The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (86 page)

Sometime between my burning down a school and the killing of Micky O’Brian.

“You didn’t say you wanted a rough estimate…”

“We can get specific later,” said Raf. “At the moment, any kind of estimate would be good.”

One minute turned into two and still she gazed intently at the screen… Longer than was necessary, but Raf didn’t hurry her. The cameras were hard at work catching every furrow of her brow, every tiny twitch that pulled at her mouth as she lost herself in thought.

“Was this boy well fed?”

From his place in the dock Hamzah shook his head, the movement entirely unconscious. And up on the bench St. Cloud cleared a sour smile from his face so fast only Raf saw it come and go. There were other smiles, fleeting and bitter, from ordinary people on the public benches. Mostly from those, like Khartoum, who were old enough to have the memories.

Into Raf’s head came thoughts of drought-twisted olive groves, crumbling irrigation channels, bushes on which apricots wizened before they were even ripe enough to be picked. Poisoned oases and fields of millet being turned to straw by a sun that hung high overhead.

“Enough,” Raf insisted to himself and the images vanished.

“Well fed…?” He shook his head. “I think that unlikely.”

“In that case…” The woman hesitated. “If the child was properly nourished, then I’d put his age at nine, with a sixty percent certainty. You have to look at the wrists,” she added, as if that explained everything. “Chest too, to check development of the rib cage… Badly nourished, maybe ten, even eleven. My professional opinion is that the child is unlikely to be much older.”

“Court records say thirteen,” insisted Raf, and he made a point of double-checking the UN report in his hand.

“Thirteen…? Very unlikely.” Dr. Schultz’s stare was a challenge. “Twelve if you must, assuming he’d been starved from birth. Except, of course,” she shrugged, “if he’d been starved from birth, then disease would have killed him before this.”

“So definitely not thirteen?”

“Ashraf Bey.”

Raf turned round to find the Khedive watching him.

“Can you tell me where this is headed?” Tewfik Pasha’s question was abrupt, but there was something unsettled in his eyes. As if the youth had only just become aware that he sat exposed in front of the world’s press, acting as
magister
while the richest man in North Africa was tried for mass murder.

And there was another truth from which the Khedive could find no escape. It was widely known that Zara had taken al-Mansur as her lover. And for all that the bey wasn’t a true believer, he still had
baraka
. A difficult quality to pin down, although luck, wisdom and blessing were in there somewhere. All those and an aura of strength that the poor believed clung like attar of roses to anyone who chose the stony path.

“Where is this headed?” asked Raf. “Towards a conclusion, I hope.”

“It matters how old Hamzah was?”

Raf nodded.

“And to whom does it matter?”

To me,
Raf almost said but he kept silent on that point. “To the city,” he said instead. “And also to you, as the city’s
magister,
I presume…”

“Yes,” said the Khedive, “you do.”

Raf looked puzzled.

“You presume,” Tewfik Pasha said with a tight smile. “But then, perhaps somebody has to… Tell us why it matters.”

Raf picked up his notebook, tapped an icon for The Hague Convention and flicked to the relevant subsection. Ready to read…

“If a combatant is twelve or under at the time of a battle, s/he shall be exempt from direct responsibility and such responsibility lies with whoever issued the command…”

For a moment Raf thought the words were his, happening only in his head. Then he saw the fear on the face of Hamzah Effendi and realized the industrialist had also heard the gruff voice. As had Senator Liz, the young German Graf and a shocked-looking St. Cloud.

Over on her bench, Zara began crying. Only Avatar looked at ease.

CHAPTER 57

1st November

There’d been tears too from Hamzah when he finally
realized who was speaking. Instinctively, the thickset industrialist had straightened up, standing taller in the dock.

“Ya Colonel,”
he said, sounding amazed.

“Lieutenant Ka.”

And then everyone in the court watched as Hamzah craned his head, looking round for his old commander. Only there was no Colonel Abad. Just a cracked radio held by Iskandryia’s favourite DJ and a familiar voice that echoed from a wall speaker.

“You never did get to the source of the Nile,” said the Colonel.

Hamzah shook his head.

“But you still got me to safety…” The voice sounded content. “Well, you got me to Koenig Pasha, which was almost as good. PaxForce wanted to kill me you know…”

“You’re a radio?”

Colonel Abad chuckled. “You might put it like that. Langley built me for counterinsurgency use in Colombia, then the Soviets patched in some ideology and relocated me to the Sudan. The CIA got me back eventually, ripped out the politics and offered me the Children of God.”

“But I was Islamic Fist, first battalion, company A.”

“No/yes… Well, some of the time,” conceded the Colonel. “It wasn’t always so simple…”

“You,” said Senator Liz to Avatar, “bring that machine here.” Her New Jersey accent sliced through what threatened to become a conversation between old comrades.

Avatar did as he was told, placing the clockwork radio carefully on the judicial bench in front of the American woman. The radio was small, battered and scratched along the bottom. Its shattered handle suggested someone had once kicked the thing.

“You can hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you… Senator Elizabeth Lee Elsing.”

“And you know me how…?”

“Your face matches all points on a security photograph taken when Elizabeth Lee Elsing came aboard. Your voice profile fits exactly a phrase Elizabeth Lee Elsing recorded to control the strongbox in her suite.”

“This thing is an appliance,” said von Bismarck. The expression on his face mixed revulsion with shock.

“An American appliance,” confirmed the box. “Upgraded by Moscow and offered exile by Koenig Pasha, with the express consent of your own superiors in Berlin. A machine linked to software designed to win wars fought by children… Although, of course, their age was just an unexpected cost bonus. And
you
have this man on trial…”

“Are you saying you should be the one on trial?” St. Cloud asked silkily.

“Obviously not,” said the box. “I was thinking more that it should be all of you.”

“I suggest,” said the Khedive, when calls had been made, legal advice taken and the case reconvened later that afternoon. “I suggest that we concentrate on one trial at a time.” He turned to Senator Liz. “Do your friends in the CIA want to reclaim this box?”

She looked at the young Khedive as if he’d suddenly spat on her. “Reclaim it?” the Senator said furiously. “We don’t even accept that we made it. The Soviets maybe. Although I wouldn’t put it past Berlin…” She scowled bitterly at the young Graf, who sat carefully examining his nails.

Tewfik Pasha sighed. “Your witness,” he said to Raf.

A hundred tiny pinhead lenses were set into the walls of the ballroom, Raf realized that well enough, but he turned to a wall-mounted CCTV camera to let the judges know he spoke direct to Colonel Abad.

“You recognize this man?” Raf asked, jerking his head towards Hamzah.

“I recognize his voice,” said the box, “once suitable allowances have been made for vocal developments. And it doesn’t matter if I say I recognize him or not. Protein pattern matching has already confirmed his identity.”

“Did he ever tell you his age?”

Colonel Abad stayed silent.

“You don’t know how old he was at the time of the massacre?”

“Massacre…”
The word was said thoughtfully, though whether that was because Abad was thinking or because elegant programming had anchored emotions to set logic sequences was impossible to tell.

“One hundred and fifty-three people died that afternoon,” said the Colonel. “Two weeks before, according to UN reports, 1,002 refugees were reclassified as collateral damage when a poorly targeted skySucker destroyed the oxygen over their camp. Seven days after, 503 died outside Wadi Halfa in a firefight between the Ragged Army and the Children of God. I note that neither of these incidents is down on record as a massacre…

“So your logic suggests,” continued the machine, “that when 503 children kill each other it’s not a massacre, but when one child kills 153, then it is. Have I got that right?”

“Answer the original question,” said Raf. “Did he ever tell you his age?”

“Very few of them knew their age,” Abad said mildly. “And it’s unlikely that Ka was any different. But you could always try working it out. For example, your reports say Ka told the Red Cross he came from Azarat and his mother died when he was a baby…”

Raf waited.

“Didn’t it occur to anyone to ask him from what?”

Glancing at Hamzah, Raf raised his eyebrows.

“Plague,” Hamzah said. “That’s all I was told. After the wells dried up and the crops died, she and my uncle walked north to Suakin and joined a caravan to El Makrif to get away from war.” Hamzah shrugged. “So did everybody else.”

“Drought,” said Abad. “War, plague and a migration of refugees… There were droughts in 89, 91, and 01. Beni-Amir conflicts from 87 to 91 and 98 to 03. Ebola in 91, 93 and 99 to 02.” The Colonel reeled off the figures, as if talking to itself. “Migrations from 87 to 92, after which the UN closed the routes to stop refugees creating new vectors for the plague.”

“Which means,” Raf and Senator Liz said together, “he was born in 91.” They’d been following the figures in their heads. The Graf was still busy writing out his sums longhand and St. Cloud was doodling.

“Assume he was born in the spring,” said Raf. “How old was he?”

“Nine on joining and eleven at the time of the
massacre
.”

Raf turned to where the SS
Jannah
’s medical officer sat near the front. “Would you agree with that assessment?”

“It is perfectly possible,” Dr. Schultz said slowly.

“Thank you.” Raf nodded to the bench. “That finishes the case for the prosecution.” He glanced over at Zara. “I imagine Miss Zara is impatient to make the case for the defence.”

St. Cloud snorted.

“With the
magister
’s permission, this court will recess for ten minutes,” he announced, banging his gavel on its wooden pad…

After that, the rest was a formality. The judges decided two to one that there was no case to answer, with the dissenting vote being St. Cloud. Ernst von Bismarck went out of his way to stress that Hamzah was completely exonerated. Just to make doubly sure, he explained, to the amusement of the more upscale newsfeeds, that this didn’t mean Hamzah had been found not guilty. For the simple reason that Hamzah didn’t need to be found not guilty. There was no case to answer.

In the seventy-five seconds it took Claire duBois’s talking head to hit Television 5, Hamzah mutated from a heavily armed teen psychopath to traumatized drought victim, stranded alone in the desert, trying desperately to carry out conflicting orders.

CHAPTER 58

6th November

“If you don’t move,”
said the fox,
“you’ll be late for
Hamzah’s party.”

“Yep,” agreed Raf and reached for his cappuccino.

The power was back on at Le Trianon and the first thing the kitchens had done was whip up a fresh batch of ice cream for Hani, the kind made with vanilla pods. A glass flute of the stuff now sat, almost untouched, in front of her.

“Not hungry?”

Hani shrugged. A minute or so later, while Raf pretended not to watch, she stirred the ice cream to a pulp with her long silver spoon.

“You going to let her get away with that?”
asked the voice.

“Probably.”

“You’re talking to the fox,” said Hani.

Raf nodded.

“The one hidden in your head?”

He nodded again.

“Okay.” The small girl put down her spoon, then picked it up again. Le Trianon was absolutely her favourite café and vanilla supposedly her favourite flavour, but Hani obviously wasn’t enjoying herself.

“Colonel Abad mended your fox?”

They’d been over this a dozen times. Raf couldn’t bring himself to believe this was the real problem, but it was the point to which she kept coming back.

“That’s right,” he said.

“How?”

“He took a look inside my head, then fixed a software glitch that stopped the fox from being able to feed.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Too fast,” said Raf. “I didn’t even know it had happened.”

“And Colonel Abad doesn’t really exist?”

“He’s as real as the fox.”

Hani looked doubtful. “How real is that?”

As questions went, this one was more difficult to answer. Actually, as questions went, that one was next to impossible… A software program designed to mimic the cunning and charisma of a long-dead revolutionary undoubtedly existed. It had led the Ragged Army, changed sides, then changed back again. Several times, from what it said.

The view of the
Washington Post
was that it was equal in intelligence to any human and therefore as dangerous.
Le Matin
disagreed, describing it as a military chess computer, a view also held by
Pravda.

“I think it exists,” Raf said carefully.

“But you think the fox exists,” said Hani, brushing crossly at her fringe.

They were seated at a pavement table, even though the weather was cold and the first Saturday in November had brought fewer people than normal out onto the streets. And she’d brought him there because he knew she liked it, if that made sense.

“Zara’s mother says that you’re insane.” Hani’s voice was matter-of-fact, although Raf caught the sideways glance that checked he wasn’t angry. Only he was angry and had been since the trial was aborted five days before.