The Burning Man

8

With Coptic Cairo at his back, Hunter looked over what appeared to be a vast rubbish dump, but which he knew was one of the most important Islamic archaeological sites in the world: Fustat, the first Islamic city in Cairo, razed to the ground when the Fatimids took the area. Piles of rubble, isolated fires, trenches and apparently random holes were interspersed with occasional heaps of plastic and cans left by locals with less of a sense of history.

He’d wandered the length of Old Cairo, but there was no sign of Laura anywhere. He’d sensed she was in trouble while he was enjoying a late-afternoon coffee in the Cafe of Mirrors. He hadn’t discussed such an amorphous feeling with the others, and he certainly wouldn’t raise it with his former Government comrades, who would have mocked such a feeling as a by-product of a woolly mind. But he had acted on such blind instincts for much of his life, and he was convinced it was what made him good at the terrible things he did. With his current knowledge, he wondered if it had always been the Pendragon Spirit at play in him, in the same way it had clearly influenced Shavi’s spirituality, or Church’s leadership abilities.

Another fire erupted in the dark depths of Fustat. Kids, he thought, gathering for sex or drugs away from the eyes of their elders.

As he headed in the direction of the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, he was almost knocked over by a man in his twenties fleeing in blind panic.

Hunter grabbed him by the collar. ‘What’s wrong?’

The man had an intellectual look about him, stylish glasses slightly askew beneath long, curly black hair. He glanced over his shoulder fearfully. ‘The fires-’

‘Calm down. Who are you and what are you doing here?’

‘Fayed Osman. I’m an archaeologist. Let me go!’ He struggled, but couldn’t break Hunter’s grip.

‘I don’t want to give you a slap.’

‘It’s the fires, don’t you see?’ Fayed gestured to the small blazes springing up across Fustat. They were burning across the city, too. ‘They’re smokeless!’

A fire burst into life not far from the road, on a piece of rough ground amidst a network of trenches. No one could have ignited it. The intense yellow flames gave way to scarlet edged with green, and within them a dark shape appeared and began to grow, like an insect metamorphosing through all the stages of maturity in seconds.

What emerged was a blur as Hunter’s perception skated all over it without finding any traction, yet he got a sense of insectile limbs attached to an animal’s body and head, perhaps a wolf.

Fayed began to rave. Hunter’s own mind convulsed as the fire-being stirred madness in him. Still holding on to Fayed, Hunter ran back to the mazy streets of Old Cairo and only came to rest when he was sure the thing was no longer following. The unnatural insanity passed.

Hunter hauled Fayed into a dark alley filled with boxes of discarded vegetables and a scavenging dog. ‘You know what that thing was?’

Fayed shoved Hunter’s hand aside and gave a deep sigh as his panic passed, too. ‘I work for the Council of Antiquities. I was despatched to investigate reports of a disturbance in Fustat. The illicit trade in antiquities is extensive — looters descend when night falls. But it was the fires and the djinn-’

‘They’re like devils, right?’

‘Before Islamic times it was believed they were nature spirits capable of driving people mad. They roamed all the lonely, wild desert areas, invisible most of the time, but they could also take on any shape, human or animal. Islamic belief said they were intermediaries between humans and the higher powers. They are said to live with other supernatural forces in the Kaf, a range of mountains that circle the earth. A metaphor for the Invisible World. Iblis, or Satan, is their chief.’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘They are born of smokeless fire.’

‘All right, you’re coming with me.’

‘I have to report back-’

‘Not a request.’

Fayed read Hunter’s face and complied. Hunter led the way back through winding streets, the main thoroughfares clogged with honking traffic. Occasionally, they came across people staring anxiously at the rooftops, or street cafes that had been abandoned.

In the centre of one such street, a policeman tore bloody streaks across his face with his nails as he raved against his invisible tormentors. Further along, the streetlights cast quickly moving shadows on a wall from no obvious source.

‘Looks to me like they’ve come out of hiding to take back what’s theirs,’ Hunter said.