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 . . .”
CHAPTER 35
22nd October
“Hey you . . .” Hani grabbed Ifritah by the scruff of the neck and pulled so that the cat’s head yanked back and its purr stopped as rapidly as if somebody had flicked a switch. “That’s better,” the girl whispered, hugging the cat to her chest. Immediately the scraggy animal started to purr again.
Hani sighed.
One of her arms ached from cuddling Ifritah, her foot had pins and needles and the narrowness of the window ledge on which she perched had sent her behind to sleep. The long velvet curtain she hid behind was both old and dusty, so half the time Hani had to hold the bridge of her nose just to concentrate on not sneezing because sneezing would ruin everything. Besides, as it was, her own breathing was almost too loud to let her hear what was being said by the cross American woman.
It should have been easy. But something in one of the woman’s pockets was interfering with the tiny microphone Hani had stuck to the bottom of the table. Or maybe the microphone was broken. After all, it came from a Tina Tears whose head she’d cracked open with a paperweight when the plastic proved too tough to cut using a kitchen knife.
Hani knew she shouldn’t be there. Just as she knew she was in trouble if Ashraf found out. And he probably didn’t even want her help. She was a child, as everybody from Zara to Khartoum kept telling her. But she also had an IQ of 160 for real, could do crosswords in French, English and Arabic and had forgotten more about computers than Raf knew, even if she couldn’t see in the dark.
Hani wasn’t meant to know about his night vision or maybe she was meant to have forgotten—but she did know. She knew other things too, dark swirling facts that waited at the edges of her mind, wanting to come to her if only she’d let them.
On the other side of the curtain, the small woman was arguing again. She’d been angry since Raf came back to finish their conversation, only this was worse. She wanted Raf to give up Effendi, that was how she put it . . . Effendi had to be given up, like cigarettes.
Ashraf refused, of course, and Hani hoped he’d go on refusing. She liked Zara, and Effendi was Zara’s father. Hani didn’t like Zara’s mother, but then Zara didn’t like Zara’s mother so the Senator could have her if she wanted.
“I’ll leave the photographs,” the woman said crossly, climbing to her feet. Hani knew that was what she was doing by the creak of a sofa. Footsteps padded across carpet, then stopped. The Senator was turning in the doorway, wanting to say something. Only the threat or retort never came. Instead the woman and her interpreter let themselves out of the governor’s chambers.
That was bad. Khartoum should have been there to let her out. Hani knew this from living with her Aunt Nafisa, notables never opened their own doors. A creak from the other sofa told her that Raf was leaving. After the creak and steps came the slam of a door and then nothing.
“You can go now,” said Hani, yanking open her nearest window to release the struggling cat. With Ifritah gone the room became more silent still. So Hani padded across the silence and picked up one of the famous photographs. The gutted boy was little older than she was, though his skin was darker and his black hair scraped back into a fat ponytail. The two girls in the next photograph were about Hani’s age. One of them was missing her hands.
Looking down, it wasn’t the boy’s face that gripped Hani’s attention but that of the bearded man on the badge pinned to his dirty shirt. Except for a beret and a small cigar clamped between his teeth, the man could have been the nasrani God, the one who got himself killed.
“Abad,” Hani said to herself and picked up the photograph, tucking it down the side of her jeans and smoothing her T-shirt back into place. No one stopped her as she left the chamber or saw her in the corridor outside. All the same, as Raf sometimes said, better safe than sorry when being sorry wasn’t an option.