Free Shooting the Sphinx by Avram Noble Ludwig Page A

him talking, and Ari could see that she knew he was upset.
    â€œNow I understand hummus.” Ari opened up slowly, cagily. “I mean, I really finally get it for the first time. And the mango juice is so good. It costs about a dime. I gave a glass to a kid, big mistake.”
    â€œWhat’s so bad about that?” She prompted him to talk, to keep him on the line.
    â€œThe tourist police beat him for … begging.”
    â€œBeat him?” The words hit her and she closed her kimono reflexively. “How old was he?”
    â€œTen, maybe eleven. They marched him out to the street where there’s always a truck with a big blue box on the back—no windows, just a giant box. They opened the door. There are about thirty kids sleeping inside right now.”
    â€œOh my god!”
    â€œAnd they threw him inside the box and locked it.”
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œMe? I didn’t know what to do. I was so stunned.” Ari realized what was upsetting him more than anything else. “I just stood there and … I didn’t do anything.”

 
    PART THREE
    The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.
    â€”Gamal Abdel Nasser

 
    Chapter 16
    Hamed pulled up in front of a British colonial building that might easily have stood in Knightsbridge or Bayswater. Ari was not expecting anything so grand, yet the number of the address matched the one he was looking for. So did the name on the brass plaque: P ETROLEUM A IR C HARTERS .
    In the States, when Ari went to a helicopter charter company, it was always in some shack on the far side of an airstrip. This place was an imposing limestone building about the size of the White House, girded by a tall wrought iron fence twelve feet high with black spikes on top. Outside the gate, a Horse Guards–style booth housed a well-pressed policeman bearing a submachine gun.
    Ari gathered his props—his little gold Sphinx, his plastic pyramids, and his toy helicopter—then walked up the steps into the echoing lobby.
    What imperial purpose this building had served for the British he could only guess. He crossed a white polished marble floor and passed through black Georgian columns. A twin circular staircase with red Persian carpet runners led upward.
    â€œMay I help you?” asked the receptionist. She wore a navy blue Chanel suit and had her hair in a twist.
    â€œI have an appointment with General Hanawy.”
    â€œFollow me, please.”
    The receptionist led Ari upstairs through a reception room. Green leather couches around a coffee table faced the secretary’s desk. Ari assumed he would sit and wait but she kept leading him on toward a mahogany door. She knocked and pushed the heavy door open.
    â€œMr. Basher is here,” she said.
    â€œSend him in,” said an imperious voice.
    Startled by not having to wait, Ari was shown into the largest office for any one person that he had ever seen. On one side was a sitting room area with Edwardian furniture where one could have tea. Models and pictures of different aircraft all painted with the same red-on-white pattern adorned the room.
    Ari walked past a conference table down toward the enormous desk at the far end, where two rows of leather-backed chairs faced inward in the Middle-Eastern martial style.
    The general arose. He wore a dark Savile Row suit. Ari had to stifle an urge to burst out laughing. The resemblance that Ari saw was uniquely Egyptian.
    General Hanawy was a taller, younger, more handsome, more statuesque version of President Hosni Mubarak, the movie star version. Ari found it quite surreal, but he had come to sell, so he forced his grin into a smile and kicked into action.
    â€œHello, sir, thank you so much for seeing me.”
    â€œIt is nothing. Don’t mention it,” said General