The Messiah Secret

There was a map of Alexandria and Cairo in the glove box, and another route-planning map that covered the whole of Egypt. While he sat in the driver’s seat, both doors wide open, waiting for the air con to haul the internal temperature down to a bearable level, Bronson looked at the latter. Compared to most whole-country charts, it was an unusual map, because almost all the roads, towns and cities were clustered in a fairly narrow T-shape, the top of which ran along the Mediterranean coast from the Libyan border east to Alexandria and then across to the border with Israel. The ‘leg’ of the T then followed the mighty Nile River all the way down to Sudan. To the west of the Nile there was just a vast empty expanse of desert, studded with the occasional settlement, and even the odd airfield. To the east of the Nile, between the river and the Red Sea, lay a ribbon of roads and settlements, but most of the built-up areas were in the north, where the Nile met the Mediterranean, in a rough ‘V’ that encompassed Alexandria, Port Said and Cairo itself.

He switched his attention to the Cairo map and fairly quickly found Al-Gebel al-Ahmar. ‘It’s here,’ he said, pointing to an area on the east side of the city, just east of the Northern Cemetery. ‘Not too far away. Can you navigate?’

‘Of course,’ Angela said briskly.

Bronson closed his door, buckled his seat belt, pulled out of the car hire agency parking lot and tried to turn into the street.

‘Tried’ was the operative word. The traffic was chaotic. Cars, coaches and vans were everywhere, their drivers grimly determined never to give way, never to allow a fellow driver the chance to get in front of them or pass. Bronson looked at the stream of vehicles for a couple of minutes, then decided the only way to beat them was to join them.

‘Just hold on,’ he muttered, as he waited for the smallest of gaps in the line of vehicles passing down the street. Then he pulled out, accelerating hard. Behind him he heard a sudden squealing of brakes and the inevitable bellows from a selection of car and van horns.

‘Jesus, Chris, was that necessary? Couldn’t you have waited?’ Angela looked pale.

‘If I’d waited,’ Bronson said, with a grin, ‘we’d still be sitting there at the side of the road, and would be for some time. I was just being pragmatic.’

‘Which means what, exactly, in this context?’ Angela asked. ‘Oh, shit,’ she muttered, closing her eyes as a coach shot out of a side road directly in front of them, forcing Bronson – and about a dozen other drivers – to hit the brakes hard.

‘It means that we’re in Egypt,’ Bronson said, ‘so I think the best option is to drive like an Egyptian. And that means all the normal rules about giving way and leaving a safe distance behind the car in front – all the stuff I was taught as a police driver, in fact – go right out of the window. Over here, if you leave a gap of more than about three feet in front of you, a driver will absolutely force his way into it.’

‘Aren’t there any rules here?’

Bronson nodded. ‘I checked,’ he said. ‘Basically, there’s just one – the car in front has right of way. So if the guy next to us gets his bumper one inch ahead of mine, and then swings across in front of me, he’s in the right. That’s why they never give way, and never leave a gap.’

Angela dragged her unwilling gaze from the melee in front of them and glanced across at her ex-husband as he changed lanes, braked hard, accelerated and changed lanes again before pulling the car to a halt behind a line of unmoving vehicles which were somewhat surprisingly waiting at a red light. Traffic lights only appeared in Egypt in about 1980, and most of the locals still tended to ignore them.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Angela said accusingly.

Bronson took his eyes off the road for an instant and grinned at her. ‘Absolutely. It’s like dodgems, but with full-sized vehicles; great fun. Now, stop complaining about my driving and tell me where you want me to go.’

About a hundred yards behind them, a Mercedes with tinted windows was following. In the driver’s seat, JJ Donovan flipped open a pack of Marlboros and extracted one, then pressed the dashboard lighter. Once he’d lit the cigarette, he cracked the window slightly to let the smoke escape, and concentrated on the traffic in front of him.

He’d watched Bronson and Angela Lewis step out of their hotel that morning, followed them to the car hire agency and then sat waiting in his own vehicle until they drove out. Then it had been a simple case of keeping tabs on them as they headed towards the centre of Cairo.