“Is that all I would need to tell him?” Henry asked.

“I’ll give you a picture from my tablet. You can attach that and say it relates to your studies. That should do the trick easily.”

He pondered the idea for a few moments, then nodded approvingly. “I don’t think we can reasonably wait even several days, so if it could work and he gets us in no questions asked, it’s got to be worth trying. Otherwise, I imagine they’ll just force their way in. But these guys know the importance of being discrete, so they’ll appreciate that. I’ll check it with Mallus in the morning, and we’ll get the picture on my laptop and send the email.”

She almost suggested they send it straight away, but stopped herself in time. Best not to seem too eager in case it gives me away, she thought. Instead, she finished her wine, and offered her glass to Henry for another refill.

Filling it up, he caught the twinkle in her eye and smiled, wrongly assuming it was meant for him. “What’s his name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What was his name? This friend of yours in Cairo?”

“Oh! Sorry, I was miles away. His name is Farid Limam.”

He repeated the name to himself, as if mentally writing it down.

“Yes, but he doesn’t use the Farid much, only on official documents and such. His email address uses his nickname.”

“Which is?”

She sauntered to the bedroom, leaving the door open behind her as she came back with a pencil and small notebook. “Just like a hotel,” she joked as she waved the pencil at him, showing the NASA symbol along its edge. After jotting down the address, she passed it to him and picked up her glass once more, trying to look as relaxed as possible.

“How strange,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Her heart skipped a beat. Had the unofficial-looking email address caused an alarm bell to ring in Henry’s mind? “What’s that?” she managed to say with a smile before taking a mouthful of wine.

“How on earth does Farid give him the nickname Ben?” he said with a grin.

She breathed out in relief and swallowed the warm red wine, before returning what she hoped was an amused shrug. Internally, her mind raced as she thought of the complex chain of events that would still have to occur for her escape to be successful: getting the picture to Henry without it being scanned for encrypted messages, Henry sending the email to Ben, Ben reading the email and having the presence of mind to send it to George, George having the common sense to work out what the hell it all meant, and then being there in Amarna at the drop of a hat, armed with hopefully more than just a laptop and a pencil, to rescue her from Henry, Seth Mallus, and however many henchmen they decided to bring with them to protect their investment.

Henry looked across the table at her, the grin still painted on his face. His eyes rested for a fraction of a second too long over her shoulder at the door of her bedroom, which she had forgotten to close on her way back with the pencil and notebook.

Bugger, she thought, coming back to the here-and-now with a thud. Before all of those things could happen, before the picture, the email, the unlikely common sense of her husband and the improbable rescue in Egypt, before all of that came one little thing: making a man wait for the second date.

Suddenly, in comparison, the rescue in Egypt seemed like a walk in the park.

Chapter 62

George had never seen such a surreal change in behaviour. Once the police had finished fully searching the car, and both himself and Ben, they lowered their guns and all broke out in smiles. Ben was shaking the hand of a policewoman, the only female in uniform he could see in front of the airport, who pointed to a row of parked cars behind a now-raised barrier.

Looking to his right, he saw the steady line of airport traffic diverted from the drop-off point, people inside their cars looking over at them and the tantalizingly-close entrance to the terminal. It was a miracle they were still alive, and had not been shot on sight.

While Ben parked the car, George was escorted to the entrance. They met at the revolving doors, and Ben gave him a wink before saying goodbye to the woman.

“We go way back,” he explained with a laugh. “We did our military service together!” They entered the door and followed it round until they were spat out into the air-conditioned foyer of the airport.

George shook his head. “It didn’t look like you went way back before they’d checked us out a bit, though. Doesn’t she trust you?”

“I haven’t seen her for years, and today is a special day,” Ben explained. “We got on well for the short time I was in the army, we keep in touch every now and then.”

“Did she just do us a massive favour, by letting us in?”

“Yes and no.” Ben looked up at the departures board. “I said we had to get you home, she said the only way was to swim, I said there must be a plane, she said go and check it out for yourself.”

George looked at him, then up at the departures. Everything was cancelled, with the exception of an Iberia flight to Madrid, which was boarding: it was the last flight out of Cairo.

“I can get that plane,” he said pointing at the departures list. “Then it’s easy to get to America!” He started running towards the ticket office, followed closely by Ben.

“I think I’ve changed my mind, George,” he shouted as his friend shot off. “I mean, are you sure you want to get on a plane today?”

Groups of tourists with luggage strewn around them stared as they ran past.

“Sure, why not?” George shouted back.

“Well, because…” Ben hesitated. There were words you just didn’t say in airports. “Because of the things that are happening out there.”

“You said so yourself: I need to get to the US somehow, and that isn’t going to happen if I stay here.”

He reached the Iberia ticket desk. Slamming his passport on the desk, he took a few moments to catch his breath before asking for a ticket to Madrid.

Behind the desk, the two clerks looked at each other and shook their heads in unison.

“I’m sorry, sir. There are no seats left. I can sell you a ticket for Monday; we expect full service to resume by the morning but understandably we have a backlog of passengers so all seats for the next two days are already taken. In the meantime, you will have to return to your hotel, or stay in the terminal.” She pointed to some seats behind him.

He looked around, and realised that all the seats were taken. There were even people sitting on the floor, some sitting on their luggage, and quite a few leaning against the walls. Almost all of them had looked over at George and Ben, and were now returning to their own little worlds with smiles on their faces, as if to say idiots, don’t they think we would have tried that if there had been any seats left?

Seeing the mass of people that filled the terminal, George suddenly came back to reality. “OK,” he turned to Ben. “Looks like your policewoman-buddy was right. Do you think it’s safe to go back to your place?”

“Probably,” he ventured.

“First, I need a drink, though.”

They found a café in the far corner of the terminal building, nestled between a shop and the outer wall of the airport. It was a small, discreet little outlet, quite some distance from the usual hubbub of Departures and Arrivals. But today was proving to be exceptional in many ways, and it took him ten minutes to get to the front of the queue and order their drinks. He chose a couple of cakes, too, and several minutes later they had settled on a large rectangular flower pot set into the marble floor on which they could sit and contemplate their next move.

“God, I am starving,” George said as he munched his way through both of the chocolate muffins he had bought.

Ben was flicking through messages on his phone, sipping the unfamiliarly-sized ‘Grande Cappuccino’ or whatever it was, when he suddenly gave a confused grunt.