“Good.” He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. He could not tolerate the idea of her facing the Mechanic or the Lucien alone. He was still haunted by the thought of her lying unconscious in that filthy hospital. She was the girl who never gave up, and he would be the one who ran behind her, protecting her where he could.
CHAPTER 43
The Khan al-Khalili bazaar was a dense warren of old buildings covering more than twenty acres of land at the east side of Cairo, about a mile from the river. Through this warren ran cobblestone alleys, narrow dirt passages, archways leading through ruined courtyards, and dozens of cement streets. On any day but Sunday, which was taken by most shop owners as a day of rest, the bazaar was packed with humanity. On Saturdays, it attracted tourists, but for the rest of the week, it belonged to locals. There were shops filling the bottom floors of the bazaar’s structures, and outside the shops were stalls, elbowing into the walkways. Everything, from spices to clothing to inlaid backgammon boards and jewelry to fresh catches from the sea, was sold. On the upper floors were dilapidated apartments and offices, crowded into tiny hot rooms, many with balconies overhanging the bazaar. The architecture was a mish-mash, like all of Cairo, some brick buildings, some wood, some plaster, most of it rickety but somehow still standing. Above it all was a blue-brown sky, choking with exhaust fumes from never-ending traffic jams on all sides of the bazaar.
On this morning, Pruit and Eddie threaded their way through the crowds, following the monitor as they walked, which Eddie held concealed in his hand. The Mechanic was finally on the move. They had been following his sporadic signal for an hour and were now closing in. His signal had been strong since they entered the bazaar, as there was little electronic communications traffic in that low-tech environment to interrupt it.
“Go left,” Eddie said as they reached an intersection of several alleys.
They turned left, entering a covered arcade where fish mongers displayed the day’s fresh catches on iced platters. Despite the early hour, it was already sweltering hot, and the relative cool of this arcade was a relief. Women with covered heads leaned over the fish, arguing over prices.
Pruit had dressed like the local women, wearing a loose, flowing robe of black cotton, with a thick white shawl draped over her head and around her shoulders. Eddie had acquired brown contact lenses for her. With them covering the blue of her eyes and the shawl covering her hair, she was indistinguishable from the thousands of other women who thronged the Khan al-Khalili. She had cut long slits in the sides of the robe to allow her access to the gun and knife strapped beneath her ribs.
Eddie wore a gray gallibiya and a small white skullcap. With his deep tan from the days in the desert, he too could pass for a local on cursory inspection.
They passed through the arcade and emerged into an open cobblestone street, where the shops were given mainly to women’s clothing. Specimens of this clothing hung from doorways and the bottoms of balconies and was laid out on folding tables and blankets on the street itself. The heat hit them again. Their robes clung to their skin, and Pruit wiped her brow on a sleeve. She scanned the street. For a moment, the crowd thinned, and she could see a long distance ahead. A hundred yards away was the Mechanic.
“I see him, Eddie,” she said, nodding in his direction. Eddie’s eyes found him as well.
The Mechanic was surrounded by the short American man who had accompanied him before and a tall, burly white man in his fifties who appeared to be a replacement for Jean-Claude. Around them was an escort of three local Cairo policemen in blue uniforms with machine guns. As Pruit and Eddie watched, the party turned a corner at the end of the street and disappeared from sight.
Pruit quickly checked her weapons. Then she turned to him, putting a hand on his arm. “Eddie, I don’t know what will happen here. If he has the manuals with him, I must get them. There might be fighting. I don’t know. If there are Lucien here, I will have to kill them.”
“I’m ready,” he said. He was nervous, but also elated. He felt the tough core of commitment in his gut, a new sensation, and this gave him strength. He squeezed her hand, then tucked the monitor into a small backpack and checked his own weapons, a knife and a gun, both strapped at his calves.
“Keep your eyes out for other Lucien. Either humans who look like me or true Lucien. They will be wearing full robes if they’re here, I suppose.”
He nodded, and they jogged after their target. They passed from the cobblestone street into a wide cement quadrangle, one of the central spots in the bazaar. The square was packed with vending stalls, and the crowds were heavy. For a moment, Pruit found herself faced with a group of elderly women and their grandchildren, slowly picking their way through the stalls and blocking her forward progress. She ducked around them, slipping behind a fruit seller, and saw the Mechanic again. He was heading to the far end of the square.
Pruit turned and saw that Eddie had been separated from her. His eyes met hers, and she gestured that they should split up and work their way up opposite sides of the quad. He nodded and moved away. Ahead of them, the Mechanic was only fifty yards away.
The Mechanic approached the meeting place, ensconced in his escort. Since Jean-Claude’s disappearance, Nate had helped him acquire a new slave, Marcus. Marcus was a middle-aged German, built like an oak tree. It had taken a prodigious amount of the Mechanic’s special solution to enslave him, but the need had ultimately been established, and Marcus lost all of his natural stature when his dose of antidote wore off.
Though the Mechanic was sweating in the morning heat, he took perverse pleasure in the fact that Nate was nearly drenched in perspiration, his dark suit jacket soaked through. Around them, at Nate’s suggestion, were three Cairo police officers the Mechanic had hired.
Nate had advised against this meeting, but the Mechanic had ignored him. He was more than a little intrigued by Adaiz’s offer. Adaiz had offered him two things. First, he promised the Mechanic the Kinley girl who had been following him and who had set Jean-Claude free. According to Adaiz, this girl had come to Earth from Herrod. She would bring the Mechanic’s past to haunt him and take vengeance upon him for stealing the Eschless technology. Adaiz would give her to the Mechanic to dispose of and thus save the Mechanic from her retribution. This was a gesture of good faith to demonstrate Adaiz’s seriousness in his offer of negotiation.
Second, Adaiz offered the Mechanic mobility that no other country could give him. He had hinted that this would be a shuttle vehicle that would allow the Mechanic to travel off-planet. Naturally, Nate did not believe this a realistic offer, but the Mechanic knew better. Like the girl, Adaiz had come to Earth from elsewhere. Though Adaiz had not been specific in revealing his point of origin, the Mechanic assumed it was some Kinley colony that had grown up over the last five millennia. Such a shuttle vehicle would do much to ensure the Mechanic’s safety.
Most enticing of all was that Adaiz asked for no exclusive right to the technology. The Mechanic would still be free to sell it to the country of his choice. Such an offer, in the Mechanic’s mind, was quite worthy of a face-to-face meeting. But he had acquiesced to the necessity of guards in case Adaiz turned out to be dangerous. He would find some way to get rid of these men when he sat down to negotiate terms.
Up ahead was the tiny café where they were to meet. It was little more than a room wedged between two taller buildings and kept dark by an overhanging awning. In front of the café were two men in full robes. One of these was Adaiz, and he stood with the hood of the robe drawn back, leaving his head bare. The other, taller man had his hood pulled over his head, completely obscuring his face. This man reminded the Mechanic of the nomadic desert tribesmen the survey crew had encountered in the Egyptian deserts. He felt a pang of worry as he looked at him. There was something ominous in his robed anonymity. Was he overreaching himself?
Adaiz-Ari and Enon-Amet stood together in front of the tiny dining establishment they had chosen for this meeting, watching the Mechanic and his retinue app
roach. The restaurant behind them was empty of customers. The lone chef and waiter stood patiently in the shadows, waiting for the men who had rented their business for the afternoon. Adaiz had chosen the café because of its small size and its ready access, through a back door, to a narrow, but clear alley that would lead them quickly out of the Khan al-Khalili, if that were necessary.
Adaiz stood stiffly, his wounds partially healed but still painful. He had performed daily healing meditations. These had helped greatly, but his body still needed time to repair. He felt vulnerable, both from physical weakness and from lack of a gun. His own gun and his favorite knife had been lost back in Jean-Claude’s apartment. He carried only his spare dirk at the moment. Enon, however, was well armed.
He glanced at the underside of his gallibiya sleeve, where he had attached the thin monitor for Pruit’s remaining tracer. She was closing in on them. On the monitor he had watched her reach the bazaar and then, over the past ten minutes, slowly wend her way closer. Her presence at this meeting would be essential to his own plans. He had found the Mechanic’s weakness. The man was terrified of who he had been in his own past. Adaiz had used this to his advantage, creating, in the Mechanic’s mind, an image of Pruit as a Kinley soldier who would do nothing less than try the Mechanic for his past misdeeds and punish him for stealing the Eschless technology. He had frightened the Mechanic enough that it would now be a small matter to get him to kill Pruit. This would serve both of their purposes. With her dead, the Kinley would lose the Eschless technology forever, and Adaiz would be free of the questions she stirred in him.
She was no more than fifty yards away. Adaiz casually turned his head to the left and scanned the crowds. He could not see her yet. He waited as the Mechanic got closer, then scanned the faces in the crowd again, careful not to look concerned or eager.
He saw her. She was dressed as a native married woman and standing in front of a shop selling African beads, her face in profile to him.
On the other side of the square, Eddie approached. The Mechanic and his group had their backs to him. He threaded his way toward them. Their destination was now clear.
Eddie moved closer. In front of the café, he caught sight of two robed figures, one was a young man with bare head who looked like he could be Pruit’s twin brother. The other was tall and thin and hooded. Eddie felt his heart skip. Was that one a Lucien?
He saw Adaiz, the human Lucien, surveying the crowd. What was he looking for?
The crowd had thinned as the Mechanic reached the café. This section of the square was populated with less desirable shops, and the main course of foot traffic passed it by for the most part.
As the Mechanic emerged from the crowds, guards in tow, Adaiz stepped forward to greet him.
“Hello, friend,” Adaiz said. “Allow me to introduce my partner, Enon.”
The Mechanic put out a hand, but Enon kept his arms folded in front of him, his right arm up his left sleeve and vice versa. Instead of shaking hands, he bowed slightly toward the Mechanic.
“Shall we go inside, out of the heat?” the Mechanic asked, his words being translated by the device on his jaw.
Adaiz glanced at his sleeve. Pruit was a mere twenty yards away. He dared not look for her, for she would certainly see him. “Before we go inside,” he said, “I would like to make good on the first of our offers.”
“Very well.”
Adaiz turned to the three policemen. “Do not look yet,” he said. “There is a young woman standing twenty yards away, on my left. She is wearing a black caftan and white shawl. If you pass through the café and down the alley, you can come out of the shop behind her. She is to be arrested and held.”
The guards looked to the Mechanic for confirmation. Adaiz was happy to notice all three were sufficiently trained to avoid staring over at Pruit and giving themselves away.
The Mechanic nodded curtly, and the guards headed into the café.
Pruit watched as the guards were dismissed, then turned back to watch Adaiz and the Mechanic. Adaiz was still in pain from their fight, she noticed. She edged slightly closer, moving herself into a protected location behind a vending stall. She was not close enough to hear their words, but she could not approach further without exposing herself.
Fifty yards from her, Eddie was also watching the disappearance of the guards, but his attention quickly came back to Adaiz and his companion. They made no move to enter the relative privacy of the café. They seemed content, for the moment, to stand where they were. He wondered why.
After only a minute or two, the three policemen emerged from a tight passageway between buildings and closed in on Pruit’s location.
Eddie saw them move, felt his legs jump into action as he automatically began to run toward Pruit. A moment later, the vending stall that had concealed her pitched forward, and Pruit came into full view, grabbed by all three men, her legs kicking and her arms struggling.
Eddie pushed people from his path, heading for her.
The Lucien and the Mechanic turned to watch the struggle. The Mechanic played with the grip of the gun he carried beneath his linen jacket. Marcus flexed his hands, ready to draw his own gun.
Passersby stopped to watch. Pruit got one of her arms free and, with it, landed a punch in the neck of one of her assailants. He gasped and clutched his throat. Another of the men grabbed her right arm and her hair, yanking her backward.
Eddie was closing in. He saw that Pruit might well win this struggle. She used one man’s grip on her leg as leverage and kicked him with her free foot, sending him sprawling to the ground. With her free hand, she grabbed the knife at her ankle. He was awed by her fighting ability.
The man she had punched was now drawing his handgun. He would shoot her, perhaps not fatally, but enough to stop her. Pruit got a leg wrapped around a man behind her and tipped him forward, throwing him onto the man with the gun. Both hands free, she armed herself with one of her own guns.
She would win, Eddie saw, but not without incapacitating those men. And if she did so, every policeman in Cairo would be after her.
The watching crowd was growing, people transfixed. Enon-Amet was anxious to have this business done so they could retreat to a private meeting, and Adaiz was equally anxious to get his brother out of the public square. The policemen were incompetent. Adaiz, having no gun of his own at the moment, turned to Mechanic’s tall bodyguard.
“End this, can you?”
Marcus nodded and reached for his gun.
Running, Eddie realized there was only one way to save Pruit. He veered from his course toward her and headed instead for the Mechanic and the men around him. The watching crowd was getting thicker, and he pushed his way roughly through.
He cut through the crowd thirty feet beyond the Lucien, then circled back behind them. Their eyes were on Pruit. One of the policemen fired at her. She leapt to the side, firing back and hitting the man in the leg. The other two policemen dove for her.
Eddie reached the hooded Lucien, coming up behind his robed back. Eddie’s knife was already drawn. In a quick motion, he grabbed the bottom edge of the Lucien’s robe and slid his knife up from bottom to top, slicing the material cleanly through. He grabbed the ragged edges of the robe with both hands and threw them forward.
The robe fell away, revealing the silver skin and alien form of Enon-Amet. His chest and arms were bare, gleaming. His pointed face stared out at the square in shock.
There were several moments when little changed and time was slow. There was the chatter of the crowd, with all eyes turned to Pruit. Then there was a high, long scream, as a child saw the Lucien. Eyes turned.
Adaiz saw that his brother stood exposed. Enon was paralyzed. This was the nightmare they had imagined since arriving on Earth. He was exposed as alien before a sea of barbaric humanity.
Even the police were looking at the silver Lucien. They had suddenly forgotten Pruit.
Enon looked wildly around.
“Adaiz!” he cried softly. “Adaiz!??
? He needed direction.
Adaiz had no idea what the reaction of the crowd or the policemen would be. But they would not stare in silence forever. In a moment, they would move to action. All he knew was he must get his brother out of this location as quickly as possible.
“Run!” he said in Avani, pushing Enon toward the café. “Run! Our escape route!”
Time shifted gears. Enon-Amet turned toward the café and began to run, but there was Pruit, heading him off, preventing his escape. She pointed her gun at him, aiming for the flesh of his neck, one of the Lucien’s most vulnerable spots. She fired, and Enon felt the bullet sing by his head.
He veered aside, changing course as she fired again. He could not follow the rehearsed route. Instead, he ran across the top of the square, the crowd turning to watch, still transfixed. There were small numbers of people who continued to browse through vending stalls, unaware of the commotion. In moments, Enon found himself in the middle of these. He gripped a woman’s shoulder and thrust her aside as he sprinted for the end of the square.
There was an intersection up ahead, a smaller road leading off. He headed toward it, his gun now in his hand. There was a thick grouping of people in front of him, and he fired at them, spraying out bursts of laser. The crowd dispersed, several falling to the ground.
Pruit was after him. She wove her way through the crowd, people trying to get out of her way, and then she was in an all-out sprint to catch up.