Hamzah wondered what Olga saw when she looked at him. A filthy capitalist? A self-deluded gangster? A parvenu so desperate for baubles he bought his own title? Or a father unable to safeguard a daughter who refused all protection?
“Okay,” said Olga briskly. “Problems I do know about . . . Your daughter’s been busted by the morales for running an illegal club. She’s in love with some spoilt little princeling who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. There are rumours of a strike at the refinery. And, despite a full and frank talk, someone’s still asking around about your childhood, according to Kamil . . .”
“Avatar,” Hamzah corrected, without even thinking about it. “He calls himself DJ Avatar.”
“Whatever. He could still become a problem . . .”
“No,” said Hamzah. “Ashraf Bey’s a problem. Avatar just wishes he was.”
“You believe the bey’s for real?”
“I know he is,” Hamzah said heavily. “And he’s a trained killer, government issue . . . A bit damaged round the edges but still under guarantee.” The big man laughed. “Well, that was how he described himself.”
“And you actually wanted this man to marry your daughter?”
“I want,” Hamzah corrected her. “More than want, I need this man to marry Zara.”
“I see,” said Olga. “Can I ask why?”
Hamzah shook his head. There were, in his experience, immutable laws about how fathers felt regarding the suitors who sent flowers and elegant cards to their daughters. The first feeling of hatred gave way to one of regret. Third, and finally, came loss as the daughter became a woman. So was it written.
Laws, equally immutable, governed the behaviour, if not the actual feelings, of those courted. Whoever came calling, daughters pretended to despise them. Presents were returned unopened, letters sent back unread. Mashrabiya shutters were slammed tight against each and every serenade. No touch was sought or permitted.
Yet Hamzah knew beyond doubt that his own daughter had spent a night with this man. And while he should have been furious, he was merely worried and oddly sad. It was hard to know if his tenderness for Zara and her willingness to turn to him was a sign of success or proof of failure.
And beyond these things he barely ever thought about, like his own feelings, was a real threat to his wealth, his happiness and to his own and Zara’s lives. Because when Iskandryian newsfeeds began running stories they shouldn’t and the police stopped contacting him at the first sign of trouble then the threat was real.
Someone somewhere reckoned they could change the balance of power.
“Look,” said Hamzah, relenting slightly. “At its most basic, I need Ashraf to marry Zara to give her protection . . . Protection I may not be able to provide for much longer. And if she doesn’t marry the bey, I have to find someone else. The big problem is that I may not have time.”
Behind her heavy spectacles, Olga’s blue eyes were large. She understood exactly what he was saying. If Hamzah could no longer protect his daughter, then he couldn’t protect her either. If he couldn’t protect her, then what hope had he of protecting the refinery, Hamzah Enterprises or any other of the myriad shells within shells making up the story that justified the last thirty years of his life . . .
“Have you upset the General?”
“No.” Hamzah shook his head. He and Koenig Pasha had a better understanding than most people realized. All the General required of Hamzah was that he recognize who was in charge of El Iskandryia, which wasn’t the young Khedive and wasn’t him. In return, the General kept Interpol at bay, played Washington’s investigators off against those from Moscow, and shamelessly ignored or flattered Paris.
“Tell me,” said Hamzah, “is there such a thing as a normal childhood?”
“No,” Olga replied immediately.
“Then, even allowing for the fact no one has a normal childhood,” said Hamzah, “mine was different.”
Standing up from his desk, he walked to a window, leant out and watched a sweeper in the playground of St. Mark’s College. The fact that Hamzah’s marble-and–red sandstone office was built next door to the college was not an accident.
He’d worked the kitchens at St. Mark’s, long ago, when he first arrived in the city. The name Hamzah came from a faded board listing every pupil killed in the war of 1914–15. The Quitrimala that became his surname was borrowed from the gilded spine of a book in the library.
He wasn’t meant to leave the kitchens but no one saw a young boy in a jellaba with a split broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other. To the pupils and masters of St. Mark’s, Hamzah was so invisible that he might as well have been made from glass.
No one would ever look through Zara.
“Follow her,” Hamzah demanded.
“Me?” Olga sounded surprised.
The thickset man briefly considered that option. There were advantages but the disadvantages were greater. “No,” he said, “get someone from security. Have them report back every five minutes.”
At noon Hamzah received a report that Zara had been admitted to the General’s house and had seen not the General but the young Khedive himself. Two hours later she was shopping for children’s clothes accompanied by a small girl, described as anxious and scrawny. The child had just demanded a haircut, one enough like Zara’s own for them to be taken for sisters.
At six, both Zara and Raf’s niece Hani were being driven aimlessly back and forth along the Corniche in a calèche, one of those open-top, horse-drawn carriages loved by tourists. Shortly after that, they disappeared through the door of a warehouse at the back of an old market near Rue Tatwig.
A quick and dirty skim through the land registry revealed that it was owned by a holding company. An even dirtier skim anchored the ownership to Madame Sosostris, a known agent of the Thiergarten, Berlin’s infamous intelligence service. An organization with whom Koenig Pasha was believed to have close, if occasionally fractious, links.
But it was only when Zara was joined by Lady Jalila, wife of the Chief of Police, aunt to Hani and cousin to a woman Ashraf Bey was rumoured to have murdered, that Hamzah began to get really worried.
CHAPTER 8
Sudan
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are . . .”
It was Zac who came up with the idea of turning off the river, a few days after antiquated F-111s bombed Masouf Hospital with his brother inside.
Ka had found a small radio and a pair of spectacles. The radio was one of those old, windup things made of blue plastic. Like the spectacles, its case was cracked, and the dial didn’t work too well, but it still got Radio Freedom, which was the government, and Radio Liberty, which wasn’t . . .
An old woman was talking about war. She sounded cross and upset. Close to tears. She didn’t think the hospital had been an arms depot at all, she thought it was a hospital.
Did she have any proof she was right?
Did anyone have any proof that she wasn’t?
How long did Madame Ambassador think the war would go on? The woman asking all the questions was younger, her voice brittle.
“As long as there’s water to be fought over,” replied the old woman tiredly. “As long as . . .”
“. . . the Nile flows,” Zac repeated, for about the fifth time. “That’s what she said.”
“Rivers aren’t taps,” said Sarah, flicking long black braids out of her eyes. Being reasonably open to new ideas, Sarah wasn’t contemptuous like Saul, just doubtful. She looked across their small campfire to where the sergeant sat, and casually asked Ka what they were all wondering . . .