The Exodus Quest

I

Knox caught a whiff of himself as he came in from the balcony. Not a pleasant experience. He went into the bathroom, stripped off. His bandages were looking tired and grey, much how he felt. He washed around them with soap and a flannel, flinching every few moments, less from pain so much as from the dreadful news about Omar.

He went back out. He'd slept here a hundred times, after late nights putting the world to rights, and had never thought twice about borrowing a clean shirt in the morning. But Augustin's bedroom door was closed. And now that Knox thought about it, he recalled how Augustin had stopped on his way out of the apartment, turned back, vanished into his room for a minute, and how he'd closed his door carefully again after he'd emerged. So maybe he had someone in there. He often did. And while Augustin wasn't coy about such things, maybe the person in there was.

Knox hesitated, unwilling to intrude. But then he remembered how bad his shirt had smelled. No way was he putting that back on. He knocked gently. No answer. He knocked louder, called out. Still nothing. He opened the door a short way, peeked inside, pushed it wide open and stood there in surprise. Augustin's flat had always been a tip, particularly his bedroom. Somewhere to bring women back to, as he put it, not somewhere they'd want to stay. It wasn't like that any more. Morning sunlight poured through dazzling clean windows onto deep-pile maroon carpet and a gleaming new brass, king-sized bed. The walls had been stripped of their ragged wallpaper, beautifully refinished and painted royal blue. Lithographs of Egypt's great monuments on the walls. Cornices, skirting and ceiling glowing white. A fitted wardrobe of gleaming mahogany. A matching dressing table and chair. And now that he'd noticed the bedroom, he belatedly realized the main room had been redecorated and re-carpeted too, though less extravagantly. He'd simply been too disorientated to notice before.

He opened the wardrobe. Bloody hell! Jackets and crisply ironed shirts on wooden hangers. Shelves of neatly folded underclothes. He flipped through a stack of T-shirts, spied the corner of a purple folder. His heartbeat instantly began to accelerate. He knew instinctively that this was why Augustin had come in here, to hide this. He knew too that he shouldn't look, yet also that he was going to. He took the folder to the window, opened the flap. There were photographs inside. He pulled them out, leafed through them in gathering disbelief, a knot tugging tight in the pit of his stomach as he wondered what it meant. But it was obvious what it meant, and there was nothing to be done about it, not now at least, except to return the photographs to the folder, replace them as he'd found them.

He still needed a fresh shirt, so he peeled one from its hanger, hurried out, closed the door behind him. Then he sat at the kitchen table, brooding on what he'd just discovered, the uncomfortable realization that perhaps he couldn't entirely trust his closest friend any more.