Chapter 5 August Fenwick paced restlessly in his vast, airy room atop the Imperial Hotel.

The instructions he had passed to Kit on the plane had been based on the presumption that within an hour of checking into the hotel,

he would be alone in the room he intended to take, the suite on the southwest corner

of the building. But the time was getting close, and Weston seemed determined to unpack every

item in Fenwick's cases himself, right down to the false bottoms, of which Fenwick was now

very glad. Were it not for the possibility of a customs inspection, he might not have used them

at all, and Weston would now be wondering in which drawer his new master would like his throwing stars and combat boomerangs.

"'Fernick stepped out onto the landing and felt the hot, dry air hit him as if he'd been struck in the chest.

"'The sun was high in the sky and seemed impossibly close.

"'Below the wide streets and avenues of the

city's downtown were teeming with life. Cairo. It had been years since he'd been here, but it was

just as he remembered, at least this part of it was, a thoroughly modern city bustling with

activity that somehow still seemed to belong to another world.

He wouldn't have to step very far away from the newer sections of the city, with all of its

British influence, to find that other world. Ancient and fascinating at times, backward and

crushingly poor in places, at night this city seethed with the danger inherent in the darkness

as much as any other did.

But now there was a new hunter in the night, and one who would not quit until his search was ended.

He recalled his days of training with Maxwell Falcone.

The stranger was retired, then, as were most of the members of his old team, the Society of

Gentlemen Adventurers, but the younger man would not take no for an answer. In the end, Falcone

had agreed to teach him what he knew about crime-fighting and investigation, but not the mystic arts.

...