The complaints had begun within minutes of his arrival. Herr Klemp had reserved a non-smoking room, but clearly, he claimed, someone had smoked there very recently-though Mr. Katubi, who prided himself on a keen sense of smell, was never able to detect even a trace of tobacco on the air. The next room was too close to the swimming pool, the next too close to the nightclub. Finally, Mr. Katubi gave him, at no additional charge, an upper-floor suite with a terrace overlooking the river, which Herr Klemp pronounced “hopelessly adequate.”
The swimming pool was too warm, his bathroom too cold. He turned up his nose at the breakfast buffet and routinely sent back his food at dinner. The valets ruined the lapels of one of his suits, his massage at the spa had left him with an injured neck. He demanded the maids clean his suite promptly at eight each morning, and he remained in the room to supervise their work-his cash had been pinched at the Istanbul Hilton, he claimed, and he was not going to let it happen again in Cairo. The moment the maids left, the DO NOT DISTURB sign would appear on his door latch, where it would remain like a battle flag for the remainder of each day. Mr. Katubi wished only that he could hang a similar sign on his outpost in the lobby.
Each morning at ten Herr Klemp left the hotel armed with his tourist maps and guidebooks. The hotel drivers took to drawing straws to determine who would have the misfortune of serving as his guide for the day, for each outing seemed more calamitous than the last. The Egyptian Museum, he announced, needed a thorough cleaning. The Citadel he wrote off as a filthy old fort. At the pyramids of Giza he was nipped by a cantankerous camel. Upon his return from a visit to Coptic Cairo, Mr. Katubi asked if he enjoyed the Church of Saint Barbara. “Interesting,” said Herr Klemp, “but not as beautiful as our churches in Germany.”
On his fourth day, Mr. Katubi was standing at the entrance of the hotel as Herr Klemp came whirling out of the revolving doors, into a dust-filled desert wind.
“Good morning, Herr Klemp.”
“That is yet to be determined, Mr. Katubi.”
“Does Herr Klemp require a car this morning?”
“No, he does not.”
And with that he set out along the corniche, the tails of his supposedly “ruined” suit jacket flapping in the breeze like the mudguards of a lorry. Cairo was a city of remarkable resiliency, Mr. Katubi thought, but even Cairo was no match for a man like Herr Klemp.
GABRIEL SAW SOMETHING OF Europe in the grimy, decaying buildings along Talaat Harb Street. Then he remembered reading, in the guidebooks of Herr Klemp, that the nineteenth-century Egyptian ruler Khedive Ismail had conceived of turning Cairo into “ Paris by the Nile” and had hired some of Europe ’s finest architects to achieve his dream. Their handiwork was still evident in the neo-Gothic facades, the wrought-iron railings, and tall rectangular shuttered windows, though it had been undone by a century’s worth of pollution, weather, and neglect.
He came to a thunderous traffic circle. A sandaled boy tugged at his coat sleeve and invited him to visit his family’s perfume shop. “Nein, nein,” said Gabriel in the German of Herr Klemp, but he pushed past the child with the detached air of an Israeli used to fending off hawkers in the alleys of the Old City.
He followed the circle counterclockwise and turned into Qasr el-Nil Street, Cairo ’s version of the Champs-Élysées. He walked for a time, pausing now and again to gaze into the garish shop windows to see if he was being followed. He left Qasr el-Nil and entered a narrow side street. It was impossible to walk on the pavements because they were jammed with parked cars, so he walked in the street like a Cairene.
He came to the address shown on the business card Shamron had given him the night before his departure. It was an Italianate building with a facade the color of Nile mud. From a third-floor window came the strains of the BBC’s hourly news bulletin theme. A few feet from the entrance a vendor dispensed paper plates of spaghetti Bolognese from an aluminum cart. Next to the vendor a veiled woman sold limes and loaves of flat bread. Across the cluttered street was a kiosk. Standing in the shade of the little roof, wearing sunglasses and a Members Only windbreaker, was a poorly concealed Mukhabarat surveillance man, who watched as Gabriel went inside.
It was cool and dark in the foyer. An emaciated Egyptian cat with hollow eyes and enormous ears hissed at him from the shadows, then disappeared through a hole in the wall. A Nubian doorman in a lemon-colored galabia and white turban sat motionless in a wooden chair. He lifted an enormous ebony hand to receive the business card of the man Gabriel wished to see.
“Third floor,” he said in English.
Two doors greeted Gabriel on the landing. Next to the door on the right was a brass plaque that read: DAVID QUINNELL-INTERNATIONAL PRESS. Gabriel pressed the bell and was promptly admitted into a small antechamber by a Sudanese office boy, whom Gabriel addressed in measured German-accented English.
“Who shall I say is calling?” the Sudanese replied.
“My name is Johannes Klemp.”
“Is Mr. Quinnell expecting you?”
“I’m a friend of Rudolf Heller. He’ll understand.”
“Just a moment. I’ll see if Mr. Quinnell can see you now.”
The Sudanese disappeared through a set of tall double doors. A moment turned to two, then three. Gabriel wandered to the window and peered into the street. A waiter from the coffeehouse on the corner was presenting the Mukhabarat man with a glass of tea on a small silver tray. Gabriel heard the Sudanese behind him and turned round. “Mr. Quinnell will see you now.”
The room into which Gabriel was shown had the air of a Roman parlor gone to seed. The wood floor was rough for want of polish; the crown molding was nearly invisible beneath a dense layer of dust and grit. Two of the four walls were given over to bookshelves lined with an impressive collection of works dealing with the history of the Middle East and Islam. The large wood desk was buried beneath piles of yellowed newspapers and unread post.
The room was in shadow, except for a trapezoid of harsh sunlight, which slanted through the half-open French doors and shone upon a scuffed suede brogue belonging to one David Quinnell. He lowered one half of that morning’s Al-Ahram, the government-run Egyptian daily, and fixed Gabriel in a lugubrious stare. He wore a wrinkled shirt of white oxford cloth and a tan jacket with epaulettes. A lank forelock of gray-blond hair fell toward a pair of beady, bloodshot eyes. He scratched a carelessly shaved chin and lowered the volume on his radio. Gabriel, even from a distance of several paces, could smell last night’s whiskey on his breath.
“Any friend of Rudolf Heller is a friend of mine.” Quinnell’s dour expression did not match his jovial tone. Gabriel had the impression he was speaking for an audience of Mukhabarat listeners. “Herr Heller told me you might be calling. What can I do for you?”
Gabriel placed a photograph on the cluttered desktop-the photo Mahmoud Arwish had given him in Hadera.
“I’m here on holiday,” Gabriel said. “Herr Heller suggested I look you up. He said you could show me something of the real Cairo. He said you know more about Egypt than any man alive.”
“How kind of Herr Heller. How is he these days?”
“As ever,” said Gabriel.
Quinnell, without moving anything but his eyes, looked down at the photograph.
“I’m a bit busy at the moment, but I think I can be of help.” He picked up the photograph and folded it into his newspaper. “Let’s take a walk, shall we? It’s best to get out before they turn up the heat.”