The Lost Testament

15

The instructions he had been given were clear and unambiguous, and the timescale extremely restricted. Nevertheless, the contractor — the name he was using for this particular job was simply ‘Abdul’ — did not act immediately. That would be the mark of an amateur, and he had always prided himself on his consummate professionalism.

So before he did anything at all, he found a quiet corner on the road a little before noon, a position that gave him a clear view of the house. He placed his begging bowl, with a few coins inside it, on the ground in front of him and sat down cross-legged, his back against the wall behind him. With his ragged brown cloak wrapped around him to conceal his muscular body, the tattered hood covering his head and leaving his face invisible in the shadow, he looked just like any one of the thousands of beggars on Cairo’s streets. He made certain that his hands remained out of sight, because everyone in his trade knew that hands were the one thing you couldn’t disguise.

He remained in that position, almost motionless, for over three hours, watching the house with a virtually unblinking gaze. He had no photograph to guide him as yet, only a somewhat contradictory description supplied by his current employer, and this address.

When a middle-aged man who roughly matched the description he had received eventually arrived at the house, Abdul still did nothing. He now knew that the information he had been given was correct: the man returned to his home for lunch on most days, rather than visiting a restaurant somewhere in the city. And now he also knew his face.

For about another hour and a quarter Abdul remained sitting against the wall on the opposite side of the street and then, with a look into his begging bowl — a glance that revealed there were a few more coins in it than he had started with — he stood up, wrapped his cloak more tightly around him, picked up his stick and hobbled slowly away, heading in the direction from which the target had approached the house.

Abdul was an expert in surveillance tactics and techniques, and knew that even the most unobservant target might notice a beggar suddenly standing up and following him down the street. So after walking a short distance from the house, he turned into a side street and continued along it a little way before stepping into an alley. He checked all around him to ensure that nobody was in sight, and then with one swift movement dropped the beggar’s cloak to the floor, revealing a somewhat creased and faded white linen suit underneath, the kind of garb worn by many low-level Cairo businessmen. The well-worn suit was a couple of sizes too large for him, deliberately chosen to hide his powerful build. His face was tanned under a thatch of black hair, with regular and unremarkable features. It was a difficult face to memorize, and was one of his most important assets, more or less essential in his line of work.

He had discarded his limp along with the cloak, and, seconds later, strode briskly back to the street, where he stopped and looked in both directions, to check that the target hadn’t left the house in the brief period while he was switching identities.

Abdul walked slowly down the street, intently studying a paper he had taken out of his pocket and unfolded, a bit of supporting camouflage for the image he was trying to create. He should, he hoped, look like a businessman lost in thought as he studied a contract or a list of goods. Occasionally, he stopped for a few moments to apparently study the paper even more intently before walking on.

If his guess was right, the target should be emerging from his house fairly soon to return to his stall in the souk, and would overtake him on the street, which was just what Abdul wanted.

He paused again, as if in indecision, and looked back along the street, back towards the target’s house. Even as he did so, he saw the main door swing open and a figure emerge. He was too far away to confirm the man’s identity, but Abdul had little doubt about who it was. His timing had been almost perfect.