Too Bad to Die by Francine Mathews Page A

ramparts and rested his elbows on them, as if intent on the Cairo traffic below. Then he opened the girl’s note.
    The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
    He glanced up and searched the crowd of tourists. In the distance, a saffron-colored wing of silk was flying. Ian decided to follow it.

CHAPTER 8
    T he girl led him swiftly down the Citadel’s ramparts and out into Mahomed Ali Square. He thought she might cross it and make for the Old Helwan train station directly opposite, but instead she turned north and hesitated in the chaotic circle of traffic that was Rumeleh Square. While she did, he crossed to the official cars waiting for their party—Alex Kirk’s with an American flag fluttering on the hood—and leaned through the window of the British one. A Canadian sergeant was behind the wheel. He saluted Ian.
    â€œWhen the ladies return with Mr. Winant and Colonel Roosevelt,” he told the driver, “go on directly to the bazaar. I’ll join you there.”
    He glanced over at the corner where the girl still stood. A donkey trap slowed as it approached, but she shook her head. A few seconds later Ian saw her point her finger at the road—universal Cairene for “taxi.”
    One stopped. She got in the back.
    He made a business of lighting a cigarette and moving slowly away from the official cars to a newsstand, but he was fairly obvious with his height and his British uniform and there was no point in trying too hard to fade into the background. She’d contacted him with her bit of paper. She expected him to follow. Any subterfuge was for the benefit of those enemies she’d mentioned. Rommel might be long gone, but Cairo was riddled with German spies.
    As soon as her taxi moved into traffic he strolled forward and hailed another. This was complicated by the fact that every driver in Cairo negotiated his price before agreeing to take a fare—but Ian handed the Nubian a fistful of Egyptian lire and told him it was “war business.” The girl’s taxi was headed around the circle and into the broad arrow that was Sharia Mahomed Ali. Ian’s followed it.
    Sharia
was the Arabic word for
way
or
street
—and this one was a boulevard that ran for several miles straight from Old Cairo to the fashionable district of Ezbekiyeh Gardens, past various mosques and government buildings, the King’s palace and the Arabian museum. It ended in front of the Opera House, and, with a bit of jogging left, Ian found himself in Ibrahim Pasha Street.
    Up ahead, past the Tipperary Club, was Shepheard’s Hotel.
    It seemed the girl in the saffron scarf wanted a Suffering Bastard, too.
    Ian ignored the shaded terrace where Khawaga, or European Cairo, surveyed the life of Ibrahim Pasha Street from the comfort of wicker chairs. He plunged straight into the dim coolness of the Moorish Hall.
    The saffron scarf was not to be found among the plump club chairs drawn up to the octagonal tables; and so he nodded to a bellman idling by Reception, and made for the grand staircase flanked by bare-breasted ebony caryatids. One of Ian’s friends once described Shepheard’s—which had dominated expatriate life in Cairo for a hundred years—as Queen Victoria’s Egyptian Tomb; and the description was apt. The ballroom groaned under red damask and fake pillars of Karnak; the smoking room might have been a pyramid’s central vault, upholstered in club leather. Even the loo was ponderously inhibiting; men preferred to relieve themselves in the alleyway
behind
Shepheard’s rather than inside it. “Too British Museum,” Ian liked to explain. “One expects a docent to wipe one’s arse.”
    The Long Bar just off the main staircase was only dotted with drinkers this November afternoon. It was early yet for officers and government people. No girl in a saffron scarf, of course; just a smattering of civilians of uncertain origin. North Africa was awash these days