‘A deal. Mutual benefit. We share all our knowledge. I’m a Medjay detective. This gives me authority, and it grants me access to places you could never reach. However, you will back me up. You will tell me what you know about this new gang. We’ll combine intelligence. You provide the force, if and when the time comes. And then you can take your revenge. But the crucial clause is this: the killer of my friend is mine to do with as I choose.’
He put the tips of his fingers carefully together and smiled.
‘You think this is funny?’ I said. ‘You think I’m here to amuse myself?’
He nodded, as if somehow impressed by my reckless behaviour.
‘You are truly angry, my friend, and I admire your thirst for revenge. But perhaps you did not think carefully enough about coming here. Perhaps you didn’t think about respect.’
‘I thought carefully. You know who I am. You could easily kill me if you wanted. So why else would I take this kind of risk unless I was-sincere?’ I replied.
He chuckled at the word, repeating it to himself as if it were the punchline of a joke. Then he reached for a jug of wine, and poured us each a measure.
‘Sit down, my sincere friend,’ he said, in a warmer tone. ‘Let me tell you about myself.’
And so it was I ended up listening to one of the most notorious and ruthless bosses of the city’s cartels. I found him to be a hard, intelligent businessman, with an astute sense of theatre; his own grand style of violence he deemed a necessary part of business. It was an expression of power, and a demand for respect. Of course, he was prepared to use it whenever it suited him, which was often; but he was no psychopath. In fact, he saw himself as a benefactor, for the men under his control were young, and otherwise hopeless, and he believed he was shaping their lawlessness to more useful ends. The vast profits of his trade he saw as a reasonable redistribution of wealth. He was himself simply profiting like a businessman from a new market of consumers-the affluent young of Egypt, who could afford the luxury of opium, and then, when pleasure turned to addiction, who could maintain that, too. He had even devised a special deal; the first hit was free. Thereafter, they bought from him. He had no concern for their welfare; in the direct terms of his morality, that was their responsibility.
I began to realize this was a man who believed his actions were reasonable and principled; he saw his cartel as a family, or a kind of brigade, and its rules were based not on violence, but on trust. Most of the kids who came to him were orphaned or from homes so broken by poverty and violence they were better off without them. He gave them something to do, something to define themselves against, and a strict routine with tangible rewards. Most strangely, perhaps, he was proud of the city, and of his position.
As a-now-former Medjay officer, I belonged on the opposite side of everything he stood for, and everything he said. And yet I found myself unable, at times, to challenge the truth of his arguments. But in any case, it was not in my interest to question him further about the less appetizing aspects of his apparently benign underworld tyranny. I only needed to know what he could tell me about the Black Star Gang.
‘They are a mystery, and they are a big problem. The supply of opium is limited, and hard to obtain, and therefore of great value; and so all the Theban gangs have always fought over it. It has been notoriously unreliable. Of course it is smuggled up the Great River, by boat. It is not so difficult to bribe the right men to smuggle the shipments through the port. And the captains take their share willingly. Sometimes the quantities are excellent-three or more shipments in one month. But at times they have dwindled to nothing. Some of us tried to set up better, more consistent supply lines, but it was impossible. The distances were too great. The contacts were obscure. The jars are heavy, and the opium juice is inconvenient to transport. It is a strange world out there, beyond our borders, and mostly our dealers and negotiators do not return.’
‘And now?’ I asked.
‘Now, suddenly, the gang war in the city has exploded again. At first we suspected each other. But soon even the most adamant of my rivals recognized this was the work of a different group. They are nothing like us.’
‘Tell me what you know.’
He sighed, and began to pace the chamber.
‘These killers are like the spirits of the dead. They travel in silence. They destroy everything. They go where they will … and no one escapes or survives,’ he said simply.
‘But how do they do that?’ I wondered.
He shrugged.
‘It is their style. It’s very elegant. And you know, unlike the rest of us, they don’t diversify at all. Gambling, prostitution, illegal smuggling of rare goods, kidnapping-these are all potentially lucrative areas. But as far as I know, they have shown no interest in any of this-’
‘How do they distribute the opium? It’s one thing to import it, and to destroy the competition. It’s another to set up a new distribution system of dealers,’ I said.
He opened his hands wide in agreement.
‘I have no idea. I am hoping you will tell me. Perhaps, when they have wiped out the rest of the opposition, they will offer us a distribution deal. No doubt the terms will not be very acceptable.’
He gazed at me, then leaned back, and roared with laughter.
‘You know something; I feel I could almost like you. You must have some balls, coming in here and talking to me like this.’
I ignored him.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me? The smallest detail might be useful,’ I said.
He pondered the papyrus and the black star.
‘Here in Thebes we are at the end of a long process, a long journey, a chain of many connected businesses. This has never been efficient, but it was always necessary. But it seems to me somehow this gang must have solved that problem. I don’t know how, but I believe they control the whole process from supply to delivery. Perhaps you should think about that. Think about where the chain begins, as well as where it ends.’
‘And where is that?’
He smiled.
‘North.’
‘Everyone knows the opium crop is grown in the badlands between Egypt and the Hittite Empire. So perhaps Canaan? Amurru? Qadesh?’ I said, thinking of the territories that Egypt had struggled to control during the long stalemate of the Hittite wars.
‘I will repeat to you one word, which I hear, coming down to me from far, far away.’
He beckoned me closer.
‘Obsidian. It is-’
‘I know what obsidian is. It is the material of looking glasses, and our sharpest knives.’ I interrupted.
Then I remembered the masterful butchery of the decapitations. What if the killer had used an obsidian knife?
‘Obsidian is a name,’ he said quietly. I looked at him, hoping for more.
The man stood up. Something in his gaunt face had suddenly changed. He was dangerous again.
‘You should go now. But I will be watching you. So don’t think you can just walk away from this. Do your part. Or else I will show you what happened to our boys could happen to you, too.’
And with that, he screwed up the papyrus with the black star, grinned and swallowed it. And then swiftly he turned, and slashed his knife across the throat of Dedu, the waiting Nubian boy. Dedu gurgled on his own blood, and then his body collapsed at my feet.
The Nubian wiped his knife over my cheeks so that the hot blood trickled down.
‘You are already deep in blood. Remember that.’
11
I had never seen Nakht lost for speech. I had just finished recounting the facts of Khety’s death. He embraced me lightly, and patted me on the shoulder-which surprised me, for he was not given to displays of emotion or intimacy, and he rarely tolerated physical contact. We stood like that, uncertainly, for a moment, and then moved apart, awkwardly. We were in the reception chamber on the first floor of the mansion. It gave on to the courtyard, where his caged birds trilled and water trickled along the crisscross of stone channels that fed the plants.