Arabesk (112 page)

With the smoked pigeon came a wine St. Cloud didn’t recognize, tannat and auxerrios, almost prune-flavoured, made from grapes grown in an iron-rich subsoil beneath a sun slightly too hot for real subtlety. One of the Emir’s own vineyards probably. Although, if this was the case, then St. Cloud wasn’t sure why each bottle was carefully wrapped in a linen tablecloth to hide its label.

The very fact Emir Moncef served wine outraged half his visitors, while the fact he justified this by quoting Jalaluddin Rumi, rather than relying on timeworn arguments of modernization and rationality, worried the other half.

St. Cloud looked to where the old man sat silent at the top table, trapped between his son and the wife he hadn’t seen for decades. This was, everybody understood, an important moment of reconciliation. Getting father, son and wife into the same room had taken high-level negotiation and no one quite understood why the Emir had finally agreed.

“God he looks miserable,” Senator Malakoff said, noticing St. Cloud’s gaze.

“Wouldn’t you?” said St. Cloud. He glanced pointedly at Lady Maryam whose moon face was almost hidden beneath a silk
hijab.
There was no doubting that she was almost as wide as she was tall.

Senator Malakoff nodded. Yes, he could honestly say he’d be miserable if that was his wife. “How much more of this do we have to endure?” he asked the Frenchman.

“Hours,” said the Marquis. “We’ve only just begun.”

Which wasn’t strictly true. As well as the guest list, St. Cloud had seen the menu and, provided one discounted the palate-cleaning offering of sorbet and the snails, goat’s cheese and fresh figs which were to be served last, the number of courses was limited to five, since wild trout and rabbit were due to arrive simultaneously as were baklava and baked Alaska.

“Hours?” The Senator looked so sick that St. Cloud smiled. As well as partial deafness the man suffered from a notoriously weak bladder; a serious flaw in someone charged with establishing contact with the party of Kashif Pasha.

St. Cloud knew about that too…

Clicking his fingers for a waiter, the Marquis whispered something in the boy’s ear, leaning rather closer than was necessary and watched the waiter scurry off, reappearing seconds later with an empty jeroboam of champagne.

“Piss in this,” St. Cloud said, placing the bottle beside the Senator’s chair. “That’s what most of us do.”

Pigeon was replaced by lamb roasted in charcoal, testicles still hanging from each gutted carcass like fat purses. Each table got two of the animals. Enough to enable every guest to reach forward and pinch fingers of hot meat without having to stretch. Unnoticed by most guests, the Sufi dancers gave way to a shaven-headed young man backed by a trio of
nasrani
jazz musicians dressed in black. Each note that ululated through the dining room had a haunting quality that filled St. Cloud with feelings of loss and regret. The Marquis hated it as a matter of principle.

“He’s good,” said Hani.

“Who is?” Murad Pasha spoke though a mouthful of roast peppers. He was fastidiously picking slivers of vegetable from the dish on which the lamb sat, his fingers getting so soiled and greasy that he’d abandoned his napkin and taken to using the edge of the tablecloth instead.

“The Sufi.”

“Is he?”

Hani looked at her cousin, who shrugged.

“How would I know?” Murad demanded. And there was a sadness to his words at odds with the wry smile that lit his face. No boy should have eyelashes that long, Hani decided before considering his question.

Knowing such things came naturally to Hani and so she’d never stopped to wonder how she knew. Reading was part of the answer. She did a lot of that. And questions. Aunt Nafisa always told her she asked too many of those. But mostly she just made connections. Adding one fact to another to arrive at a third that was obvious in retrospect.

“Our porter,” she said carefully, “he’s a Sufi and this is his kind of music. Also my Uncle Ashraf…”

Murad Pasha raised dark eyebrows. He’d heard all about Lady Hana’s uncle. “He’s a Sufi too?”

“Possibly,” said Hani with a shrug. “They like the same music. I was going to say that really he’s…” She lowered her voice and the boy bent closer, head tilting so that Hani could whisper; but the truth about the sons of Lilith went unspoken as one of the guards behind the Emir suddenly yelled.

And grabbed for his automatic.

“Emir.”

Time slowed and within its slowness Hani watched the Sufi raise a revolver, thumb back the hammer and let go, the trigger being already depressed. His first shot drilled the bodyguard through his still-open mouth. Blood and splinters of vertebrae exiting in a vivid splash from the back of Nicolai Dobrynin’s neck.

“No…”

Murad’s scream broke time’s crawl and in the acceleration that followed Hani saw the grey woman try to throw herself across Moncef just as his other bodyguard decided to do the same. Flame flared again from the Sufi’s muzzle, there was a crack of gunfire and, in the utter silence, Eugenie and the second Soviet guard tumbled together. As for the man with the gun, a shot from behind dropped the Sufi where he stood.

All this took maybe a second. Perhaps fractionally less.

Murad Pasha was still rising from his chair when Hani grabbed him and tipped hers back, their chairs hitting the floor with an impact that knocked what little was left of the boy’s shout from his body.

“Stay down,” said Hani.

Murad shook his head.

“You’ll be killed.”

“Look,” Murad said, as he snatched free his wrist, “No one’s shooting at you or me. It’s my father they want to murder. Okay?” The boy’s scramble to stand upright ended abruptly, when Hani grabbed one ankle and yanked hard.

She didn’t mean to let go, but the moment Murad’s other foot raked across her knuckles instinct cut in, and by the time she’d taken her hand from her mouth Murad was on his feet, looking for his father, who appeared to be missing.

Hani swore. Bad swearing. The kind Zara used when she thought no one was there. But Hani clambered to her own feet all the same, trying to stay low so bullets went over her head, if there were any more bullets.

Which was how she came to see a distant waiter, thin and white jacketed with a staff tag that read
Hassan
wrestle a Browning hiPower from a tuxedoed musician.

“Shoot him,” barked the officer who’d stood behind Kashif Pasha. Hani wasn’t sure which one he was talking about either. “Do it,” Major Jalal insisted. When no one moved the major drew his own automatic. Only Major Jalal never got to pull the trigger because one second the waiter and musician were struggling and then they weren’t.

For a moment the waiter just stood, watching the other man crumple and then he retreated towards the outside kitchens, Browning hiPower still in his hand and muzzle pointing firmly at Major Jalal’s head.

A parting shot over the head of the crowd kept Kashif’s guests from rushing after him. The metallic clunk that followed was the waiter ramming a spit between handles on the other side of the courtyard door.

“Shoot out the hinges,” Kashif Pasha ordered.

“No,” said an older voice. “Not before securing the room.”

Hani knew without looking that she’d just heard the first words Emir Moncef had uttered all evening. It was a grey-haired, steel-eyed kind of voice. One that allowed for little compromise. Although that didn’t stop Kashif Pasha from pushing Major Jalal towards the blocked door.

“Do it…”

“We said no.” Moncef’s words were firm. Far firmer than the steps that carried him back into the room. “That exit could be booby-trapped. Either wait for a bomb squad or send someone round to check from the other side.” The Emir addressed his remarks to everybody but most guests understood, as did Kashif Pasha, that the rebuke was aimed at him alone.

“But…”

“Do what His Highness says.” Flat as a line showing cardiac arrest, the voice came from behind Moncef. The woman to whom it belonged was neat, compact and had skin the colour of ripe aubergine. A single pip on her shoulder gave Fleur Gide’s rank as lieutenant. The gun she carried was a Heckler & Koch, capable of 850 rounds a minute. She carried it low so it raked across everyone in sight, even her commander.

“I thought we agreed…” Kashif’s voice was harsh.

“And we thought you promised to provide adequate security,” said the Emir, his face hollow with grief. “Nicolai and Alex are dead. And our oldest companion.” He stared down at the grey-haired woman killed with a .45, one that had drilled through her ribs and still held enough velocity to kill the guard who had been standing behind her. She lay in a cloak of blood on a white floor, eyes still open.

Leaning heavily on his cane, the Emir knelt to close the woman’s eyes himself, muttering a prayer for the dead.

Kashif Pasha was shocked to realize his father was crying, in public and openly. Over two Soviet guards and a
nasrani
mercenary. In the circumstances the only thing he could do was ignore the fact. “Where’s my mother gone?” he demanded.

“I took her to safety,” said Lieutenant Gide. “As I did your father when the shooting started. Those were
madame
’s orders, should the need arise.” Her gaze made it clear that the madame to whom she referred was the elderly woman dead on the floor. Kashif Pasha ignored her. “Arrest everyone in the kitchens,” he told Major Jalal. “Before they run away.”

“And just why would they do that?” the Emir asked.

“Because they’re
nasrani,
” Kashif Pasha said through gritted teeth. “Because one of them just shot an undercover member of military intelligence.”

“Undercover?
I thought we’d agreed
…”

Kashif Pasha scowled at his father’s mimicry and the Emir smiled. “Arrest them if you must,” he said, “but release them afterwards.” He held up one hand to stop his son from interrupting. “Understand me. None of them are to disappear.”

Wednesday 2nd March

Hani, three seats away from where Eugenie got shot, eyes
locking on his, too frightened to be puzzled at not recognizing a face so familiar.

Raf reran that sequence in his head, letting Alex, Nicolai and Eugenie tumble endlessly in time to his own, real-world punches. To turn back like this, to attack an enemy was probably the last thing anyone hopelessly outnumbered was meant to do… But then, as he’d spent a lifetime telling himself, Raf wasn’t anyone.

He was the guy with an eight-thousand-line guarantee and weird-shit eyes, batlike hearing and a sense of smell acute enough to revolt a dog. A man with pixel-perfect memory for every last one of those bits of his life he was able to remember. And ice-cold gaps where the rest should be.

Slamming the soldier’s head against a wall, Raf lowered a limp body to the ground and began stripping it. The tunic was too tight across Raf’s shoulders and the trousers short. The boots were good, though, and the cap fitted. After dressing the conscript in his discarded trousers, shoes and shirt (the waiter’s tunic having already been dumped), Raf dragged the unconscious man into position against an alley wall.

“Drunk,” said Raf as he stood over the body. He sounded disgusted but not quite disgusted enough. Pushing his fingers down his own throat, he retched across the other man’s chest and down into his lap. Alcohol and scraps of food stolen from serving plates being taken back into the kitchens.

“Who’s that?” demanded a voice. An NCO stood behind him in the entrance to the alley. Ahead of them both was a side door into the Domus Aurea.

“Some filthy drunk,” Raf said and kicked the body.

Originally, way back, the
dar
had been built for some half-Alicantean
taifa
. Isabeau had told Raf its history as they both helped Chef Edvard set up his makeshift kitchen in a small yard off the
bait bel kebu
. The red-and-white horseshoe arches that provided access to the dining room, the carved capitals in Mudejar style, gilded stucco
muqarnas
work across the ceiling, the intricate, impossibly complex tiling. All had been purchased with the spoils of piracy. It was like discovering that Dick Turpin held up stagecoaches because he had a passion for snuffboxes and French enamel…

“Keep looking,” ordered the NCO.

“Yes, sir,” Raf said.

There were days now—whole days, sometimes days that ran into each other—when Ashraf Bey understood that he’d created the fox. What had happened when he was seven was his responsibility alone. He had chosen to walk out across that girder, the soles of his school slippers melting with every step. Just as he’d chosen to steal a fox cub from its cage and hide in the attic. Not knowing that the fire he’d set would reach his hiding place. And certainly not knowing it would burn down his whole school.

He’d wanted to destroy the biology building. An ugly block of cheap polycrete faced with pine slats like some tatty ski lodge. That was where the animal experiments were done. Where frogs were dissected and roadkill skinned to reveal underlying muscle structure. Where he’d been made to peg out the pelt of a badger and rub salt into stinking leather, having first scraped it so thin that in places it looked almost translucent. “What’s done is done,” Raf told himself and headed into another alley, stopping at a door to kick it open. “So why cry?” The question was rhetorical, Raf accepted that. But he answered it all the same.

“No reason.”

He was beginning to see how it worked. Every question he’d ever asked the fox he answered for himself. Pulling information from memory to provide those clinically precise, unhelpful answers. Sweating the small stuff to make the big stuff go away. His life had been one long refusal to take the real facts and make them add up.

Raf searched the house swiftly, five rooms on three floors, saying nothing to the frightened inhabitants. On his way out he shook his head at a couple of conscripts on their way in. “Empty,” Raf told them. “No one hiding.”

Why was he upset? Good question.

Tiri had been kept in a wire cage at the rear of the biology block. Most of the smaller animals lived inside. Hamsters and rats, mice bred for so many generations that generations of biology masters had lost count. A black widow spider permanently catatonic with cold. Sickly stick insects. Guppies in water thicker than fog. And a single, magnificent Siamese fighting fish, all broken fins and ragged tail.