Raf sighed and cleared his head of the Huntsville psychotrash that flooded it every time he tried to think about what he felt. Other people’s feelings he could do. His own . . . He’d been analysed so many times by Dr. Millbank that he could no longer distinguish what was emotionally real from what he’d been told were his feelings. Which was weird because, and the fox always used to agree with this, half the time Raf was pretty sure he felt nothing at all.
“Are you listening to me?” That was the point at which Zara pushed her face in close.
No, thought Raf, not really. And before he could stop himself, he had leant forward and kissed her, very lightly.
He apologized on the drive back to the governor’s mansion. A drive so short that he and Zara could have walked it in the time it took Hakim and Ahmed to safety-check the Bentley.
Of course, before he apologized he had to get his breath back.
“Columbia,” she had told him. “Power-punching exercises.”
She’d been reluctant to get into the Bentley until Raf explained that her alternative was to wait for a horse-drawn calèche to take her out to Villa Hamzah to be with her mother. Whatever her decision, Hamzah Effendi would remain under guard at the precinct.
Hakim and Ahmed he’d made walk back to the gubernatorial mansion. Punishment for grinning when she sucker punched him in the stomach.
“Why all the playacting?” she’d asked.
“Because that’s my job,” said Raf. “And the best way to fake something, is to pretend to be what you already are . . .” Catching Zara’s appalled glance, he shrugged and yanked at the wheel, suddenly dragging the Bentley round a bend into a side street. The car had no power steering, and Raf strongly suspected the absence was intentional.
He wouldn’t put it past Koenig Pasha to drive a telemetrics-free vehicle precisely because it lacked assisted steering, voice-activated starting, electronic locks or air-conditioning, not to mention adaptive cruise control. Even the engine could be hand-cranked, though it was hard to know if that was special or had once come as standard.
The point was, while almost every other vehicle in the city had seen its electronics go belly-up in the blasts, the governor’s Bentley still functioned. Which was how Raf ended up with a dusty square to himself. And it was obvious from the way pedestrians turned to watch the unlit Bentley slide slowly round Place al-Mansur, its pennant fluttering in the darkness, that they expected no less.
The city had a confidence in its new governor that Raf had never had in himself, that no one on the right side of sanity could ever have.
“Remember that lunch?” Raf asked. “When we met officially? Your father told me you never cried.”
“That was then,” said Zara crossly. “Things change.”
“Either that, or we change them,” Raf replied. “Sometimes surviving is all it takes.”
“And that’s what you do, is it? Survive . . .”
Raf nodded.
Sitting there beside him, her hands clasped tight between stockinged knees and her shoulders hunched forward like a frightened child, Zara took a deep breath and slowly willed herself back under control as a familiar street slipped by and the dark gateposts of the mansion came forward to meet her.
The fact Raf was right didn’t make her like him any more.
“I took a detour,” Raf told Hakim, seeing him standing by the gate, and with that Raf edged the Bentley into a courtyard lit by coal-filled oil drums.
“The master arrives . . .” Khartoum was no longer dressed in his ornate livery. Instead, the old man wore a pale grey souf so long its rough edges dragged on damp cobbles. Around him stood soldiers, plus a thin clerk in a flapping suit. The old man looked amused.
“Your office is worried.” The Sufi practically had to push the clerk towards the car window. “Tell him then.”
“Excellency . . . Ambassador Graf von Bismarck demands an immediate audience.”
Did he now?
“And the one from Paris?”
The man nodded.
“London, Washington, Vienna?”
A quick nod greeted each capital in its turn.
“And Stambul?”
“The red phone . . .” The man was embarrassed. “It rang, Excellency, but when I finally answered it the line was dead. Perhaps the main exchange . . .”
“It’s been fried,” said Raf. “Along with the relay stations. Please tell the Graf that I’ll see him for ten minutes, an hour from now, in the council chamber.”
“Your Excellency . . . The ambassador was hoping . . .”
“That I’d go there. Too bad.” Raf watched the clerk debate with himself which it would be most dangerous to offend, the Germans or Iskandryia’s new governor. His decision quickly became clear when the man snapped off a smart salute and stepped back from the car.
“You scare them, don’t you?” Zara’s smile was thin.
“It’s the aftertaste of the General.”
Zara shook her head. “It’s you,” she said. “Take a good look at yourself in the mirror.”
“I don’t do mirrors,” said Raf.
“That’s what I mean.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say after that so, once Khartoum had opened Raf’s door, Raf walked round to the other side of the car and opened the door for Zara.
“And I wish you’d stop that,” Zara said with a scowl. “All this heel-clicking shit.” Her scowl lasted until she reached the mansion’s steps, at which point Hani came bundling out of the big front door.
“Zara!”
“Hello, honey.”
Hani grinned. “How are you?” she added as an afterthought; visibly remembering her manners.
“Okay, I suppose. And you?”
“Terrific.” Hani suddenly opened both arms to embrace the ink-black sky. “Someone’s killed the lights. All of them. You can see what’s happened better from the roof.” Hani turned to go, then swung back, remembering something. “You and I,” said the child, looking serious. “We need to talk . . .”
CHAPTER 42
25th October
“You know Colonel Abad stole someone else’s face?”
Zara didn’t.
“On the badges,” said Hani. “It’s not him. The face belongs to someone who died years and years ago. You know what that means? It means he kept himself to himself, or people would have noticed he wasn’t the same as his picture . . .”
Hani nodded. “I’m right, aren’t I?” She looked at the older girl, then frowned. “Don’t you like clues?”
Zara stared round at the governor’s study, her face doubtful. Official papers were piled in untidy heaps, encyclopedias, old history books, ancient maps of the Sudan. A bookcase along one wall had half the volumes pulled out and dumped on the floor. It looked like a whirlwind had hit the place. And the whirlwind was about four paces away, laying a fire and asking riddles.
“Honey, we really shouldn’t be in here.”
“You want to save your father?”
Do I . . . ? Zara stared at the child, throat tight.
“Thought so.” Hani walked over to Zara, gave her a quick hug and went back to work, crunching old financial reports into tight balls and pushing them under kindling.
“Clues,” Hani said firmly, putting a match to a computer printout. “Crosswords, logic puzzles, number grids, those stupid MENSA things in the papers . . . Do you like them?”
“Sometimes.”
Hani sighed. It was late. Raf was still furious about something, and Zara was so busy trying not to get upset in front of her that she wasn’t really listening to a thing Hani said. Even Khartoum was useless. She’d tried to talk to him but he’d just excused himself, then come back later with matches and a jug of water from the kitchens.
Which was less than no help.
It was hard being the only one who could think properly. Especially if you were nine. Or maybe ten, there was some doubt about that.
“In a moment,” said Hani, “I’ll make you
some cocoa.” She blew on the flames until the kindling caught, added a couple of wooden candleholders from the mantelpiece and all the pencils from the General’s desk tidy.
Uncle Ashraf’s desk tidy, Hani corrected herself. Taking a half-eaten bar of Fry’s chocolate from her pocket—it was possible for a human to last a week on a single bar, she’d read it in some magazine—Hani broke cubes off the chocolate and dropped five or six into the water jug. She should probably have heated the water first, she realized, looking at the lumps lying there at the bottom.
Still, it was a bit late to decide that now. Pushing the copper jug into the middle of the flames, Hani sucked her fingers where they’d got singed and went back to the real problem.
“Did you bring your weird picture?”
“Did I . . . ?” Zara was shocked. “Honey, how did you know about that?”
“It must have been sent to you,” Hani said firmly. “I’ve asked everyone else. The General sent you something from Dante’s Purgatorio. . . A Doré engraving. Am I right?”
Hani pulled a yellowing page from her jeans pocket and smoothed it out on the desk. “He sent this one to Raf. It’s from Inferno.”
The engraving showed the man with his chest sliced open. His hands gripping the edges of the wound, not to close it but to pull it apart. From her other pocket, Hani extracted what looked like a photocopy but was actually a printout of a low-rez scan.
“I couldn’t get the original,” said Hani, “because that’s locked away. But Uncle Ashraf had this copy on computer in an evidence file. When he still had a working computer,” she added thoughtfully.
“It was the General who sent this to my father?”
“That’s Koenig Pasha’s writing,” said Hani, turning over the printout to show Zara the handwriting script on the other side. “So I guess so . . . In Raf’s file it says Effendi asked the General for help.”
“For help!” Zara’s laugh was hollow. “How do we know that’s the General’s writing?”
Hani shrugged. “I had a look at his diary,” she said, pulling a notebook from a desk drawer and handing it to Zara, who shook her head and gave it straight back.
“You read his diary?”
“No. It’s in German,” said Hani. “I don’t know German . . .”
This was where the conversation paused, while Hani kicked off one silver Nike, pulled off the sock underneath and used it as an oven glove to lift the copper jug from the fire. The jug she put on the hearth to cool and the sock got tossed in the fire. It had started to smoulder anyway. When they drank the cocoa, it tasted more of water than chocolate, but neither Zara nor Hani mentioned the fact.
“You got a Doré engraving from the General?”
Zara shook her head, so Hani started again.
“You got an engraving?”
Zara nodded.
“Are you sure the General didn’t give it to you?”
“It was sent by fax,” said Zara, “from the SS Jannah.”
“Jannah,” said Hani. “What does that mean?”
“It means garden,” Zara said, puzzled. Hani had to know that.
“Garden.” Hani wrote the word in pen on a clean piece of paper. “So who do you think sent the picture?” She sounded like Raf at his most serious.
Zara blushed. “I thought it was the Khedive . . . But it could have been Avatar. I let him go in my place.” Which, like Raf at his most serious, couldn’t have been too popular with His Highness.
“Have you got the engraving?”
Zara nodded.
“Can I have a look?” Hani asked, once it became obvious that Zara intended to leave it at that. “It would be useful . . .”
“It’s . . .” Zara hunted for the right word. “Very rude.”
“So’s the angel,” said Hani, nodding to the bare-breasted woman with wings and a discreet drape of cloth across her broad, Victorian hips.
“This is ruder,” Zara said, but she went to get the picture anyway . . .
“Mmm,” said Hani. She did her best to sound grown-up, but the slight widening of her eyes and a growing grin gave away her shock. “She’s a spider.”
“That’s right.”
“A woman spider, bent over backward . . .” Hani flipped to the sheet underneath, nodding to herself; it showed the back, on which the General had written a brief note, plus the word Judecca.
Next Hani rechecked the titles of the books from which the pictures had been ripped.
“Paradiso, Purgatorio, Inferno . . .” The words went down on her sheet of paper one under the other. As an afterthought, Hani numbered them. She’d already found a book called Inferno on the shelves by the door. Sure enough, it had the flyleaf ripped out. Hani was as certain as anything that she’d also find vandalized books called Paradiso and Purgatorio, once she bothered to check.
Only here will you find peace. That was what the General had written on the back of the first picture. Paradise. Only here will you . . . It made sense. Hani copied the words onto her bit of paper and numbered it.
Taking Zara’s spider woman, she turned the weird picture over and wrote down Welcome to limbo. Having numbered this to match Purgatorio, she put At its centre hell is not hot directly underneath and numbered that as well.
Apollyon,Judecca and Cocytus came last.
She thought of drawing different-coloured lines to link the General’s comments to the names of the books, but it didn’t seem necessary. Instead, she drew a big exclamation mark under the list.
“Do you actually know what any of this means?” asked Zara.
“Not yet,” Hani admitted. “But I’ll let you know when I do.” Pushing the paper to one side, Hani scraped back her chair and tiptoed to the door, which she opened a fraction. Sudanese soldiers were coming and going in the hall. Mostly they seemed to be Raf’s guard. “The German’s arriving,” she told Zara. “He looks cross.”
Zara peered over Hani’s shoulder at the young German ambassador. “No,” she said, “what he looks is nervous . . .” Just then, Khartoum came into the hall and bowed to the visitor, ushering him through an open door. “That’s not the audience chamber,” said Zara.
“No,” said Hani, “it’s a waiting room. Now he’ll look cross.”
CHAPTER 43
25th October
“Coffee,” Raf suggested and the German youth in front of him winced; as Raf suspected he might. According to his file, the ambassador from Berlin loathed the stuff.
“In Iskandryia it’s traditional,” said Raf.
“Isn’t everything?” The ambassador’s voice was resigned. According to Koenig Pasha’s notes His Excellency Graf von Bismarck was nineteen. He looked younger, fourteen going on twelve, with the faintest trace of a blond moustache and long hair that flopped over one eye. The unflopped eye, startlingly blue, stared nervously at Raf whenever the ambassador thought Raf wasn’t looking.
Iskandryia was one of the most career-destroying posts on offer, particularly for someone who hated intrigue and coffee. And from what Raf could gather, Ernst von Bismarck had taken it only because his other alternative was marriage to some Schleswig-Holstein. It seemed the Graf wasn’t the marrying type.
“If not coffee,” said Raf, voice suddenly sympathetic, “then what?”
“Orange juice . . . If that’s possible.”
A clap of Raf’s hands brought not Khartoum but Hani. She’d changed from jeans into a dress at least one size too big. Unfortunately, she’d retained the silver Nike trainers.
“I’m Hani al-Mansur,” Hani announced, thrusting her hand at the startled ambassador. “He’s my uncle.”
“Where’s . . . ?” Raf began.
“Doing something,” said Hani firmly. “Whatever you want—I’ll get it.”
When the orange juice arrived it came on a tray complete with a silver bowl of pistachios, soft-skinned and bright green on the inside, two small brass pipes and a fingertip of sticky resin.
The German ambassador and Raf waited while Hani wi
thdrew. Only then did Raf notice a note folded neatly on the tray under his glass.
“A sweet child,” said the Graf.
Raf reread Hani’s scrawl, nodded doubtfully and pushed the note deep into his pocket. “Endlessly surprising,” he said and changed the subject. “You demanded a meeting . . . ?”
It seemed preposterous to call what was happening an audience, so Raf didn’t.
“Berlin wants . . .”
“I’m sure it does,” said Raf. “But first explain why your intelligence service has been waging war against Hamzah Effendi.” He stared at the boy, who put down his glass and went deep red.
Personally, Raf lacked the capacity for visible embarrassment, but then he’d had a lung deflated when he was six and a very minor blood-supply nerve to his face snipped where it ran between his second and third ribs. The surgeon went after the nerve through a tiny incision in his armpit.
“They haven’t . . .”
“Are you telling me the man pulled out of Lake Mareotis wasn’t Thiergarten. . . ?”
“You don’t know that he killed the first girl,” Ernst von B said hotly. “Whatever you’ve been saying.”
“What about the attack on the Casino Quitrimala?” said Raf. “Are you telling me the Thiergarten didn’t organize that?”
“That had nothing to do with us.”
“And I’m supposed to believe this?”
“You have my word,” Graf von Bismarck said stiffly. He looked as if he was getting ready to cry.
“But the man who died in the fire was German?”
The nod was slight enough to be almost invisible.
“Okay,” said Raf. “Just suppose some of your men have been turned . . . Who corrupted them?”
Needless to say, the Graf had no idea, although he immediately suggested Paris because Berlin always blamed Paris for everything.
“And the bomb?”
“My intelligence officers suggest the mujahadeen.” Von Bismarck looked hesitant. “But I’m not convinced the rebels have that level of sophistication.”
Raf reached behind his chair for a cardboard box and pulled out a thin tube the length of his arm, attached to a small wooden base. “Sophisticated it’s not,” he said, voice grim. “Effective, yes. You can buy most of the components from the nearest souk.”
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