A Creature of Smokeless Flame

by Margaret Ball

  “No, they’re one-size-fits-all. The only variable is length.” Victor measured us with his eyes. “One medium-short, one standard, one extra-tall. I’ll get those tomorrow. I can say they’re presents for my girlfriends back in America.”

  “I don’t want to complicate your life,” I started to apologize.

  “On the contrary. It should raise my prestige tremendously if they think I have three girlfriends back home. It might also discourage Mama Aesha – one of my informants, a formidable old lady - from trotting out nice Swahili girls for me to marry. Really, I should have invented some girlfriends long ago,” Victor assured me ebulliently. “But right now, I need to buy some tins from Prajapati.”

  “Tins?”

  “Food tins. You can get take-out here, but they like you to provide your own dish.”

  “What, no Styrofoam?”

  “It’s making inroads. Prajapati has a closet full of used packing material in the back. But the good curry places still make you bring your own food tin. Chicken curry all right with everybody?”

  The chicken curry was more than all right, and Mombasa went up yet another notch in my estimation. Lobster, shandies, curry, white sand beaches, authentic African art; this was more like what I’d expected when I applied for a passport in the momentary euphoria of actually graduating with honors. I made a mental note to be sure Lensky didn’t ‘forget’ to get that mask shipped home from the Royal Court Hotel.

  After we’d eaten Victor capped the evening by producing three bui-buis in varying lengths.

  “Turns out Prajapati keeps some bui-buis in boxes at the back of his store,” he explained. “It’s amazing what the old guy can find in that stockroom. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’s been holding the Twelfth Imam and the wreckage of MH370 until called for.”

  I stepped into the shortest bui-bui, tucked the front vee into the waistband of my jeans, tied the head strap under my chin and tucked the loose fabric of the top part over my forehead and under the strap at my temples. A couple of flips brought the remaining fabric forward to frame my face. I caught the last loose end of black nylon between two fingers, brought it up across my nose and mouth and gave the guys a triumphant look. Ben was still trying to get his Size Elevens through the tubular bottom half of the thing, and Lensky was just listening to Victor’s instructions with a bemused look.

  “I thought you just draped it over your head,” he grumbled.

  “Well… actually, I’m not totally sure how it goes,” Victor confessed. “Never having worn one myself… You probably ought to get Thalia to show you. She seems to be quite the expert.”

  “A friend in Mogadishu showed me how to wear it,” I explained.

  It’s not often I catch on to something physical faster than my colleagues, let alone more gracefully. I enjoyed a brief glow of satisfaction; then I tucked the loose end of the face veil out of the way and helped Ben and Lensky adjust their costumes. When we were done, Victor looked us all over carefully.

  “Apart from the jeans peeking out under the hem, Thalia looks exactly like every other veiled woman in Mombasa. You probably want to wear something lighter weight under the bui-bui anyway, Thalia, that black nylon is a heat trap.”

  He turned his attention to the guys, and eventually pronounced that Ben might be able to pass for an exceptionally tall and light-skinned Swahili woman once he lost the glasses and replaced his loafers with sandals.

  “I’ll need sandals too,” said Lensky, pushing folds of black nylon away from his face.

  Victor’s lips twitched. “Don’t bother.”

  “I’m not going barefoot in this cesspool of tropical diseases!”

  “That’s not what I meant… Thalia, Ben. What do you see when you look at Lensky?”

  The theory that bui-buis were one-size-fits-all came to grief over Lensky’s broad shoulders; they strained the upper part of the loose tube to seam-ripping point. The supposed-to-be-loose tube, I mean.

  The bits of the headdress that were supposed to be tucked into neat forehead and cheek folds stuck out from Lensky’s head at crazy angles. As for the loose end that was supposed to be held over your nose and mouth by one corner, he’d crumpled it in one fist without even trying to pull it up over his face.

  I did not laugh at my husband, but it was a very close thing.

  “I’m sorry,” Victor said. “Thalia looks natural enough, and you look passable, Ben, but you, Lensky, look like – like –”

  “A very unhappy, very blond American case officer,” I finished for him.

  There was a ripping sound as Lensky extracted himself from the black nylon sack.

  “I can’t return that if you tear it!” Victor sounded alarmed.

  “I will happily pay for the pleasure of ripping the thing,” Lensky informed him. “I don’t need the disguise anyway. I am a highly trained field officer; my tradecraft is quite adequate when I wish to evade surveillance.”

  And if he needed help, he could call on us to create a topological camouflage. But somehow I suspected it would not be tactful to mention our paranormal abilities right that minute.

  “I’m sure you will manage just fine,” Victor said, backing away. “And I, I expect you’d like some privacy now.” He went on through the kitchen and shut the door to his bedroom in the front.

  “Now,” said Lensky, “let’s see about adding some verisimilitude to this story that we’re a honeymooning couple.” And he took me, bui-bui and all, back to the gracious bedroom overlooking the terrace.

  I hoped that Ben had brought something to read.

  9. A smokeless flame

  Less than a mile from the apartment over Prajapati General Merchandise was a small house that had originally been a guest apartment in Sheikh Mohamad Aboud’s compound. After the assassination of the sheikh by al-Shabaab the entire compound had become unpopular with the locals; it was said to have been occupied by a group of shetani who resented a human presence.

  Omar al-Zanji had explained to his people that there was no need to fear the shetani in the compound, because he possessed a jini who was, just like humans, a creation of Allah, and who could command the shetani. The men who’d followed him south, and the younger ones who’d joined him here in Mombasa, agreed in theory – but their eyes rolled when they had to enter the guest-house where Omar kept his jini. It wasn’t that they saw anything, exactly; the djinn manifested herself to them only as a pervasive sense of cold, as a deeper shadow among shadows, as a shimmer of the smokeless flame from which Allah had created her. Only when Omar was alone, as now, did she take her preferred form as an almost-human woman of dazzling beauty.

  “I have brought you gifts,” he announced, laying out his new offerings on the cushions. A stack of glass bangles sparkled beside sticks of incense, a rosewood chest, two small vials of perfume.

  The djinn drifted across the cushions, inspecting the items. The serpent’s tail below her veils flicked the perfumes to the floor, shattering the fragile glass vials, and Omar winced.

  “I do not love the scents of flowers,” she told him. “If you would please me, bring me stronger perfumes. Cannot the perfumers of this city blend musk or civet into their goods?”

  “Those are costly.”

  “You were able to afford them when you entrapped me here.” The tail knocked over a tall blue glass bottle. This did not break.

  “Serve me well, and you shall have them again.”

  The almost-human face frowned. “Have I not done enough for you already? Not contented with my embraces, with delights unknown to mortal man, you have sent me across the seas to bring lightning upon your enemies, yes, and to bring their children as tribute to your power! The men of the Suahil bow down before you.”

  “Not enough of them, not yet,” said Omar, “and there are in this land other men who know not the proper fear of majini. Three such have come into the city, wazungu who dare to ask about the Rightly Guided. I must go to my island. After you transport me to Usirudi I wish you to return here
. You will watch these newcomers, tell me of their doings, and affright them so that they will flee my wrath.”

  The jini reclined languorously upon cushions and stretched, displaying the seductive curves of her chosen form. “There are many men in this land. If I frighten these, will not more come to replace them? Have a care, little one, lest you draw on my power beyond your ability to repay.”

  “By the blue glass wherein I trapped you first, I will have it so!” Omar picked up the tall blue bottle and made as if to strike her with it. She winced away from the gesture, looking almost human, almost vulnerable.

  “So long as the power of the glass remains, so must I serve you,” she said with a very human-looking pout. “But why must you always demand such harsh tasks? Once I served you in your bed, and you swore that you would never ask more than the delights I brought there.”

  “If I did, I was drunk upon pleasure.”

  “Sweet, sweet intoxication!” She flung a pale, rounded arm around his neck. “We could know that again…”

  “After you have made me a great man, as you promised.” Omar lifted the tempting arm, kissed the jini’s fingertips, then threw her hand away from him. “And after you learn not to come to my bed in that form.” He pointed with disgust at the scaly tail twitching below her veils. “Your serpent’s tail disgusts me!”

  The jini wept and vanished, leaving only the shadow of smokeless flames in the air.

  ***

  “Did you just feel a cold breeze?” I pulled up the sheet that we had somehow kicked to the bottom of the bed and wrapped it over my shoulders.

  “No such luck.” Lensky stretched out his arm and pulled me close. “You must be acclimatizing. Only Mombasa lifers could call this cold – aiee!” He shivered. “Does this place have air conditioning? And did Victor just turn it on?”

  I didn’t think the apartment came with air conditioning. The windows onto the terrace had no glass; only that elaborate ironwork stood between us and the night air. “See, you felt it too.”

  “Only for a minute. And it could have been you trying to warm your feet on me again. You have the coldest feet.”

  ***

  In the morning we heard screams and weeping from the store below the apartment. Mr. Prajapati told us that his wife was distraught; some creature had crept into the store during the night and had killed her cat. Worse, she had heard the cat’s anguished cries and had run into the store in time to see the killer – or rather, the shadow where the killer was not.

  “She is very certain that it was a shetani,” he said. “You understand, my wife was born here. She is a good Hindu, but she grew up on the stories of these Arabs who believe in djinn and devils and all manner of evil spirits. I will have to send for a sheikh to heal her, and those bastards – I mean, those good men charge three times the usual price to come to a Hindu!”

  Lensky inquired about the price. It didn’t seem to be exorbitant – about four thousand Kenya shillings, or forty American dollars. He offered to pay for the exorcism, saying that although we had intended no harm, it was always possible that the spirits had been disturbed by wazungu moving into this quarter of the city.

  “I just hope Prajapati doesn’t make a habit of asking you to pay for exorcisms,” Victor said, shaking his head over this generosity.

  “Oh, I don’t think he will,” Lensky said gravely. “Mrs. Prajapati doesn’t have any more cats.”

  ***

  “I send you against these wazungu, and all you do is kill a cat!” Omar grumbled.

  The jini swished her tail irritably. “You did not warn me that the wazungu have a serpent-spirit of their very own. I was lucky to escape with my tail intact!”

  “Nonsense! Wazungu do not even believe in the spirit world. They could not possibly have a jini.”

  “I did not say it was a jini. It was of a form unfamiliar to me. The body glittered like metal, and the head was horribly deformed, all beak and eyes. But it could see me, and if I had not made my escape it would have struck and fastened that beak in my beautiful tail.” The jini flicked her tail forward and stroked the scales lovingly.

  ***

  “What, could you not see the djinn?” Mr. M. demanded.

  “No, I could not see the djinn. Tell me about it.”

  “She had the face of a woman and the tail of a serpent.”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  “Of her,” Mr. M. corrected me. “She was slinky and seductive, for those vulnerable to that sort of thing.” Since his acquisition of a robot snake body, Mr. M.’s only sensual temptations involved coffee and sugar. “Richly decorated with jewels and henna patterns and floating silks of brilliant color. A pity you could not see it for yourself. It is the way of the Djnoun—”

  “Dudge-noon?”

  “Djnoun,” Mr. M. snapped. “The Arabic plural. It is their way to veil themselves from mortal sight, but you will know of their presence because it becomes cold wherever they pass. When she realized that I could see her, she fled.”

  I remembered the sudden chill last night, and shivered – but not from cold this time. It seemed we had been very, very lucky that Mr. M. had chosen to spend last night with us, in the bedroom overlooking the terrace.

  “Can a djinn hurt, ah, real people?”

  “Some of the Djnoun are very powerful indeed,” Mr. M. informed me. “Did not Solomon use his Seal to compel the Djnoun to build his palaces? Did not the Prophet warn his followers to cover their utensils at night, to close their doors and windows against the Djnoun and keep their children with them? No doubt,” he added reflectively, “the Prophet would also have told them to keep their cats close by, were it not that neither god nor djinn nor man can rule a cat.”

  Lensky had joined us in time to heard that last statement, and he gave a sharp crack of laughter. “Doubtless he would have said the same of topologists!”

  I found that I did not like our lovely windows onto the terrace quite as well as I had at first. But Mr. M. promised me that he would spend every night in our room and would be constantly vigilant against the djinn.

  Shortly afterwards Lensky received a call from Nelson Finch that wiped the laughter from his face. “I have to go, Thalia. We’ll talk tonight.”

  “What happened?”

  “There’s been a… communication.”

  He was tight-lipped, unwilling to tell me anything more than that a video had appeared on the Internet, purporting to be a communication from Jeshi-la-Rashiduni.

  “The ransom demand?”

  “Finch didn’t say. He just said I’d want to see it for myself.” He kissed me and was gone before I could offer to save him the trouble of a cross-city journey evading possible surveillance. Dammit! I could have raised camouflage around both of us and teleported him to… no, I couldn’t, not without his help. I had never been to the CIA office. For the first time I wondered if Finch had some sinister reason for trying to keep me out of the loop. No, that made no sense. He’d made it abundantly clear that he had no respect for me as an investigator or as anything else. It was probably nothing more than that he wanted to play Spy vs. Spy with his old buddy Brad and didn’t want to be bothered with Brad’s young wife hanging around. It couldn’t be anything more than that.

  Could it?

  Victor was extremely unhelpful when I asked him about tracking down this video that had Finch and Lensky so upset.

  “What is it?” I demanded after I got fed up with his vague evasions. “Did Brad tell you not to let the little woman in on anything?”

  “No, no, nothing like that!” Victor protested. “The thing is… Look, Thalia, when Dr. Salinas got in touch with me about doing a favor for some friends of his friend in Texas, he didn’t tell me you were going after Jeshi-la-Rashiduni.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  Victor backed away from me, hands up. “Nothing! Nothing at all… and I’d like to keep it that way. Look, you people blow in to town, you blow out, you don’t care what kind of a m
ess you leave behind. Me, I’ve invested nine months in cultivating relationships, finding informants, getting into this community. And I have another six months of work to do, minimum, before I have enough data to make the dissertation committee happy. Plus, the director of the Fort Jesus Museum just invited me to co-author a monograph on the Swahili artifacts found at the dig on Shanga. I’m not going to blow all that, get run out of town, probably even have to leave the coast, just because you want to poke sticks into the Rashiduni anthill. It’s not healthy to ask questions about those people.”

  I sat down, slowly, concentrating on looking as small and unthreatening as possible. Very few people actually do perceive me as a threat, but Victor seemed to be well and truly spooked. “Okay. I understand your point of view, and I won’t ask you to betray any confidences or put yourself at risk. Only, as a personal favor, could you share with me what you do know about the Rashiduni? I understood they were a very new group. How could they have got everyone in Mombasa so scared, so fast?”

  “I don’t know about everyone in Mombasa,” Victor hedged. But he sat down opposite me.

  “Well, I asked around about them on our first day here, and four separate people reacted just like you’re doing now. They don’t know about any Rashiduni, they don’t know anybody named Omar, they hardly even go to the mosque never mind listening to inflammatory preachers, and they were just about to leave town for a long vacation up-country.”

  “I don’t want to leave town for a long vacation up-country. I need to stay here and keep doing my research.”

  “And the sooner we’re out of your hair, the easier that will be. I get that. But Victor, we’re not going to go away just because you’re uncomfortable with us. There are children involved here. Steve Harrison – Lensky’s boss? His son was kidnapped by the Rashiduni, and they took two other little kids at the same time. American kids,” I emphasized.

  “They brought them here? How did they pull that off?”