That the huge hull had originally belonged to a Soviet factory ship was a fact remembered only by nautical fanatics, shipping enthusiasts, Koenig Pasha and Hani.
“Look!” The girl practically screamed the word.
“Hani!” Madame Syria was torn between outrage and undisguised fear that the governor’s niece might tumble over the edge to the marble floor far below.
“Look,” insisted Hani.
The chief librarian did what she was told, impressed despite herself. She’d only seen the SS Jannah once before, as a girl, when the trimaran from Iskandryia to Syracuse had throttled back to let its passengers watch as the great liner cruised by.
“We’ve got to tell Uncle Ashraf,” Hani shouted, already halfway down the first flight of stairs. “Really, we must . . .”
“Uncle . . .” No matter how often Madame Syria heard the child refer to the new governor of El Iskandryia by that name, it still seemed disrespectful. But then the child was his niece and a mesdame so . . .
Lady Hana bint-Abdullah al-Mansur, better known as Hani, hit the bottom of the stairs and grabbed the middle-aged woman by the hand, practically dragging her across the pink marble floor towards the exit.
“Paradise,” yelled Hani. “It’s almost here.” She’d shouted her message so often from the back of a calèche that her voice was now raw.
“What?”
“Paradise. The SS Jannah, ” said Hani, her face split in a grin. “It’s true. Go on, tell her,” Hani insisted, turning to Madame Syria. The librarian stared at Zara, then glanced over Zara’s shoulder to a study door opening beyond.
“Excellency,” she said hastily.
Ashraf Bey scowled. In the study behind him were St. Cloud, the Graf and Senator Liz, representing Paris, Berlin and Washington. All three had an opinion on the final sentencing of Effendi, all firmly held, all different. None of them wanted to give way on a single point. Everything, it seemed, but absolutely everything was a matter of principle.
Execution would play badly to the world’s press. So they wanted Raf to agree to life imprisonment at Ras el-Tin. And this was before a man had even been found guilty . . .
Hani slipped her hand from Madame Syria’s grasp, stepped politely but firmly around Zara, who was blocking her from Raf’s sight and stopped directly in front of her uncle.
“Solved it,” she told him, her voice little more than an intense whisper.
“Solved what?” Raf demanded.
“The riddle, obviously!” Hani’s face exploded into a grin, then that was gone, leaving Raf looking at a quiet, satisfied smile. This too vanished as Hani noticed something on the study table behind Raf.
“Baklava!” said Hani in a tone something between outrage and admiration. “You’ve got fresh baklava!” Without waiting to be invited, actually without appearing to notice Raf’s other guests at all, she slipped through the door and into his seat.
“Hani.”
Politeness said not to answer with her mouth full, so Hani waited.
“My niece,” Raf explained and watched three faces shift their attention from him to the small girl and back again.
“There’s a ship coming into harbour,” said Hani when her mouth was empty, which took a while because Hani ostentatiously chewed the mouthful thirty-two times, as her late Aunt Nafisa had instructed. “It’s the SS Jannah. ”
Tewfik Pasha had decided in advance what he intended to say and had prepared himself to overrule any objections. The talking box that Zara’s brother found in the bilges had proved invaluable on both counts. An atelier on board the SS Jannah had spent the previous twelve hours hand-stitching a second jacket to specifications so strict that the Khedive had rejected the first attempt as inadequate.
The coat was modelled on a jacket his father had worn when he married the Khedive’s mother, as seen on endless reruns of Lives of the Rich and Infamous. Cut from black silk and featuring minimal embellishment, the jacket’s only decoration had been a thin piping of gold around its high collar. Unfortunately, the current Khedive’s replica was both narrower across the shoulders and less tailored at the hips, although the atelier had worked hard to hide that fact.
At the suggestion of Colonel Abad, the Khedive had shaved away most of his beard, removing everything except the ghost of a goatee and the faintest trace of moustache. And, helped only by Avatar, he’d showered, dried himself and climbed into the immaculately sewn costume; because that’s what his new clothes were, a costume, the accretion of society’s ideas on how a Khedive should look.
On Tewfik Pasha’s head was a tarboosh. Over his heart was pinned a simple enamel-and-gold star. The order of the Imperial Crescent, first class. Even his choice of decoration carried a message. It was there to remind the waiting cameras that his ultimate allegiance (such as it was) went to Stambul.
And there would be cameras, dozens of them. That much was obvious from the myriad feeds he’d scanned as the SS Jannah steamed east towards El Iskandryia. A major city without electricity, without working computers, landlines, even cookers and cars. Its very nakedness drew the media like wasps to a honey trap. As the Khedive suspected his new governor intended it to . . .
Standing on deck with the injured Avatar slightly behind him, as protocol demanded, Mohammed Tewfik Pasha watched men the size of ants grab a stern rope and carry its giant loop to a waiting bollard. It took eight men to lift one rope and still they staggered under its weight.
When the rope was in place, a winch on the stern tightened, pulling the liner forward as a rope at the bow was loosened, removed from its bollard by another group of ants and carried forward, to be fixed around a bollard waiting up ahead. At which point the forward winch began to tighten. It was a laborious way to coax a liner along the edge of the Silsileh and perhaps there were easier ways to dock on Iskandryia’s great seawall, but this was the SS Jannah.
Stars, starlets and actual icons, whole galaxies of famous names were aboard. At least they were according to the Hello International. A panoply was the term they used. The reality was rather different. Late October/early November was definitely out of season and the constellation was confined to three minor genome-proteone heiresses, the elderly founder of LearningCurve GmB, two balding Bollywood lotharios, the Van der Bilt girl and him . . .
Ruler of a stricken city besieged on all sides by more-powerful nations who claimed to have only Isk’s best interests at heart. Nations who, according to all the newsfeeds, still demanded that he give up Iskandryia’s leading industrialist. And for what? To prove Isk was fit to join their nest of vipers.
Colonel Abad was right. It was an imposition too far.
Tewfik Pasha was scowling ferociously as he let an automated gangplank carry him down to the waiting dock, a fact that registered with everyone but him. He was too busy staring out over his silent city, looking beyond the crowded Corniche and the odd-angled pyramid of the bibliotheka to the green of Shallalat Gardens and a distant baroque palace that had, a century back, been the winning entry to the competition to design Iskandryia’s railway terminus.
His scowl had everything to do with coming home and the state of his city. Nothing at all to do with the sight of Zara bint-Hamzah standing near the bottom of the gangplank or the fact she gripped the hand of Ashraf Bey as if her life depended on it.
Or was that her father’s life?
“Your Highness,” she said, dropping Raf’s hand.
Tewfik Pasha nodded to the girl and let go his scowl. But even as he fumbled for something appropriate to say, Zara’s attention shifted away from him to her half brother and something passed between the two as silent as thought and swift as electricity. Only then did she notice Avatar’s injuries.
“I have a statement to make,” announced the Khedive loudly.
Camera crews surged. At least that was the appearance. What really happened was that the police cordon relaxed enough to let journalists flow through strategic gaps. They were getting good at that.
Cameras whirred, fla
shguns fired and questions were shouted.
And all the while the Khedive just stood there, counting down in his head from ten, elegant but slight in a simple black uniform. His face utterly impassive as the chaos broke around him. This was his version of courage. A refusal to engage immediately, to do from instinct what would please everyone else.
“You,” he said finally, reaching zero.
“Your Highness . . .” Having been chosen, the Englishwoman with the lacquered blonde hair appeared uncertain which question to ask first. Too many needed answering, half of them involving the huge vessel moored behind him.
“How did you . . . ?”
“I own the SS Jannah.”
She looked at him, the rest of her question already dead on her lips.
“It belonged to my father,” the Khedive said with a shrug. “Utopia Lines merely lease the vessel.” He could tell them how absurd he found this idea, that such an object should be owned by one person, but now didn’t seem to be the time. If possessing a ship was absurd, then how much more so to possess a city, even a broken one . . .
The journalist looked from the Khedive to the liner, then back again. A tiny camera hummed in the air a few feet above her head; one lens focused on her face, the other fixed on whatever she had in her sights. “Electricity,” she said as understanding suddenly lifted the frown from her face.
“You’re going to use the ship to power El Iskandryia.” Enough capacity to power a small city, she was pretty sure that was in the liner’s specifications somewhere.
“Power the city?”
It was a good idea, the Khedive was happy to admit that. But that wasn’t why the liner had made her first landfall in forty years.
“No,” he said. “Nothing so altruistic. After yesterday’s unprovoked attack on the liner, SS Jannah needs a refit.”
Instant anarchy. Just add . . .
Ignoring the explosion of questions, Tewfik Pasha examined the crowd, his eyes skipping bland and blind over Zara and Raf, until they finally fixed on the man for whom he’d been searching. The Soviet ambassador, Commissar Zukov.
“The attack was yesterday, at noon,” said the Khedive. “Eight men in a Mi-24x Hind gunship . . . A Soviet-made attack helicopter,” he added. Though for most of those gathered on the Silsileh, including Commissar Zukov, no clarification was necessary.
The Commissar was an elderly diplomat, waiting out his last years in a relatively unimportant post. And the Khedive had few illusions about the fact that Iskandryia was Zukov’s reward for a lifetime of doing exactly what he was told. In the man’s face, the Khedive could see panic and fear, but no guilt. Which was what the Khedive had expected.
“It’s possible the helicopter was stolen,” Tewfik Pasha admitted. But then pretty much anything was possible.
“They were terrorists?” The voice came from his right, a Frenchman.
“No,” said the Khedive, “they were jewel thieves . . .” He paused to let the crowd of journalists assimilate that fact. “At least, I assume that’s what they were. They certainly broke into the safe.”
“I thought the vault aboard SS Jannah was unbreakable?” The Englishwoman with the lacquered hair had refound her voice. And the hunger in her blue eyes told the Khedive exactly how this story was going to play.
“Nothing is unbreakable,” he said carefully.
“Particularly not to a safecracker with a thermal lance.” Avatar grinned, his voice street smart enough to suggest he knew all about things like that.
Flashguns fired.
No thermic lance had existed, but she wasn’t to know that and nor was anybody else. The helicopter had been kept. The bodies Tewfik Pasha had ordered tipped over the side. As far as the Khedive was concerned, the press could report that as burial at sea.
“Was there a battle?”
The Khedive thought about that one.
“There was a short skirmish,” he said finally, with an apologetic glance towards Avatar and his bandaged shoulder. “As you’d expect, security aboard the SS Jannah is excellent.” The Khedive’s lips twisted into a sour smile. Now he was beginning to sound like an advertisement for Utopia Lines.
“So the thieves were arrested?”
“No,” the Khedive said. “They came armed and they were killed.” His gaze took in the Commissar, von Bismarck, the American Senator and that old man from Paris whose title kept changing. “Except for two of them,” he added as an afterthought.
On cue, two burly crew members dragged the crippled Soviet girl down the walkway. Behind her staggered a small man, a revolver held to his cropped skull by a third crew member. Cameras fired, as the Khedive meant them to.
“Ashraf Bey.”
Raf stopped his whispered conversation with Zara and stepped forward. The bow he gave was slight, little more than a nod.
The Khedive raised his eyebrows. “I’m putting these two in your charge.”
“Highness,” said Raf, and raised a finger. One of his uniforms instantly broke away from holding back the crowd. “I’m transferring the prisoners to you,” Raf said. “Take them both to the Imperial Free . . . And you.” Raf looked round for Hakim. “Make sure they get full protection. And a doctor,” he added as an afterthought.
Protection from what Raf didn’t say.
“Excellency . . .”
Raf turned back to the excited huddle of journalists.
“What is going to happen with Monday’s trial?”
“In what way?”
“Will you continue as magister. . . Now that His Highness has returned?”
“No, he will not.” The Khedive’s answer was clear enough to reach the back of the waiting group. And even if it hadn’t been, there were enough floating cameras and mics aimed in his direction to carry his reply to the waiting world.
“From now on,” said the Khedive, “Ashraf Bey will be acting as city prosecutor . . .”
The gaze Raf met was unbending. A decision had been made publicly and was not to be broken. “After all,” Tewfik Pasha continued, “combating crime is a major part of any governor’s remit.”
“In that case, will you still be allowing Miss Quitrimala to represent her father?”
“What case?”
The English journalist didn’t seem able to answer.
The Khedive stroked his small beard, looking for the briefest moment exactly like his grandfather as a young man. “As magister I will accept anyone the defendant chooses to appoint,” he said carefully. “Although, in the circumstances, I would strongly recommend a trained lawyer.”
“But Quitrimala refuses to appoint his own defence . . . What’s more”—the Englishwoman’s voice was taut with the human drama of it all—“he categorically refuses to accept anyone appointed by the court.”
“Well,” said the Khedive, “that is his right.” For the first time since Tewfik Pasha appeared on the jetty, he looked straight at Zara.
Hani sighed.
CHAPTER 55
30th October
The corridor was painted a drab institutional beige. Along its edges the dirty plastic floor tiles curled up to allow the floor to be sluiced clean. A relic from the bad old days when this wing had housed the insane, the incontinent and the politically inconvenient.
Three states that often went together.
At least they did under the Khedive’s grandfather, after military doctors had finished their various forms of rehabilitation.
Raf moved quietly along its length, doing his best not to blink at the brightness bleeding in through windows opaque with grime. He wore no dark glasses and even five years’ worth of dust and spiderwebs was not enough to soften the light.
Hakim and Ahmed he’d left hanging in the Athinos café opposite the hospital’s front steps. Not very willingly Raf had to admit, but he’d overruled them with alarming casualness before making his way unannounced into the ugly concrete building. Along with the two guards, he’d left Eduardo, who was still in shock at discovering that “the man,�
� as he insisted on calling Raf, was governor of Iskandryia.
The façade of the Imperial Free had a preservation order on it, as did all the buildings that fronted the Western Harbour. The view from the sea was so famous that, years back, Koenig Pasha had decreed the skyline could not be changed.
When Raf had first arrived, the security guard inside the main door was watching Ferdie Abdullah, his eyes glued to a public screen, like somebody recently denied one of life’s basic necessities. If he noticed the scowling young man with the flowers and Dynamo cap, he thought no more about it.
Raf had returned the nod of a passing porter who was vaguely aware of having seen the visitor somewhere before, probably the last time the Dynamo fan came to see whoever he came to see. His fiancée from the size of that bouquet. No sane man would waste so much money on his wife.
Reaching the lifts, Raf had punched a button at random. He got out at obstetrics and took a different lift down two floors, got out again and used the emergency stairs to climb back past obstetrics to the deserted wards above. From there he walked the length of a corridor, until it ended at a large window.
Defenestration.
An ornate word for an ugly threat; but there were less messy ways to achieve what Raf wanted . . . Pulling a tiny voice recorder out of his pocket, he checked that it was fully charged and working, then slipped it back into the battered leather jacket he’d borrowed from Eduardo.
Raf didn’t really need to check the machine, since the Braun was brand-new and came from a boutique on the SS Jannah. He was just putting off what came next. And he already had the key code for the door in front of him. He’d got that from Hakim, who’d been guarding the impromptu prison cell when he got Raf’s order to meet him in the loading bay behind Athinos.
And since the consultant had already made his rounds for the day and, other than Professor Mahrouf, only Ahmed and Hakim had authority to enter the cell, it was Hakim or Ahmed that the Soviet girl expected.
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