Major Abbas flipped shut his cheap notebook and looked around him. The walls of the alley were peeling, scabs of plaster littering the ground. Even the feral cats were thinner than elsewhere and for the Mellah that made them almost dead. Ribs like cracked twigs and fur matted with dust. The place stank of shit, human and animal, and with the heavy taste of blood from a nearby slaughterhouse. Jewish maybe. Most of the usual slaughterhouses were on the edge of the Medina.
"Your arm," Major Abbas said to the boy. "How did you lose it?"
Moz looked down at the empty sleeve pinned to the front of his jellaba, so that it couldn't flap free.
"I didn't," he said, "it's still there."
The Major stared at the boy's face but it was free of irony or insult; in fact, Major Abbas doubted that the small boy even knew what irony was. As for madness, how could anyone tell? But the boy's huge brown eyes were clear and his gaze firm. The kid had the longest eyelashes of anybody he'd ever seen, Major Abbas realized, then looked away, suddenly embarrassed.
"What do you mean it's still there?" The words came out harder than he'd intended.
"It's there," Moz said. "Wait, I'll show you." Without pausing, the boy unbuttoned the neck of his jellaba, dragged the garment over his head with his one good hand and discarded it in the dirt. "See?"
He stood naked, his body thin as a kitten and every rib visible for counting, legs thin like a stork's and genitals small as a lost acorn. Turning, Moz presented his scarred shoulders and thin buttocks to the man who hardly saw them, he was too busy looking at the arm twisted behind Moz's back and tied in place with cheap twine.
"Why?" Major Abbas asked.
"I use the wrong hand," Moz said, his voice matter-of-fact. "All the time. Mostly to eat. You know, my dirty hand."
Everyone Major Abbas knew ate with their right hand only. And in Paris it had been a shock to see his French friends, people he regarded fondly, tearing at their baguettes with both hands and lifting fruit from bowls with whichever hand was nearest. All the same...
"Your mother does this?"
The boy shook his head. "Malika's father."
"But your mother lets him?"
"He owns the house," said Moz, as if that explained everything and perhaps it did.
"So," Hassan said later. "You're friends with policemen now."
Moz shrugged.
"Tell me," insisted Hassan. "What were you talking about?"
"Nothing."
"He walked you across Djemaa el Fna and bought you cakes for nothing?" There was a slyness to his voice Moz hadn't heard before.
Idries sniggered.
"I'm going home," Moz said firmly.
"What a good idea," said Hassan. "We'll come with you."
Twisting to check his escape route, Moz spied the two Algerian boys leaning against the wall about ten paces behind him. Both were smiling. He knew what was coming and was obscurely glad that Malika was not there to see it.
"Catch me," Moz said, jinking around Hassan and cutting down an alley so tight a toddler could have touched both sides at once.
They did.
CHAPTER 15
Lampedusa, Saturday 30 June [Now]
The office was tiny, stacked with boxes. On one wall a work roster gave duties to Antonio, Marc and Gus, bar staff who'd long since been sent back to their villages. A marine artificer had bolted a steel grill across the room's only window, reducing the daylight to baroque shards which ran across the top of a desk as if escaping from a painting.
An electric fan on a small filing cabinet swung back and forth. Every time it reached hard right it glitched, clattering noisily as it stripped plastic gears, before beginning to swing back again. Prisoner Zero would have liked to fix it but both his feet were shackled to a chair.
"Have they been treating you well?"
Prisoner Zero looked at the redhead in the doorway and then flicked his gaze to the marine and the suit behind. The suit wore black Armani, with a red tie and white shirt. His shoes were expensive but dusty, the side effect of not being senior enough to rate his own jeep. On his little finger was a graduation ring. It looked expensive.
"Doesn't he talk?"
The suit's question was addressed to his military escort. The man was a civilian so Master Sergeant Saez didn't bother to answer.
"I'm Katie."
Stepping towards the chair, Dr. Petrov held out one hand and waited. When the prisoner didn't take it, she kept her hand extended, apparently counting off the seconds behind watchful green eyes. At a point known only to herself, Katie Petrov dropped her hand and nodded.
"I'm Bill Logan," said the suit. "And this is Dr. Petrov. She'll be asking you some questions."
"Everything you tell me will be in confidence." Katie's voice was firm and the glance she gave Bill Logan was heavy with meaning. "I want you to know that."
"I'll leave you with him then."
"That would probably be a good idea." Turning to the desk, Katie picked up a manila file and flicked it open. Inside was a single piece of lined paper, blank on both sides. She usually used a Psion Organiser to record her notes and then downloaded them to her laptop, but this was different.
"Undo the shackles," she told the marine. "And then let me have the room to myself."
"The shackles are to stay on, ma'am," Master Sergeant Saez said. "And I'm to stay here."
"Not a chance," said Katie Petrov. "I don't talk to patients in front of third parties. It's unethical."
"For your own safety, ma'am."
The psychiatrist smiled. "I have a black belt in jitsu," she said. "I work out for two hours a day. Look at him..." She nodded at Prisoner Zero who sat, head down, staring at dust that danced in the shards of sunlight, his body encased in a filthy orange jump suit. "Do you really think he's a threat?"
"He tried to kill the President."
"With an antique rifle," said Katie Petrov, "from almost half a mile away. And I'm not the President, thank God."
"All the same," said the Master Sergeant. "My orders are to stay with the prisoner."
"Really?"
Master Sergeant Saez nodded.
"Then we have a problem," Katie told Bill Logan. Shutting her file with a snap, Katie ignored the marine, nodded politely to Prisoner Zero and prepared to vacate the room designated her office.
"Where are you going?" Bill Logan was media coordinator for this operation, his temporary release from CavourCohen Media coming after a brief call to Max Cohen from someone unspecified at the Pentagon.
"Where do you think?" Katie said. "If you can fly me out to the middle of nowhere then presumably you can fly me back again."
She eyeballed the man in the black suit, gaze firm. She knew exactly who Logan was and how he'd made his reputation, but since the man hadn't bothered to introduce himself properly Katie chose to think of him in the abstract, as a hanging for expensive clothes and limited outlooks. Doing this made it easier not to feel worried by her decision.
"We'll get another psychiatrist," said Bill Logan. "That won't be hard. And you're only here because you went to college with the President's son. In fact, we can make a virtue of this. Announce that you felt compromised by your knowledge of the First Family. Unable to assess the maniac who tried to kill--"
"Except that's not what I'll be announcing," Katie said, "is it?" She put her folder back on the desk and turned to face the man. Without even realizing, she fell into a combat pose. A fact not missed by Master Sergeant Saez, who took a second look at her, reappraising.
"What I'll announce," she said, "is that I turned down this assignment because you refused to give me proper access to Prisoner Zero. A man who is quite obviously drugged. To this statement, I'll add a rider. That, in my personal opinion, flying me out to this godforsaken island was nothing more than a cynical media exercise by the Secretary of Defense designed to keep the White House quiet..."