The Mark of the Assassin

cacophony of street
    noise, most conversations were conducted by shouts. This made planning
    Eric Stoltenberg's assassination difficult. Delaroche, for reasons of
    security, insisted they talk on the bed, face-to-face, so they could
    speak softly, directly into each other's ears. "They put soldiers there
    to keep pedestrians away from the building, in case it goes without
    warning."
    "But if the building goes without warning, the soldiers will be killed.
    That's insanity."
    "No, that's Cairo."
    A cart entered the street, pulled by a lame donkey. The driver was a
    small boy, blond, green eyes, dressed in a filthy robe. Garbage spilled
    from the bed of the cart. The soldiers taunted the boy and threw scraps
    of bread at the donkey. For an instant Astrid thought of getting her gun
    and shooting one of the soldiers. She said, "Jean-Paul, come here,
    quickly."
    "Zabbaleen," Delaroche said, stepping onto the balcony. "What?"
    "Zabbaleen," he repeated. "It means the rubbish collectors. Cairo has no
    sanitation, no official system of trash removal. For years the garbage
    was simply thrown into the streets or burned to heat water in the baths.
    In the thirties, the Coptic Christians migrated to Cairo from the south.
    Some of them became the zabbaleen. They earn no money, only the garbage
    they collect. They live in a village of garbage in the Mokattam hills,
    east of Cairo."
    "Jesus Christ," she said softly. "Time to get dressed," Delaroche said,
    but Astrid remained on the balcony, watching the boy and his garbage. "I
    don't like him," she said, and for a moment Delaroche wasn't certain if
    she were talking about the zabbaleen or Eric Stoltenberg. "He's a cruel
    bastard, and smart too."
    "Do it just the way we planned it, and everything will be fine."
    "Don't let him hurt me, Jean-Paul."
    He looked at her. She had killed a dozen people, lived her life on the
    run, and yet she still became as frightened as a small girl at times. He
    touched her face, kissed her forehead softly. "I won't let anyone hurt
    you," he said. They looked up. A large wooden desk teetered on a
    tenth-floor balcony of the condemned office building. It hung there a
    moment, like a passenger clinging to the rail of a sinking ocean liner,
    then crashed to the street, shattering into a hundred pieces. The
    zabbaleen's donkey bolted. The soldiers scattered. They looked up and
    began shouting in rapid Arabic, shaking their fists at the men on the
    balcony. "Cairo," Delaroche said. "My God," Astrid said. "What a fucking
    city."
    THE HOTEL ELEVATOR was an old-fashioned lift, threaded through the
    center of a spiral staircase. It was broken again, so Delaroche and
    Astrid had to wind their way down from the seventh floor. Fahmy, the
    eternal desk clerk, shrugged his shoulders in apology. "Tomorrow, the
    repairman comes, inshallah," he said. "Inshallah," Delaroche repeated,
    in a perfect Cairene accent, which Fahmy acknowledged with a formal nod
    of his bald head. The lobby was quiet, the dining room deserted except
    for two aproned waiters silently pursuing the dust. Delaroche found it
    depressing and vaguely Russian, with its long tables, curled meat, and
    warm white wine. Astrid had wanted to stay in one of the big Western
    hotels--the Inter-Con or the famous Nile Hilton but Delaroche insisted
    on something more secluded. The Hotel Imperial was the kind of place
    guidebooks recommend for adventuresome travelers who want to get a taste
    of "the real Cairo."
    Delaroche had stolen a motorbike: small, dark blue, the kind of scooter
    young Italians use to race round the streets of Rome. He felt slightly
    guilty, for he knew some Egyptian boy had worked three jobs and saved
    years in order to buy it. He put Astrid in a cab and in rapid, precise
    Arabic told the driver where to take her. Delaroche roared off on his
    motor scooter, Astrid behind him in the cab.
    ZAMALEK IS AN ISLAND, long and narrow, which the Nile surrounds like a
    moat. It is an enclave of Cairo's wealthy: the residue of the
    aristocracy, the young rich, a clique of Western journalists. Dusty
    apartment houses rise above the corniche and stare disapprovingly across
    the river toward the noise and chaos of downtown. Below the corniche,
    along the water, is an embankment where the liberated youth of Zamalek
    screw into the early morning. At the northern tip of the island lie the
    cricket fields and tennis courts of the Ghazira Sporting Club, the
    playground of the old British elite. In the shops and