He grinned, looking very amused. “Not at all. I think that wherever the hellstone came from — an undiscovered cave system, maybe — naturally houses the bacteria. The fact that the rock is from space is just coincidence.”
“Oh,” Zahra said, feeling a little stupid. She had jumped to the most outlandish explanation first, rather than the most realistic. She glanced out the kitchen window again. Coincidences, chance, luck… They didn’t usually get along with Zahra, unless it related to her ability to stay alive.
“You said the scroll leads to somewhere. Where does it lead you, exactly?”
“Supposedly to the Temple of Anubis, a place made entirely of hellstone — the jar’s origin.”
“Oh, and that’s really bad considering the length they went to steal Mom’s jar.”
“Yes, it’s not good news. I doubt Khaliq had enough hellstone to do any real damage. He needs the full quarry to enact his plan.”
She pushed her coffee aside and leaned forward. Her hands found her face, and she closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
“Oh, there’s one more thing.”
Zahra paused and parted her fingers enough to see her father. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me?”
George looked extremely uncomfortable. He knew whatever he was about to reveal would seriously piss off his daughter. “Your mother, her last name wasn’t really Hassan.”
Zahra took a deep breath and turned, and fully faced her father. “Fine, then, what was it?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“It was,” he cleared his throat, “her last name was—”
“Just tell me!”
“It was Ayad, Zahra. Her last name was Ayad.”
Zahra didn’t verbally respond. She just stood and walked away, placing her hands on the kitchen counter. She looked at her reflection in the window as her father added onto the dogpile of information.
“Her brother was once the leader of the Scales of Anubis.”
“Khaliq’s father?” Zahra asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” he sorrowfully replied. “It also means that Khaliq is—”
Zahra spun, tears freely falling. “It means that psychopath is my cousin!”
Chapter 35
Zahra
Zahra finished rinsing her face off in the guest bathroom. Patting it dry, she glanced up at herself in the mirror and wondered how someone like her could be related to a person as wicked as Khaliq Ayad. Then, there was Ifza. She was part of Zahra’s family too.
No, she told herself. Just because they shared the same blood, it didn’t make them family. Zahra was nothing like the Ayads.
She took a deep breath and tossed aside the hand towel. Zahra exited the bathroom and rejoined her father in the kitchen. He was still nursing his second cup of coffee, though he didn’t look all that interested in it.
Zahra sat. “You okay, Dad?”
He gazed up at her, his eyes wet. “No. How can I be? My son…” he sniffed, “my son is with that madman, and I’m here, safe and sound… and scared.”
Zahra reached a hand out, and her father took it. “Look, Dad, I have to go. Baahir needs my help.”
“Zahra, no.”
She held up a hand. “He has no one else. I’m going to Cairo tonight, but—”
“But what?”
“Do you have any contacts down there you can trust? Maybe someone who knew Mom?”
George was thinking. His eyes were glassy, looking through the wall rather than at it. When his posture changed, and he blinked back into the world here and now, Zahra knew he had thought of someone.
He confirmed as much. “I may know one man. If he’s still alive…”
“Who?”
He looked at her. “You know him, Zahra.”
“I do?” Zahra tried to remember the people she had met in Cairo over the years, both in her present life and the past. She couldn’t pick out anyone that could help in a situation like this.
George revealed the man. “Waleed Badawi.”
Zahra snorted. “Uncle Wally? You’re kidding me, right?”
She remembered her Uncle Waleed as a crazy son-of-a-bitch, someone her mother never liked to talk about much. By all accounts, he was as intelligent as his half-sister — Zahra’s mother, Hanan.
But instead of going into academics or the sciences, Uncle “Wally” had gone into the unofficial business of importing and exporting.
Zahra hadn’t even known the man was still alive — her father had fallen out of touch with him shortly after her mother’s passing.
“No, I’m not kidding, and he’s, um, he’s not really your uncle.”
She gave an exhausted laugh. “Now, you’re going to tell me Grandma and Grandpa weren’t really my grandparents, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “No, but Waleed really isn’t your uncle. We just had you guys call him uncle to make it easier on you whenever he came stateside to visit.”
It made sense. If she and Baahir were conditioned to call the man “Uncle,” then it was understandable that the man could be trusted. That was Zahra’s assessment, right or wrong.
“And you’re sure we can trust him?”
“Absolutely.” He wiped his eyes and faced his daughter. “Zahra, Waleed is the man who smuggled your mother out of Egypt all those years ago. If there is one person in Egypt we can trust, it’s him.”
Zahra stood, knowing what she had to do. “Let’s hope he’s still around.”
She pulled out her cellphone and clicked away.
“What are you doing?” George asked.
“Texting a friend — well, an acquaintance — with a plane. I need to get to Cairo, ASAP.”
“And this friend can get you to Egypt on a whim — just like that?”
“For the right amount of money, yes.” Zahra looked up at him. “Cork hasn’t let me down yet.”
“Cork? Your pilot-friend’s name is Cork?”
She nodded. “It’s a long story.”
George got up and left the kitchen. Zahra could hear him head down the hall and into his bedroom. A minute later, he returned with something.
“Here,” he said, holding out a photo.
Zahra took it and looked it over. It was a picture of her, Baahir, her mom and dad, and Uncle Wally back in New York City. They had posed for the photo somewhere in Central Park, though Zahra was a bit fuzzy as to exactly where.
The ballfields?
“If you find Waleed, give him this and tell him everything that’s happened.”
Chapter 36
Baahir
As soon as Baahir had arrived, he quickly took over the entire operation beneath The Pharaoh's Lounge. If a priceless artifact was going to be dissected — in a cave, no less — then it was he who was going to do it, much to the chagrin of the old-timers already in place. He didn’t care what anyone else said, and Khaliq didn’t seem to mind.
“Do it,” Khaliq had said, eyeing his people.
Those two words gave Baahir anything he wanted, including a better place to rest. Instead of sharing one of several communal cots, he was given his own, as well as whatever books Khaliq’s aboveground men could scrounge up. There was also a computer filled with terabytes of information, but it had no internet connection. Khaliq had made sure that the people working below had no way of contacting the outside world.
Which made Baahir think… Are all of these people here willingly?