Prince of Fire

sure?”
    “That’s what he calls himself. Handsome devil.” Quinnell handed Gabriel the newspaper. “Don’t go too early. The place doesn’t start to get going until midnight. And watch your step around Mimi. She might be a New Age fruitcake, but she doesn’t miss a trick.”
    M R . K ATUBI BOOKED a table for Herr Johannes Klemp at Mimi’s Wine and Jazz Bar for ten o’clock that evening. At nine Gabriel came down from his room and, forsaking the taxi stand, set out across the Tahrir Bridge toward Gezira Island. Reaching the island, he turned right and headed north on the river-front road, along the fringe of the old sporting club where British colonialists had played cricket and drunk gin while the empire collapsed around them.
    A string of luxury high-rise apartment buildings appeared on his left, the first evidence he had entered the most sought-after address in Cairo. Foreigners lived here; so did wealthy Egyptians who took their cues not from Islam but from the trendsetters of New York and London. It was relatively clean in Zamalek, and the incessant noise of Cairo was just a discontented grumble from the other bank of the river. One could sip cappuccinos in the coffee bars and speak French in the exclusive boutiques. It was an oasis, a place where the rich could pretend they were not surrounded by a sea of unimaginable poverty.
    Mimi’s occupied the ground floor of an old house just off July 26th Street. The art deco neon sign was in English, as was the entirely vegetarian menu, which was displayed under glass and framed in hand-painted wood. Next to the menu hung a large poster with a photograph of the evening’s featured entertainment, five young men with silk scarves and much jewelry. It was the sort of place Gabriel would normally enter only at gunpoint. Herr Klemp squared his shoulders and went inside.
    He was greeted by a dark-skinned woman dressed in orange satin pajamas and a matching head wrap. She spoke to him in English, and he responded in kind. Hearing the name “Johannes Klemp,” she smiled warily, as though she had been forewarned by Mr. Katubi to expect the worst, and led him to a table near the bandstand. It was a low, Arabesque piece, surrounded by brightly colored, overstuffed lounge chairs. Gabriel had the distinct impression he would not be spending the evening alone. His fears were realized twenty minutes later when he was joined by three Arabs. They ordered champagne and ignored the morose-looking German with whom they were sharing a table.
    It was a pleasant room, long and oval-shaped, with rough whitewashed plaster walls and swaths of silk hanging from the high ceiling. The air smelled of Eastern spice and sandalwood incense and vaguely of hashish. Along the edge of the room, and barely visible in the subdued light, were several domed alcoves, where patrons could eat and drink in relative privacy. Gabriel picked at a plate of Arab appetizers and looked in vain for anyone resembling the man in the photograph.
    True to Quinnell’s word, the music didn’t start till eleven. The first act was a Peruvian who wore a sarong and played Incan-influenced New Age pieces on a nylon-stringed guitar. Between numbers he told fables of the high Andes in nearly impenetrable English. At midnight came the featured entertainers of the evening, a group of Moroccans who played atonal Arab jazz in keys and rhythms no Western ear could comprehend. The three Arabs paid no attention to the music and spent the evening in liquor-lubricated conversation. Herr Klemp smiled and applauded in appreciation of admirable solos, yet Gabriel heard none of it, for all his attention was focused on the woman holding court at the end of the bar.
    She was quite a looker back then, Quinnell had said. Still is, if you ask me.
    She wore white Capri pants and a satin blouse of pale blue tied at her slender waist. Viewed from behind, she might have been mistaken for a girl in her twenties. Only when she turned, revealing the wrinkles around her eyes and the streak of gray in her dark hair, did one realize she was a middle-aged woman. She wore bangles on her wrists and a large silver pendant around her long neck. Her skin was olive-complected and her eyes nearly black. She greeted everyone in the same manner, with a kiss on each cheek and a whispered confidence. Gabriel had seen many versions of her before, the woman who moves from villa to villa and party to party, who stays permanently tanned and permanently thin and