The Lucifer Gospel

2

Finn was swept out of the aircraft along with five hundred other passengers, most of them Egyptians coming home on vacation to see their families. She moved through the laughing, chattering crowd, eventually found her luggage, and then spent almost an hour in a lineup at a customs desk to clear her bags. The terminal concourse was almost unbearably packed with meeters and greeters, but she eventually made her way to the doors of the glass-fronted building relatively unscathed and unmolested, except for a couple of quick anonymous clutches as she was getting out of the jetway and a clumsy attempt to unzip the bag on her hip and steal her wallet while she was emerging from customs. By the time she’d made her way through the crowds at customs and the even bigger throngs at immigration and finally reached the terminal exit, she’d paid out close to a hundred dollars American in “gratuities” and “fees” to half a dozen airport employees and officials.

When she stepped out of the building the heat hit her like a fist. So did the smell. On the ground the pollution was almost invisible, just a metallic haze in the distance, but the stink was just like the guy Hilts had said. It smelled like a giant litter box. Finn almost laughed out loud. All those years in school and it had come to this.

She looked around. There were people everywhere. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them, and they all seemed to know exactly where they were going. About half the men were wearing Western dress, while the other half wore a bewildering variety of the long flowing robes called jelabia. Some were turbaned, some wore small white embroidered skullcaps she knew were called tagiyahs, and others wore the Lawrence of Arabia-style kafiya with their braided silk-rope circlets. The women, dressed in skirts or in the more traditional robes, all had their heads covered, some only with scarves, while others were fully veiled. Her own copper-colored hair, tied back in a ponytail and barely covered by her battered old Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap, was drawing a lot of attention from the men, and none of it good.

Cars, trucks, minibuses, scooters, taxis, and tour busses crowded the curb. Horns blared, people yelled and gestured; there was even a horse-drawn cart with huge rubber wheels piled high with battered hubcaps. Finn found herself grinning broadly. It was hot as hell and blindingly sunny. The sounds were painfully loud and the traffic added its own sour smell to the air. It was a madhouse.

And it was wonderful.

With her carry-on in one hand and dragging a suitcase behind her, Finn threaded her way through the bustling crowd looking for the driver that had been promised. She’d been expecting an appropriately adventurous Discovery Channel Toyota Land Cruiser, or better yet, a Land Rover. What she got was a distressingly rusted Fiat ambulance that at some stage in its long career had been converted into a minibus. Once upon a time the Fiat had been red, but it had long since faded to pink. Finn could still see the almost invisible white cross on the door and the word ’emergency” along the side. Standing beside it was a young man in blue jeans, a skintight Shoenfelt T-shirt, and shiny Elvis Presley hair. He looked about sixteen, but she knew he had to be older than that. He was smoking a cigarette and clearly trying to look like Al Pacino in Scarface. He was carrying a cardboard sign that read ADAMSON EXPEDITION. Her smile widened even farther; it was amazing what that word “expedition” could do for your energy level after a long flight in a crowded airplane.

She humped her luggage across the broad sidewalk and crossed the street to the flat-nosed vehicle. “I’m Finn Ryan.”

The young man gave a worldly sigh, breathing twin lines of smoke from his nostrils. He looked ridiculous. “Which one are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. Field Crew? Lab Crew? Volunteer? Specialist?” His English was perfect and nearly without accent.

“I’m the staff illustrator.”

He nodded, looking her up and down. If he hadn’t been so young she might have called it a leer. “Specialist.”

“Who exactly are you?”

He made a sour face. “Achmed, the driver. Achmed, the translator. Achmed, the labor supervisor.”

“I gather your name is Achmed.”

“You couldn’t pronounce my real name. Americans think all Egyptians are named Achmed, or Abdullah, or Mohammed, so I’m Achmed. Achmed the Egyptian.” He barked out a bitter little laugh.

Finn smiled. “What do Egyptians think all Americans are called?”

“In your case, Ah’mar katha ath nan,” Achmed replied, arching an eyebrow.

“Excuse me?”

“It means red-haired… sort of,” said a voice behind her. It was Hilts, the dark-haired photographer from the plane. He was now wearing a battered pair of amber-tinted aviator-style Serengeti Drivers, a very old dark blue peaked cap with gold pilot wings embroidered on the band, and a cracked and ancient leather flying jacket that was far too heavy for the terrible heat. He smoked a fuming, slightly deformed cigarillo. His only luggage was a large gray canvas duffel bag with the name HILTS stenciled on the side.

“I’m Hilts,” he said, leaning close to Achmed, then whispering, “Balaak bennana derri lawTul’a!”

Achmed’s jaw dropped. “Aawwaah! You speak Dardja?”

Hilts rattled off another brief speech in the melodic, high-speed dialect, and the blood ran out of the young Egyptian’s face. He muttered something to Finn, his eyes refusing to meet hers.

Hilts translated. “He apologizes for what he said and for offending you and he also begs your forgiveness.”

“What did he say?”

“You don’t want to know.” He turned back to Achmed. “Why don’t you put our bags on the bus?”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Hilts,” Achmed said with a nod. He began loading the luggage.

“You’re part of the expedition?” Finn asked, surprised.

“I told you, I’m a photographer.”

“You look more like a flyer wearing that getup,” she said, nodding at the cap and jacket.

“That too.” He smiled. “I’m-”

“Don’t tell me,” Finn said and laughed, “you’re an aerial photographer.”

“You’re quick for a girl.”

They climbed into the minibus. Achmed got behind the wheel and they headed into the city. The drive into Cairo was a quick education in the art of automotive mayhem. There were thirteen million people living in Egypt’s capital city, and by the looks of things all of them were in their cars and trying to get somewhere. Most of the vehicles were old and Japanese, Russian, or French, and the vast majority were missing at least one body part. All of them were blowing their horns. Red lights were ignored. There were no lanes of any kind and traffic cops were everywhere, having absolutely no effect on anything.

“Think like an autumn leaf floating on a fast-flowing river,” Hilts cautioned philosophically as Achmed bullied his way into the city. “You’ll eventually get there, but not necessarily by the route you intended or the speed you thought you’d be going.”

The Nile Hilton was a late-50s monolithic slab and the first modern hotel built in Cairo. It sat like a giant pack of cigarettes blocking the view of the Nile on Midan Tahir, the overpopulated dead center of the city’s financial district and the place where, one way or the other, all that traffic was headed. Achmed dropped them off at the Corniche El Nil entrance, dumped their bags on the sidewalk, and promised to be back in forty-eight hours to take them and the rest of the expedition to the civil airport in the Imbaba district on the other side of the river. The young man gave them a brief nod, slammed his door, and drove back into the seething traffic in a blast of exhaust, horn blaring.

“Welcome to Cairo,” said Hilts. He helped Finn with her luggage and they checked in at the standard blonde oak and marble front desk. When they were done the pilot-photographer rode up with her in the elevator. “I’ll meet you at Da Mario’s in an hour,” he said, getting out on his floor. “I need a lasagna fix.”

“Da Mario’s?”

“The best Italian food in Cairo. It’s either that or Latex.”

“Latex?”

“It’s the hotel bar; very classy, believe it or not. They’ve got flavored vodka hookahs.”

“I’ll go for the lasagna.”

“Good choice. Da Mario’s, an hour.” The door slid closed. Finn rode up another two floors, found her room, and dropped her bags at the end of the bed. She went to the balcony and stepped out. The sun was setting now and the western horizon was a streaked bloody fog of dying light. It was the most sinister, most dangerous, most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, like looking at the memory of a battle fought long ago, or a vision of one yet to come. She thought about where she would be going the day after tomorrow-out there, six thousand years of history waiting just around the corner. She stayed for a moment, then turned away, her heart beating hard with excitement. She went back into her room and began to unpack.