Effendi

CHAPTER 34 22nd October

What was it with the missing mirrors? The last time the Senator had been invited to meet Iskandryia’s governor, half a dozen ornate Murano looking glasses had covered the walls, making a large room look even larger. Now the old man and his mirrors were gone, their memory etched in lighter patches on age-darkened silk. So what was that about, and was it safe to ask?

Was it even safe to be alone with this man?

In front of her sat a killer. Senator Liz couldn’t get that fact out of her head. Not a killer like the General, when war or political expediency dictated, but the real thing. Ashraf Bey had put a revolver to the head of the previous Chief of Detectives and pulled the trigger, claiming humanitarian reasons. And the really weird bit was, no one in the city seemed to find that remotely odd.

But then that was Iskandryia for you.

It seemed the bey might also be behind the assassination in Kabul of Sheik el-Halana, the man who authorized the bombing of the Ottoman Consulate in Seattle. Then there was the death of a Thiergarten agent. And the bey’s rumoured links with the Sultan himself.

As far as Senator Liz was concerned, the sooner a deal was done and she was out of his company the better. Her only problem, and it was a big one, was that the ostensibly polite young man sitting opposite was obviously not listening to a word she said. And she really did need him to get behind the plan.

“Your Excellency . . .”

Twin ovals of dark glass. Somewhere behind those lenses was the man himself, whoever he was. And White House opinion was divided on that.

“Tell me,” said the man. “Do you like our wallpaper?”

“Do I . . .” Senator Liz looked as put out as she felt.

“It’s Turkish,” he said. “I was thinking of having it painted. Only that’s going to take gallons of emulsion and I can’t decide on a colour.” He lapsed back into silence, leaving Senator Liz to look around while she decided what, if anything, his comment actually meant.

Added to the main building in 1803, the chamber they used was too large for a withdrawing room, too small to qualify as a proper ballroom. And at exactly one and a half times the height of every other room on the ground floor, it guaranteed that the roof space above was so cramped as to be useless for anything but storage, but Raf still liked it more than any other room in the mansion.

Somewhere, hidden beneath its floor covering, were marble tiles, hacked from a quarry by slaves. But none of the tiles could actually be seen because most of the space was taken by two vast Chinese silk carpets, with Bokhara runners and Isphahan rugs filling in the gaps.

“It’s very nice wallpaper,” Senator Liz said carefully.

“You’re right.” The man sitting opposite her nodded. “The question is, would it look better painted? And if so, should that paint be white?”

Senator Liz swallowed a sigh. Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur looked frighteningly like his father, the Emir of Tunis, and it appeared the similarity might go more than skin deep. The last time the Senator had been allowed into the Emir’s presence, the man had been camped deep on Jubal Dahar, guarded by dark-eyed girls carrying snubPups. His Highness had taken all of thirty seconds out of that evening’s routine to tell Senator Liz that the answer was no, whatever her query was, except for those bits to which his answer was yes. . .

Behind the Senator stood an interpreter, redundant from the moment she’d discovered that Ashraf Bey spoke English. Since the interpreter’s day job was actually second intelligence attaché at the US Embassy in El Qahirah, Senator Liz had intended to get on-the-hoof briefings as her meeting with the bey progressed. Now, of course, that was impossible.

The Senator would have felt much happier if the impressively bulky file in front of her had contained even one sheet of usable information on the man sitting opposite. But he had no vices, apparently. Having saved the life of the Quitrimala girl, he took no reward, though the sum offered had been vast, astronomical . . . He’d turned down a marriage worth billions, apparently because he wasn’t in love with the girl. He belonged to no clique, no cabal.

And he had to be insane.

Three days he’d kept the world waiting. The President in Washington, the Kaiser . . . Hell, even his own Sultan in Stambul.

“Your Excellency . . .” The entreaty stuck in Senator Liz’s throat. But she had a job to do, even if that job wasn’t easy. “Iskandryia . . .”

“. . . is fucked,” Raf didn’t even let her finish the sentence. “You hear that . . . ?” He cocked one ear to the sound of a cherry top blasting past the grounds of the mansion. “Riots in Karmous. One of the co-op banks has folded.”

“Bad news, nothing but bad news,” said Senator Liz, her voice mournful. It was a sadness that didn’t quite reach her pale eyes.

“Not necessarily,” Raf said lightly. “For example, we’ve established beyond doubt that Hamzah Effendi is not implicated in the murder of the second girl, the one found on his beach. Unfortunately, the real murderer was killed . . .”

“By me,” added Raf, under his breath, in the basement of a deserted house in Moharrem Bey. But he didn’t say that aloud, obviously enough.

“We also know that the murderer of the first girl shot himself at Lake Mareotis . . .”

Raf didn’t know that at all, but a chemical residue impregnating the pouch found with that man apparently matched the drug used to sedate Dawn Hauger at Casino Quitrimala. So it was a reasonable guess.

“Which means,” said Raf, “three murders, three butchers, each carrying out a near-identical crime to order. Of course, now the third one is also out of action . . .”

Elizabeth Elsing blinked, but it was the reaction of her man standing behind her that interested Raf. “You have him under arrest?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

Raf stared at the interpreter, who looked very much as if he’d like to take back the question, but when Raf answered, he took care to address his words to the Senator.

“Unfortunately,” said Raf as he put down his coffee cup and leant back, “he also died . . .”

“He died?” So intent was the small woman that she almost fell off the sofa from bending too far forward.

“Sad, isn’t it?” said Raf. “I can, however, tell you that he was German.” Raf flicked open a leather notebook and hit resume, watching as words scrolled up the page. Yet another message from Hani by the look of it and two missed calls from Zara.

“We’ll be releasing his name later . . .” Raf flicked shut the notebook and put it back on the table.

“Advance notification of which,” Senator Liz began to say, “would be very . . .”

“ Useful. Yes,” said Raf, “I’m sure it would.” Whatever froideur might be about to fall ended as double doors crashed open and Khartoum staggered in, carrying a heavy silver tray.

Double loops of gold tied themselves in knots up the front of his frock coat. A cravat of yellowing Maltese lace frothed from his neck. And beneath the large silver buckles of his shiny shoes, grey showed against black, where Khartoum had missed patches of dust on their freshly cleaned patent leather.

“Fresh coffee, Your Excellency.”

Raf took one look at the old man’s face and swallowed his smile. If Khartoum was dressed like that, then there was a reason. Just as there had to be a reason for the parable Khartoum had told Raf before the meeting began. It had begun by Khartoum asking him if he’d read any of Hani’s stories.

The answer to that had been no. Although he’d had some read to him.

“Good.” Khartoum smiled. “Here’s another. A thief creeps into the enclosure of a Sufi master and finds nothing there but sand and dry crusts. As he leaves, understanding his disappointment, the Sufi tosses the thief the tattered blanket from his bed, so that he should not go back into the street empty-handed.”

“That’s one of Hani’s tales?”

“No,” the old man had said. “Not yet . . .”

Raf watched in fascination as the old man lowered his heavy tray carefully onto the table. A small gilt jug was accompanied by two tiny gilt cups, a Limoges platter of rosewater Turkish delight, dusted with sugar, and a smaller plate, piled high with tiny crescents of pastry. An open cigarette box, made from beaten silver but lined with rosewood, was filled with Balkan cigarillos.

“I trust Your Excellency needs nothing.” Khartoum gave the tiniest bow and walked backward from the chamber, as if he’d been a majordomo all his life.

Coffee, tiny croissants, Turkish delight. . . Limoges dishes and an English silver tray. Somewhere in there, sure as mathematical certainty, was an answer to their sum. Concentrate, the fox would have said. So Raf did, starting with the nothing that Khartoum considered he needed.

Zero had been an Arabic understanding. The nasrani who came with their heavy mail and what passed for cooking grasped the numerical concept of something plus something, but zero, the addition, subtraction and definition of nothing, had to be explained.

The French, the English, the Germans, now the Americans. And before that the Mamelukes and the Arab invaders. He had it! What Khartoum was saying was, given the chance, Isk would again re-create itself. No one ever truly conquered this city . . . They either passed through or were adopted by the city they thought had fallen to them.

“What do you want from us?” Raf demanded.

“Us?”

“With the city, with me . . .”

He faced her across a low table and both of them understood that they’d finally arrived at the real reason why they were there.

“Iskandryia . . .” said the Senator.

“Is in chaos.” Raf shrugged. “We’ve had this conversation. What matters is . . . Why are you here?”

“To offer help.” The Senator sat back, forcing herself to relax. Unfortunately, Raf saw her do it. Which just made her stressed again.

“Help?” Right, thought Raf. Obvious really. “And in return?”

For a second it looked as if Senator Liz was about to say, there is no “in return.” But something in Raf’s smile stopped her. “The situation is tricky.” She began again . . .

Your carpet is moth-eaten, hardly worth buying, the quality is poor, besides it is too small, too expensive and I don’t need a carpet anyway. . . Raf had heard it often, that opening position in every negotiation. The one that said, out of the goodness of my heart I’m going to agree to rob you blind.

Tuning out the low drone of the Senator’s explanation, Raf traced the Doppler spore of a cherry top as it raced down Fuad Premier, passed through Shallalat Gardens and vanished along Avenue Horreya. Orders had gone out that afternoon locking down the city. Leave had been cancelled across all divisions of the police, even the morales. The military were on standby, confined to barracks but ready. His Sudanese guard patrolled the streets around the mansion.

Raf could imagine tomorrow’s headlines.

“. . . does that sound acceptable?”

Yanking his attention back to the chamber, Raf smiled at the American woman seated opposite. “Run through that last part again,” he said. “I think I might have missed something . . .”

Unsweetened by its sugar coating the pill was bitter. On behalf of PaxForce—read Washington, Berlin and Paris—Senator Liz demanded the right to station armed observers within the city to keep the peace. But there was worse, infinitely worse. And finally Raf understood why Hamzah had been desperate to see his daughter safely married, so desperate that he’d been prepared to bribe Lady Nafisa to achieve it.

“We have evidence,” the Senator was saying. Flipping open her old-fashioned file, she pulled out a stack of 10 × 4s, all of them copyrighted to “Jean René” and dated decades earlier.

The photographs might have been arranged in chronological order, or by level of atrocity, or maybe the order was as random as the place names printed on the back and war really was God’s way of teaching geography.

Mostly the dead were children, some almost old enough to count as adults, if that threshold was sufficiently flexible. They varied in race, skin colour, age and sex. And the only thing they had in common besides a gaping cross cut into each chest was the bareness of their feet and the raggedness of ripped uniforms . . . Inasmuch as T-shirts and cargo pants could count as uniform. Most of the dead also wore amulets, small leather bags, metal charms and badges, lots and lots of badges.

Cheap and plastic, black on red. The eyes of a saint above the beard of a prophet.

“Colonel Abad,” Senator Liz said redundantly.

Raf already knew that. He’d had a tri-D of the man on his study wall at school. Between the plastic badges, dark poppies blossomed against dark skin, wounds from the bullets those amulets were meant to stop. Flies hovered frozen around faces that stared blindly into a sky that time had long since left behind.

“Hamzah was involved in this?” Raf’s question was hesitant. As if he couldn’t quite believe his own suspicion, but the crosses that disfigured each corpse were unmistakable.

“No,” said Senator Liz, “this was done by Ras Michael’s Church Militant. Those responsible were tried and executed or jailed. These are Hamzah’s responsibility . . .” She took the remaining photographs from Raf and discarded the top third, handing back the rest.

They were no less ugly. Children still lay faceup to the sky, their feather-and-bone amulets as impotent as the combat patches tacked to their shirts.God Rules, read one T-shirt. Below the slogan someone had sewn a star, cut from red cloth.

“Don’t tell me,” said Raf, reaching for the original photographs. “This is one side.” He flipped over a photograph. “And this is the other . . .” Side by side on the table, a dead girl and a ripped-open boy stared back at him.

Senator Liz nodded.

“So why go for Hamzah rather than Colonel Abad?”

“Because we know where Hamzah is. Anyway,” she said, “our best intelligence suggests Abad’s already dead.”

“Already . . .” Raf tossed down his photographs. “If you’ll excuse me.” He didn’t wait for her answer, just stood up and strode out of the chamber. On his way through the door, he flicked off the lights. Maybe she’d learn something about the nature of darkness.

Raf had an office full of researchers back at Third Circle, an Intelligence Department based out of the barracks at Ras el-Tin and a dozen detectives, one or two of whom might even be able to do their job; but he found the information he needed in the kitchens, holding a skillet in one hand and a wooden spatula in his other. Flames roared from a gas ring as the gaunt man shuffled coffee beans backward and forward, like a skeleton mixing concrete.

“There was a war,” said Raf. “When Hamzah Effendi was a child.”

“Before you were born?” Khartoum sounded amused by his own question. “Yes, there were many wars. All unnecessary. What of it?”

What indeed?

“Who was in the right?” The question sounded stupid even as Raf asked it; but sometimes questions need to be asked, even stupid ones. And he knew the Sufi’s answer would be honest, no matter that the old man was partisan.

“No one was in the right,” said Khartoum.

“Then who was in the wrong?”

“No one.” Dark eyes regarded Raf, as piercing as those of a hawk. “They were children,” said Khartoum. “Not men, not women . . . You should ask who armed them. Who had an interest in seeing them fight? Or maybe this is a question you too think best left unasked . . .”