Arabesk (76 page)

27th October

“Hani al-Mansur…” The child answered her mobile at
the first ring, voice extra polite. “Can I ask who’s calling…?”

Her Nokia was one of only a dozen let into El Iskandryia on special licence from the governor, who turned out to be the person on the other end of the call. She had to ask who it was because these cell phones were analogue, very stupid ones without the option of vision.

For some reason, Ashraf had been most insistent about the analogue bit.

Their conversation was short. “Yes,” said Hani, “Ifritah’s fine. She’s here with me and I’m really pleased to see her.”

She listened to Uncle Ashraf’s next question and sucked her teeth, but not that crossly. “Yes… I’ve had supper and I’m ready for bed. No, you don’t need to collect me in the morning. Donna’s going to the market. I’ll walk in with her…”

At the next question, Hani groaned theatrically. “Yes,” she said. “You are fussing. That’s your job.” She listened to Uncle Ashraf’s good-nights, added her own and went back to the keyboard of the
bibliotheka
’s only working Web connection.

“I’m back,” she announced quietly.

“About time,” said Avatar.

He owed Raf a life. Hani hadn’t needed to remind him of that but she did anyway… Then apologized. Only to decide that she didn’t need to apologize because it was true. After that, she asked him some weird questions about whether Zara now wanted to marry Raf.

The rest of it Avatar didn’t understand and Hani had given up trying to explain. He got the bit about him forwarding on the spider fax to Zara. Things imploded at the point when Hani added the spider fax to an angel and a wounded man and came up with the fact that hell was cold, purgatory was water-bound and he knew heaven better as the SS
Jannah
.

It was only the fact that Hani swore she’d been told this by the General that made Avatar believe any of it was true. So now, at Hani’s insistence, he was looking for the ninth level of hell, otherwise known as
Cocytus
.

Needless to say, it wasn’t on any of the numerous wall maps dotted around the corridors and stairways of the SS
Jannah
…

The rucksack slung on Avatar’s shoulder was heavy and awkward. What was worse, it clanked every time he brushed against a wall, which was often. Those were its bad points. On the plus side, it contained rope, pepper spray and several cans of Coke.

“Guard.” Hani’s voice in his earbead was matter-of-fact, unhurried.

“Yeah, seen him.” Avatar stepped backward into a recess, out of the guard’s line of sight and out of his line of fire as well. There were two men, one in a suit, the other dressed in bell bottoms and white top, a black silk folded neatly around his muscular neck. Avatar knew this was a guard, not a crewman, by the gun he carried.

Dminus4 was off-limits to civilians; guests in the parlance of the SS
Jannah
… The official reason was that Dminus4 housed the vaults of Hong Kong Suisse, the liner’s official bank.
Welcome Aboard,
the induction film for the SS
Jannah,
described the vault as made from weapons-grade steel with a single time-coded, iris-specific door and reassuringly thick walls. From what Hani had said, it was a perfectly ordinary floor-to-ceiling blockhouse with a boringly ordinary lock.

But then why not? Everything except gambling chips for the casino was included in the overall and frighteningly extortionate price; the only real valuables brought on board by guests, their papers and jewellery, were kept secure in individual safes that came with each cabin. The heistproof vault was a sop to tradition, only there by repute.

“Clear now.”

“Yeah.”

Avatar stepped out of his hiding place and checked both ways along the corridor. He was in plain sight of at least three CCTV cameras but those didn’t worry him, everywhere on board was in sight of cameras. Nothing obvious, mind you. At least not on the guest levels. No little robot lenses to twist their heads as one walked from room to room. Most of the guest-level cameras used little pin lenses embedded into the walls and linked to some gizmo running visual-recognition software.

Quite how Hani had spliced herself in to them Avatar had no idea. Something to do with a handshake, according to the kid. And it was a clean connection, although there was a tiny time lag between them, defined not by the miles between SS
Jannah
and El Iskandryia but by how long it took to bounce data packets off a comsat slung somewhere over Sao Tomé.

“How long we got left?”

“About thirty minutes,” said Hani.

“There wasn’t another battery?”

“Dead.” The kid’s voice was resigned. So resigned that Avatar had trouble working out if Hani was seriously chilled or just having trouble getting her head round how bad things actually were.

When Hani had first called Avatar, she asked if he wanted her to fix a voice connection to Zara, so he could check what Hani said. He’d thought about it for all of a second and rejected the idea. He believed what she’d told him about how bad things were looking for his old man.

“There should be a door at the end of this corridor…”

“Locked,” said Avatar.

“How do you know?”

“I’m guessing.”

“Try it anyway.”

Sighing, Avatar crab-walked swiftly towards the heavy door, his back to the wall and the revolver he’d stolen from the Khedive’s cabin held upright, combat style.

Avatar was doing his very best not to rush things but there was an ache behind his eyes and a hollow in his gut where his stomach should be. Since he regularly went a week on two kebabs and three lines of sulphate, the hollowness had to be fear rather than hunger. Not a good feeling.

The door wasn’t just locked. Someone had welded it shut with a splatter gun. Cold drops of solder beading the edge of its frame like metal tears.

“They’re coming back!” Hani’s warning came seconds ahead of footsteps echoing along a corridor.

“Come on,” Hani said. “Hide…”

Avatar shook his head, then realized the kid wouldn’t pick up his gesture on her monitor. She’d be too busy watching the guards. “Which way are they headed?”

“Towards the lifts,” said Hani, her voice tight.

“Good.” Avatar meant the comment for himself, but the kid picked it up anyway from one of the wall mics or something equally scary. Avatar’s relationship with machines was confined to his mixing decks, and he liked those dumb and pliable.

“Avatar…”

“Yeah, okay, I can see them now.”

They were jiving between themselves, some joke about a v’ Actor on the third deck. Their laughter was not cruel, just barbed, the armour that those who lack wear against those who have. Except that in this case
lack
was relative. The crew aboard the SS
Jannah
earned more in a month than Avatar scratched together in a year.

Pulling back the hammer on his borrowed Taurus, Avatar muffled the click it made by folding his fingers over the top. Then he pressed himself back flat against the corridor wall, putting a fat downpipe between himself and the approaching pair.

They did what Avatar expected them to do, which was head straight past, still deep in conversation.

Very gently, Avatar touched his revolver to the side of the guard’s hair and watched irritation turn to fear, as the hand that flicked up to brush away whatever it was met the cold ceramic of Avatar’s weapon.

“Make a noise,” growled Avatar, “and say good-bye to your head.” The threat came out exactly as he’d imagined and Avatar felt unreasonably proud. It was, he hoped, exactly the kind of thing Raf might say.

“You…” The suit not suffering a gun to his head spun round and found himself face-to-face with a dreadlocked stowaway wearing a
God Speeds
T-shirt. It made the suit even more unhappy. “You won’t get…”

“I just did.” Avatar gestured towards the lift. “That way,” he said, herding them towards a waiting Orvis. “Now,” said Avatar when they were both safely inside, “how do I reach the floors below this?”

At this level the lifts didn’t thank you for travelling or hope you enjoyed the rest of your day, they were blind and dumb, with buttons that needed pushing. And the lowest level on the small array of buttons in front of him was Dminus4, this one.

“There isn’t a floor below this,” the suit said through gritted teeth. “This is as low as it gets… And how did you get aboard anyway?” His eyes took in Avatar’s black combats, the T-shirt and the strands of black glitter threaded into his dreads. Nike sneakers completed the outfit.

The SS
Jannah
had no second- or third-class cabins. Come to that, it didn’t even have first-class accommodation. Everything was executive or above, running all the way up to the Imperial Suite, where Mohammed Tewfik Pasha, Khedive of what remained of El Iskandryia, currently occupied the whole seventh floor. No more than two hundred guests were ever on board at any one time. And it was the ship’s proud boast that guests were outnumbered three to one by hotel staff. That was before one even considered whatever crew were actually needed to run the ship.

“The floor below this,” Avatar said crossly. “How do I get to it?”

The two crew members looked at each other, and the suit raised his eyes to heaven. “Look, kid,” he said, “there isn’t…”

Avatar shot him through the leg, just above the knee. By the time the slug exited the man’s quadriceps and flattened itself against the steel wall of the lift, the suit’s lungs were dragging in mountains of air.

“Don’t even think about screaming,” Avatar advised him. “Now, let’s try again, how do I…?”

“Okay, okay…” The unharmed guard had one hand out, as if to ward off bullets from the gun Avatar began to raise. “So far as I know,” he said slowly, “this is the ship’s lowest level. Everything else below this is buoyancy tanks, turbines or ballast.”

“What about servicing the engines?”

“It’s a self-functioning sealed unit. Right…?” He glanced to the man on the floor for confirmation. “It’s sealed.”

“There must be hatches.”

“Yes and no,” said the guard nervously. “They’re welded shut.”

“Too bad.” Avatar looked at the puddle of red spreading itself across the lift’s grey floor and pointed his gun at the injured suit’s other leg.

“It’s true, I promise you…” The man nodded like a frantic puppet, as if his frenzy alone could convince Avatar. “There is no way down…”

“Find me one,” Avatar demanded, but he was talking to Hani.

28th October

“I shouldn’t…”

“Yeah, so you keep saying,” said Raf. “You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t have done that…” He was grinning like an idiot, he couldn’t help it. Beside him, Zara lay curled tight, with one of her arms thrown across his stomach and tiny beads of sweat tangled in her short dark hair, at the point where it brushed back from her forehead. Quick breaths flexed the cage of her ribs.

“You okay?”

“What do you think?” Zara untangled her legs from his and rolled away. This time round she didn’t bother to pull up a sheet, merely sprawled on Raf’s bed with one arm up over her grey eyes, revealing dark-tipped breasts that were high and perfect and honey-sweet in the early daylight that crept through the windows from the garden outside.

“Do you think they heard?”

Raf listened to the crunch of heels on gravel below, the unmistakable squeal of boots as a soldier executed a perfect about-turn at the end of the path, swivelling on the spot.

“I would imagine so,” he said, straight-faced, only to shake his head when Zara sat up and stared across, eyes wide.

He’d done only what she allowed. Which was more than Zara intended and less than he wanted. She was working to rules, though even Zara wasn’t quite sure whose rules those were.

“How about you,” she asked. “You okay?”

“Sure.” Raf shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Right.” Her smile was lopsided. “Of course you are.” Zara yanked back his covers. “Anyone can see that.”

Somewhere in the hinterland between midnight and early morning, as the stubborn darkness finally diluted, Raf had first struggled out of his shirt and then his pants, stripping himself bare. Neither of them had suggested Zara might want to do the same. But his hands had caressed her beneath her nightdress and finally found answering movement from her body. Movement that built slowly until she took his hand and almost pushed it into her pants.

“Stand over there,” said Zara, and pointed to a patch of sun that lit the room’s white floor. So Raf did what she asked, aware that she watched as he climbed naked out of the bed and walked across the tiles. When he stood where she wanted, he turned to face her and saw her blush.

“Now what…?”

She knelt with marble tiles cold and hard against her bare knees. There were a dozen good reasons why she shouldn’t be kneeling there. Some personal, some cultural, a few of them even political.

“What?” Raf asked, seeing her shoulders shrug.

“Nothing,” said Zara and then could say no more. She felt his hips tense under her grip and heard him begin to swear softly as his back arched and every muscle in his legs seemed to lock.

She was a republican and Marxist, he was an Ottoman bey. She was new money and he was wealth inherited. No, she scrubbed that, Raf had little money, either way. He was police and her father was a criminal. Iskandryia’s establishment had adopted him and that too made him her enemy. Her father was on trial and he controlled the court. If it was in her power, she would overthrow everything he represented and the order to which he belonged.

And here she was on her knees before a man, something she’d promised herself would never happen. It didn’t matter if it was sex, money, violence or necessity that put a woman there; once there the weight of history made it hard to get back up again.

Zara could feel Raf’s fingers hard on the side of her head, so she took her right hand and wrapped it round him and moved her mouth in time to his need.

And later, with his taste still in her mouth, she led Raf back to the bed and sat beside him while he curled into a foetal ball and slept like the child she guessed he’d never been.