*
STILL in his whites, Moustapha Al-Sekem scowled behind the slats of the Venetian blinds in his office window. No-one beat Moustapha Al-Sekem, especially not this boy, this guttersnipe, this sometime hand-whore, a glue-sniffer, a corrupter and recruiter of boys for the network, a child with no morals, a child with no scruples. He was little more than a beast. He did not deserve to live. The profile which lay on his desk told him everything about Hisham Mahmoud and Al-Sekem hated him. His home was soiled by him. Everything he had worn would be burned. They had accumulated over the years. They had belonged to other boys who had passed through the villa anyway. There had been several. Most were boring, one or two were awful, but not one had been as skin-crawlingly, slimily repulsive as Hisham Mahmoud.
He glared over the rim of his arak glass to where the boy was engaged in an earnest conversation with the Georgian whore. No doubt he was telling the tale of the head in the fridge. Al-Sekem had watched the film of the kid chucking up without any real emotion. Uthman, by contrast, had gurgled with joy but something troubled Al-Sekem, niggled him, nagged at him, like a persistent itch. It was not just that Hisham's voice was nothing like as good as Talal Hafez had led him to believe, more cluster of cats than choir of angels, nor his sporting talents, nor even his appearance, those stupidly sensitive features and full lips, that stupid thick hair, those stupid thick eyebrows, those stupid cheeks that, when he smiled, plumped up like a squirrel chomping nuts, those fat little ear-lobes, that stupid olive-shaped face – God, how he hated him! – it was the easy, breezy confidence bordering on arrogant yet watchful disdain that grated so much. He was fifteen. Al-Sekem drank. He hated Katya Kinkhladze too.
He had picked her up on a rare trip to Amman. She had been drinking coffee in Books @ Café in Rainbow Street. Al-Sekem had concluded his business at the Wild Jordan Centre, a lucrative contract for supplying photovoltaic panels to its hotels in Dana. She had the cheap looks, sensual body and willing mouth that Al-Sekem suspected boys would find attractive. She had left Georgia the previous summer following the brief but bloody war with Russia, was studying Arabic at the University of Jordan and running short of funds so for a stack of cash and a luxurious life-style she had suspended her studies and accompanied him back to Ajloun as his live-in hostess, entertaining his guests and being seen on his arm. He felt nothing towards her, not even when she danced for him, insinuating her naked legs round the silver pole and jangling her butt-cheeks. She was, like the boy, merely another piece of disposable meat who would be dead in a couple of days when Al-Sekem would create a new identity in a country that would both appreciate and reward his considerable talents and audacious vision.
Finishing his drink, he was suddenly disturbed by a presence in the doorway, a guard who was gripping a teenaged boy above the elbow. The unresisting, uncomplaining boy was dressed in dirty olive joggers and a frayed, stained, beige T-shirt. His naked feet were filthy. He stank of poverty, deprivation and desperation. A filthy, blood-stained bandage was wrapped loosely round his left hand.
''We found him climbing over the compound wall,'' explained the guard. ''He says he is Hisham Mahmoud from Damascus and is a special delivery from Talal Hafez.''
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