“Can you tell me about that case, since that’s why I’m here?”
“My posting in Egypt only started four years ago. This job requires us to move around a lot. And I haven’t yet seen the file. That’s all I can say.”
Sharko immediately understood that the other man didn’t want to take sides. A diplomat.
“Will this Noureddine bring me to the crime scenes if need be?” the French cop insisted.
“There’s one thing you have to understand, Chief Inspector. The country is moving forward, and the Egyptian authorities hate looking back. What are you hoping to find after all this time?”
“Would you do it, if it comes to that?”
Inspector Lebrun honked in turn, for no good reason. The guy was stressed out, but how could you help it in this whirlwind of noise and steel?
“It’s out of the question for us to run our show without Noureddine’s consent. For one thing, we don’t like that type of solo op at the embassy, since the organization and the cases handled by the Egyptian police are under the seal of defense secrets. On top of which, you won’t have enough time.”
Sharko gave him a tight smile.
“Hence the reason for my quick round-trip, no doubt. And I suppose Nahed isn’t by my side simply to interpret.” He turned around. “Isn’t that right, Nahed?”
“You have a vivid imagination, Chief Inspector,” Lebrun answered in a dry voice.
“You have no idea.”
Mohamed Farid Street. The Mercedes halted in front of the Happy City, a three-star hotel with a pink-and-black facade.
“Clean and stereotypical,” said Lebrun, “given that most of the other hotels in the city were jammed. July in Cairo isn’t exactly devoid of tourists.”
“As long as there’s a bathtub…”
The embassy inspector held out his business card.
“I’ll expect you this evening at 7:30 at Maxim’s restaurant, across Talaat Harb Square, not very far from here. You can listen to Édith Piaf songs and drink French wine. You can tell me all about your meeting with Noureddine, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Clearly they were leaving nothing to chance. Once he stepped outside, Sharko was engulfed by the sweltering heat and instantly drenched in sweat. The grumbling of motors, the strident shriek of horns, and the odors of exhaust were unbearable. With a sigh, he pulled his suitcase from the trunk. When he turned around, Eugenie was standing in front of the hotel, arms folded, still wearing the same outfit. She was pouting as she watched the cars battle it out on an avenue that rivaled the Champs-Élysées.
“…spector?”
Lebrun was waiting, hand outstretched. Sharko regained his wits and shook it nervously. The embassy attaché quickly glanced toward the spot that the French cop had been staring at a few moments before. Nothing there.
“One final piece of advice. Noureddine is no softy. He’s the kind of guy who thinks you’re betraying Egypt the moment you disagree with him—you get my drift. So try not to offend him, and keep a low profile.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to keep a low profile in the land of the hieroglyphs.”
18
The central police station of the governorate of Qasr el-Nil looked like the poorly maintained palace of a deceased sheikh. Protected by tall black fences, its dark facade opened onto a garden containing a mix of palm trees and police vehicles, which seemed more like grocers’ delivery vans. Only the large blue two-note revolving lights showed the difference. In front of a long staircase, six military guards—each with white short-sleeved shirt, kepi bearing the insignia of an eagle stamped with the national flag, Misr assault rifle across the shoulder—slapped the edge of their hands against their chests at the exit of a corpulent man endowed with three stars on his epaulettes.
Hassan Noureddine rested his sausagelike fingers on his hips and sniffed the gas-and-dust-laden air. Small black mustache, eyes dark as overripe dates beneath bushy eyebrows, pockmarked cheeks. He waited for Sharko and Nahed Sayyed to reach his level before greeting them. He politely shook the hand of his French counterpart, even gracing him with a languorous “Welcome.” But he was more interested in the young lady, with whom he exchanged a few words in Arabic. The latter leaned forward with a smile, which was mostly forced. Then the man turned around, torso rigidly straight, and plunged back inside the building. Sharko and Nahed exchanged a look that needed no comment.
In the giant entrance foyer punctuated with functional offices, stairways guarded by police sunk toward the basement level. A tumult of voices rose, chants in Arabic, litanies repeated by a chorus of women. Sharko crushed a mosquito on his forearm—the fifth one, despite all the lotion he’d slathered on. Those critters dug in everywhere and seemed resistant to any form of protection.
“What are those women chanting?”
“ ‘Prison is powerless against ideas,’” Nahed murmured. “They’re students. They’re protesting the ban on allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to stand in the elections.”
Sharko discovered a modern, well-equipped police force—computers, Internet, technical specialties like making composite sketches—but one that still seemed to work by ancient rules. Men and women, most of them veiled, waited in clusters in the foyer; office doors opened as if at the doctor’s, and whoever was fastest got in first. The idea of waiting in line didn’t seem to exist.
Sharko and his interpreter had to hand over their cell phones—to keep them from taking pictures or recording conversations—and were ushered into an office worthy of a gallery in the Palace of Versailles. Everything was outsized. Marble floors, Canopic and Minoan vases, figural tapestries, gilded bronzes. An immense fan spun on the ceiling, stirring the viscous air. Sharko smiled to himself. National heritage: everything here belonged to the state, and not to the conceited pig who sat heavily in his chair while sucking on a local cigar. While many Cairenes carried their excess weight gracefully, this fellow wasn’t one of them.
The Egyptian tendered his open palms toward two chairs; in them sat Sharko and Nahed, who took out a small notebook and a pen. She was wearing a long khaki-colored dress and a matching tunic that slightly revealed her tanned neck. The police chief stared at her openly with his large, porcine eyes. Here, people liked to show that they appreciated women, unlike in the street, where a pejorative tsss, tsss hissed whenever some unveiled female crossed a Muslim’s path. The chief rubbed his mustache, then lifted a sheet of paper in front of him. As he spoke, Nahed filled her notebook with stenographic symbols before translating:
“He says that you’re a specialist in serial killers and complicated crimes. More than twenty years’ service with the French police, in the Criminal Investigations Division. He says it’s very impressive. He asks how things are in Paris.”
“Paris is having trouble breathing. And how are things in Cairo?”
The chief of police crushed his Cleopatra between his teeth with a smile as he talked. Nahed picked up the conversation.
“Pasha Noureddine says that Cairo is trembling at the rate of killings that is shaking the Middle East. He says that Cairo is being strangled by Islamic networks, which are much more of a threat than the swine flu. He says they attacked the wrong target when they burned all those pigs in the municipal ditches.”
Sharko recalled the distant black smoke that he’d glimpsed at the city outskirts: pigs being incinerated. He answered mechanically, but his words made him want to vomit:
“I agree with you.”
Noureddine nodded, continued to blather on for a few minutes, then slid an old envelope toward the inspector.
“Concerning your case, he says everything is there, in front of you. The file from 1994. Nothing computerized; it’s too old. He says you’re lucky he was still able to find it.”