Arabesk (114 page)

Hani nodded. “Zara’s brother has a pirate station,” she said. “But Avatar only has to change every week.”

“Whose’s Zara?”

“My uncle’s mistress,” said Hani, then stared in bewilderment at the elderly NCO who suddenly broke into a coughing fit.

“The AN want to overthrow the government,” Murad said. “But they didn’t try to kill my father.” A tremble in his voice was the first sign Raf had sensed that the boy was not nearly as composed as he wanted to appear.

“I thought you said you were in the government?” Hani sounded puzzled.

“Minister for Education,” Murad agreed. “Also for archaeology. Kashif’s everything else apart from bioscience and technology. The Emir kept those for himself.”

“Did you see the attack?” Raf demanded.

Murad nodded. “We were there,” he said. “I was invited and Hani invited herself. We sat next to Kashif Pasha as it happened.”

“When
what
happened?” Raf asked.

“Someone tried to shoot the Emir,” said Hani. “Eugenie died saving him. And two guards, a Sufi and a musician. Now everyone’s arguing about…”

“Who tried?”

Hani paused. She’d got older without him noticing, Raf realized. More confident. A little bit taller. He tried to remember back to that age and couldn’t.

“Well,” said Murad, “there was this waiter.”

“You can’t go in there.” The birdlike woman was out of her seat before Raf got halfway to the door of Kashif Pasha’s inner office.

“Tell me about it,” Raf said tiredly. People telling him where he couldn’t go was getting to be something of a refrain. He kept walking and the woman dropped her hand, as if she’d somehow just scalded her fingers on the cloth of his sleeve.

Used to wielding power but resigned to it always belonging to someone else, the woman fell back on formality. “Can I ask if you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need one,” said Raf. “Police business.” He pulled a leather cardholder from his pocket and flipped it open, flashing an identity card he’d taken off Kashif’s unconscious soldier. It was shut again before her eyes even had time to focus.

“Well, he’s not here.” The woman’s hair beneath her scarf was thinning and deep lines slashed down both sides of a thin mouth. The world had not been kind to her. “So you’ll still have to come back.”

“Even better,” said Raf, hand already turning an enamel door knob. “That gives me a chance to search his office.”

“You can’t…”

“What’s your name?” Raf asked her.

“Leila el-Hasan. I’m the pasha’s private secretary.”

“Get yourself another job then,” Raf told her, not unkindly, and shut Kashif’s door behind him, shooting its bolt.

The décor could go either way. High Arabesque, which got called Moorish in guidebooks, or ersatz European, which usually meant oak panels, dark furniture and oil paintings. Those were the default options when it came to North African government buildings. There was a third alternative, of course. Seattle Blond was what you got if you fed old Scandinavian through late-period Edo, but pale kelims and steam-shaped ash was never going to be Kashif Pasha’s thing.

What Raf found was High Arabesque. An office centred around an alabaster fountain so massive that this bit of the Bardo had to be last century despite the obvious antiquity of the horseshoe arch surrounding its door. No floor underpinned with anything but steel could have supported that weight. Beyond the fountain began carpets, large and probably priceless; obscured by a faded leather ottoman and a couple of wing chairs. And against the farthest wall, beneath a window so vast it needed sandstone pillars down the middle to support it, stood an office desk, notable only for its ordinariness.

Raf read the subtext in a single glance. Look at the magnificence imposed upon me by birth. Notice how modest my own expectations. Contrast the two and be aware of my modernity. And it must work, because half of Europe regarded Kashif Pasha as Ifriqiya’s up-and-coming saviour.

The only thing missing from the room was a portrait of the Emir and it didn’t take a man of Raf’s talents to read that. Although he read the subtext below the subtext, that suggested that while Kashif was ambitious he lacked advisers to help him plan his moves with subtlety.

But then lack of subtlety was never a problem when dealing with Paris, Washington or Berlin. Particularly Berlin.

None of Kashif’s desk drawers were locked. Which either said look how open I am, or else, so great is my power no locks are needed to protect my privacy. Alternatively it might have been because there was nothing in the desk of the slightest significance.

No state papers or smoking gun. Not even a bottle of Jim Beam or a
Hustler
imported under diplomatic seal. Mind you, Raf had expected little less. He’d visited Kashif’s office for one reason only: to rattle a few bars and see what tried to bite.

And to judge from the hammering at the door he was about to find out.

Opening the door was one option; letting whoever was on the other side smash apart original ninth-century panels was another.

“Wait,” Raf ordered, voice hard.

On the other side of the antique door the hammering ceased.

Raf took his time to walk across the office, but then, given the size of Kashif Pasha’s room, this was not unreasonable.

“Right,” said Raf, slipping back the bolt. “It’s open.”

Two men in bottle-green uniforms came tumbling into the room. They had heavy moustaches, light stubble and hard glares. One glance at the glowering pasha behind them showed where that look originated.

“Up against the wall,” the thinner of the two barked. “Now.”

Raf shook his head. “You can go,” he told the man. “Take your fat friend and shut the door. I want to talk to my brother.” That got their attention. Got the attention of Kashif Pasha as well.

Ashraf Bey stepped forward and held out his hand. “This won’t take long,” he told Kashif Pasha. “I need to ask a few questions about last night’s shooting.”

“You need…” Despite himself, Kashif Pasha’s eyes slid to the
chelengk
recently pinned to Raf’s lapel. Such exalted signs of Stambul’s favour were rare. Given only to victors in battle and those who had rendered personal service to the Ottoman throne.

“Who are you?”

“Ashraf al-Mansur,” said Raf, letting his hand drop. “Acting on behalf of the Emir.” Which was almost true. He’d been asked to act by Eugenie, who’d led him to believe that this was the Emir’s suggestion. Close enough to count. He shrugged. “I thought you’d like to be first,” said Raf. “Before I track down your guests.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Kashif Pasha crossly. “Everyone who should be has already been pulled in for questioning. My men were arresting people all last night.”

“Everyone who should be…?” Raf raised his eyebrows.

Kashif Pasha’s nod was abrupt. Furious.

“So you’ve questioned the Marquis de St. Cloud?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kashif’s fingers were knotted into fists. Although Raf doubted if the man even realized that. “The Marquis is a personal friend.”

“How about Senator Malakoff? Ambassador Radek?” Raf was enjoying himself. “Or are you carefully ignoring anyone important…”

A crowd had gathered in the outer office and through the door he could see Kashif Pasha’s secretary, her face twisting with anxiety as a man in a grey suit attempted to comfort her. Behind them hovered a handful of clerks.

This was exactly what Raf had needed most, an audience.

“So,” said Raf, “why haven’t you questioned the Marquis?”

“What are you suggesting?”
Kashif Pasha stepped in close, like someone facing down an enemy but Raf knew different. Once, longer ago than he remembered, a Rasta on remand in the same jail as him had explained about clinches. They were where weak fighters hid when seeking protection, nothing more.

“I don’t know,” said Raf. “Why don’t you tell me.”

Wednesday 2nd March

“Why did Kashif’s soldiers walk you to the car?” There
was something in Murad’s voice that said he’d been mulling over this question for most of the trip. Which he had. He’d been trying to decide if asking it would be rude.

“No idea,” said Raf and pulled the borrowed Bugatti into a parking space in front of the farmhouse and cut the engine.

Behind him Hani snorted but Raf ignored her. He was too busy watching Murad in the rearview mirror. Everything from eye colour to skin hue was different. The boy had narrower shoulders than Raf. A softer face. And thick dark hair instead of the fine ash blond that made Raf so visible. But there was something lost in his face, the same closed-down expression and the boy even chewed his lip in the same way.

Only Raf’s squint was missing. His habitual reaction to trying to see without shades. Those had come later, after the second round of operations in Zurich. Besides, the dark glasses were meant to be a temporary fix, Raf could remember being told that.

“You okay?” he asked the boy.

“Sure.” Murad shrugged. “Why not?” And in a way Murad was telling the truth. For a twelve-year-old who’d recently seen four people murdered he was doing fine, especially as one of them was a woman he’d known all his life. Opening the Bugatti door, Murad stepped out onto gravel. It was the only way he could avoid more questions…

“You know,” Raf told Fleur Gide, stepping through the front door, “my brother thinks Berlin turned that Sufi.”

“Berlin, Your Highness?” Major Gide looked genuinely shocked. “I assumed it was Washington or Paris.”

She’d been the one to take the decision to let the Bugatti through the gate. A responsibility that fell to her as Eugenie’s temporary replacement. Fleur Gide was as ambitious as the next special forces officer but this was one promotion she would happily have done without.

“Someone turned him, you agree?” said Raf. “And you don’t have to call me Highness. I’m an Excellency at the most. If that…”

The newly promoted officer nodded doubtfully.

“Word on the street has the Sufi working for Kashif Pasha,” Raf said. “Only that’s wrong. Well, it is according to my brother.”

Mentioning that the nearest he’d got to checking the word on the street was listening in while Murad Pasha scanned a dozen pirate stations seemed inappropriate. A twelve-year-old princeling lacked something as an information source when dealing with Ifriqiya’s new head of intelligence, temporary or not.

Rough flagstones covered a hall that made do without carpets. On the walls, sporting prints showed stags at bay and scenes from a duck shoot. There was a fireplace, carved from granite and featuring an ornate coat of arms with two of the quarterings themselves showing quarterings. Above the mantel hung a simple mirror while flames danced in the hearth below, filling the ground floor of Eugenie’s old house with the scent of burning pinecones.

A thickset, bejewelled woman stood in front of Raf and refused even to glance at the prints on the walls. Only a boar’s head mounted onto a mahogany shield with the date 1908 engraved onto an ornate silver label below drew any reaction. Lady Maryam shuddered every time she accidentally turned in that direction.

“I came because duty demanded it,” Lady Maryam said heavily. And Raf knew he was being warned not to judge her by the objects to be found in the house.

“Sometimes,” said Raf, “that’s all you can do.”

He’d heard the other version. The one where Major Gide bundled the Emir into a car to get him to safety. Only to have Lady Maryam clamber in the other side and refuse to budge. What upset Major Gide most was her certain knowledge that Eugenie would have had no hesitation about dragging the sullen overweight princess from the car and leaving her in the courtyard. And that was before factoring in the Emir’s fury that she’d allowed Lady Maryam to travel with them while leaving Murad, his favourite son, behind.

“Wait here,” said Lady Maryam, “while I see if my husband is awake.”

Tracking her footsteps across flagstones, Raf followed them up a flight of stairs and across bare boards. The knock at a distant door was surprisingly gentle.

A creak of hinges died when the door shut, leaving Raf with a waterfall of near silences, none of them significant because they were not what Raf listened for. Below the clatter of dishes on a work surface and the small-arms pop of water pipes stretching, he heard the rustle of wind through a pine tree beyond the window. The wings of an owl. Slow and methodical. And under this the claws of a rat scurrying across the gravel at the front of the farmhouse where Major Gide’s guards patrolled creaking gates. Falling through silences, one at a time. Hyperreal…

“Uncle Ashraf!”

Ashraf Bey came awake to find himself watched by Hani, Murad and Lady Maryam. There was one other person present. A thin man with swept-back grey hair and blue eyes above a hawk nose that had once been broken. A day’s worth of white stubble only heightened the hollowness of his cheeks. And he leant heavily on a stick. All the same, there was a ferocious intensity to his gaze; as if he burned with fever or was some celestial body in its final stage of immolation.

“So you’re Sally’s child…” The Emir’s smile was sad. “You know,” he said, “she told me you died. And then you turn up all those years later in El Iskandryia. I wouldn’t have believed it without seeing you.”

The hand that shook Raf’s own was hot, dry like paper, the bones beneath the age-bruised skin weak as twigs. Even the slight grip Raf gave was enough to make the old man wince. There’d been a dozen things Raf had always wanted to say to his father and none of them seemed appropriate.

What the man opposite felt, Raf found hard to tell.

“Don’t you
want
to talk to each other?” Hani demanded.

“It can wait,” said the Emir. “What are a few minutes after this long?”

When the old man walked, it was slowly, leaning heavily on his stick. And at every change of level Murad Pasha positioned himself at the Emir’s side so the old man could reach out and steady himself. A fact Lady Maryam obviously hated, to judge from the sourness of her expression.

Although that could also have been down to the Emir’s refusal to admit she even existed. She might as well have been a trophy mounted on the wall since she obviously created in him the disquiet that the boar’s head seemed to inspire in her.