Her Kind of Trouble (22 page)
"Some of the people here seem to resent the trouble, but that one—Cathy—says they're making up a guest room for Kara and me. She said we can stay until the diplomats come to some kind of agreement."
Surely that agreement wouldn't include Jane giving Kara back. One nice thing about politics being so competitive—
England
wouldn't want to buckle to Egyptian pressure, any more than
Egypt
wanted to give in to
England
.
"I hope it doesn't take too long. You have my number at the Hotel Athens, right? You'll call if you need anything?"
Jane gave me a hug. "I can't thank you enough!"
"Don't bother trying. You've fought the good fight. Just hold out a little bit longer, okay?"
She nodded, too emotional to say more.
I shook hands with Kara.
She said, "I don't care what my papa's lawyers say. If he ever gets me back and tries to make me marry some stupid boy, I'll…I'll
spit
on him!"
If that was the goddess energy speaking, I wished I could channel it more deliberately. "Just be careful you choose your battles, Kara. And take care of your mom, okay?"
The little girl nodded, eyes still glowing from our recent adventure. A Grailkeeper in the making, for sure.
Speaking of choosing battles, it was time to leave them to theirs and return to my own. I had to go diving again, to follow that prescience I'd had about the grail. If I found it, I had to talk to d'Alencon about how to protect the grail. I had to check on Rhys, make sure he hadn't overexerted himself as my wheelman this morning. He might have once been a priest, but he was still a guy, and guys—the good ones, anyway—don't like standing back when women are in danger. Whether or not it went back to cavemen killing saber-toothed tigers that threatened the camp or not. I headed out of the British Embassy full of plans.
Not a one of them included what happened next.
"You are Madeleine Sanger, yes?" demanded a dark-skinned, white-uniformed police officer as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
"Magdalene," I corrected him, immediately wary. "Why?"
"I am afraid that you are under arrest for kidnapping," he said pleasantly, and took my arm. "Come with me, please."
I looked around me—and, sure enough, there stood Hani Rachid in full triumph, across the street.
With an Eye-of-Horus design drawn onto his cheek.
"I didn't kidnap anybody," I protested, not moving even when the officer put pressure on my arm. "I took a little girl to
Cairo
with the permission of her grandmother."
In fact, I had deliberately not accompanied Kara onto the embassy property that first time. She went of her own accord.
"Perhaps we can resolve this at the police station, miss," said the officer, his grip tightening.
"Or perhaps you can check the laws," I argued back. "I had Tala Rachid's permission—"
"Miss." The officer sounded much less pleasant, now. "A complaint has been filed. You are under arrest. I am being polite, as you are a visitor to our country, but you come with me now, or I will force you to come with me."
And really, what was I going to do—make a break for it? I
could
. I had no doubt that I could twist from the officer's hold on me and outrun him. Especially if he tried to follow me in the police car I now recognized parked against the curb.
Traffic would be on my side.
But I wouldn't do it. The law was also on my side, for now at least. Going fugitive over something this minor would be a mistake.
So I let the policeman lead me to his car—and tuff me.
But the thought of being imprisoned in an Egyptian jail even temporarily sure didn't sit comfortably in my stomach.
Neither did the white grin of Hani Rachid as he watched his vengeance play out.
Chapter 14
The worst part was when the police took my passport. Unlike in the States—or what I'd heard, having never been arrested myself before now—they left me with my jewelry and even, after searching it, the fanny pack with my money. But the passport, they confiscated.
Suddenly, I wasn't just in an Egyptian jail.
I had no proof that I was even an American.
And I sure wasn't being treated like a
guest
.
"I want a lawyer," I stated, more than once, during the booking process. Many of the officers just ignored me; I couldn't tell if they even spoke English, which was an unnervingly helpless feeling. "I have a right to a lawyer."
One officer answered, "You have
no
rights."
Maybe he was joking… but I suspected he wasn't. This wasn't exactly the Land of the Free. So I started asking for a phone call.
"We will do the calling," insisted the officer, filling out paperwork for me since, in a country that used Arabic, I was as good as illiterate. "Who is your husband?"
Lex
. That's whose ring I was wearing, wasn't it? If I had them call Lex Stuart at the Four Seasons, I'd be out as soon as humanly possible. Maybe sooner than that! Lex had powerful contacts I could barely imagine.
And yet…
I know what you're thinking. I was thinking it, too. Now was no time to handicap myself with stupid principles!
And yet, if I only had principles when it was easy, how important were they, really?
It wasn't just that I was remembering Hani's recent gloat about Jane—
She will be arrested, she will beg me to help her
. As if it really
was
a woman's place to have freedom only through the intervention of a man.
It's that Lex
wasn't
really my husband. This
wasn't
his fight—in fact, he'd been against this trip, much less my helping Jane, from the start. Surely I could get myself out of this without claiming myself as his property.
Besides, the statement was a legal document. For all I knew, if I announced Lex as my husband on it, we would end up common-law married for real.
"He is not here," I said.
"Yes, but what is his name?"
"You don't need his name. You have mine. That's what counts. The woman whose granddaughter I'm accused of taking from
Alexandria
will vouch for me—Dr. Tala Rachid. And I have a friend in
The officer scowled, but wrote it down.
The cell they brought me to was straight out of a bad exploitation movie—dirty, cramped and stinking of sweat and human waste. There were no beds; the women who were sitting or lying down did so on the stone floor or on worn blankets. One was coughing heavily. One was moaning.
I didn't realize I'd hesitated, there in the doorway, until the guard shoved me hard enough that only my good sense of balance kept me from sprawling onto the ground.
I spun and glared.
He yelled something that was clearly an insult and turned away. Apparently, just by being accused of a crime, I'd lost that shiny halo of invulnerability that tourists sometimes start to believe they wear.
So here I was. In jail.
In
Cairo
.
Crap.
I looked at the other women in our small cell—there were eight of us total, two not much older than Kara. Over half wore the traditional head covering. One woman sat in a corner slowly peeling an orange. Two others stared at her with obvious envy. Wherever she'd gotten it, I had the feeling nobody else had one.
At first I just stood quietly and tried to look inconspicuous—as if, with my skin and hair color, that would ever happen. Finally, as time passed and nobody did anything worse than stare at me and talk among themselves, I ventured, "Does anybody here speak English, please?"
Several of the women stared. Several glanced at me, then looked away in disgust.
"
Parlez-vous français, s'il-vous plait
?" I tried. I was going to run out of languages pretty soon.
"I speak the English some," offered a soft voice, and a teenage girl with thick black hair stepped tentatively closer to me. Another woman said something rapidly in Arabic—a protest? The teenager waved her away. "I learn in school, yes?"
I cannot describe how wonderful it felt to hear words in my own language. It was as though I'd been deaf, but could suddenly hear again. I wanted to hug the girl. Instead I said, "Hello. I'm Maggi."
"I am Samira," she said. "You be American, yes?"
"Yes."
She said nothing, but her face got so serious as she cocked her head that I guessed what she was thinking.
I said, "Do you want to know why I'm here?"
"Only if you wish to say, miss. I mean not disrespect." Her posture was submissive. Most of the women's were—at least when the guards were watching. When they weren't, a clear pecking order quickly developed.
Nobody had bothered me—probably because they hadn't figured me out yet. Did Samira hope I'd be able to protect her…or was it possible she was trying to protect me?
I kind of hoped I wouldn't be here long enough to find out.
"I am accused of kidnapping a little girl," I explained. "I brought her to
Cairo
, with her grandmother's permission, and she ran into the British Embassy to see her mother. But it is a mistake."
Samira nodded solemnly.
"Do you know what happens next?" I asked, glancing around us again.
"Next?"
I nodded. "After this. After now."
"The guards maybe take us to clean," she admitted, brow furrowed in thought. "They do not make men clean. Only women. When it is time for the lunch, they bring bread and cheese."
"But when can I get a lawyer? When do I get to make a phone call? How long will I
be
here?"
She nodded, better understanding my question. "You be brought before Public Prosecution Office in only day, maybe two day."
"A day or two?"
She nodded.
