Syndrome E

24

Sharko was climbing painfully out of the tub as one of Cairo’s three thousand muezzins called the faithful to dawn prayer. The powerful, mysterious voice seemed to descend from the heavens like an oracle. The cop remembered the loudspeakers that were omnipresent in the streets. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and already the entire city vibrated beneath the teachings of the Koran.

The inspector stretched backward, his spine stiff. A probable compression of vertebras L1 and L2, the doctor had once told him. He was getting older, for God’s sake, and sleeping for several hours folded in two in a bathtub was not exactly age appropriate. As for the mosquito bites, they irritated his skin to the point where he wanted to peel it off with a knife. He slathered his entire body with a thick coating of lotion, heaving a sigh of relief.

He swallowed his Zyprexa tablet, which was spectacularly ineffective in such a hot and stressful climate, then packed his bags. The flight to Paris was scheduled for about 5:00 p.m. Not yet really here, already gone. And in a hell of a rush to get back to the “cool” of Paris, with its mere eighty-something degrees.

After buying some bean fritters on the street corner, Sharko hailed the first cab he saw and asked to be taken to the Saladin Citadel.

The Nasr dropped him off fifteen minutes later in front of the impressive fortification, perched above the city. The first rays of sunlight, off to the horizon, enflamed the plains around Heliopolis, and in the background stretched the slopes of the Mokattam Mountains, the mythic City of the Dead spread out at their feet. While crunching on his fritter, Sharko took in an eyeful. The tombs devoted to the three dynasties of caliphs and sultans who’d governed Egypt for over a thousand years were haloed in the colors of dawn. Reds, yellows, and blues paid homage to the vast necropolis, now inhabited by the wretched poor. Sitting on the base of one of the minarets as if he ruled the world, Sharko realized just how fractured Egypt was becoming with each passing year: on the one hand, the majestic, untouchable past, with its pharaohs, mosques, and madrassas; and on the other, the much less resplendent future, devoured by chaos and the poverty of a population growing out of bounds.

A car suddenly pulled up at the edge of the small road, about twenty yards away. Sharko walked toward it as Atef got out and opened the trunk of his well-manufactured 4×4. The two men shook hands.

“Nobody followed you?” asked the Arab.

“What do you think?”

Atef was wearing a khaki-colored outfit, like a safari suit. Loose-fitting shirt, trousers with wide side pockets, hiking boots. Sharko, for his part, had gone with the tourist option: Bermuda shorts, docksiders, and sand-colored shirt.

“I’ve got the info,” said Atef. “We’re going to where the garbage collectors live. There’s a hospital there, the Salaam Center.”

“A hospital?”

“If you’re looking for a common thread among the victims, that’s it. The girls had all gone into city hospitals, almost at the same time. That was in 1993, the year before they died. And one of them, Boussaina Abderrahmane, went to the Salaam Center.”

“How come?”

“My uncle isn’t sure. Mahmoud hadn’t told him about it in too much detail. But we’ll soon find out.”

Sharko had sensed it: the killer had some connection with the world of medicine. The medical examiner’s saw, the removal of the eyes, the ketamine. And now the hospitals. The path was coming into focus.

The Arab picked up the handle of the tire jack, which he wiped with a cloth.

“Bad luck. I just got a flat in the left front tire. It’s supposed to never happen with these Japanese cars. Let me just fix this and we’ll get going.”

Sharko took a few steps back to gauge the extent of the damage.

His skull then seemed to shatter into pieces.

The blow had knocked him flat on the ground.

Dazed, he tried to stand up, but less than ten seconds later his hands were joined behind his back. The rasp of adhesive tape. Atef bound his wrists and stuffed a rag into his mouth, which he surrounded with several layers of tape. He snatched the policeman’s cell phone.

Shoved into the trunk, Sharko heard, before the wall of steel cut him off definitively from the light:

“You’re going to join my brother, you son of a dog.”

The car sped off.

In an instant, Sharko understood that he was about to die.