Arabesk (62 page)

“Is that all?” Most days, even Sundays, he had several dozen backed up and waiting not to be answered.

“Three you need to deal with, Excellency,” said the girl, as she carefully poured a tiny brass cup of coffee. He thought her name was Natacha Something. The fox had spotted her coming out of an interview room carrying papers and got Raf to ask someone her name.

Quite why, Raf still wasn’t sure; except that the girl had deep eyes, skin the colour of dry chamois and a body toned from evenings spent in an expensive gym. But what both he and the fox had really noticed, on their first glance down the corridor, was long dark hair, falling to her narrow hips. Utterly straight and midnight black.

Next time Raf had seen her, the girl was opening the door of his office for him and handing him a coffee and that morning’s crime sheet. Someone, somewhere in the precinct had translated his casual enquiry into the fact he wanted the girl as his new PA. So now she handled his post, made him coffee, kept his diary and did other stuff he knew less than nothing about, all the while watching him nervously from the corner of her eye.

Wondering when I’m going to proposition her probably, Raf thought with a sigh.

“Trouble, Your Excellency?”

Raf looked up. She was…

“How old are you?”

Natacha blushed. “Eighteen, Excellency.”

And now working for the new Chief of Detectives, even if she had fallen into that job by accident. No doubt she dressed carefully outside the office, but in here she wore black jeans and a white cotton blouse, black leather shoes with lowish heels and matching belt. The neck button of her blouse was unfastened and her sleeves folded back, like in the magazines, to make it obvious that she was ready to work hard.

A year ago, from what Raf gathered, those bare wrists would have been fine. Now they were only just acceptable. A year from now, dressed like that, she might well be breaking some official code. Of course, a year from now she could be unemployable in any office in the city, just on the basis of her gender.

“What are the important calls?” Raf’s voice was more abrupt than he intended and he could see the girl try to work out exactly what she’d done to offend him.

“Hamzah Effendi was the first. Then his daughter Zara.” The girl paused. “She left a new number. Apparently she’d had the old one changed and forgotten to tell you.” Was there an element of disapproval in that face?

Raf thought that, on balance, there might be…

“And the third?” he asked gently.

“The General.”

Just what he needed. Raf glanced at the report open on his screen. Stomach ripped, heart and lungs missing, slashed stops to the long strokes of the cross, the initials
H.Q.
cut into her wrist… It was getting so Raf could recite the litany of wounds in his sleep. Only sleep wasn’t currently an option. Not if it meant letting the fox disappear again.

“Tell them all I’ve gone to breakfast,” said Raf. “That is, should they call back.”

Natacha’s shock almost made him smile. Hamzah Quitrimala was rich and everyone in Iskandryia knew Raf had been meant to marry Zara. But the girl’s horror was reserved for the fact that he might refuse to jump when the General ordered. Koenig Pasha’s main advantage was that no one dared underestimate his power, with the result that the old man barely had to use it.

“Just tell them,” said Raf.

Felix’s old Cadillac sat in the fat man’s bay. That is, the sign still read
FELIX ABRINSKY
,
CHIEF OF DETECTIVES
because the paperwork needed to change the sign was sitting on Raf’s desk awaiting his signature. Since Raf wasn’t too sure about sticking with the job, he’d been ignoring the forms. And besides, he got some weird kick out of seeing the sign still there. Like Felix was about to come shambling out of the lift onto the garage level and head for his car, trailing whisky fumes, litter and bad advice.

17th October

The arms were those of El Iskandryia, their use on a pennant
restricted to the governor, though almost anyone on Rue Missala would have announced confidently that the flag was that of Koenig Pasha himself, such was the immutable link in most people’s minds between the General and their city.

The last time Raf had seen the young officer at the Bentley’s wheel was months back, the day Raf arrived at Iskandryia’s airport. At the time, Raf was being bumped up a chain of command like the problem he was.

“…sef,”
said a whisper in Raf’s head.

“Captain Yousef.” Raf offered his hand.

The man looked pleased to be remembered but slightly embarrassed all the same. “Major Yousef, Excellency. I’ve been promoted.”

“Congratulations. For services rendered…?”

Major Yousef looked more embarrassed still. He obviously didn’t think it was appropriate to explain what Raf already knew. The major had come to the General’s attention by refusing to take responsibility for deporting Ashraf Bey as an undesirable and been promoted because this turned out to be a wise decision…the fact this promotion had been over the head of older men, including a senior captain the General disliked intensely was, of course, not to be mentioned.

“Coffee?” Raf asked, as Le Trianon’s headwaiter materialized from within the café. “Or perhaps mint tea?”

“Neither, I’m afraid, Your Excellency.” The major nodded towards the waiting Bentley. “You’re expected.”

“The General…?” Raf did his best to look surprised.

Major Yousef nodded. “There’s been another murder. A dead American. But apparently Your Excellency already knows that…” Gesturing towards Raf’s Cadillac, parked on the pavement where the fat man used to park, he added, “I’ll have someone bring your car.”

At the oak door to the mansion in Shallalat Gardens, Raf was met by a young boy who glanced once at the Chief of Detectives’ haggard face, raised his eyebrows and nodded towards a door behind him.

“He’s in there…”

The boy paused, as if he intended saying more, then shrugged, mostly it seemed to himself.

“I know,” said Raf tiredly, “he’s upset.”

“Upset.”
His Highness Mohammed Tewfik Pasha, Khedive of El Iskandryia and also ruler of Egypt, at least in name, stopped dead. “Upset,” he said, staring at Raf with large eyes. “Upset doesn’t cover half of it… Oh yes.” The boy paused, remembering something else. “And apparently he knows the truth about your origins.”

Raf hammered on the study door, waited for a couple of seconds, then hammered again. Instead of hitting it a third time, he straightened his shoulders and walked into the governor’s office, only to find the small room deserted.

Panelling, mirrors and a floor of white marble, all that came as no surprise. Every high-ranking office in El Iskandryia seemed kitted out with variations on ersatz European, although Islamicist mosaic did at least replace wood panelling in some. What was surprising was a new oil painting taking up most of one wall, its brushwork bright and its heavy gilt frame positively pristine.

In it, the boy who’d met Raf at the front door wore a bottle-green uniform with three gold loops of braid knotted around each wrist. Other than that, and a thin gold stripe down each side of his trousers, the uniform was bare apart from star and crescent badges either side of its high collar.

At the boy’s side hung a simple sabre, with a single gold knot on a double length of braid. On his head was a red fez.

“Dressed like some
mutahfiz
…”

Which wasn’t a word Raf recognized, though it was obvious from the voice behind him that it wasn’t a compliment.

“…and now apparently you want to lose him his city.” The old man stood swaying at the French windows, white knuckles gripping the top of a Malacca cane. Over his shoulder Raf could see a preternaturally green garden of monkey puzzle, rhododendron, bronze statues and tightly clipped box hedges.

“Having a bad day?” Raf asked.

Eyes dark as any storm glared back at him.

Olive trees. Red earth. A boy falling backward, face shocked.

Raf blinked.

“Afraid?” demanded the General.

“Always,” said Raf.

The old man looked surprised at that. “Of what… Me?”

Raf shook his head. “Not just of you, of everything. Waking up/falling asleep. Looking in the mirror. Losing a bit of me I’m not even sure exists.”

“The usual…” The old man nodded and absentmindedly put his brandy balloon on the immaculately polished surface of an antique desk, creating a ring. That was how Raf knew Iskandryia’s most famous teetotaller really was drunk. “The condition of life,” said the General. “We live, we die. In between we’re afraid to admit we’re afraid. You know the real definition of courage?”

“There are dozens,” said Raf, picking up the General’s glass and wiping the desk with his sleeve. “Most of them contradictory.” He swirled the cognac until it coated the inside of the glass, then watched the pale liquid break into rivulets.

“…
egs,”
said the fox.
“…gn of a good VSOP.”
Raf could remember being told about
legs
by one of his mother’s lovers, the Animal Channel producer probably. Speaking to the boy about brandy while really trying to impress a drunk obsessive, being too stupid to realize the only thing likely to impress Raf’s mother was money to fund her films.

“What…?” Raf looked at the General who stood waiting.

“My definition of courage,” said the old man. “You know it?”

“Dying well?”

“Acting as if you believe, even when you don’t.”

“Same thing,” said Raf as he put down the General’s glass, this time on top of a folded paper that sat on the desk between them.

A fuzzy picture showed a missing teenager, her long blonde hair uncovered as she stood grinning on a street corner in some city that wasn’t El Iskandryia… Paris, maybe, judging from a sugary white basilica behind her.

What little text there was screamed its certainty that this girl was the butcher’s most recent victim. No underlined links pretended to go somewhere, because
Saiyidi
wasn’t downloaded from a news vendor. It was run off an old-fashioned press in a cellar somewhere in Karmous and read by those without paid access to newsfeeds or money for vendors. The same kind of urban poor who listened to pirate stations and recognized souk rumour for the truth it was.

“You promised me the killer was already dead.”

“She is…”

“She?”
Koening Pasha raised his eyebrows at the pronoun. “Whoever told you that was wrong. Sack your informant.”

“No one told me,” Raf said crossly. “The woman’s dead. I killed her.”

“So who did it this time?” demanded the General. “Her ghost?” His laugh was bitter, tired also. “Drink,” he said.

Raf shook his head, then realized that wasn’t an invitation but an order. Glancing round, he found a large bottle of Hine sitting on a semicircular marble table, balanced on top of a fat pile of intelligence reports.

Half the cognac was gone and its cork was missing. Raf was still looking round for a glass when the General grunted with irritation.

“Not you, idiot, me…” He held out his brandy balloon while Raf filled it halfway to the top. Then, turning unsteadily towards the French windows, the old man stamped back into his garden, not bothering to check that Raf was ready to follow.

Which he very definitely wasn’t. Raf was too busy skimming an intelligence report, the one under the bottle. It was concise, factual and loaded. According to some second attaché at the temporary Consulate in Seattle, a local triad, represented by a button man named Wild Boy, was offering $1,000,000 for news of someone known as ZeeZee. The man had been tracked to an Ottoman Airways flight bound for Zanzibar. Unfortunately, enquiries at the Ottoman Airways office in SeaTac/Seattle had failed to identify the name under which ZeeZee had travelled or whether his journey had been broken en route.

What was known, was that the man had travelled on a diplomatic passport, probably issued by Stambul. Though, regretfully, the woman on the check-in desk had not actually looked inside.

“Remind you of anyone?”

Raf looked up to find the Khedive standing in the hall doorway, face quizzical.

“No,” said Raf. “Afraid not.”

The boy smiled. “Me neither.”

Under the biggest cypress tree was an ornate bench. Between the cast-iron bench and a nearby oak stood a rain-streaked statue slightly taller than Raf. The statue showed a rudimentary metal tree with a naked girl falling headlong between its stark branches.

“Pike sverer mellom grenene,”
said the General. “Gustav Vigeland—1907. You know what it represents?”

Eyes wide, mouth open, small fists clenched. Raf could take a reasonable guess. But the General got there first, answering his own question as if he’d been the one asked.

“Whatever you want it to represent… So the next question,” said the General, “is who decides exactly what
we
represent…?”

He didn’t wait for the answer to that either.

“Because I don’t and you sure as hell don’t…” The old man raised his brandy balloon and suddenly the dark eyes that stared at Raf over the top of the glass were anything but drunk.

“The city decides.”

Raf thought he should do something about now, so he nodded.

“You’ve probably heard them all. Isk the whore and Isk the virgin. The city of glass. Solid and ephemeral, transient and timeless. The city within the city. Every cliché from every guidebook. The old man used the analogy of a card house as belief…”

Koenig Pasha was talking about the Khedive’s father, Raf realized. The man who sat for fifteen years in a small teahouse on an island off El Muntaza, which was how long it took him to die. The teahouse became his bed, the island his ward and the Haremlik across its narrow bridge became his hospital, filled with specialists from around the world.

“And he stole the card-as-belief metaphor from his father… An old-fashioned, outdated man.” The General’s voice was uncharacteristically bitter. “But one who was nonetheless intelligent.”

Seeing the blank look on Raf’s thin face, the General began to explain himself, his long fingers and narrow wrists twitching as he mimicked adding and subtracting playing cards to a card house that wasn’t there.