The Power of Five Oblivion (16 page)

Richard nodded. “Yeah,” he muttered. “It’s great to be back.”

Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad sat behind his desk on the second floor of the Abdeen Palace, a huge building in the eastern part of the city. Once it had been the headquarters of the President of Egypt and it was only right that he should have taken it over. Everything about the room was out of proportion. The white marble floor seemed to stretch for ever. The windows looking out over Qasr el-Nil Street were triple-height. The potted plants were the size of small trees. Even the desk dwarfed the man who occupied it.

Akkad was exactly sixty years old. He was an ordinary-looking man, quite short and almost completely bald with just a few wisps of grey hair around his ears. His skin was dark, his eyes very brown. It would be easy to imagine him as a dentist or perhaps an accountant. There was a sort of willingness to please about him, a sense that he would apologize even as he was sentencing you to death. As if to make up for his physical appearance, he was wearing an elaborate military uniform. The jacket, trousers and shirt were all the same pale green. He had a dark tie and heavy epaulettes, both on his shoulders and on his collar. The only colour in the room came from the rows of medals displayed across his chest. There were so many of them that the effect was almost comical, as if the weight of them might actually make him topple over to one side.

Today’s sandstorm had finally died down and outside, everything was quiet. Although much of Cairo was in ruins, Qasr el-Nil Street was still intact and a ring of steel had been thrown around the palace to protect it from rebel forces. Akkad was studying a report of a helicopter attack that had taken place the day before on Maadi, a wealthy suburb to the south which was believed to house a rebel stronghold. A nerve gas had been used and according to the report many thousands of people had died. The number was immaterial. If there had been rebels operating there, they were there no longer. Sometimes, to kill a wasp it was necessary to take out the entire nest.

There was a knock on the door and, without waiting for an answer, two men appeared, both dressed in crisply ironed uniforms. In perfect unison, they marched in, almost as if they were one creature, joined at the hip. They saluted and stood to attention. Akkad did not look up from his document, even though he had finished reading it. He was making a point, allowing the silence to add to the tension in the room. He knew what the men were going to tell him. He had heard about it long before they arrived. For their part, Colonel Bassir and Major Farouk stayed still, trying not to show how nervous they were. Both had taken part in the operation at the Great Pyramid that morning. They had come to report their failure and they knew perfectly well that, as far as Akkad was concerned, failure was never an option.

“So the girl escaped, I understand?” Akkad said at last, not looking up. He spoke in Arabic. He paused briefly, then allowed his eyes to travel from the page to the two men.

“Yes, sir,” Bassir replied. He had been the commanding officer. He was thirty-two years old, married with two children, and right now he wondered if he would ever see them again. He had already decided on his strategy. He was going to blame Farouk. He had given the right orders. It was his junior who had failed to carry them out.

“How did it happen?”

“Rebel forces were waiting at the pyramid, sir. It seems incredible that they should have been there. How could they have known that the girl or any one of the Gatekeepers would appear? I had of course ordered Major Farouk to search the area, to make sure that it was secure. I am sorry to have to report that he failed in his duties.”

Farouk knew what Bassir was doing. The two of them had served together for more than six years and were close friends. Their families met sometimes after evening prayer. And now Bassir was cold-bloodedly knifing him in the back. It was perfectly reasonable. Had their positions been reversed, he would have done exactly the same.

“Did you follow the girl into the city?” Akkad asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he already knew the answer and that anyway, he didn’t really care.

“We were unable to, sir. Too many of our men had been killed. Even the shape-changer was cut in half. Most of our vehicles were disabled. Everything happened very quickly, and of course there was also the sandstorm…”

Akkad gazed at his commanding officer for the first time and suddenly there was a chill in his eyes which was anything but ordinary. There were stories that Akkad had been a ruthless fighter in the old Egyptian army. It had been his personal responsibility to interrogate political prisoners. Not a single one of them had lived to describe the experience. “Were you aware of how important it was to secure this girl?” he demanded. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Then how do you account for this failure?”

“I obeyed your instructions to the letter. I gave the commands. The men were slow and ill-disciplined.”

“Major Farouk was responsible for their training?”

“Yes, sir.”

The accusation hung in the air. Akkad turned to Farouk and now spoke to him. “Do you have anything to add?”

“No, sir.” Farouk stood his ground and waited. He knew that there was no point in arguing or trying to raise a defence. The Field Marshall would have made up his mind before either of the two men had come into the room. Even so, the silence seemed to drag on for an eternity before he announced his decision.

“Colonel Bassir,” he said. “I want you to assemble an execution squad in the parade ground. You will choose four of our most accurate riflemen … we cannot afford any more errors. Full ceremonial uniform.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can bring together a couple of regiments to witness the event. Shall we say one hour from now?”

“Yes, sir.” Bassir hesitated. There was one detail missing. “Who is to be executed, sir?”

“You are, Colonel Bassir.” Both men stared and Akkad went on quickly. “It is most unfortunate but this has been a serious blunder and you were the commanding officer. We have to make an example. That is all.”

Bassir stood there, stunned. He tried to look at Farouk for help. But the other man turned away. Briefly, he thought of bringing out his own gun. It was there, hanging at his belt. No. That would be madness. In a way, Akkad had been generous to him. At least his death would be swift.

“Thank you, sir.” Bassir saluted stiffly and left the room.

“I want you to organize search parties, Major Farouk,” the field marshall continued as soon as the door had closed. “Speak to every informant. The girl must be in the city somewhere. Someone must know where she is.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do make sure you find her soon. If there is any further failure in this matter, I will hold you personally responsible.”

Farouk could barely speak. He spun on his heels and walked as quickly as he could out of the room.

Akkad continued working until twelve o’clock, when it was time for afternoon prayer. He didn’t need to look at the clock. He knew instinctively by the length and the position of the shadows. He got up from behind his desk and dropped to his knees. But he did not face east. He faced south.

Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad had once been a good Muslim. But the old religions were almost forgotten. Along with Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism they simply seemed … irrelevant. Akkad now prayed three times a day to his new master, to Chaos, the King of the Old Ones. And the best thing was that, unlike the old religions, his master answered back.

As Akkad muttered prayers of loyalty and devotion, the lights seemed to go out in the room. The shadows lengthened and dragged him in. The sunlight disappeared from behind the windows. Suddenly it had become very cold. Outside, there was the roll of a drum and a sudden blast of gunfire. And, almost at the same time, he heard the voice whispering in the room and he was aware that there was someone – or something – standing very close behind him.

“Find the girl,” it said. “I need her. I must have her. Find the girl and bring her to me. Find her now.”

FOURTEEN

“They’ve started fighting again,” Richard said, listening to the gunfire coming from the west of the city.

He had developed a sense of distance and direction so that he could more or less tell where a battle was taking place just by glancing at a map. He had not yet been allowed to leave the compound – it was considered too dangerous – and anyway, there would have been no point with the sandstorms blowing almost continuously, twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, turning every street into a dead end. He was puzzled about the storms. He’d never thought of Cairo as a particularly windy place and wondered if there had been a catastrophic shift in the weather patterns, perhaps a result of global warming. Was that another curse that the Old Ones had brought down on the planet? The strange thing was that nobody in the compound ever mentioned it. Like the war itself, the storms had been going on so long that they had come to be expected as a normal part of life.

“Maybe it’s Samir and his men,” Scarlett said.

“What time did he go out?”

“About six this morning…”

By now, they knew half a dozen of the commanders in this outpost of the rebel army. They were all young, in their twenties, and – unless they were on a special exercise – they dressed in ordinary street clothes, with a single red ribbon pinned to their top pocket. Red was the colour of the revolution. In ancient Egypt, it had been the colour of victory. The rebels all spoke a little English, although less than they might have done. With no television, there were no English-language programmes or films to learn from. There was no Internet either. For Scarlett, that was worse than almost anything, leaving her cut off and alone. But as Rémy had explained, it had simply disappeared one night a long time ago. Nobody could remember exactly when it happened, but then, Richard reflected, nobody had ever been quite sure when it had been invented either. It had just gone and that was that.

Two weeks had passed – but it was hard to keep track of time when every day was the same. And there was always the possibility that the Old Ones were still playing with them, that they might be jumping forward months or even years without even noticing it. Scarlett had been moved out of the hospital block and had a small room next to Richard, down in the basement, out of the way. They each had a bed, a basin and the use of a shower with only a trickle of cold water – although Rémy had told them to be grateful. There were now many cities within Egypt – and indeed many countries – with no water at all. At night, they looked out of small, barred windows that were half sunken below ground level so that their only view was of the boots of the guards on patrol as they walked past. The doors were unlocked. They were allowed to walk together around the compound. Otherwise, they might as well have been in jail.

At least Scarlett was well on the road to recovery. No matter what his own situation, Richard couldn’t hide his relief. She had lost weight, which, with the meagre rations in the compound, she wasn’t going to put back on, and the shock of what she had been through was still etched on her face. The surgeon had cut her hair short and there was an unpleasant scar from the operation, which wouldn’t disappear until the hair grew back. Glancing at herself in the mirror, Scarlett had grimaced. “God, what a mess!” She was quickly recovering her sense of humour along with her strength and her determination to fight back. She was glad to be alive.

Richard had liked her from the start. He was still sorry that he had been separated from Matt and worried about him all the time – but the two of them had quickly bonded. How could they fail to, thrown together like this? Scarlett was thin and small and, with her cropped hair, had the look of a child beggar on the streets of Bangkok. But Richard never forgot that she was one of the Five and that she had immense power if she chose to use it. He had seen it for himself in Hong Kong. For her part, Scarlett was relieved to have Richard with her and, as much as he denied it, insisted that he had saved her life by bringing her here. She liked him because he was scruffy and disorganized and pretended to be completely helpless, drawn into an adventure which he didn’t understand. At the same time, she saw his hidden strengths. He had been a good friend to Matt and would do anything for him, indeed for any of them. He would be with them until the end.

Richard had only recently told her what had happened to the world – her world, the one they had both known. He needed to be sure that she was strong enough to absorb it. He had briefly considered keeping it from her but had known at once that he couldn’t. After all, it was the reason she was here. And so he had told her everything that Albert Rémy had told him.

She hadn’t been shocked. It was all too much to grasp and – isolated, left on their own inside the compound with no newspaper or television images to make it all real – it had just added up to so many words. What proof did they have that it was even true? Rémy was as cut off as they were and had little information beyond what was happening in Cairo, and much of that was hard to prove. And yet neither of them had any doubt at all that the world was in chaos. That was the reason the Old Ones had broken through the gate at Nazca. From the moment they had returned, they had been swift and ruthless going about their work.

“I dreamt about London,” Scarlett said.

The two of them were sitting in the classroom where Richard had been brought when he first arrived. The buildings had indeed once been a school and were now divided between living accommodation, the hospital, storerooms and military command. This was a neutral area. Richard and Scarlett knew they would be left on their own.

Richard waited for her to continue.

“I can’t bear thinking about it, the idea that it’s not there any more.” She paused. “Do you really think there’s nothing left?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “To be honest with you, Scar, I’m like you. I don’t want to think about it.”

Scarlett touched the side of her head. Her old nickname had become horribly appropriate. “Why would anyone want to do that? Blow up a city?”