The Shroud Key Read online

  “What now?” she inquires.

  “Try knocking,” I suggest.

  “Knock,” she says. “That’s your solution? Just knock like we’re asking the next door neighbor if we can borrow some sugar?”

  “Got a better idea, sweetness?”

  Raising up her right arm, she makes a fist with her hand and wraps on the door with her knuckles. Three solid knocks. She’s right. It’s as if she were paying a visit to her next door neighbor. The bone against hollow metal echoes in the vertical stairwell.

  We wait for a long few seconds. Until we hear the sound of deadbolts being released.

  Anya steps back, so that her back is pressed against me. It’s not a bad feeling having her so close to me. So close I can feel my heart beating against her body.

  The door opens.

  The bearded, late-middle-aged man standing inside the open door is short and somewhat round. He’s wearing loose dungarees, work boots and a work shirt with an apron draped over it, like a butcher might wear. But this apron is not stained with blood.

  “Come with me,” he demands.

  Without a word we follow him up yet another, shorter set of stairs until we come to a set of Bilco basement doors that have already been opened. The man climbs through first with us on his tail. When we come to the top, I can see that we’re not inside a butcher shop, but a working news stand that’s part of a larger three-roomed shack.

  The man quickly closes the egress doors and padlocks them. He then covers them over with a thick rug.

  “Help me with something,” he orders in broken English while taking his place on the opposite end of a large wooden harvest table.

  I grab hold of the opposite side of the table and together we lift it and set in onto the rug. The table has some food on it. Some meats and cheeses, along with a bottle of red wine.

  He tells us to eat something.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Call me, Carlo,” he says. “I will be escorting you to the airport. Your flight leaves for Cairo in two hours.”

  In my head, I’m recalling the guns I left behind under the dumpster. I tell Carlo about them.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “We will pick them up and hold onto them for you.”

  “What do I do for weaponry in Cario?”

  “You will be greeted by a man right outside your gate. His name is Sameh. He will be your fixer and your confident. He will take care of everything. Do you understand?”

  I nod.

  “Thank you.”

  He smiles.

  “Don’t thank me. I am getting paid for my services as are you. Thank your friend, Checco.”

  Anya turns to me.

  “Checco’s quite the character,” she comments. “He certainly knows how to spend my dead dad’s money, doesn’t he?”

  “Wait until you get his bill,” I say turning to her. Then, turning back to Carlo. “Is there somewhere we can change out of these holy clothes?”

  In my mind I’m picturing the lug-soled boots, dark Levis work shit, and leather bomber I lugged with me in my satchel. No doubt Anya is dying to ditch the nun’s habit.

  He nods to a room off the back.

  “You first,” I say to Anya.

  In the meantime, I pour a glass of wine, and eat some cheese. The first food I’ve consumed in many hours. Carlo excuses himself while he tends to some customers demanding train tickets out in front of the newsstand. I sip the wine and try to make sense of this whole thing. As far as we know, Manion is somewhere Egypt. In the desert outside of Cairo, digging in a location on behalf a wealthy Muslim Brotherhood kidnapper that is almost certainly a wrong location. My guess is that Manion knows he’s digging in the wrong place and that he’s simply stalling the inevitable: The moment when his kidnappers get so frustrated with him, they put a bullet in his head.

  But I’ve been commandeered by the Florence Polizia to locate Manion before that happens. Nowhere in my present job description does it call for my locating the Holy Grail—the true bones of Jesus. But the problem is this: It’s in my blood to go after the bones. I am digger by trade, but I am hunter also. Denying my chance at the bones is like asking me not to breathe. Without even realizing it at the time, I had a chance to go after the bones once before, and blew it. Now a second chance has fallen into my lap.

  But then, I’m not a cold hearted greedy son of a bitch either.

  My religiously devout parents raised me better than that. I’ve promised to locate Manion and I will do so. But once that mission is accomplished, I’m going after the bones. If Manion and his ex-wife wish to accompany me, all the better. I might be able to deduce the location of the bones via the blueprint I pulled off the shroud. But I have no idea what to expect once we get to the site. No idea what to look out for, be it booby traps, natural obstacles, or certain death itself. One thing is for sure, no matter where they lay, the bones won’t simply be there for the taking. We will have to work for them. Work for them harder than we’ve ever worked in our lives. That will take strength, but it will also take courage and brains. That’s why I need Manion, and that’s why I need him alive.

  Anya emerges from out of the back room. She’s back to her black jeans, lace-up boots, and leather jacket over a simple black T-shirt. She is as beautiful as the night is long. She takes my hand.

  “Better get dressed, Ren Man,” she says. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

  I lean in, kiss her on the mouth. She tastes sweet, her lips as soft as my melting heart.

  “You’re falling in love,” I say.

  “Bite your tongue. I’m not that easy. But then, unlike you, I’m not that hard either.”

  I hold back a laugh on my way to the back room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We’re transported by car under the cover of darkness to the Turin International Airport and soon we are airborne for the four hour trip to Cairo. We land just as dawn is arriving on the new day and the sun is rising bright orange over the desert, melting the coolness that no doubt settled in over the night and replacing it with a heavy, laden heat.

  As promised we are greeted outside the baggage claim doors by a young man named Sameh. The tall, muscular, black-haired man doesn’t greet us with secrecy like one might expect. Instead he holds up a white cardboard sign with the name CHASE written on it in thick black Sharpie.

  So much for keeping our heads safely under the local radar…

  After sharing some quick greetings, Anya and I follow our contact out of the airport and into the heat of the early morning. Seating us in the back of his white sedan, we head out into Cairo’s notoriously heavy traffic. To say the traffic is thick here is like saying the Sinai desert contains some sand. Traffic is everywhere and it is non-stop. It seems to take on a life of its own, like a mechanical river of moving metal parts, choking smoke, and noise. It’s so chaotic, dense, and even dangerous, that Sameh uses his horn not to draw attention of someone he wants out of the way or someone who is about to run into him, but for communicating specific messages. One beep for “How’s it going?” Two long beeps for “Wake up, you’re about to smash into me.” One long extended beep for “Move or by the grace of Allah, I will run you down!” This isn’t my first trip to Cairo. My first trip goes back all the way to the mid 1970s when I was just a boy and my father was sandhogging for some university archaeologists who were working on the Theban Mapping Project in the Valley of the Kings. So I’ve learned the road ropes by now.

  As we crawl along, Sameh peers at us through the mirror.

  “I have secured a hotel for you. The Kings Hotel. Very close to Giza.”

  I know the place since I’ve stayed there a half dozen times before. An old time hotel better suited for journalists, adventurers, and private antiquities collectors who deal only in cash and who prefer to keep to themselves. No questions asked. It also houses one of the only remaining bars in an ever increasingly militantly Muslim Cairo.

  “Private antiquities collectors?” Anya poses.
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  “Treasure hunters,” I say. Then, “What about a weapon, Sameh?”

  “I have all of that covered, naturally. Plus a laptop computer….Checco filled me in on everything required of my services.”

  Anya leans into me, whispers into my ear. “Every time I hear that name, I picture piles of one-hundred dollar bills going up in smoke.”

  “But it’s money well burnt,” I whisper back.

  I think about the photos we’ve taken of the shroud. How important it will be to match the small blueprint up with a detailed plan of one of the three Giza pyramid interiors, should I be able to locate just such an interior plan. And it’s possible I know just the place to find one.

  “Why aren’t we headed to Giza right now?” Anya asks, setting her hand on mine.

  “It’s important that I see a man first,” I insist. “A man whom I’ve worked with on occasion when digging in and around Cairo for various clients. A man named Amun. If anyone knows about a dig being sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood using a kidnapped American as the lead archaeologist, it will be Amun. He might be one of the sleaziest men I know, but he will prove instrumental in our finding your husband. There’s a lot of desert out there. Anything else is just entering into a wild goose chase.”

  But what I also know is that he will help me with finding the exact location of the bones should the blueprint pulled from the shroud turn out to be authentic.

  Anya removes her hand.

  “I’m just anxious is all,” she says. “I’ll be able to breathe better once we find Andre.”

  She looks out the window onto the stream of cars and trucks, their beds filled with people, crates of chickens and other live and not so live cargo. In between the vehicles, boys and men scoot around on motorbikes. Some people take a chance on running in between the moving cars, Chinese made pickups, and Jeeps.

  It takes almost an hour to drive the relatively short distance from the airport to Tahrir Square. Throughout history, this spot has been the ground-zero for demonstrations, revolutions and riots. Today is no exception. From my perch in Sameh’s shotgun seat, it looks like a war zone. There’s a throng of Arab protestors gathered around several consulates, including what I know to be the American facility. The men cover their faces with black cloth and they wear scarves over their heads. They look like bandits. Some are tossing rocks at the U.S. embassy gates and over brick walls which are covered in razor-sharp concertina wire. Some of the masked men grip AK47s, which they point towards the Arab sky, fingering live rounds into the air. In the near distance, a tall office building is blackened and still smoking from a fire. People are shouting and screaming.

  “Keep your heads down back there,” Sameh warns. “This has been going on for days. People are dying in the streets.”

  Tahrir Square isn’t really a true square at all, but a large oval with a roundabout in its center. I’ve spent some time here in the past, so I’m well aware that all manner and types of buildings from many different eras make up the perimeter of the square, including a dozen or more consulates and embassies. The Egyptian Museum is located on the square, and so is the Arab League Headquarters, plus the House of Folklore, and even the American University which was thriving the last time I was here, but that now is an empty shell of its former academic glory.

  “What are they protesting right now?” Anya begs.

  “The same thing they’ve been protesting for more than a year,” Sameh says, his hands tightly gripping the wheel. “The president has taken it upon himself to rewrite the constitution while assuming supreme power. While some celebrate the return of true, militant Islamic rule to the country, others see the President’s declaration of supreme power as the first act in an inevitable civil war between militant Islamists and supporters of a free democratic republic. Our economy is in a shambles. There’s no food, or gas, or jobs. You could almost say the Muslim Brotherhood is propping up a modern day pharaoh while tearing down the country.”

  “The Muslim Brotherhood,” I say to her. “These are the same people who have taken away your ex-husband.”

  A barrage of automatic gunfire startles us. It comes from directly behind us. Turning in my seat, I see a gang of black-bearded and scarved men. They’re making fists with one hand, and waving AKs with the other. They’re coming up on our car.

  “For the love of Allah,” Sameh laments. He presses his foot on the gas, but there’s nowhere to go. Not if he doesn’t want to smash into the car ahead of him. He lays on the horn. One long solid honk.

  Get the hell out of the way…

  The angry gang is getting closer.

  “What do they have against us?” begs Anya.

  “They know my car,” Sameh says. “They know it is the car of a fixer… A guide.”

  “Let me guess. A guide for westerners and infidels,” Anya adds, her face peering out the back window.

  The gang is on us now. They’re pounding on the hood with the butts of the AKs. Screaming and shouting in obscenities I cannot begin to make out, but I somehow understand nonetheless.

  Sameh is visibly sweating, the beads forming on his forehead and streaking down his dark face. I don’t like seeing my fixer like this. It means we’re in real danger.

  I put my hand on the door. Maybe it’s time we make a run for it.

  “No Chase!” he screams. “Don’t do it. They will maul you, drag you away and beat you ...They will beat and rape Anya. They will take me away and kill me.”

  I feel my heart lodging itself in my throat.

  Anya has grown pale.

  “You have a gun?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “Not here.”

  “Then just do something.”

  To our right is the gravel and sand-covered center of the round-about. Back when I was a kid, the center supported a giant fountain that rivaled something you might find in downtown Rome. But in more recent times, the fountain has been ripped out and replaced with a giant statue of the much revered Muslim leader, Omar Makram. Makram is famous for having kicked the crap out of Napoleon’s troops in a battle waged amidst the pyramids of the Giza Plateau. Behind Omar, are planted some flag poles which used to support the flags of the free world. Only there are no longer any flags flying in the wind, since it’s quite obvious the symbols of the free world have been pulled down, spit on, and burned.

  Sameh turns the wheel to the right, hits the gas, drives up onto the gravelly center and guns it. The mob who occupies it is forced to move to the side in one giant wave, or else risk being mowed down and martyred unintentionally. But one man separates himself from the mob, holds his ground, aims the black barrel of his automatic rifle at us.

  “Down!” Sameh screams. “Get! Down!”

  I grab the collar on Anya’s leather jacket, pull her down onto me. I don’t hear the two rounds that burst through the front and rear windshields above our heads, so much as I feel them fly past.

  “You still with us, Sameh?” I bark.

  “Thank Allah,” he says, turning the wheel one way and then another, the car fishtailing over the grass and gravel, but somehow moving forward. I feel a heavy thump, and I know the car has dropped back down onto road.

  I sit up, enough to peer through the windshield. “Where the hell are we?”

  “1973 Victory Bridge,” he informs. “We’ve made it out of the square with our lives. You can breathe now.”

  Brushing shards of glass off her shoulders, Anya sits up.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Welcome to Cairo,” she says. “I thought this place was supposed to be a tourist’s paradise on earth.”

  I can see she’s trying to look on the bright side, but failing miserably.

  “Most of the tourists are long gone,” I say, feeling the beads of sweat pouring down my face, tasting the salt on my lips. “Back when I was a kid I could walk the streets of Cairo alone and not worry about a thing.”

  “Back when I was a kid,” Anya says, “I was lucky if my parents took an out of town vacation
at all.”

  Sameh cuts a quick left and proceeds down a narrow alley. We pass a butcher shop to my right, three skinned goat carcasses hanging from its exterior rafters. The butcher is squatting on the gravelly ground, smoking shisha from a tin-bellied hookah. To my left, a small group of three black burka-clad women move to the side for us. They don’t look at us for fear of making eye contact with the driver. The driver is a man after all, and only their husbands are allowed to look into their eyes.

  We speed down a half dozen more alleys, taking too many rights and hooking way too many lefts to make sense of, until we come to a full stop outside the short flight of stairs that access a humble concrete high-rise consisting of maybe nine or ten stories. The neon sign mounted to building’s exterior reads “Kings Hotel.” There’s an armed guard standing at the top of the stairs. He’s dressed in police whites topped off with a black beret.

  Sameh gets out, opens the door for Anya.

  I exit the vehicle, and take a quick look around. Located directly across the street from the hotel is an old mansion built during the Victorian French occupation. It’s surrounded by brick and iron walls. Several machine gun-armed guards watch over it. There are cars parked in the streets, some of them bombed or burned out and left to rot. Others have become resting places for the many wild dogs that roam the streets looking for an easy meal, or an unlucky rodent to cross the road.

  We have no bags other than what we’re carrying, so Anya and I proceed up the stairs behind Sameh. When we enter into the lobby, we feel the coolness of the ceiling fans circulating the air around the dim, stone-tiled room. To our right, the long bar is crowded with khaki and bush-jacketed men, drinking the morning away.

  “Here are the keys to your room,” he says, handing us one metal key apiece. “I assume you would like to freshen up. I will wait for you in the bar.”

  “Thanks for taking care of us back there,” I tell him. “Have one on me.”

  He smiles, his dark eyes rich and genuine.