The GoldenCity

While the Free Runners were leaving a false trail in various hostels and hotels, Linden prepared cloned passports for Gabriel and Simon. When governments inserted RFID chips into passport covers, forgers quickly learned how to use a machine called a skimmer to read the information. If the skimmer was hidden in a doorway or an elevator it could read the passport carried in someone’s pocket or handbag. Linden didn’t waste time with skimmers and simply bribed a hotel clerk to scan tourist passports with a legally obtained inspection reader.

Once Linden had the information, he created a cloned passport with a duplicate chip. The information could be altered so that the person carrying the clone matched the embedded photograph and biometric data. In developing countries, the match didn’t have to be perfect; ignoring their own instincts, emigration officials tended to wave a passenger through if a machine announced that everything was correct.

“So who I am supposed to be?” Gabriel asked Linden.

“A young man named Brian Nelson who lives in Denver.”

“And what about me?” Simon Lumbroso asked.

“You’re Dr. Mario Festa-a psychologist from Rome.”

Simon grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Good. I’m enjoying this. And, of course, Dr. Festa thinks his government is protecting him.”

***

A few days later, Gabriel, Linden and Simon flew to the West African country of Senegal. At the Dakar airport, Linden paid a bribe that inserted their new passport numbers into the global monitoring system. They quickly transferred to a different airline and took an overnight flight to Egypt. In the morning, they arrived and took a taxi from the airport into Cairo. Their cab moved through the crowded streets of Cairo like a boat floating in a labyrinth of muddy canals. Drivers kept honking their car horns while the traffic police stood listlessly on the sidewalk. But the Cairo jaywalkers displayed grace and confidence: old people, street sellers and pregnant women glided through the traffic as if they had given their souls to Allah before stepping off the curb.

Simon told the taxi driver to take them to the City of the Dead on the east side of the Nile. Qarafa cemetery had once been the site of the Roman fortress of Babylon; and the brick and stone ruins had been transformed into a burial ground by the Mamluk rulers in the fifteenth century. Over hundreds of years, squatters had built huts among the tombs, and these improvised dwellings evolved into four-story tenements built with a grayish-brown concrete that resembled dried clay.

The cab passed through a square where men were selling canaries and parakeets, the little birds calling to each other as they fluttered back and forth in their cages. Men approached their car offering melons, shoes, and lottery tickets pinned to a cardboard sign. Veiled women walked arm-in-arm through the crowd while a recorded voice wailed from the speakers mounted on each mosque.

The driver got lost a few times, but eventually they reached the tomb of Iman al Shafi-i, a Muslim holy man. A mosque with four minarets had been built around the gravesite, and an elderly caretaker gave them a tour of the complex-stone walls and a faded green carpet, swallows darting around the interior of the copula. When they had seen enough of the mosque to provide a reason for their presence in the neighborhood, they walked across the dirt street to a storefront café. Each customer sat at his own little table as the pudgy café owner bustled back and forth with glasses of hot tea that had sprigs of mint floating on the surface.

Simon Lumbroso could speak basic Arabic and had business contacts in Cairo, but as an Orthodox Jew he felt self-conscious about his appearance in a Muslim country. At the hotel, he slipped on a djellaba- a long cotton robe that covered his shabby black suit and the fringe from his tallit katan, the ritual Orthodox garment.

Linden and Gabriel were wearing cotton trousers and sports jackets without ties. Gabriel didn’t mind looking like a businessman, but he wondered if Linden could truly disguise himself. The big Frenchman moved with an aggressive confidence and constantly surveyed the space around him as if he were preparing for an attack. Beggars and stray dogs sensed the danger and stayed away from him.

Simon lowered his mobile phone and wrote a number down in his memo book. “I just talked to the priest’s wife. She thinks he’s at his uncle’s house.”

“But he was supposed to meet us here.”

“This is typical for Cairo. What is expected never occurs. And what occurs is never expected.” Lumbroso started dialing a new number. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

“While we wait for the priest, order some coffee,” Linden said. “This tea tastes like dishwater.”