The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [123]
“So I see,” said David, glancing at Bassam’s apron. Bassam had grown stout on his own cooking, but he was still capable of throwing a rowdy patron out the door.
He joined them for coffee and asked what brought them to Cairo. “Has the black afrit come here?”
“You know about that, do you?” Ramses said.
“Yes, to be sure. It seems,” said Bassam, “that the Father of Curses did not cast it off after all.”
Emerson’s reputation was obviously in jeopardy. Suppressing a smile, Ramses said, “That was only a—er—preliminary attempt. Sometimes, with a spirit so powerful, even the Father of Curses has to try more than once.”
“Hmmm.” Bassam scratched his beard. “That is so. He will perform another ceremony, then.”
Ramses let that statement stand. He didn’t bother to ask about the Pethericks; this was not the sort of place they would visit. The talk soon turned to politics. Bassam knew they were in sympathy with the cause of independence, so he spoke freely and passionately. His comments gave Ramses a new insight into the situation. If Bassam, a peaceable man and a successful merchant, felt so strongly about the subject, the mobs of Cairo could easily be incited to violence. There would be unrest in Egypt for years to come.
By the time they left the restaurant, the street outside was deserted except for a slow-moving donkey and its rider. Ramses stopped long enough to inform the fellow, in his most courtly Arabic, that beating a tired beast violated the laws of the Prophet and that he was about to discover whether beating a driver made him move faster.
“I did not see you, Brother of Demons,” the driver faltered. “I hear and obey.”
Beyond the lights from the restaurant the familiar street, hardly wider than a path, was dark as pitch. David fell back a step or two.
The attack did not come from behind. Ramses was the first to hear the sound—not the regular pad of bare feet, but a faint, surreptitious rustle as of cloth rubbing against a harder surface. He broke into a run. The shot whistled past his side and David cried out. Cursing, Ramses whirled round, ran full tilt into David, and caught hold of his sagging body.
“Where are you hit?”
“Not hit. My damned leg gave way when I started to run. Don’t worry about me, go after him. Be careful!”
Ramses followed his advice, staying close to the walls on his right. The pursuit was almost certainly futile. He had caught a glimpse of a dark figure disappearing around a sharp curve in the street before he turned back. No hero, that one. Ramses’s rapid advance had caught him by surprise and spoiled his aim.
And if he hadn’t run away he might have picked both of them off with a second and third shot.
He could hear David hobbling behind him and quickened his pace. Rounding the curve, he saw ahead the lights of the Place de Bab el-Louk. The plaza was deserted except for two cabs hoping for passengers. No fleeing fugitive, no lurking shadows.
He waited for David to catch him up, keeping an eye on the arcade across the plaza for signs of movement.
“No sign of him,” he said. He did not inquire about David’s leg. The grisly wound David had received during the War would slow him for the rest of his life, but he didn’t acknowledge weakness or appreciate solicitude.
“He’s not very gung ho,” David said. “If he’d gone on shooting he stood a good chance of hitting one of us.”
“Well, I was coming at him at a good pace,” Ramses said fairly. “If he had waited to fire again, and missed again, I might have caught him.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“I’ll give you three guesses what I saw.”
“A shadowy figure robed in black,” David recited in a singsong voice. “That disguise is rather wasted on us.”
“But it’s totally concealing and easily obtained. Almost half the women in this country still wear the tob or the habara.”
One of the cabdrivers looked hopefully in their direction. Ramses waved him to them and looked the other way while David climbed in. The carriage was