Free The Templar Cross by Paul Christopher

showed a mouthful of gold teeth.
    “Four hundred pounds,” said the concierge.
    Holliday gave Rafi a quick inquiring look.
    “About a hundred U.S. dollars, perhaps a little less,” said the Israeli.
    “Deal,” said Holliday.
    Everybody shook hands. The concierge kept his hand extended.
    “He wants his money in advance,” said Rafi.
    “His money?”
    “He’s Faraj’s agent. He’ll take his cut and pay him at the end of the day if everything goes all right.”
    “American dollars?” Holliday asked the concierge.
    “Certainly. Excellent.” The phrase seemed to run in the family. Holliday counted out a handful of bills and passed them over. The concierge gave Faraj his orders and the young man leapt forward to open the rear door of the wretched little car.
    “Run into the automobile certainly,” said Faraj, beaming. Holliday and Rafi clambered into the taxi. They tore away from the Corniche with its canyons of brand-new high-rise buildings by the beach and into the twisting, dusty, packed-earth streets of the Old City. After a tooth- jarring ten-minute ride Faraj dropped them off at their destination and parked. Faraj began to croon to himself. Holliday and Rafi went to a makeshift street-side coffee shop and sheesha bar and sat down at a tiny plastic table.
    The coffee shop had a faded old sign translated into both English and Cyrillic Russian that showed a hand-painted, steaming cup of Turkish coffee and a sheesha hookah pipe. Directly across the narrow traffic-clogged street was the open front of the Abu Ibrahim Gift Shop. Rafi ordered two cups of thick sweet coffee in passable Arabic and waved off a waiter bearing an ornate brass and glass pipe. Around them at half a dozen other tables Egyptian men were smoking, drinking coffee and chatting amiably. In any other circumstances Holliday would have been enjoying himself.
    A donkey cart rolled by loaded down with a huge pile of old bald automobile tires. The crumbling sidewalks were busy with pedestrian traffic moving back and forth. Beneath everything was a never-ending primal roar of four million people going about their business. The air was thick with dust, smelling of hot brick and a heady mixture of spices and a tang of salt, reminding Holliday of how close to the ocean they were. The odor was certainly better than the urinal stink of Cairo.
    “Not very promising, is it?” Rafi said, looking across at the gift shop.
    “No,” agreed Holliday.
    The shop was a dizzying glut of tourist junk arrayed on scores of narrow shelves. The souvenirs were brightly painted, garish “reproductions” of Egyptian artifacts that ranged between quarter-sized plaster imitations of the famous King Tut mask and plastic mummy key chains. There was even a shelf full of Brendan Fraser action figures. A short dark man in a short-sleeved white shirt, black trousers and sandals sat on a high stool, smoking a cigarette and looking lazily out at the street. He was presumably the owner, Abu Ibrahim. Chained to the uprights of the rolled-up metal shutter that closed off the shop at night was an old motor scooter.
    “When I was at Oxford getting my postgraduate degree I saw an old black-and-white Alec Guinness comedy called The Lavender Hill Mob . A bunch of idiot crooks steal a bullion shipment, melt it down into miniature Eiffel Towers and smuggle them out of England as cheap souvenirs. Maybe that’s what our friend over there is doing.”
    “I doubt it,” said Holliday. “All that stuff over there is made in China, I’ll bet. Besides, the gold we saw in Valador’s place was intact, not melted down.”
    “Then what’s the scam?” Rafi asked. “Valador didn’t have that number written down for nothing.”
    Holliday thought for a long moment. Across the dusty street the man in the white shirt pinched out his cigarette and dropped the butt into his pocket. Their coffee arrived. Holliday added a couple of sugar cubes from the bowl in the middle of the table, then took a