In the Palace of the Khans (20 page)

“British Embassy.”

Nigel pitched his own voice high, and a bit giggly.

“Uncle Roger?”

Brief silence.

“Himself. To which of my innumerable nieces have I the honour of speaking?”

“Gina, Uncle Roger. Is it OK to call now?”

“Seems like it, Nigel. What on earth's up? Where's your father? I thought it'd be him calling.”

“They've shot the President. On the stairs. In front of everyone. They're holding them all captive in the Great Hall. Mum and Dad are there too. I can see them on CCTV.”

“Good God!… Where are you?”

“Hiding. With my friend. We didn't see who shot him. Look, I'm desperate to tell Mum I'm OK. If there's anything you can do … Don't tell her anything else. Just I'm OK. We're going to try and get out when it's dark. Can we come to the embassy?”

“Better stay clear for the moment. The military have just shown up, front and back, not letting anyone in or out. For our own safety, they say, because of some kind of disturbance. I take it some of them are behind this.”

“Lots of them. We saw a guy called Colonel Sess something …”

“Sesslizh?”

“That's right. We've just seen him on CCTV with another guy called General Madzh something having a row with a chieftain called Adzhar Taerzha … something like that—they're different sorts of Dirzh and they don't get on—anyway, he was in it too, and Avron Dikhtar—he was one of the President's secretaries …”

He ran out of steam.

“Right,” said Roger. “That's all very helpful. Look, we'd better cut this short, so I can call the FO back home. It seems to me the sooner this gets out into the world the more chance there is these thugs will behave themselves, and decide they'd better let your parents go. Meanwhile I'd strongly advise you to lie low for a bit, if you think you're safe where you are. There'll likely be rioting when the word gets out. The old boy was a Varak. There are a lot of Varaki in Dara, around the market area. They won't like this at all. It's going to be pretty hairy out there for a while. There'll be a curfew as soon as it's dark. Streets full of soldiers. Anyway, give it a couple of hours and call again if you can. All right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Good luck then. Bye.”

CHAPTER 12

Nigel put the telephone down and stood staring blankly at the screen. Nothing much seemed to be happening, though soldiers bustled to and fro like ants round a nest—no way of knowing what their scurryings meant. The captive bigwigs fidgeted in their chairs.

He went back to the table. His food was still on his plate. He didn't want it. Without thinking he reached across the table and Taeela took his hand.

“I am wrong, Nigel,” she whispered. “I have four friends. Two are in this room. Two are there.”

She nodded towards the screen.

“Who did you talk to, Nigel?”

“Roger, at the embassy. He says we're better off staying here. We can't go to the embassy—they're watching it. Besides, there'll be a curfew, soldiers everywhere. And he thinks there'll be rioting as soon as it gets around what's happened. Shooting and tear gas and that sort of stuff. I don't know. The longer we give them the more chance they'll have to get organised and find us.”

“We ask Fofo. Soon I will wake him. Eat, Nigel. You must be strong.”

“If you say so.”

He began to pick listlessly at his food with his free hand, watching the monitor screen while he chewed. He had almost emptied his plate when Mr Dikhtar showed up and spoke to Nigel's father and mother, and then worked along the front row of the audience, doing the same. He gestured to them and they rose and followed him sideways across the Great Hall and out of sight.

Reluctant to bother Taeela, Nigel went to the console and keyed in the CCTV Index code she had used. He worked through it and found his parents sitting with the other chosen bigwigs while Mr Dikhtar introduced Adzhar Taerzha and the smooth-faced colonel, who both made speeches while Mr Dikhtar translated.

It was desperately frustrating to watch. The only time anything happened that Nigel understood was when his father asked a question, his mother came suddenly alert, and the colonel answered, making soothing gestures with his hands as he spoke. They were doing their best to find Nigel (true). They'd make sure he wasn't hurt (maybe). When they'd finished talking the colonel and Adzhar Taerzha shook hands, pretending to like each other fine, and left. Time passed. Nothing new happened.

Restless, he gave up watching and explored the room. The rest of the cupboard contained clothes, packages, boxes, files, a tool-set and so on, The curtain in the corner hid a seat with a hole in it, leading down to a dark shaft from which rose a faint whiff of river-water. Through the window he could see army vehicles moving along the embankment road on the other side of the river. Tanks guarded that end of the bridges either side of the palace.

Taeela had cleared away the remains of her lunch and was sitting brooding at the table. Beside her was a mug of water and a bowl with morsels of food chopped small. It didn't look as if she wanted to talk, so Nigel got out his travelling chess set and experimented with variations of the French defence while he finished eating. Unexpectedly, he found one which actually led somewhere interesting, and lost himself in it for half an hour.

“Now I wake Fofo,” said Taeela.

She picked up the bowl and mug and went over to the cot. The old man woke at a touch, and immediately tried to rise. She helped him to his feet and then over to the curtained corner, waited and brought him back. He tried to protest when she told him to sit on the cot, but gave in and waited, smiling, while she piled pillows and cushions against the headboard, and eased him back on them. He settled down with a sigh and allowed her to feed him morsel by morsel, and to steady the mug for him while he drank.

When he'd cleared the bowl he lay still, his good eye bright and interested while she talked, finishing with a question. He answered slowly. She protested earnestly. He shook his head and answered more briefly, then closed his eyes and fell asleep. She returned to the table, shaking her head.

“Bad?” said Nigel.

“Fofo says we must go, when it is dark, today. He will show me how we do this. These traitors are not ready, not—like you say—organised. They will be very busy everywhere doing other stuff. Perhaps they will not see us, and we will go away from Dara Dahn to Sodalka, where the chieftain is my father's cousin, Baladzhin. He is an enemy of Adzhar Taerzha. I don't want this. Baladzhin wants to marry me to his son. I tell … told Fofo we don't go before he is strong again. He says he will not come. He will stay here and spy on our enemies, but there is a good man who will come with us.

“What do I do, Nigel? I do not wish to leave Fofo. There is no place I can go, so I stay here. If these traitors find me, I kill myself.”

She would, too. He shook his head and took her hand.

“Don't let's think that far,” he said. “Let's get absolutely ready to go, in case we have to get out in a hurry, and then let's wait and see. The embassy's out. They've got soldiers watching it front and back. And it's not going to be that easy getting anywhere in Dahn, because it means crossing the river, and they've got the bridges guarded, by the look of it. Anyway, Roger told me to call again soon. I'll ask him if he can think of anywhere to go in Dara.”

They got everything ready they could think of. Fohdrahko woke, obviously stronger, ate a little more, then showed them the entrance to a hidden passage on the other side of the room. They practised leaving, and stacked everything ready in it—a large-pocketed sleeveless military-looking jacket for Taeela, a dahl to go over it, and a small embroidered duffel-bag of the sort Nigel had seen women carrying in Dahn; a dahl for Nigel, plus his shoulder-bag, stuffed to bursting; and a man's jacket that Fohdrahko insisted on taking.

That done, Nigel called the embassy again, but Roger said he didn't know anywhere they could safely hide in Dara, and anyway he was still strongly against their leaving the palace unless they had to. Somebody had called from there, he said, and told him that the ambassador and his family were staying there for their own safety because there was a minor disturbance in Dahn; but they would be coming home as soon as it was under control. Nothing about the President being dead, or Nigel missing. When Roger had asked to speak to the ambassador the line had gone dead. Nigel was actually watching his parents on the monitor as he spoke. Food had been brought to the room, but his mother didn't seem to be eating anything. She had a book with her, of course, and was reading.

Time crept past. Ten minutes seemed a whole hour. And they still couldn't be sure whether they were staying or going.

Their minds were made up for them as dusk gathered over the roofs of Dahn. Nigel and Taeela were at the window taking turns to use his monocular to watch what was happening at the far end of the bridges. At least whoever had spoken to Roger had told him one bit of the truth. There was a disturbance all right. Three more tanks and a lot of soldiers had arrived to confront a mass of people who had swarmed down from the crooked little streets above the river and were trying to force their way onto the bridges. Beneath them the fishing fleet was heading out for the lake just as if this had been a day like any other day. It was getting too dark to see when footsteps sounded on the floor above.

They froze, listening, then crossed silently to the console. Taeela adjusted the monitor and they were looking down into her living room. Colonel Sesslizh was there, with a junior officer and two men in western dress.

“Russians,” whispered Taeela. “What do they do?”

One of them started to plug cables into sockets on the electronic case he'd been carrying. The other took a gadget like a metal-detector, put on a pair of headphones, lowered the business end almost to floor level and waited while the other man adjusted controls in the case. Then he began to work to and fro across the room as if he were looking for buried treasure. They could follow the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.

“What does he do?” said Taeela again.

“Looks like some kind of heat-seeking … Wait … I think he's found Fohdrahko!”

The footsteps had stopped roughly over the cot, and on the monitor Nigel could see the operator moving his gadget probingly to and fro.

Taeela frowned a moment, thinking, tapped in a code and closed down.

“We go,” she said decisively, and helped Fohdrahko to his feet.

“Hold it!” said Nigel. “Don't go straight there. They'll know where to look when they get in. Take him across to where we came in, so they think we've gone back that way. Then round and back to our bolt-hole. We'll sort ourselves out inside the passage.”

Taeela nodded and led Fohdrahko across the room, explaining to him as they went. Nigel nipped over to join them at the other entrance, and then took some of the old man's weight as they moved as quickly as they could along by the wall, over in front of the window and back to the bolt-hole.

While Taeela and Fohdrahko were crawling through he listened anxiously to the movement of the footsteps. It seemed to have worked. The searcher had followed them to the far wall and lost them there. With luck when their pursuers found their way in they'd waste time exploring those passages. Taeela was closing the entrance slabs well before the searcher's footsteps reached them.

“You have this now,” she said, handing him the key. “I go first with Fofo, to be helping him, and so he can tell me stuff. I use his key. You come behind and close the holes. And you pull this after us, so you wipe away our feet marks. All right?”

“This” was a roll of soft cloth wrapped several times round a pole almost the width of the passage, weighted, and with a loop of cord tied to either end. Looking where they had been standing he could see the scufflings of their movements on the dusty paving.

“I get it,” he said.

She muttered to Fohdrahko, switched off her torch and together they moved away into the darkness. He fitted the roll across the passage by feel and followed, dragging it behind him, with his left hand held forward to brush the inner wall and guide him. The darkness wasn't as absolute as it had seemed. The black shapes of the other two disappeared into a pale gleam from the left. Beyond the corner lay a long passage stretching across the front of the building, lit here and there by the last of daylight coming through small openings in the fancy stonework of the facade.

They halted by the nearest one to sort out their loads. Nigel folded his dahl over his shoulder-bag and Taeela put on her sleeveless jacket, with her dahl slung through the cords of her duffel bag, then draped the jacket Fohdrahko had chosen over his shoulders and knotted its sleeves under his chin.

They moved slowly on. At one point Fohdrahko stooped to peer through an opening in the inner wall. Nigel, when he reached it, did so too and found himself looking down into the Great Hall. The last of the audience who had come to watch the Tribute ceremony were being led away. Two women were kneeling on the stairs with buckets beside them, scrubbing at the area where the President's body had lain. Two officers came down the stairs. They didn't even glance at the place.

There was something about the scene …

Nigel's skin crawled as he grasped for the first time how creepy these passages were. How often through the centuries had the unseen watchers stood here, spying on the scene below? All now dead and forgotten, but still their spirits seemed to breathe from the chill masonry.

He shook himself out of the daze and hurried after the others. By the time he reached them Taeela had unlocked another pair of slabs, but instead of crawling through the opening, Fohdrahko took the cloth-roll from him and dragged it off along the passage, leaving behind it a smooth layer of dust that looked as if it hadn't been disturbed for years.