Authors: Paul Sussman
For a moment everyone just stood, lost in their own thoughts. Then, releasing Freya’s hand, Kiernan cleared her throat and stepped forward to the head of the grave.
‘Freya has asked me to say a few words,’ she said, throwing a glance first at Freya, and then Flin, who was gazing down at the coffin. ‘I promise that it
will
be just a few words, because as everyone who was privileged enough to know Alex will be aware, she hated fuss and chatter.’
Although soft, her voice seemed to fill the entire glade.
‘Thirty years ago now, I myself lost someone I loved very much. My husband, as it happens. In that dark time two things helped me through. The first was the love and support of my friends. I hope, Freya, you can feel our love here today in this special place, both for Alex, and for you too. We are here if you need us, however, whenever, wherever.’
She cleared her throat again, fingering the gold cross at her neck.
‘The other thing that eased my pain in that time of sorrow was the Holy Bible and the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. I would quote from it now, but I know Alex wasn’t a believer, and although the love of Jesus is universal, I won’t insult her memory by dwelling on sentiments with which she herself did not feel comfortable.’
It was fleeting and barely noticeable, but as she said this
there was the faintest tightening around her mouth, as if of disapproval.
‘Instead,’ she went on, ‘I would like to read you something that was close to Alex’s heart, and that is a poem by Walt Whitman.’
She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket, pulled out a printed sheet and slipped on a pair of spectacles.
‘O Me, O Life,’ she read, holding the sheet out in front of her.
O Me! O Life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! So sad, recurring – what good amid these, O me, O Life?
Answer
That you are here – that life exists and identity
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
She folded the sheet and removed her glasses, wiping an index finger across her eye.
‘There is so much I could say about Alex. Her beauty, her intelligence, her courage, her sense of adventure. I think Walt Whitman puts it best, though, when he talks about contributing a verse. Alex contributed a verse to all our lives, a very special verse, one that enriched and uplifted us all. Sister, friend, colleague – the world is a poorer place without her. Thank you, Alex. We miss you.’
She returned to Freya’s side and took her hand again as two of the local men stepped forward with shovels and started filling the grave. The thud of dirt on coffin echoed dully around the grove, a harsh, discordant sound at odds with the otherwise idyllic atmosphere. For a brief moment Freya’s eyes met Flin’s, the latter giving the faintest of nods as if to convey that he both understood and shared in the grief she was feeling, before the two of them looked away again. The grave was rapidly filled until all that was left was a raised rectangle of sandy earth surrounded by flowers.
‘Goodbye,’ Freya whispered.
Afterwards Dr Rashid made his excuses and hurried off, explaining that he was on call and needed to get back to the hospital. Most of the local people drifted away too, leaving just Freya, Molly, Flin, Zahir and a young, bearded man whom Zahir introduced as his brother Said. As the five of them walked back along the path to Alex’s house, Flin came up beside Freya.
‘Not ideal circumstances, I know,’ he said. ‘But I’m glad to meet you at last.’
She nodded, but said nothing.
‘Alex told me a lot about you,’ he went on. ‘About your
climbing and everything. Scared the shit out of me, to be honest. I get vertigo just standing on a step-ladder.’
She gave the faintest of smiles.
‘Did you know her well?’
‘Pretty well,’ he replied, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘We shared an interest in the desert. Became friends. Good friends.’
She glanced at him, raising her eyebrows.
‘You and Alex were … ?’
‘Christ no!’ Flin gave an amused snort. ‘Neurotic English bookworms weren’t her thing at all. As far as I could make out she was more into the hippie-surfer type.’
An image of Greg, Alex’s former fiancé, flashed into Freya’s mind – blond, tanned, toned. She shook her head to dislodge it.
‘She was very good to me,’ Flin was saying. ‘Helped me through some … difficult times. She was more like a sister than a friend.’
He kicked at a stone in the path, then turned to her, frowning.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … inappropriate analogy.’
She waved a hand to indicate that the apology was unnecessary. Their eyes met and held a moment before they both looked away again. The path led them through a shadowy olive grove, the ground carpeted with manure pats and dusty black olives, before at last bringing them to Alex’s house.
Someone – the housekeeper, Freya assumed – had laid out a simple breakfast on the table in the main room: cheese, tomatoes, onions, beans, bread and flasks of coffee. They gathered round and picked at it, only Zahir and his
brother showing any real appetite, faltering bursts of conversation petering out into extended silences. Thirty minutes passed, then both Flin and Kiernan announced that they had to be leaving to catch their flight back up to Cairo.
‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’ Kiernan asked as they walked out to Zahir’s Land Cruiser, her arm threaded through Freya’s. ‘I could hang around if you like.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Freya replied. ‘I’m going to stay here for a couple of days, get Alex’s stuff together, then head home. My flight’s not till Friday.’
‘Why don’t I meet you at the airport when you come back into Cairo?’ said Kiernan. ‘We can have lunch, say goodbye properly.’
Freya agreed and they embraced, the older woman kissing her on the cheek before pulling away and climbing into the Toyota’s rear passenger seat. Flin stepped forward and handed her a card: Professor F. Brodie, American University in Cairo, Tel: 202 2794 2959.
‘I doubt it’ll happen, but if you ever find yourself at a loose end do look me up. You can scare me with climbing stories and I can return the compliment by boring you rigid with tales of Neolithic rock inscriptions.’
He leant forward and for a moment it looked as if he was going to embrace her. As it was, he just gave her a quick peck on the cheek and, walking round the other side of the 4x4, heaved himself up beside Kiernan. Zahir and his brother climbed in the front, the engine roared into life and they were just moving away when Freya suddenly reached through the open window and grasped Kiernan’s wrist.
‘She didn’t suffer, did she?’ Her voice had become choked,
urgent. ‘When she … Alex … you know, the morphine … When she took it. It was quick, wasn’t it? No pain.’
Kiernan squeezed her hand.
‘I don’t think there was any pain at all, Freya. From what I heard it would have been very swift, and very peaceful.’
Beside her Flin seemed about to add something, his mouth half opening before closing again. Freya withdrew her hand.
‘I just needed to know,’ she mumbled. ‘I couldn’t bear it if …’
‘I understand, dear,’ said Kiernan. ‘Believe me, Alex didn’t suffer in any way. Just a small prick when the needle went in and that was it. No pain, I promise.’
She leant forward and touched Freya’s arm, then nodded to Zahir and they drove off. Only when they had disappeared among the trees and Freya was walking back towards the house did it strike her exactly what the older woman had said. She spun round, the colour draining from her face.
‘Alex would never have …’
But the roar of the engine had faded away, leaving just the hum of flies and, in the distance, the soft coughing of the irrigation pump.
Using his elbow Angleton nudged shut the door of Flin Brodie’s apartment. The rhythmic slap of the caretaker’s plastic slippers slowly faded on the stairwell outside as he
descended to the ground floor again. He’d wanted to stick around, see what Angleton was up to, but the American had added an extra wad of notes to the money he’d already paid him for opening the door and told him to scoot. He was old and dirty and clumsy and Angleton didn’t want him moving stuff around, alerting Brodie to the fact he’d had visitors. This was business, not just a bit of casual snooping. Keep it professional, keep it focused. That’s what they paid him for. That’s why he was the best.
The door closed with a muted click. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a pair of latex gloves and tugged them on, the rubber hissing and snapping as he stretched it up over his wrists. Along with the shoe covers he’d donned on the landing outside, they would ensure there were no traces, no indication of any sort, that he’d been there. He was almost certainly being over-cautious. Brodie had no reason to expect an intrusion of this sort, or to be on the lookout for one on his return. You could never be too careful, though. On the thousand-to-one chance the Englishman
was
more paranoid than Angleton was giving him credit for – and with his background the possibility was always there – he wasn’t going to risk blowing the whole operation by leaving unnecessary clues.
He glanced at his watch – plenty of time; the Dakhla flight hadn’t even taken off yet – and started wandering around. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just trying to get a feel for Brodie, a sense of what he knew, how he tied in with the whole Sandfire thing. Living room, kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, study: he examined them all, snapping shot after shot with his digital camera, recording his thoughts on a handheld Olympus Dictaphone.
To the untrained eye the apartment wouldn’t have revealed a great deal about its owner: a self-contained, bachelor Egyptologist with an interest in classical music, desert exploration, current affairs – particularly Middle Eastern current affairs – and, judging by the scarf and signed team photograph in the living room, El-Ahly Football Club. Those and a few other details – Brodie kept himself fit, read at least five languages, steered clear of alcohol and had a social conscience (thank-you letters from a children’s orphanage in Luxor and a Zabbaleen outreach programme over in Manshiet Nasser) – would probably have been about the sum total of things. A join-the-dots sort of portrait, giving a basic character outline but without any great depth or meat to it.
But Angleton’s eye
was
trained. As he moved around the rooms he was able to read between the lines of their contents, teasing out the underlying information. In the bathroom, for instance, tucked into one of Brodie’s heavily worn Kayano trainers, he found a state-of-the-art speed and distance monitor, its computerized memory recording details of all the Englishman’s runs over the last fortnight. Ten kilometres in 36:02 minutes, 20 kilometres in 1:15:31, 15 kilometres in 53:12 – Brodie, it seemed, wasn’t just fit, but seriously so. In the bedroom the battered lamp on the bedside table, the marks on the wall directly behind it, the three-quarters-empty pack of Xanax tablets, all likewise spoke to Angleton. Brodie, they told him, was someone who had nightmares, flailing in the dark for the light switch before popping anti-anxiety pills to calm himself down again. All confirmation of what the American’s research had already told him about the man.
The photo of Alex Hannen in the living room was interesting. Whether the two of them had been lovers or not Angleton couldn’t be sure. On balance he’d say no – lovers, in his experience, usually possessed multiple images of each other, especially if they lived separately, whereas here there was only the one photo. Brodie clearly cared for her – deeply, to judge by the expensive silver frame in which the picture was enclosed – but if pushed Angleton would have gone for close friendship over romance.
Either way, what intrigued him more were the telling little clues tucked away in the corners of the photo. It had clearly been taken out in the remote desert – the western desert, he assumed, given their mutual interest in the place – and by Brodie himself, whose reflection could just be made out in the mirrored lenses of Hannen’s sunglasses.
In the background, off to the left and slightly blurred, were a couple of orange equipment cases (there was a similar case in the apartment hallway, containing some sort of radar or sensing device). Even more intriguing, behind Brodie in the reflection in Hannen’s shades, almost invisible – Angleton had to peer very hard with the mini-magnifying glass he always carried – was what appeared to be the tip of some sort of wing or sail, way too small for a plane. A kite? A hang glider? A microlight? He couldn’t tell, and there wasn’t time to take the photo away for digital enhancement. It was informative nonetheless, suggesting, when you factored in the equipment cases and remote desert setting, that as well as being personally close, Brodie and Hannen had also been working together in some way. A one-off trip? Part of some bigger project? Again, he couldn’t be sure, but it was another fragment of the picture. Piece by piece by piece.
He spent almost twenty minutes poring over the photo before glancing again at his watch – still plenty of time – and heading back into the study. He’d already given it the once-over, but it was clearly the nerve centre of Brodie’s world so he wanted to have another nose round before he left, see if anything more could be gleaned from it.
He stared again at the framed print on the wall behind the desk, repeating its legend –
The city of Zerzura is white like a pigeon, and on the door of it is carved a bird –
into his Dictaphone even though he’d already done so on his earlier sweep of the room.
The wooden filing cabinets lined up beside the desk also received a second inspection. Each was divided into five drawers, each drawer crammed with sheaves of notes, articles, photographs, charts, print-outs and maps, separated out into alphabetically headed sections, starting with Almasy in the top drawer of the first cabinet, and finishing with Zerzura in the bottom drawer of the last one.