“Where are they headed?” Wally asked.
“Southwest — across the desert.”
Wally ran a hand over his bald head. “They must have identified the temple’s coordinates.”
“Dammit!” Zahra slammed her right fist into her left palm. She took a deep breath and calmed. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
Wally scratched his chin. “Maybe… maybe not. Come. I have something else to show you —”
The door to the offices opened again. George and Cork stepped through, accompanied by another of Wally’s men. Their eyes scanned the warehouse, eventually landing on Zahra and the operation’s owner.
“Waleed,” George said, stepping over to him. “It’s been too long.”
Wally accepted George’s outstretched hand.
George looked his daughter up and down and frowned but didn’t ask what had happened.
But Cork did.
“Oi, Zahra, you look like
“The thingy fell down, and I was in it.”
Cork frowned, and Wally gazed up at the tall woman.
Zahra turned and performed a brief introduction. “Waleed Badawi, this is Cork. She’s… a friend.”
The two shook hands, and the cocky Brit elaborated. “I’m her
“I bet,” Wally said, eyes darting back to Zahra. He cleared his throat. “I was about to show Zahra another part of my operation, if you’d care to join us?”
Everyone fell in line behind Wally. One by one, four men added themselves to their group, including the younger guy from earlier. They kept their distance, though. It was plain to see that Wally was being careful. At least a few of the workers inside were more than
Cork would be, as well. There was no mistaking that she’d be armed too.
The group headed across the main floor of the warehouse, weaving through rows of conveyor belts and sorting machines. Two additional men joined the rear of the party, making Zahra’s anxiety peak. She was about to stop and voice her worries but didn’t get the chance.
“We are here,” Wally announced, turning around in front of the wall of containers. These were heavily worn, even rustled in some spots. Zahra figured that their condition had put them out of commission.
The younger man stepped up and unlocked a stout padlock from the centermost container. He and Wally pulled open the heavy doors to reveal something odd.
More doors.
These looked new and contained a pair of biometric devices. Both Wally and the other guy placed a palm on a pad, and a blue light activated and scanned their hands. A soft clunk followed their efforts. Unlike the older doors, these slid apart into what Zahra realized were false walls. She leaned around the open container doors and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The modern doors were perfectly hidden behind what the average person would think were unusable shipping containers.
Stairs.
The younger man spoke up. “Please, follow me.” Wally winked and tipped his head toward the entrance.
Zahra and George stepped up next to Wally. “So,” Zahra asked, “who’s he?”
“That is Ali,” he smiled, “my son.”
“Your son?” her father asked. “You have a son?” Apparently, Wally had kept
“Yes, I do, and what lays beyond is his domain.”
Cork leaned in close to Zahra as the group moved toward the stairs. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Yeah,” Zahra said, “me either.”
The trek along El Wahat Road was long and consisted of nothing except shades of brown. There was nothing to see in any direction other than sand and more sand. The sky held a haze that mutated it from a beautiful blue tapestry to a yellowish murk. But even in the harshest environments, the land would occasionally offer a blemish within the, otherwise, dominating sandscape. Oases weren’t just a fictional paradise devised by a writer to torture his sun-stroked protagonist. One such sanctuary protruded from the Western Desert a hundred miles west of the Nile River.
Baahir sat behind the driver, and Khaliq’s personal bodyguard, Ajmal, eyes glued to the landscape. Baahir’s ears, however, were intently listening to the conversations emanating from the front seats. Khaliq was shouting orders and directions to his personal driver and those navigating the two large SUVs behind them. In Khaliq’s hand were photocopies of the last few pages of the Book of the Dead. If Baahir had to wager a guess, he’d say that Khaliq had probably read them a hundred times by now.
