The Heretic's Treasure by Scott Mariani
He looked up at the house. There was a light on upstairs, shining through a gap in closed drapes. A movement from inside. Someone getting ready for bed, maybe. He hesitated for a moment, creaked open the small wrought-iron gate and walked up a path to the front door. He rang the bell. A minute went by, and then he heard sounds from inside. A woman’s voice speaking Arabic. Footsteps coming down the stairs. A little scrape of metal from the other side of the door told him that someone was sliding aside the cover of the peephole to see who was there. The door opened a crack, pulling the security chain taut.
A woman’s face appeared in the gap. She was perhaps in her late thirties, but she looked tired and careworn. There were lines on her brow and flecks of grey in her black hair and her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she peered out at him.
Through the three-inch aperture Ben could see a pair of teenage boys behind their mother in the hallway. Both were dressed in T-shirts and shorts, hair tousled as if they’d climbed out of bed in a hurry to see who the mystery visitor was. One was about thirteen, the other maybe a couple of years older. The elder one was trying hard to look strong and protective. Ben guessed that meant there was no father in the household. Behind the two kids, the hallway was littered with crates and cardboard boxes. It looked as though the family were either in the middle of moving out, or moving in. This wasn’t looking promising. He glanced again at the name on his list.
‘Mrs Hassan?’ he said to the woman in Arabic.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘It’s late. What do you want?’
‘I need to talk to your husband, Mrs Hassan. Can I come inside?’
She hesitated, shook her head. ‘My husband’s not here any more.’
‘Where can I find him? It’s important.’
‘Whatever business you had with him, you’re too late.’
‘Where did he go?’ Ben asked. But the look of intense sadness on the woman’s face was already telling him the answer.
She didn’t reply. Hung her head and wiped an eye. The elder of the two boys stepped up to the door, reached for the security chain and unhooked it from its fastening. He opened the door and stood in the doorway, defiance in his eyes, doing his best to bristle and puff out his narrow chest and shoulders. It was a brave thing to do, Ben thought. A boy standing up and being a man. A turning point in his young life. That took a lot of guts.
He smiled at the kid. ‘I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’
‘My father is dead,’ the boy said. ‘Go away. Leave my mother alone.’
Ben cast his eye around the hallway. There was a desolate air about the place. What had once been a family home was now just an empty shell full of memories these people wanted to get away from.
‘Who are you?’ the woman said again, laying a hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘You are not from the police.’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I’m looking for something and I thought your husband might be able to help me.’
‘He was ill for a very long time,’ she said, beginning to cry. ‘He had diabetes. First they cut off one leg, then the other. Now he’s dead. I don’t care what you were looking for. I want you to go.’
He watched the tears streaming down her face, and his heart went out to her. There was little point in apologising for disturbing what was left of her family in the middle of the night.
He turned and left. Heard the door shut behind him as he made his way back down the path to the little gate. The taxi driver was slouching behind the wheel, one arm hanging loosely out of the window. Ben opened the door and climbed in the back seat with a sigh.
‘Where now?’ the driver said lazily.
Ben dug the crumpled list back out of his pocket and unfolded it. Now there was just one name left at the bottom.
Mahmoud Barada. Nightclub owner and entrepreneur on the side. Buyer and seller of pretty much anything he could turn a dollar with.
Ben read out the address to the driver and felt the acceleration press him back in his seat as the taxi lurched away.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the warm leather as the car sped into the heart of downtown Cairo. This was the last chance. If it led nowhere, he was going to have to rethink his options.
His mind drifted until the taxi driver’s voice broke in on his thoughts. ‘We’re there. You want me to hang around?’
‘I won’t be long.’ Ben stepped out of the car.
They were at the end of an unmarked alleyway. Coloured neons flashed on crumbling brickwork and the huddled shapes of people in the shadows. Buying and selling. There was a lot of it going on. As Ben walked up to the nightclub entrance a girl came up to him and offered him a good time. She might have been Somali, and wasn’t more than seventeen. He walked past her and paid some money to the beefy guys at the door. The music was pumping out into the street, a blend of hip-hop and Eastern.
Ben walked inside. As one o’clock drew closer, it seemed that the party was just beginning to groove. The place must have been a warehouse or storage depot at one time. The air was thick with the heat and smell of a thousand tightly packed bodies, black, white and everything in-between. Through the heavy bass throb of the music he could hear half a dozen different languages as people yelled at each other to be heard.
There was a long bar at the far end, where at least a hundred people were jostling and shoving to get served. Above it was a scaffold construction with scantily clad dancers, their bodies shining and writhing in the strobing lights. Around the edges of the room were nooks and tables screened by palm leaves. Couples sat close, heads almost touching so that they could talk in the din.
Ben pushed through the throng that swarmed at the bar.
‘You can’t miss him,’ Abdou had said. And Ben didn’t. Barada fitted the old man’s description of him exactly. He was the only person at the bar who wasn’t trying to get a drink. He leaned on his elbows with his back against the shiny counter, surveying his enterprise with a look somewhere between smug satisfaction and cold contempt. His flowery shirt was open halfway to the waist, buttons straining across his belly. He was about forty, greasy thinning hair tied back in a ponytail, his face pitted with old acne scars.
Ben walked up to him and saw the cold gaze swivel to meet his. Barada gave a curt nod as if to say, What the fuck do you want from me?
Ben’s eye ran across Barada’s broad chest and down his arm. The left forearm sticking out of the rolled-up shirt sleeve was thick and hairy. Around the wrist, flashing in the swirling lights, was clasped a chunky gold Rolex.
Ben moved closer, close enough to smell the booze and garlic on the man’s breath and shout in his ear. Barada looked like he was ready to listen.
‘I have a business proposal for you,’ Ben said.
The man’s face was deadpan. He stared for a beat, peeled his heavy frame off the bar and gestured to follow him. Ben watched the wide back muscle its way through the crowd. Barada spilled a girl’s drink out of her hand and didn’t look back. The hand with the Rolex swatted open a door marked ‘PRIVATE’ and Ben followed him through. The door swung shut, damping the thud of the music. On the other side of it was a dark, winding corridor. Barada kept walking, and Ben walked behind a few paces. A few yards along the corridor, light was shining out of a half-open doorway. Barada thumped on the door, shoved it open, kept walking past.
Two large men appeared in the doorway. Behind them in the room was a low table scattered with beer bottles and a big screen was showing an action movie, cars exploding and machine guns rattling.
The two guys stepped out into the corridor, staring hard at Ben, then followed as Barada led the way up a flight of steps. He shoved open another door and they were inside an office. The décor was seventies porn king. Barada walked around behind a desk, settled heavily into a chair. He motioned to the heavies, who stood either side of the door, hands crossed over their stomachs, gazing at Ben as if just waiting for the command to take him apart.
Ben walked up to the desk and dumped his bag on it.<
Barada gazed impassively up at him. ‘So what do you want? You speak English, right?’ He spoke it with the phoney transatlantic twang of someone trying too hard to sound cool.
‘I want to see your watch,’ Ben said.
Barada grimaced, confusion quickly slipping into impatience. ‘You said you had a business proposal.’
‘I do. You let me see your watch, and I don’t kill you. That’s the deal.’ Ben slipped out the CZ pistol and pointed it in Barada’s face. He didn’t take his eyes off the fat man but sensed the sudden shift behind him as the two heavies moved his way.
‘Stay,’ he said.
Behind him, the two guys stopped dead.
‘Back against the wall,’ Ben said.
The heavies backed up. There was silence in the room, just the muffled thump of the beat shaking up through the floor.
Barada chuckled as he peered down the barrel of the 9mm. ‘You’ve got some incredible fucking nerve. These two guys can break you into small pieces.’
‘Take it off,’ Ben said, pointing at the watch. ‘I want to see it.’
Barada hesitated. ‘You some kind of weirdo?’ he demanded. ‘Got a watch fetish or something?’ But he did what he was told. He undid the clasp. The bracelet opened up and he shook it down his wrist and slipped it over his big hand. He passed it to Ben.
Ben flipped it over and ran his eyes over the back. Neatly engraved in fine italic script on the gold backplate were the words ‘To Morgan, with love from Mummy’.
Ben looked down at Barada. There were some beads of sweat breaking out on the man’s brow but he was doing his best to look collected. Ben lowered the gun a few inches, still aware of the glowering heavies behind and on either side of him. ‘OK, I’ll take it.’
‘What do you mean, you’ll take it?’
‘I want it.’
‘It’s mine. You can’t have it.’
‘I’m buying it,’ Ben said. ‘Double whatever you paid for it.’
‘Or?’
Ben clicked off the safety.
Barada snorted. ‘What, you stick a gun in my face, you tell me you want my Rolex but you want to pay for it?’
Ben smiled. ‘Do I look like a criminal to you?’
‘So what the fuck are you, some kind of mummy’s boy who wants his watch back? You’re Morgan, right?’
‘Morgan’s dead,’ Ben said. ‘And I think whoever sold you this watch killed him.’
Barada shrugged. ‘Not my concern. I buy and sell stuff. I’m just a businessman. I don’t ask questions.’
‘That’s fine,’ Ben said. ‘But you can answer one for me. I want to know who sold you this.’
‘I forgot.’
Ben laid the Rolex on the desk. Still pointing the gun at Barada, he reached into his bag and took out a thick wad of notes. He slapped them down on the desk beside the watch. ‘That’s forty thousand Egyptian pounds,’ he said. ‘For the watch and the information. I’m guessing that’s a lot more than you paid for it. Give me what I want, then I’ll go away. Nobody has to get hurt. You can buy another watch just like it in the morning. Deal?’
Barada gazed wistfully at the Rolex. ‘It’s a limited edition. No longer produced.’
‘You’re breaking my heart.’
Then Barada’s eyes moved from the watch to the pile of money. ‘Seems like you want this pretty badly. What’s your intention, if I give you this information?’
‘Not your concern,’ Ben said. ‘You’re just a businessman, remember?’
Barada smiled, relaxing a little. ‘I like your style. You’ve got balls, coming in here like this. You want a girl or something? Stick around a while, have a drink.’
‘I want what I asked for. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a name and an address.’
‘Maybe we can do business,’ Barada said. ‘What the fuck. They’re shits anyway.’ He grabbed a pad from his desk, reached for a pen and scribbled two names and an address. ‘Couple of dealers. Lowlife druggy bastards. They live in a stinking rat-hole apartment across the river. Mostly stoned out of their heads. They owed me money, said they didn’t have it. I could have had their legs busted, but I liked the watch.’ He shrugged again and tore the page off the pad. ‘But I guess it’s only a watch.’ He reached for the money and slipped the note across the desk.
Ben picked it up and read it. ‘This information had better be good.’
‘It’s good,’ Barada said, stuffing the money away in a drawer. ‘And if you put a couple of bullets in their heads, nobody’s going to cry over it.’
Ben slipped the note inside his pocket. He lowered the gun. ‘How long since you got the watch from them?’
‘Couple of weeks, give or take.’ Barada paused, looking expectantly at Ben. ‘So we’re cool?’
‘Maybe,’ Ben said.
‘You sure you don’t want that drink? What’s your name, anyway?’
‘Another time.’
Chapter Seventeen
It was after one when Ben found the place, a sad-looking tenement building right next to a breaker’s yard. Everything was marked with neglect. A cat darted out of the doorway as he approached, carrying a struggling rat in its teeth. He walked through an entrance hall that smelled of stale urine and was dimly lit by a flickering bulb. Climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and came to the door he was looking for.
It wasn’t even locked. He walked right in and the stink of the place hit him. He paused, letting his eyes adjust to the blackness. Ahead of him was a short passage, littered with junk. He made his way along it and opened the inner door.
The room he walked into was bathed in the dull glow of a sideboard covered in flickering candles. Wax dripped down the wood, hardening on the floor. Somewhere in the shadows, aggressive rap music blared from a tinny stereo. The air was oppressive, thick with the mixed odours of stale booze and smoke and sweat-the smell of a space whose inhabitants didn’t care about their own lives.
A bare mattress lay on one side of the room and Ben could make out the shapes of two sleeping bodies in the candlelight. A man and a woman, both naked, arms and legs entangled, half covered by a rumpled sheet.
Across on the other side, nearer to the candle-glow, was a table. Ben took in the razor blade, the rolled-up banknotes, the little mound of white powder and the half-snorted line of it that the table’s single occupant hadn’t managed to finish before he passed out. He was slumped on a low stool with his arms spread across the table, his forehead resting on the glass. Ben watched him for a moment. He was breathing slowly, deeply. He looked young, early twenties, scrawny with a patchy beard.
A yard from the table, a second woman was lying sprawled, her bare legs kicked out on the rug. Ben stepped over to her and crouched down to take a look at her. She was maybe twenty and looked European, with dirty blonde hair and what could have been a pretty face if it hadn’t been pressed down against the floor of a dingy drug den. She was just as out of it as her friends. She was wearing some kind of lightweight blazer, striped cotton that had ridden up to reveal her skimpy knickers and an angel tattoo across her coccyx.
Something about the striped garment looked very familiar. Ben reached for a candle and brought it closer to inspect. He was pretty sure it was the same one Morgan Paxton had been wearing in the photo.
He flipped on a light switch. The room was suddenly bright, but that didn’t do much to stir its occupants. The girl on the rug seemed to sense something, and lifted her head a couple of inches. The naked couple on the mattress didn’t move, and neither did the young guy at the table.
Ben turned off the shrill music and walked back over to the table. He leaned down so that his face was just a few inches from the glass. He took a deep breath and blew hard, scattering the white powder into clouds of dust.
That got the attention of the young guy. He suddenly woke up, eyes snapping wide open. He lurched unsteadily to his feet and made to grab Ben by the shirt, shrieking in Arabic, ‘You fuck! You fuck!’
Ben twisted his wr
The girl on the floor slowly dragged herself across the rug and started burying her face in it, snorting up the fallen coke. Ben hauled her to her feet, moved her to an armchair and lowered her into it. He stripped the blazer off her. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded in English.
‘I’m not here for that,’ Ben said. He stuffed the blazer into his bag and took out the pistol. The girl started screaming, and it woke the two on the mattress. The naked woman was suddenly alert, staring at Ben in horror and pulling a sheet around her.
‘Get some clothes on,’ Ben said to her. She nodded. Stood up, legs trembling, and started pulling on jeans and a loose top.
‘Now get out of here,’ he said. ‘Don’t come back.’
The women left, staggering out of the door.
Now it was just Ben and the two guys. He stepped over to the one who was still lying slumped on the floor, muttering to himself. Grabbed a fistful of the guy’s hair and dragged him kicking and hollering over to the mattress. He dumped him down next to his friend, who was coming around, struggling into his trousers and groping for his shirt.
Ben stood over them. Pulled back his left sleeve and saw their half-open eyes flicker to the gold Rolex that he was wearing alongside his own Omega.
‘Recognise this?’ he said.
No response, but there was a glimmer of understanding in their faces. Now they knew what this was about. The younger one glanced away nervously. His hands were shaking.
Ben walked to the door and peered out into the corridor. The women were long gone. He shut the door, locked it and put the key in his pocket. He checked the window. It was barred, and there was no balcony or fire escape. He glanced back down at his two groggy, blinking, mumbling prisoners. Satisfied that they weren’t going anywhere, he did a quick search of the flat.