The Lost Testament by James Becker Page A

being aware of it. No different to normal, then. And now she was looking at him with a peculiar intensity in her stare that was a good enough warning to concede the point.
    “I’m really sorry,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I didn’t even know I was doing it.”
    Angela dropped her gaze after a moment; then she shook her head.
    “God,” she muttered. “I’m sorry too. I’m a bit over-sensitive at the moment. Work is really boring, I can’t find the answer to the question Ali Mohammed asked, and to see you drooling over that dyed-blond bimbo in a third-rate restaurant was almost the last straw.”
    She fell silent for a few seconds, then looked up at him.
    “I will admit one thing, though.”
    “What?”
    “She
had
got a nice butt. You were right about that.”
    “Yours is better,” Bronson said immediately.
    “Well, in that case . . .” Angela unlocked her door and led the way inside.

23
    News, especially bad news, travels quickly in Cairo, and rumors of the torture and killing of a local trader were already sweeping through the souk.
    Mahmoud Kassim had a cleaner-cum-housekeeper who visited his property every day, and her echoing screams when she walked into his bedroom had alerted almost everybody in the street. The Egyptian police were already investigating the murder, and had several firm leads, according to the gossip in the coffeehouses.
    Abdul frankly doubted that, because he had been very careful to ensure he had left no physical traces of his presence anywhere in the property, apart from the dead body. But the uproar over the killing was unwelcome to him and to his employer.
    “You should have disposed of the body, you fool.”
    Abdul was not used to being spoken to like that, and immediately his temper flared.
    “I couldn’t dispose of the body. Walking through the streets of Cairo carrying a corpse would have been far more dangerous than leaving him where he died. It’s just unfortunate that this cleaning woman went into the house and found him so quickly.”
    “The word ‘unfortunate’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. You do realize it’s possible that this other dealer, this man Husani, will now be on his guard?”
    Abdul shook his head and walked a little farther down the deserted alley, holding his mobile phone to his ear.
    “Not necessarily. There is no obvious reason why he should assume that Mahmoud’s death was anything to do with the object he bought from him.”
    The deep voice at the other end of the line gave a snort of disbelief.
    “You’d better be right,” he snapped. “You have not fulfilled this contract in a satisfactory manner to date. If you do not resolve this matter, and quickly, we may be forced to take further steps.”
    “Are you threatening me?” Abdul asked, his voice suddenly cold with barely suppressed anger.
    “Yes, of course I am,” the man replied simply. “You’re not the only contractor in Cairo. Unless you deliver the parchment to me within the next twenty-four hours, we will terminate the contract and issue appropriate orders to another person. Orders that may indirectly include you. You have been warned.”
    Before Abdul could even begin to formulate a reply, the other man ended the call.

24
    In a large and comfortable house on the southern outskirts of Cairo, Jalal Khusad, a heavily built and prosperous-looking middle-aged man, his face dominated by a large and very black beard, looked at his mobile phone with an irritated expression on his face. Then, with a gesture of disgust, he tossed the phone onto the tooled leather top of his mahogany desk.
    Things were not going as he had planned. As a senior member of P2 in Egypt, he knew of the Englishman by reputation, and he didn’t want to disappoint him. He couldn’t afford to.
    The matter had seemed simple enough and should not have been difficult to complete. All his contractor Abdul had been told to do was recover a single piece of parchment and eliminate whoever had