Countdown in Cairo Read Online Free PDF Page A

door.
    “Hey,” he said. “Where’s the map?”
    “What map?”
    “The one that will take us down to Memphis?” he said.
    “Oh,” she said. She put her hand to her mouth to cover a smile. “It’s still upstairs.”
    “How are we going to find our way without a map?” he asked.
    “Duuh,” she said.
    “Duuh,” he answered. Playfully, he swiped at her backside, and she ducked away.
    “Good question,” she answered. “I’ll get it.”
    She turned and jogged back toward the hotel, a flurry of bare legs and arms.
    In the lobby of the hotel, she skipped past the doorman and the amused gaze of the porters and front desk staff. Anxious to get going, she went to the stairs near the elevator and sprinted up them to the first floor, taking the steps two at a time. She felt great.
    She would always remember how great she felt at the start of that day.
    The door to their room was open. She walked in, startling the morning maid. They exchanged greetings.
    Janet spotted the map. She grabbed it, gave the maid a courteous nod, then was down the stairs, through the lobby, and out the door again. She turned the corner. The sidewalk was quiet. Across the parking lot she saw their car. It hadn’t moved. She felt a new surge of love for Carlos. This vacation had been what they needed. She was more certain than ever that he was her perfect partner and the right man to marry. She was about fifty paces from the car, and she raised her hand with the map, waving to him. Through the rear window of the car, she saw him raise his hand and wave back. The day was set to begin. Time to get going.
    He cranked the ignition. The car give a little shake as the engine turned over.
    A tremendous eruption roared in a firestorm out of the car’s engine, then out of the chassis. It happened so fast that Janet later had a sense of first seeing it happen, then feeling the shock waves and then, with a disconnect of several seconds, hearing it.
    The explosion knocked Janet backward and sent her sprawling. She whacked her face and arms hard on the hot asphalt.
    The car flew up into the air and into the driving lanes of the parking lot, rocking the cars parked in front of it and behind it and setting them on fire.
    Stones, mortar, and brick cascaded off the walls of the hotel and tumbled down into the street near Janet, almost burying her.
    Her entire world was suddenly immersed in a silence punctuated by a profound ringing. She felt nothing, knew nothing.
    Then it came to her that she was lying down on the sidewalk. Smoke billowed and flames raged from the wreckage of the car. There was something wet all over her, which she quickly realized was her own blood.
    An excruciating pain throbbed through the silence. Her vision blurred. Mentally and physically, she was in shock. Prone, she moved her hands, which seemed like someone else’s. She saw that all that remained of the auto in front of her was wheels and a chassis. The rest of it burned before her, the body of the young man she loved within it.
    She blinked. There was hot sticky blood in her eyes. Everything in her vision had a reddish tint. Words and ideas formed in slow motion, but they formed anyway. Carlos is dead, and in a few seconds I will be too.
    Good thing, she thought as an excruciating pain shot through her head. At least we’ll die together.
    Things went very white, and then completely black.

FOUR
    In a quiet wing within the main building of the United States Department of Treasury in Washington, DC, Alexandra LaDuca leaned forward at her desk. On the screen of her main computer, Alex studied the final anatomy of a case she had plunged herself into upon her return from Spain two months earlier.
    Ray Medina’s clients had been his wealthy friends. He had promised them twelve percent on their investments; then, using the old technique of underselling his abilities, he had produced K-1 tax forms showing returns of twenty percent.
    But Medina had also been battling a serious liver