Again it was a long pause. Everybody was reflecting on Andrew and Paolo’s words. The mistress, old woman with nice strict face, invited people to the wide terrace with served table. Earlier when he was approaching the four-storey house Holmes put an attention on its original architecture. From the street it looked as multi-deck ship. Every terrace was a small home garden: everywhere there were flowers, exotic southern bushes and even small trees with oranges and lemons on them. And since the lower floors terraces protruded far forward, from the third floor terrace one could get a nice view on blooming many-tier gardens. Rays of the falling Sun lighted shapes of far Madrid, which were seen in the dwindling evening haze. The guests sat at the table but Holmes couldn’t take his eyes off of the ancient city’s panorama in front of him.
When he had come to the hotel and checked the last events he tried to put to system all heard during the day and made the appropriate notes in his notebook computer. During the supper Andrew told a lot from the main “Dead Water’s” document: the Sufficiently Universal Theory of Ruling”. And at parting Mr. Verov gave him the copies of missing “Chas Pick” papers and promised to send an e-mail if there would something new. Paolo supplied him with large bibliography of history of Trotskyism and copies of some documents he possessed. All of them including Antonio relied on Holmes’s and his friend Watson’s analytical talents.
The next day Holmes spent walking about in old Madrid, long sitting in small comfortable cafes, which in abundance were in Madrid, looked at careless tourists. So, outwardly he just did nothing, but really he intensively thought, comparing all he had heard in Vaduz or El Escorial. His still uncertain understanding of the matrix methods of ruling was formed. But at the same time he got the feeling that something important was missing. And about it he could neither read nor hear from somebody; only guess. Yet he foresaw that this something important stays just around the corner. With such thoughts he returned to his room. At the moment Holmes was going to call Watson to tell about his futures plans the phone called.
Mr. Holmes, for God's sake forgive us for late call. We call you for the third time! – He heard familiar Antonio’s voice.
Has something important happened? – Holmes asked anxiously.
Turn the TV on, in five minutes the last news will be shown. Pedro Colyado, our yesterday’s master was right. Today at 13:44 by Moscow time (GMT +3:00) not far from resort town Sochi Russian airliner Tu-154 making the flight number 1812 from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk fell down the Black Sea. Everybody on board, i.e. passengers and crew, perished. The causes are ascertaining.
Holmes turned the TV-set on. All is certain. The “picnics” matrix works on. He almost mechanically wrote down the collapse coordinates: latitude 42.11 North, longitude 37.37 East. He opened the calendar with a person feeding birds and counted the shown, i.e. not hidden, fence spaces. They were 37 indeed. Could one predict the catastrophe coordinates seven years before? This just couldn’t be! Holmes remembered the notes on probabilistic methods he had left to Watson. In the commentaries to them, as he could remember, they were called the “God’s games”. No, Andrew was right: the Almighty doesn’t play the dices. All of this is just the elements of the matrix ruling; and matrixes are often formed by thoughtless people who later step on their own rake[60]. Wait, but it was just the previous day when Andrew had translated the story placed in “Chas Pick” at the backside of the “Jade of History”. It was a funny story called “The Rake”. The similar sounding of the words “a rake” and “to rob” was played up in it. So, Holmes wondered if somebody had robbed himself that day.
Holmes called to London. Watson was at home and it seemed that he had been waiting for the call. He obviously was alarmed by something and told that he already had heard of Tu-154 tragedy but he couldn’t say anything specific or definite about that. Holmes reminded him about September 7 and promised to return to London in a week.
October 5 – 7. Egypt. Cairo.
In the morning Holmes flew to Cairo. Very attentive and courteous firm’s official Mahmud met him in the airport and immediately drove him to hotel Sheraton. Holmes got a number with a view on Nile at the ninth floor of the tower like house with an exotic name “Nefertiti”. The midday Sun warmed the air to +33ºC (+91.4ºF) but there wasn’t a feeling of stupefying heat at a balcony. High pressure and dry air provided good state of health. Underneath one could see an unstoppable car flow of the 16 millions strong megapolis.
The conference was held in one of numerous halls of the hotel. There was nothing unusual – simple modern event with dull reports, graphs illustrating firms’ tendencies to the bankruptcy, assurance charges, income decrease etc. Having chosen several booklets, which could probably be interesting for the firm’s heads, Holmes was going to leave for a café when Mahmud who took care of him leaded to him a tall full-bodied man of Arabian appearance. He was dressed in a light suit and a snow-white shirt with a tie.
Mr. Holmes, let me introduce you Mr. Aleph Salem, an owner of the largest furniture fabric in Cairo and just extraordinary interesting man.
Holmes shook dried-up but strong hand of Salem.
I was going to meet with you, Mr. Holmes, some day soon in London, where I should have gone for business. But there is one my good friend among the organisers of the meeting. He had seen a name Holmes in the participants list and graciously informed me of your visit to Cairo. So I decided to take occasion. Mr. Holmes, excuse me, I want to talk about not so usual problem, which is outside the conference matter.
Salem was a little bit anxious and because of that he spoke the perfect British English.
Mr. Salem. You seem to have finished Cambridge?
You’re quite right, Mr. Holmes. I’ve finished the department of law and for some time I studied the modern philosophy. I would like to invite you for a dinner tomorrow. If you don’t object I promise to serve a fine Indian cuisine.
Why Indian if we’re in Egypt?
Just because my wife is from India.
Holmes decided to stake one's all. An English word “picnic” has many meanings. So even if he had been wrong the prepared phrase would only have been a little contrast to Salem’s impeccable English.
You want to show me a “picnic”, don’t you?
The amazed Salem’s face showed that he hit the nail on the head.
Have you already been acquainted with the “picnics”? – He asked with a perplexity. – Has somebody let you know it in advance? But I’ve told of them to nobody. I have so many questions and, – he paused for a little choosing the words, – the most unexpected versions. But I wasn’t sure that you know the “picnics”, I mean the Russian “picnics”.
Me too, I wasn’t sure that you know these Russian “picnics”. For two weeks I have been meeting them under the most mystical circumstances in England, in Switzerland and in Spain. That’s why I thought that the very “picnics” have been waiting for me in Egypt as well. I’m ready to discuss them during the tomorrow’s dinner.
Holmes had been in Cairo two years before on the same firm’s business. A little has changed during that time. Maybe more old cars, as if from an auto junkyard, had appeared. Cairo was the city of the fabulous contrasts of poverty and richness where nearly two million people live on the ancient burial place called “the city of the dead”. With all of exotics: the pyramids, Sphinx, old-times fashioned settlements on banks of Nile, young boys and girls in white tunics and black wigs, – he had got the acquaintance during his first visit to Egypt. That time he was just walking along the embankment of the river Nile, which doesn’t differ from any European city’s embankment but in that it is less kempt. But nonetheless though of the commonness of the city’s landscape with a touch of Arabian exotics Holmes felt the same strange feelings, which he had drown his attention to two years before. That time he had considered them to appear because of the abundance of new Egyptian exotic impressions. But why did it happen that day in the business atmosphere far from any mystics? Was it the feeling of the matrix of the past secretly connected with the present? Suddenly he remembered discoverers of pyramids and their strange fate. Then his thoughts returned to the Madrid talks where Verov and Riego discussed the ruling activity of twenty-two hierophants. It would be useful to nibble at this subject at the dinner.