Three Great Novels (39 page)

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Authors: Henry Porter

Tags: #Thrillers, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction

BOOK: Three Great Novels
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‘I’ve never been, but I’m certain it wouldn’t suit Khan.’ He paused. ‘And you?’
She pushed herself from the wall and stubbed out the cigarette on the ground. ‘I’ll go back to work in London.’
He massaged his neck and looked up at the sky. ‘You know, in an odd way the time spent here has done me good. I may change my life after this.’
‘You may be forced to,’ she said sharply. ‘The FBI want you in New York and they expect you to explain about the money you sent to Lebanon.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said simply.
‘Will you continue with your practice?’
‘Who knows what happens. Did you have any idea a week ago that you would be on an island in the middle of the Nile with us?’ He paused for an answer but got none. ‘I read an article in the newspaper a few weeks back about a man who was driving along a road near his home in Connecticut. He had been to the local stores; the weather was fine; there was no traffic on the roads. As he reached the driveway of his home, a tree that had stood for hundreds of years suddenly fell down on his car and set it alight. His family and neighbours were unable to rescue him, and watched as he burned to death. In the newspaper, there were expressions of puzzlement from his family. Why should this good man - a loved and loving man - be taken in the prime of his life? Why? Who was behind it?’
‘Do you believe in God, Dr Loz?’
‘Yes, naturally.’
‘How do you explain the wisdom of dropping a tree on an innocent man?’
‘I don’t need to. That’s not for me to understand.’
‘But you must try to fit it into your system of belief?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t. And you, Isis, do you believe?’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think God intervenes in human affairs.’
‘Why?’
‘Compare the intricacy and scale of the universe,’ she looked up at the sky, ‘with the mess and pain of human life. There’s no one running this thing except us, and we should take responsibility for it. When we do, things will improve.’
‘That’s an atheist speaking.’
‘No, a rationalist.’
‘Surely you believe in fate - destiny?’
She picked up some bread. ‘They’re words used to explain chance, luck, accident and coincidence. I don’t believe in a pre-ordained life. No.’
He began eating also, smiling as though in possession of superior knowledge. ‘With your name, Isis, you could have guessed that you would eventually end up here. That’s fate.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t named after the Egyptian goddess,’ she said. ‘My name comes from the end and beginning of my mother’s first two names - Alazais Isobel.’
‘From two beautiful names comes one beautiful name - like a child.’
‘Right,’ said Herrick.
‘But seriously, here you are on an island in the Nile. Did you know that Isis’s greatest temple is on the Nile, somewhere south of Luxor, and that she is associated with the river and the growing of corn?’
‘Yes, I did,’ she said without interest. ‘How come you know so much about this?’
‘I find Isis the most appealing of all the ancient deities because to begin with she used her magic to heal the sick. She brought her husband Osiris back to life, and nursed her son Horus. Also, she is made of contradictory passions: on the one hand she was ruthless and cunning; on the other, a loyal and devoted wife who went to the ends of the earth to find her husband’s dead body. She is like all interesting people - a paradox. In her case, both deadly and caring.’ With this he broke a piece of bread and scooped up some tahini.
‘If anything, Dr Loz, the paradox is nearer to your character. I mean here you are healing your friend but in other lives you are, or have been, a soldier and fundraiser for a terrorist organisation. So perhaps the lesson is that we should never judge someone by one observation, but wait until the whole picture emerges from many observations, then decide which is the dominant trait.’ She stopped. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.
‘I don’t drink,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m going to have one.’
Loz wrinkled his nose.
‘When I was at school,’ she continued, ‘I did read something about Isis, in particular about her relations with Ra, the sun god. Do you know about Ra, Sammi?’
He shook his head.
‘Ra’s might depended on his secret name, a name that only he knew. You see, the ancient Egyptians believed that if someone learned your secret name they gained power over you. Isis made a cobra from Ra’s spittle, which had fallen to the ground on his journey across the sky. The cobra bit Ra and injected poison. Only when Ra told Isis his secret name did she agree to relieve his pain.’
‘In other words, she tortured him. I told you she was ruthless. ’
She smiled. ‘I was wondering whether you had a secret name. Something that would give another person power over you if they knew it.’
‘Why do you do this job? This spying.’
‘It’s very simple. I believe in the freedoms that we have in the West, and I am happy to work against those who want to destroy them.’ She paused to sip the whisky she had mixed with a little mineral water. ‘Also, I’m good at it,’ she said, putting the glass down. ‘Very good at it.’
His forehead puckered with disbelief. ‘You want nothing else in your life?’
‘You’re making the assumption that I don’t have anything else in my life.’
‘You lack something,’ he said, ‘possibly love.’
‘Oh, give me a break. Let me tell you I’m happy and utterly fulfilled in what I do.’
‘No, I think not.’
‘On what evidence?’
‘Your body. The tension in your shoulders, the way you stand and move, the set of your mouth, the expression in your eyes. There are a hundred signs. You’re a very attractive woman, but neither happy nor satisfied.’
‘I guess that’s the line you use on all the girls in New York,’ she said.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You should take more care of yourself, maybe visit an osteopath when you return to London.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Except your hip, which hurts when you get up in the morning, and your shoulders, which rise up during the day and cause you headaches, and perhaps a difficulty at night when you try to find a comfortable position for your neck on the pillow.’ He sat back, satisfied. ‘You could certainly use some help.’
She reached for a carrot and sliced it lengthways into strips.
‘I would guess you’ve been very seriously ill at one time in your life. There seems to be some residue in your body of that sickness. When was that?’
‘What is this - the osteopathic seduction?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I am trained to observe people very closely. That’s all. An artist’s eyes do not stop noticing the shape of things or their colour when he leaves the studio. It’s the same with me. When I saw you in Albania I noticed these things immediately.’
They sat in silence for a while, then she picked some fruit from the basket and got up from the bench. ‘I have work to do now. I’ll see you in the morning.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Khan looked up into Loz’s face when he returned from grinding the pills into a solution. He was glad Sammi had found something to ease the pain that was growing in his chest, to say nothing of the constant throb in his feet.
‘No man has ever had a friend like you,’ said Khan. ‘I don’t deserve you. I cannot believe my good fortune.’
‘Don’t tire yourself, old friend.’
‘What’s the matter with me, Sammi? Tell me. What is it? Why can’t I keep my eyes open?’
‘Because you have had years of ill treatment and hardship. You need rest. I will give you this shot, then you will feel much better tomorrow.’
‘But you wanted to leave tonight.’
‘That’s okay. We can wait. The important thing is for you to get better. Then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.’
While Loz wiped his arm and slapped it to bring up the vein, Khan’s mind returned to the hillside in Macedonia and the wonder he’d experienced one morning as he watched the sun come over the hill and saw the light filtering through the trees. Now he could smell the dying embers of the fire, mingled with the rich, damp scents of the morning; taste the mint tea that the young Kurd had made him. The memory of those moments had been clouded by the terror that had followed less than half an hour later, but now he understood that the completeness he felt when walking down the track was something important. He should remember it.
‘There was some kind of a bird there,’ he said suddenly.
‘A bird?’ said Loz as he slipped the needle into Khan’s vein. ‘What kind of bird?’
‘The smallest bird I have ever seen. It was almost round with a tail that stuck up. It had made its nest just where we camped. The fire was right below the vine where it lived … it stayed there all night and the next morning it was still there to feed its young.’
Loz smiled down to him. ‘And you liked this bird, Karim?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, it seemed very brave and determined.’
‘Like you.’
‘No, like you, Sammi. You never give in.’
Loz sat down on the stool. ‘Now, sleep, old friend. We need you to be strong in the morning.’
Khan nodded. There was much he wanted to say. He opened his mouth but then he felt his eyes close and could not bring to mind the words he needed.
Sammi seemed to read his mind and said it for him. ‘There was never true love like this before. Never between a man and a woman; never between two men.’ He picked up Khan’s hand and clasped it in his, then bent and kissed him on the forehead.
Khan smiled and opened his eyes. The smooth plane of Sammi’s forehead was broken with a single crease of anxiety, and there were tears running down his face. ‘Thank you,’ said Khan, and closed his eyes to a multitude of fleeting images: his mother opening her arms to him on a shady terrace; the mountains of the East and the dancing, spirited eyes of the fighters.
His
men, the men who’d fought with him and shared the hardship.
His
men.
 
Herrick climbed to the turret with her computer, satellite phone and digital recorder, and sat on the warm tiles to concentrate on the recording she’d inadvertently made. The machine had gone for a full two and a half hours before switching itself off. That time included the forty minutes she had spent watching Loz treat Khan, then a period during which Khan had been left alone while she and Loz talked outside, and finally about forty-five minutes of them alone together. She went through the recording, stopping at random, but found little of interest, so she copied it into the computer, encrypted it, then dispatched it to Vauxhall Cross. She would listen to it later when she was in the bath.
She logged off from the secure server and dialled Dolph’s numbers one after the other, each time getting a message service. She decided to try him again in a couple of hours and left the computer and satellite dish on the ledge surrounding the turret, knowing they would be just as safe there as in her room. Then she descended to the courtyard, where she smoked a cigarette and thought about her strategy for the following day.
From somewhere on the other side of the building came the faint sound of music - strings overlaid with the chant of a male singer. Occasionally she heard snatches of the same voice as the previous night. Foyzi had told her it was the CD player of one of his men, a Sufi addicted to his sect’s music. She listened until it stopped and silence fell on the island. Above her, the stars had been partly obscured by clouds moving from the north, which explained why the evening was still so stifling. She rose and took a few paces towards her room, then stopped in her tracks as she caught the sound of a motor some way off to the south. Her ears strained to the night, but she couldn’t tell if it was coming from the sky or the river. After a few seconds it died away completely. She listened for a further five minutes but heard nothing more and reached the conclusion that it must have been a boat.
Sleep was impossible because of the heat. Besides, she could not stop thinking about Loz and Khan. She gathered up her sponge-bag, a set of earphones and the digital recorder, and went with a lamp to the bath-house. It lay at the corner of the main building and was constructed from large granite blocks which even during the heat of the day retained a deathly chill. At the centre of the room was a square bath made out of porphyry, which in other circumstances might be mistaken for an ancient sarcophagus. She set down the lamp, but before plugging the waste pipe with a rag, she had to remove the insects and lizards that had accumulated in the bath, and kill a scorpion that scuttled into the light on the floor.
The water had a slight metallic odour, but she let herself down into it gratefully and found that she could lie almost fully stretched out. As the water rose, she noticed the light catch pieces of feldspar in the granite. She washed, then made a pillow for her head out of part of her robe and shifted the lamp so she could see the machine’s display. Having forwarded the recording to the seventy-five-minute mark, she began to listen again.

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