The Tomb of Eternity

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Hawke and Snowcat emerged from the hotel on the eastern side and found themselves opposite a busy marina on the west bank of the Nile. The sun shone powerfully on the river’s broad surface, and the smell of exhaust fumes hung heavy in the air. The street was quiet with only a few taxis and the occasional delivery truck, but this was the up-market part of the city where the authorities liked to sweep any trouble out of sight.

“This way!” the Russian agent said, pulling on Hawke’s arm.

“Oh please, no more rivers!” Hawke said, thinking about Venice.

She looked at him, confused. “No! You think I’m crazy? No, this way!”

Hawke followed her south along the road running parallel to the Nile for a few hundred yards until they reached a building of peach and white plaster rising from behind a high wall.

“What the hell is this place?” he asked.

“Russian Embassy — here we will be safe.”

They moved along the road until they were at the entrance, and Snowcat rang the buzzer on the enormous white gates. Back at the Sheraton, the armed men were now spilling out onto the street and heading in their direction. Hawke watched as Snowcat stared at the intercom speaker, desperate, her heart beating hard in her chest with the breathlessness of the chase.

A man answered through the intercom. He spoke Russian, and his voice was muffled and hard to hear.

Snowcat spoke with him for a few moments, but the gates stayed shut.

Hawke watched the men advancing on them. “I hate to tell you this, Agent Snowcat, but our friends are getting rather too close for comfort.” As he spoke they had to duck behind the wall at the side of the gate for cover as the men fired in their direction.

“Shut up! I’m trying to speak.”

“All right, take it easy. Russians…”

More conversation followed in rapid Russian, totally incomprehensible to Hawke, who was now starting to have serious doubts about this particular exit strategy.

“What’s the deal?” he said urgently.

Snowcat turned to him, confused. “They won’t let me in.”

“What?”

“They say they don’t know who I am — I gave them my full name and codename and some other information we use to identify ourselves, but they claim not to know me and they say I must go away or they will call the police.”

Closer now, the men’s shooting had begun to cause a general panic on the street outside the embassy. “I think that ship’s already sailed, to be honest,” Hawke said, grimacing as another bullet traced over his head and thudded into the plaster of the gatehouse.

“I don’t know what to do,” Snowcat said, shaking her head in bewilderment.

“Then it’s over to me,” Hawke said, grabbing her hand. “Come on!”

They sprinted away from the men, turning right on Ibn Al Akhsheed Road and running up the street toward a high building at the end. “Looks like this should give us some time to think,” Hawke said as he pulled Snowcat into the Pyramisa Casino.

They entered a plush, expansive casino with lights built inside the ceiling that glittered like diamonds over the busy room beneath them. Everywhere they looked they saw people throwing money away on roulette wheels and backgammon boards.

“What now?” Snowcat said.

“We could play poker, but I’ve always preferred blackjack,” Hawke said, as he scanned the room for another exit.

Snowcat rolled her eyes and stared at the Englishman. “Now is the time for jokes, really?”

“I guess not,” he said, noticing the look on her face. “This way!”

They ran down the carpeted steps into the busy room and weaved through the hundreds of people crowding around baccarat tables and pachinko machines, all hoping to win a million, or at the very least, watch someone else win a million.

Hawke knew they’d all be focussing on something other than their odds in a few seconds’ time, but that was the plan. If anything could give them good cover and slow down the armed men, it was hundreds of terrified gamblers desperately clutching their chips and running six ways from Sunday.

Then the armed men burst into the casino and fired a few rounds from their guns into the ceiling, bringing the chaos Hawke had wished for.

Shouts and screams rose from the casino floor as the horror of what was happening dawned on the guests, but Hawke and Snowcat had the advantage. He surveyed the area and realized they were still a hundred yards from the nearest steps to the upper level where the exits were. Then he saw another option.

“Can you run?” he asked.

“Of course!”

“No, I mean really run.”

“I think so,” she replied, narrowing her eyes in confusion.

“Good, then let’s go!”

He sprinted forward and drawing on his parkour training he vaulted over the brass bars that separated the casino floor from the raised area where people ate and drank. Snowcat watched with respect as the Englishman’s powerful body sailed over the bars and he landed with the agility of a cat on the upper level. He stopped and automatically crouched down for cover before turning back to face her.

“You can do that?”

“Of course…” she said, and sprinted forward, copying the manoeuvre Hawke had just completed and nearly pulling it off, but her right foot caught the top bar and pulled her upper body down hard into the carpet of the upper level.

“Nearly, I can do it…”

“You’re doing fine.”

Behind them the men had located them from the far side of the room and were now spreading out and running down both sides of the casino on the upper level, firing occasional shots in short, professional bursts which were designed to keep Hawke and Snowcat pinned down.

“We need that exit!” he said, and they dashed toward a fire escape with all their might.

Hawke kicked the panic bar so hard he nearly tore it off, and they were once again shielding their eyes from the savagely bright Cairo sun.

“These guys just don’t give up!”

“They will never give up,” Snowcat said, an eerie knowing look on her young face. “Trust me, they will not stop until you are dead, and now me too.”

“Too bad they picked a fight with me then,” Hawke said. “Because I never give up either.”

Behind them they heard the men shouting as they cleared the casino and made their way toward the rear fire escape.

“They’re talking in English!” Hawke said.

“Of course they are, Joe! You haven’t worked any of this out yet?”

“Worked what out? Those bastards are British and they’re trying to kill me! I thought they were Russians — no offense.”

“Hey,” Snowcat said, and shrugged her shoulders. “None taken, but we have to get out of here, right now.”

“You read my mind.”

As the men crashed through the fire escape and Hawke and Snowcat sprinted away into the Cairo sprawl, his mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts. Clearly the men were professionals — either Special Forces or former Special Forces guys — and now he knew they were British… but why were British soldiers trying to kill him?

His heart pounded as he raced through the back streets of Cairo with no answers, and the only person who could give them to him was a Russian woman he barely knew, running beside him into nowhere.