Mysterious Cairo by Edited By Ed Stark, Dell Harris Page A

in touch with him there as soon as I came in, but this Joe had earned a house call.
    Along the way, I remembered something the Whisper had said to me once about Frenchmen's eyes and making sure the odds were even. I stopped off at the back alley shop of a fence I knew and picked up a few items I thought might come in handy, if my hunch about Montaigne was right.
    The Sesetek Arms used to be the Sheraton, before good ol' Mobius sank his clammy claws into this planet. It was still pretty ritzy, but the "ancient Egypt" motif wore thin after a while. I wasn't there to admire the decor, though.
    The desk clerk looked me up and down and turned up his nose. I'd seen his mug someplace before, and then it hit me. I asked him how things were at Rosalie's, a little whorehouse in Old Cairo I'd visited on a case once, and wasn't penicillin a wonderful thing? He was a lot more polite after that.
    He told me Montaigne's room was on the third floor, but the man had guests, and they had asked not to be disturbed. Fifty Royals got me his room number; another fifty that his guests were "men of the cloth." There were three of them, and they'd been up there only a few minutes. Montaigne had called down himself and asked that there be no calls, no interruptions.
    One other little detail my new friend had for me: the priests were all wearing dark glasses. Didn't that seem a little strange, this late in the evening? I told him he was better off not knowing and slipped him a few extra bucks to make sure he wouldn't tip Montaigne or his guests off.
    One thing was certain — going up and knocking on the door would be a very bad idea. Fire escapes had served me well on more than one occasion, and this would be one of those times. I would have felt a lot better with the Sting at my side, but in this business, you make do with what you have.
    I climbed the iron ladders, cold with the chill of the Cairo night. A hundred little dramas were probably being played out in the rooms I passed — men making and losing fortunes, women hiding out from their pasts, lovers finding each other. All I cared about was one darkened window on the third floor.
    That's right, pitch black. My pigeons had already flown, maybe, but I still kept my head down when I reached the landing. When I got near the window, I saw that something had spattered all over the inside of the glass and run down to the sill. Either someone didn't like their gin, or someone didn't like Montaigne.
    Inch by inch, I lifted my head to peer in. I couldn't make out very much — the only light I had to work with was the glow of a far-away street lamp. For an instant, I thought I saw a glint of steel, the small barrel of a weapon. Then it was gone.
    There's an old saying among folks in my line of work: there are some things you never find unless you're looking for them. That may explain why I was able to see three pinpricks of red light moving inside Montaigne's room—I knew they would be there when I heard about the dark glasses on the priests. I also knew what they were from descriptions some Storm Knights related once: low-light eyes, mechanical contraptions that let Malraux's cultists see in the dark.
    The fact that they worked here, in Cairo, made me very nervous.
    I reached into my coat for the goodies I had purchased on the way to the hotel. I'd bought them to use on Montaigne, if necessary, but now I didn't think it would be. I laid both on the floor of the landing and pulled out my Zippo lighter and my .45. My timing would have to be perfect — I lit the fuses, grabbed the sticks, tossed them through the window pane and shut my eyes tight.
    You see, it's a funny thing about low-light eyes, from what they tell me. A really bright flash all of a sudden can drive the things haywire. That's why a few flares at the right moment are just the thing to soften up cyberpriests.
    As soon as I heard the French curses, I crashed through the window and into the room. Opening my eyes, I saw the glare had