,” Richard said. “To be honest with you, Scar, I’m like you. I don’t want to think about it.”
Scarlett touched the side of her head. Her old nickname had become horribly appropriate. “Why would anyone want to do that? Blow up a city?”
“Terrorists don’t really need a reason. It’s always just hatred and fanaticism … the complete opposite of reason.”
“You know the terrible thing,” Scarlett’s eyes were far away. “I saw it in my dream. Everything in ruins … all those people dead. But I didn’t feel anything. It was as if I’d never lived there.
And the only thing that makes me sad now is thinking about my school friends, and Aidan in particular. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see them again and I’ll never even know if they lived or died.”
“We have to work out what we’re going to do,” Richard said. “If we sit around here much longer, we’re both going to go mad.”
Scarlett saw that Richard was gently nudging her out of her mood. And he was right. Now that she had recovered, she was already bored, sitting in the compound with almost nothing to do. Rémy had found her a few dusty paperbacks in English, although they were barely worth reading, and there was an old chessboard that she and Richard had played on, using pebbles for the missing pieces. But they had been here too long already. It was time to move on.
“We have to get back to the Great Pyramid,” Scarlett said. “That’s our way out of here. I only have to think where I want to go and we’ll be there.”
“That won’t be so easy,” Richard said. “They know you’re here now. Our friend Monsieur Rémy says they’re looking for you everywhere. After what happened, they’re going to have every soldier and shape-changer in Cairo around the pyramids. You’d never get through.”
“We could go in disguise.”
“As a camel?”
“I was thinking more of a burka.”
“I don’t think it would suit me.”
The door opened and Albert Rémy came in. The Frenchman was always pleased to see them and regarded Scarlett’s arrival as something of a miracle, but this morning he was particularly happy.
“I have wonderful news,” he said. “Tarik is here – in the compound. Of course, nobody knew that he was coming until a few minutes ago. But I have seen him and he wishes to speak to you.”
Tarik.
Both Richard and Scarlett had heard a great deal about him. He was the man in the photograph that Scarlett had seen from her bed, the leader of the rebellion. All the commanders revered him. Every night they told stories about operations that he had led, street battles that he had won. He had been fighting the forces of Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad for as long as anyone could remember, and many of the words painted on the walls around Cairo had been taken from speeches that he had made. Tarik was a warrior name in Arabic and that was why he had chosen it for himself. He was the ultimate warrior and urban guerrilla. He had dedicated his life to liberating the city and many people said he was the only hope they had left.
Rémy escorted them out of the building, across the courtyard and into the military wing of the compound. As always, there were guards at every door but Richard was aware that they were more disciplined and better dressed than usual. He could feel the tension in the air. He and Scarlett were shown into a room at the back, dominated by a round table covered with papers and files. There were maps on every wall, most of them showing Cairo and the surrounding area. An old fridge hummed in one corner. Electricity flickered on and off throughout the day but it was obviously working now. The room smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke. It had a shabby carpet, whitewashed walls and a scattering of classroom chairs.
The man who was waiting for them was young and good-looking. That was Scarlett’s first impression. His clothes were semi-military; a combat jacket, jeans, army boots. Around his neck there was a cotton scarf which he would pull over his face when he was out in the sandstorms. He had black hair cut short, brown eyes and a face that seemed to be made up of straight lines: the chin, the cheekbones, even his eyebrows. He was about thirty years old. The picture that Scarlett had seen had been taken perhaps five years before. There was something about him that inspired confidence even before he spoke. Perhaps it was his eyes, which shone with passion and self-belief. There were two men with him – older, weather-beaten and bearded – saying nothing. Tarik dominated the room.
“You are Scarlett Adams,” he said. His voice was soft, his English perfect.
“Yes.”
“And Richard Cole. Mr Rémy has told me all about you. I am very glad you are here. I will confess that there were times when I wondered if the stories about you were even true, but my men saw for themselves that you came out of the Great Pyramid. We have seen the shape-changers. We must accept that the world is no longer as it once was and that we are fighting an enemy who comes out of our worst nightmares and who makes us re-adjust our beliefs.” He gestured at the table. “Please, will you sit down? I have asked for some tea to be brought. It is important that we talk.”
Richard and Scarlett did as they were asked and a moment later a soldier came in, carrying a kettle of steaming green tea which he served in small glasses. The moment briefly reminded Scarlett of another time when she had been served the same drink. Then, she had been a prisoner of Father Gregory in the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy. Of course, this was different. Tarik was a freedom fighter. He was here to help them. But even as she accepted the hot glass, the memory nudged her and she had to repress a shiver down her spine.
“You speak very good English,” Richard said.
“My grandmother was English. I learned it as child.” Tarik seemed to dismiss the subject and turned instead to Scarlett. “A people’s army physician removed a bullet from inside your brain,” he said. His eyes were fixed on her, examining her minutely. “Without his help it is certain you would have died. You should be grateful.”
“I am very grateful,” Scarlett said.
“And yet many people are dying here every day. They are not as fortunate as you. Egypt was promised democracy but Field Marshall el-Akkad stole it from us. Anyone who dared to speak against him was imprisoned or killed, and in the end this war was all that was left to us.”
“I’ll do anything to help you.” Scarlett wasn’t sure why she said that, but it seemed the right thing to say.
Tarik nodded slowly. “Will you? Will you?”
“The only way to defeat the Old Ones is to get the Five together again,” Richard said. “We need to send Scarlett back through the Great Pyramid and search for the others.”
Tarik turned back to Richard. Now his eyes were hooded, thoughtful. “That may not be possible. Our enemies know the power of the doorway and they have been keeping it under close guard. Scarlett slipped through their fingers once. They will not allow her to do it a second time.”
“Could she fly out of here? We’ve seen planes…”
“The only planes belong to the military and the airfields are well protected.” He spoke briefly to Rémy in Arabic and Rémy answered in the same language. Richard realized that it was almost impossible to tell what Tarik was thinking, no matter what language he was speaking. He gave the impression of always being five or six steps ahead. Once again Tarik examined Scarlett. “Are you as powerful as they say you are?” he asked.
Scarlett hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. There was a silence and she realized that they were waiting for her to go on. “I can control the weather.”
“In Hong Kong, I understand, there was a typhoon.”
“Yes. But I didn’t create it. Maybe I helped hold it back…” Her voice trailed away.
“To hold a typhoon, to stop it in its path, that must have been worth seeing. You are just a girl. You are … how old? Fifteen? And yet we heard of this typhoon that killed so many people and caused so much destruction all those years ago. You did not create it. But maybe you could now?”
Scarlett glanced at Richard. Both of them felt uneasy, unsure where this was going.
“To control the weather…” Tarik continued in his soft voice, his hands cradling his glass of tea. “The heat of the sun, the force of the wind, lightning and thunder, perhaps the very air itself! If you could do it in just one street, Qasr el-Nil Street, for example…”
“The presidential palace,” Rémy muttered.
Tarik looked up suddenly and Richard saw a faint gleam in his eyes. “You say you want to help us, Scarlett. Could you do that for us? Could you kill Field Marshall el-Akkad by perhaps suffocating him or burning him or drowning him?”
“Wait a min
ute…” Richard cut in.
But Scarlett was already ahead of him. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I mean, I’ve never killed anyone.”
“People died in Hong Kong.”
“That wasn’t my fault. I’ve already told you. I didn’t start the typhoon and I wouldn’t have done it, even if it had helped us escape. I’m sorry, Mr Tarik. Of course I want to help you. But not that way.”
Tarik nodded and although his face still gave nothing away, a sense of sadness had crept into the room. “You think perhaps that I am a monster for even suggesting it,” he said. “To ask a girl to kill a man is not easy. It is not pleasant. But the man himself is a monster. What he has done to this country is monstrous.” Tarik fell silent, then seemed to come to a decision. “Please, come with me.”
He got up and went out of the room. Albert Rémy looked briefly at the two of them, as if warning them to be careful, and they all followed. Tarik’s two officers, neither of whom had spoken a word and who had given no indication that they even understood what was going on, came last. Tarik walked out into the compound, soldiers springing to attention and saluting as they saw him coming. There could be no doubting the effect he had on the men around him. Every one of them was delighted just to stand for a moment in his shadow. He continued into the hospital building, where Scarlett had been treated, and she wondered if he was going to reintroduce her to the surgeon who had saved her life. But instead he led her along a corridor on the ground floor and into a room at the very end, and she found herself in a long ward with sixty beds, stretching out in two lines, facing each other from wall to wall. The beds had been arranged with military precision. Each one had a small wardrobe and a side table. A nurse and a doctor were moving slowly along, checking the occupants, handing out pills.
It took Scarlett a moment to realize that every single patient in the room was a child.
Some of them were as young as nine or ten. They had all been injured in different ways, many of them swathed in bandages, some of them asleep, some staring rigidly at the ceiling as if they were afraid to move. What upset Scarlett perhaps more than anything was that there was nothing in the room to comfort them: no pictures, no toys, no teddy bears. It was as if being wounded had somehow turned them into miniature adults. And not a single one of them was complaining. The silence was almost unnerving.