Ten years back, when he was small, death squads had cleared the streets of raggeds and kinderwhores, dumping childish bodies by the truckload into the weed-heavy waters of Lake Mareotis. As July had slid into August and the temperatures soared and foreign film crews began to descend on the city, the entourage around the young Khedive spoke of little else. Normal gossip ceased, as did backbiting and the daily jostle for position. A horrified fascination took hold of the palace, from which the Khedive had to be protected.
Rooms stilled when he walked into them, conversations died, no one would talk if he was there. Which made it twice as hard to work out exactly what was going on. It was weeks before he discovered that the rubbish being removed from the souks and alleys was human.
Almost everyone the Khedive overheard approved of what was being done. So much so that in the kitchens and sculleries, hardworking porters cursed each other for not having had the idea first.
The one person not impressed was Koenig Pasha.
With the arrival of autumn came the executions. An army major, two detective sergeants, a colonel in the morales and a uniformed police officer. After that, the street cleaning stopped and the only thing left to drive raggeds from their narrow alleys was that winter’s lashing rain.
Shaking water from his long dark hair, Tewfik Pasha stepped out of his shower and blinked, surprised to find Captain Bruford waiting impatiently in the doorway to his bedroom. He hadn’t actually asked the woman in, Tewfik Pasha remembered with a sigh. Unidentified helicopter or no, punctilious courtesy had kept the Utopia Line’s captain where she stood.
“Come in,” he suggested and turned away to slip his arms through the sleeves of a dressing gown. “Can I offer you coffee?”
His sudden smile dazzled Captain Bruford so much that she accepted, without stopping to remember that it was almost noon and her own breakfast had been eaten hours before. Coffee and toast, served on the bridge; which was what a few of her older officers still called the computer room.
“That helicopter . . .”
The Khedive handed her coffee in a bone-china cup with matching saucer. Both items featured a discreet Utopia Lines logo. “Do you want me to order some croissant?”
She refused the croissant, only too aware that eyes of darkest brown watched her from a face that was perfectly symmetrical, perfectly proportioned . . . just perfect really.
Captain Bruford shook her head and glanced back to find the eyes still watching her. “The VSV,” she said. “You really . . .”
“I am afraid I can’t.” The Khedive’s shrug was apologetic. Almost as apologetic as his voice. “You see,” he said as he spread both hands to indicate his helplessness, “I can’t be seen to run away.”
“But the other passengers . . .”
“You have an onboard defence system,” said the Khedive. He nodded to a complimentary notebook resting on his bedside table. It was that year’s Toshiba, an update of the model with the lizardskin cover and silver corners. In it was everything a guest might want to know about the SS Jannah.
“Somewhere in the small print,” said the Khedive, “it mentions that you carry ship-to-air defences. However, my own intelligence digests confirm that you have functioning PCB.”
“We’ve got what?” The captain’s voice was hollow.
“Lightning throwers, three of them, LockMart-made, second-generation.” The boy wriggled the fingers of one hand. “I’ve got some too. They look like black metal spiders.”
“Like . . .” Captain Bruford halted.
“If they attack you,” said the Khedive, “attack back. If they don’t, then let them land on the ’copter deck. If there’s a problem, I and my bodyguards will deal with it.”
“Bodyguards?”
“Well, bodyguard,” the Khedive admitted. “Sort of . . .”
“And where is this bodyguard?” asked the captain, still cross at being blackmailed over the particle beam weapons. It was blackmail, because PCBs were illegal under an antiproliferation treaty signed eighteen months earlier. Added to which, bodyguards were strictly forbidden aboard the SS Jannah. That was condition one of being accepted aboard.
“Where’s Avatar?” The Khedive glanced round his suite and then at the sunlit balcony beyond. “Now there’s a question.” Dropping his silk dressing gown to the floor, Tewfik Pasha hunted for some trousers. “To be honest, I haven’t a clue . . .”
He was still looking for something to wear when Captain Bruford let herself out. In total, she’d been in his suite for less than ten minutes. And he was, she told herself, irritating, difficult and overprivileged even by the standards of guests on the SS Jannah. He was also undeniably beautiful, with a charisma that made Hollywood replicas look shallow and contrived.
She considered briefly the possibility that he really was the General’s lover. And then her watch chimed and she took the first available Orvis, overriding its programming so that it took her straight down to the ops room. She might be the captain, but this was a civilized ship and she didn’t want to keep her chief of security waiting any longer than was necessary.
CHAPTER 50
28th October
Café Le Trianon was closed. That meant the private lift that went straight up to the floor above and the offices of the Third Circle was out of action. And that meant Hani had to use the stairs from Boulevard Saad Zaghloul. She didn’t mind; in fact, things were much quieter in the HQ of Iskandryia’s civil service now that the lift and the telephones had stopped working.
Unfortunately, people still kept interrupting her.
Hani hit a hot key and her list of satellites vanished. Although the subroutine that was supposed to be making contact with Avatar kept running in the background, without success.
“Hani. What are you doing here?”
Ingrid Nordstrom saw the young girl’s face freeze and stepped back, forcing a smile.
Life at the Third Circle had been difficult these last few days. There was no real work for her to give the staff when they came in, but equally no one had given Ingrid permission to let them stay away.
She sighed.
None of this was the child’s fault and actually Ingrid liked Hani. Much more than she usually liked children, or most other adults, come to that. The bey’s young niece was the politest child Ingrid had ever met and the quietest. And if not for the child’s obsession with computers, no one would have noticed she was here at alclass="underline" but with just two machines working in the whole office, it was inconvenient if Lady Hani decided to monopolize one of them.
“I’m halfway through a story,” said Hani. “I’m good at stories.”
She was too.
Raf thought she was with Khartoum, who thought she was at the madersa with Donna. And Donna thought she was shopping with Zara. Whereas, in fact, she’d walked from Shallalat Gardens to Le Trianon by herself. Later she’d say sorry, if she got found out, but at the moment things were much too critical to explain.
“It’s a fairy story,” said Hani, “sort of . . .”
“What’s it about?”
Hani’s face creased in concentration, one finger hammering at the Pg Up key until she found the passage she wanted.
“And lo as dusk fell over the stony desert, a son of Lilith came out of the night wrapped in a mantle of darkness. Across his chest he wore a necklace of human teeth and in his hand he carried a staff carved from the wing-bone of a djinn . . .”
Out of the corner of her eye Hani could see the woman frown so she skipped down a few paragraphs.
“. . . and when the sun rose over the rose-hued walls of Al Qahirah, the son of Lilith hid in the shadow of a house and wrapped darkness tight around his thin body. And this day passed as days always pass, slowly for those who labour and more swiftly for those to whom life is joy.