Men huddled in doorways to Evan’s annoyance, for they obscured the barely legible numbers on the sandstone walls. He was further annoyed by the filthy intersecting alleys that unaccountably caused the numbers to skip from one section of the street to the next. El-Baz. Number 77 Shari el Balah—the street of dates. Where was it?
There it was. A deeply recessed heavy door with thick iron bars across a closed slot that was built into the upper panel at eye level. However, a man in dishevelled robes squatting diagonally against the stone blocked the door on the right side of the tunnel-like entrance.
‘Esmahlee?’ said Kendrick, excusing himself and stepping forward.
‘Lay?’ replied the hunched figure, asking why.
‘I have an appointment,’ continued Evan in Arabic. I’m expected.’
‘Who sends you?’ said the man without moving.
‘That’s not your concern.’
‘I am not here to receive such an answer.’ The Arab raised his back, angling it against the door; the robes of his aba parted slightly, revealing the handle of a pistol tucked into an undersash. ‘Again, who sends you?”
Evan wondered whether the sultan’s police officer had forgotten to give him a name or a code or a password that would gain him entrance. He had so little time! He did not need this obstruction; he reached for an answer. ‘I visited a bakery in the Sabat Aynub,’ he said rapidly. ‘I spoke—’
‘A bakery?’ broke in the squatting man, his brows arched beneath his headdress. ‘There are at least three bakeries in the Sabat Aynub.’
‘Goddamn it, baklaval’ spat out Kendrick, his frustration mounting, his eyes on the handle of the gun. ‘Some asinine orange—’
‘Enough,’ said the guard, abruptly rising to his feet and pulling his robes together. ‘It was a simple reply to a simple question, sir. A baker sent you, you see?’
‘All right. Fine! May I go inside, please?’
‘First we must determine whom you visit. Whom do you visit, sir?’
‘For God’s sake, the man who lives here… works here.’
‘He is a man without a name?’
‘Are you entitled to know it?’ Evan’s intense whisper carried over the street noises beyond.
‘A fair question, sir,’ said the Arab, nodding pensively. ‘However, since I was aware of a baker in the Sabat Aynub—’
‘Christ on a raft!’ exploded Kendrick. ‘All right. His name is El-Baz! Now will you let me in? I’m in a hurry!’
‘It will be my pleasure to alert the resident, sir. He will let you in if it is his pleasure. Certainly you can understand the necessity for—’
It was as far as the ponderous guard got before snapping his head towards the pavement outside. The undercurrent of noises from the dark street had suddenly erupted. A man screamed; others roared, their strident voices echoing off the surrounding stone.
‘Elhahoonai!’
‘Udam!’
And then piercing the chorus of outrage was a woman’s voice. ‘Siboomi jihalee!’ she cried frantically, demanding to be left alone. Then came in perfect English, ‘You bastards!’
Evan and the guard rushed to the edge of the stone as two gunshots shattered the human cacophony, escalating it into frenzy, the ominous rings of ricocheting bullets receding in the cavernous distance. The Arab guard spun around, hurling himself to the hard stone floor of the entranceway. Kendrick crouched; he had to know! Three robed figures accompanied by a young man and woman dressed in slovenly Western clothes raced past, the male in torn khaki trousers clutching his bleeding arm. Evan stood up and cautiously peered around the edge of the stone corner. What he saw astonished him.
In the shadows of the confining street stood a bareheaded woman, a short-bladed knife in her left hand, her right gripping an automatic. Slowly, Kendrick stepped out on the uneven layers of stone. Their eyes met and locked. The woman raised her gun; Evan froze, trying desperately to decide what to do and when to do it, knowing that if he moved quickly she would fire. Instead, to his further astonishment, she began stepping backward into the deeper shadows, her weapon still levelled at him. Suddenly, with the approach of excited voices punctuated by the repeated penetrating sounds of a shrill whistle, the woman turned and raced away down the dark narrow street. In seconds, she had disappeared. She had followed him! To kill him? Why? Who was she?
‘Here!’ In a panicked whisper the guard was calling him. Evan whipped his head around; the Arab was gesturing wildly for him to come to the heavy, forbidding door in the recessed entranceway. ‘Quickly, sir! You have gained admittance. Hurry! You must not be observed here!’
The door swung open and Evan ran inside, instantly pulled to his left by the strong hand of a very small man who shouted to the guard in the entranceway. ‘Get away from here!’ he cried. ‘Quickly!’ he added. The diminutive Arab slammed the door shut, slapping in place two iron bolts as Kendrick squinted his eyes in the dim light. They were in some kind of foyer, a wide, run-down hallway with several closed doors set progressively down both sides of the corridor. Numerous small Persian rugs covered the rough wood of the floor—rugs, Kendrick mused, which would bring very decent prices at any Western auction—and on the walls were more rugs, larger rugs that Evan knew would bring small fortunes. The man called El-Baz put his profits into intricately woven treasures. Those who knew about such things would be instantly impressed that they were dealing with an important man. The others, which included most of the police and other regulating authorities, would undoubtedly think that this secretive man covered his floors and his walls with tourist-cloth so as not to repair flaws in his residence. The artist called El-Baz knew his marketing procedures.
‘I am El-Baz,’ said the small, slightly bent Arab in English, extending a veined, large hand. ‘You are whoever you say you are and I am delighted to meet you, preferably not with the name your revered parents gave you. Please come this way, the second door on the right, please. It is our first and most vital procedure. In truth, the rest has been accomplished.’
‘Accomplished? What’s been accomplished?’ asked Evan.
‘The essentials,’ answered El-Baz. ‘The papers are prepared according to the information delivered to me.’
‘What information?’
‘Who you may be, what you may be, where you might come from. That is all I needed.’
‘Who gave this information to you?’
‘I have no idea,’ said the aged Arab, touching Kendrick’s arm, insinuating him down the foyer. ‘An unknown person instructing me over the telephone, from where I know not. However, she used the proper words and I knew I was to obey.’
‘She?’
‘The gender was insignificant, ya Shaikh. The words were all important. Come, Inside.’ El-Baz opened the door to a small photographic studio; the equipment appeared out of date. Evan’s rapid appraisal was not lost on El-Baz. ‘The camera on the left duplicates the grainy quality of government identification papers,’ he explained, ‘which, of course, is as much due everywhere to government processing as it is to the eye of the camera. Here. Sit on the stool in front of the screen. It will be painless and swift.’
El-Baz worked quickly and as the film was Instant Polaroid, he had no difficulty selecting a print. Burning the others, the old man put on a pair of thin surgical gloves, held the single photo and gestured towards a wide-curtained area beyond the stretched grey fabric that served as a screen. Approaching it, he pulled back the heavy drapery revealing a blank, distressed wall; the appearance was deceiving. Placing his right foot next to a spot on the chipped floor moulding, his gloved right hand reaching for another specific location above, he simultaneously pressed both. A jagged crack in the wall slowly separated, the left side disappearing behind the curtain; it stopped, leaving a space roughly two feet wide. The small purveyor of false papers stepped inside, beckoning Kendrick to follow him.
What Evan saw now was as modern as any machine in his Washington office and of even higher quality. There were two large computers, each with its own printer, and four telephones in four different colours, all with communication modems, all situated on a long white table kept spotlessly clean in front of four typist’s chairs.
‘Here,’ said El-Baz, pointing to the computer on the left, where the dark screen was alive with bright green letters. ‘See how privileged you are, Shaikh. I was told to provide you with complete information and the sources thereof, but not, however, with any written documents other than the papers themselves. Sit. Study yourself.’
‘Study myself?’ asked Kendrick.
‘You are a Saudi from Riyadh named Amal Bahrudi. You are a construction engineer and there is some European blood in your veins—a grandfather, I think; it’s written on the screen.’
‘European…?’
‘It explains your somewhat irregular features should anyone comment.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Evan bent over looking closer at the computer screen. ‘This is a real person?’