Cairo Surrender Ch. 01

"Please offer my appreciation for the consideration of the invitation and provide them a bottle of your best champagne as a token of my regard."

Bowing and scraping, the waiter hurried off to do Abazar's bidding, grateful for the opportunity to provide the service—and even more grateful for the excuse not to be on the balcony as Abazar seethed.

For the next half hour, Abazar sat, sinking ever deeper into his chair and into a dark anger, not listening to his cousin, who was doing everything he could to distract the focus of Abazar's attention. Abazar's attention was focused on the silver bucket stand close behind the side of the man in the gray suit, as waiter after waiter tried to fill his glass from the champagne bottle couched in the bucket—and was repeatedly rebuffed so that not a drop of champagne was being consumed. At no time did the man in gray look up at the balcony. The youth in white did scan the room and linger his gaze at the balcony from time to time, but Abazar didn't see that. His attention was plastered to the sliver ice bucket and the rejected champagne bottle.

At the end of the half hour, announcing his movement by a deep rumble from within, Abazar abruptly stood, sending china and silver and crystal scattering across his table and onto the floor. An army of waiters descended on the table to chase the errant implements, dab at the stains on Abazar's black silk evening suit, and apologize abjectly for sins they had not committed.

Abazar was flushed with anger, standing straight and majestically, looking like a god of wrath. The movement did not go unnoticed by anyone in the dining room—anyone but the gray-suited solicitor, the white-suited youth, and the Cairo police chief, that is. Indeed, every eye had been surreptitiously watching Abazar since the delivery of the first invitation, and all lips were being moistened with tongues in anticipation of his reaction to the refusal of his gift. Raymond Little seemed to look especially amused by the little drama playing out right under his nose.

This simply was not done in the Gentlemen's Dining Room of the Shepheard's Hotel. None of the men in their lifetime could remember such an instance—and memories had to be searched for any inkling of precedent, which seemed to be couched in tales of sunrise duels on the broad lawn between the hotel and the Nile and tragic, surreptitious funerals.

"Cousin, please. They are looking," the cultural minister croaked in a strangled voice. He reached out to tug at Abazar's sleeve, but his hand was roughly brushed away.

"I will go now," Abazar said in a menacing tone. He snapped his fingers, and his flunky appeared at his side. Whispered instructions were given, and the flunky disappeared into the shadows.

"But we cannot go yet, cousin," the minister hissed. "I told the guards to come back at eleven. We cannot go without guards. You know the streets. We cannot. It's not safe. You've had threats. So have I. We must wait for—"

"You may wait, as you wish, cousin. I will not."

And then Abazar was on the move. And accompanied by a rising gasp from the diners from one wall to the other, he slowly, and with iron-rod-straight back, descended the stairs from the balcony rather than leaving via the balcony door into the hotel proper. Each and every diner felt the lash of the snapping of the taboo of the staircase, as, with an "I dare anyone" glare and a carriage of righteous indignation, Abazar slowly descended the stairs and departed, head held high—by the main door.

You could have heard a pin drop. For a full five minutes. And then the buzzing started. The buzzing of a hundred hives.

Through it all, the man in gray sat, facing away from the main door, muttering instructions to his ward, who was peeping surreptitiously under charcoal lashes toward the door—seeing the majestic progress of the imposing figure of the Egyptian man without having an iota of an inkling what was causing all of the tension—but somehow drawn to the man who was causing all of the commotion.

When the door to the main dining floor had clicked shut and two headwaiters belatedly positioned themselves in front of the closed panels, the man in gray motioned to a waiter and, as the buzzing gained strength, he watched his glass and that of the city's police chief being filled with champagne from the iced bottle in the silver bucket at his elbow, and then he saluted the police chief and tossed off the champagne. A waiter was immediately at his elbow to refill his glass.

Within hours the foreign community was abuzz with reports of what the nearest diners heard the man in gray then say.

"I've heard that conditions had become lax out here—Allenby told me that—but I had no idea they were now letting natives in the lobby of Shepheard's, let alone in the Gentleman's Dining Room. What is the world coming to, one wonders."