The Alexander Cipher Page 0,27
softer than usual, and a little wheezy. He’d lost a tooth and suffered severe bruising of his ribs, too, which evidently made breathing painful. “Well?” he asked.
“Would you please excuse us?” Nessim asked the doctor sitting beside his bed.
“With pleasure,” said the doctor, a shade too emphatically for his own good.
Nessim closed the door behind him. “We’ve got the girl,” he told Hassan. “She was going for a bus.”
“And Knox?”
“We almost had him. At Cairo Airport. He got away.”
“Almost?” said Hassan. “What good is almost?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Hassan closed his eyes. Evidently, yelling hurt too much. “You call yourself my head of security?” he said. “Look at me! And you let the man who did this wander around Egypt like some kind of tourist?”
“You’ll have my resignation as soon as—”
“I don’t want your resignation,” said Hassan. “I want Knox. I want him here. Do you understand? I want you to bring him to me. I want to see his face. I want him to know what he’s done and what’s going to happen to him because of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care how much you spend. I don’t care what favors you have to call in. Use the army. Use the police. Whatever is necessary. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well?” asked Hassan. “Why are you still here?”
“With respect, sir, there are different ways to catch him. One, as you rightly suggest, is by using our contacts in the police and the army.”
Hassan squinted. He was a shrewd man, for all his wrath. “But?”
“It was easy enough to secure their help last night. We simply told them that Knox had caused a serious incident on a boat though the details were still unclear. But tomorrow and the day after, if we still want their active help, they’ll want evidence of this serious incident.”
Hassan looked at Nessim in disbelief. “Are you saying what he did to me isn’t sufficient evidence?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“So far, very few people know anything more than rumors. I picked your medical team myself, and they know better than to talk. I’ve had my own people guarding your door; no one has been allowed in without my explicit permission. But if we involve the police, they’ll want to investigate for themselves. They’ll send officers to interview you and take photographs and talk to the other guests on the boat, including your Stuttgart friend and the girl. And I wonder if that would be helpful at this particular moment—or, indeed, whether it would be good for your reputation to have photographs of your injuries reaching the newspapers or the Internet alongside exaggerated reports of how they were incurred, which could easily happen, because we both know you have enemies as well as friends in the police. And you should ask yourself what it would do for your personal authority if people got to see what a mere dive instructor had done to you—and that he’d managed to escape, too, even if only for a little while.”
Hassan frowned. He knew the value of being feared. “What’s our alternative?”
“We drop the charges. We say it was all a misunderstanding, and we put the fear of god into the girl and then get her out of the country. You lie low until you’ve recovered. Meanwhile, we go after Knox ourselves.”
There was a long silence. “Very well,” said Hassan finally. “But you’re to take personal charge. And I expect results. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I understand entirely.”
Chapter Seven
IT WAS GAILLE’S FIRST VISIT TO ALEXANDRIA, and it didn’t make much of a first impression, with traffic barely moving along the Corniche, the city’s famous seafront. The masts of fishing boats and yachts in the Eastern Harbor jangled in a light breeze that brought with it a faint acidic tang. She rested her head back, shielding her eyes from the early morning sun as it flickered between tall, rectangular, sun-bleached hotels, apartment blocks, and offices, all pocked with satellite dishes. The place was coming to life like a gigantic yawn. Alexandria had always been the late riser of Egyptian cities. Shops were raising steel shutters, lowering canopies. Groups of portly men sipped coffees at pastry cafés and watched benignly as ragged boys and girls wended through the traffic selling packs of napkins and cigarettes. The alleys leading away from the harbor front were tight, dark, and faintly menacing. A tram already crammed with passengers paused to take on more. A policeman in a dazzling white uniform and flat cap held