To their left was a dark slant of rock jutting from the red earth as nakedly as broken bone. Jbel Gueliz, little more than a toy mountain.
Dogs howled, scrawny cats slunk against walls and doves fluttered around a tall, white-painted cote. They met carts laden with tomatoes and peppers and stepped aside for a farting three-wheeled truck over-crowded with sheep. A comforting smell of dung filled the air as they passed two donkeys tethered on a half-finished building plot, guarded by a boy barely half as tall as his animals.
Moz was saying goodbye to the city without knowing it and stacking his head with fragments when he thought his mind already numbed beyond caring. Although, mostly what Moz was to recall about that afternoon was Idries two steps in front of him, head down and walking so fast that Moz could barely keep up, despite being both taller than Idries and stronger.
The other boy was -- almost literally -- running away from Moz's questions. They both understood that. Idries's answers reduced to jagged breathing and an endless repetition of "Hassan will tell you." Moz knew he should stop asking, just as surely as Idries realized this wasn't going to happen. So Moz hurried along behind, his shoulders hunched and fear pressing in on him.
On any other day he'd have been wincing at the rawness of his split lip or stripping off his T-shirt to show Malika the blood-dark bruising all over his body, only Malika...
The physical pain Moz felt was nothing compared to his fear and both were subsumed beneath his need to arrive wherever it was Idries was taking him.
"How far?"
"Over there," Idries said, pointing to a gate in a wall. Moz could see the relief in his eyes. "Hassan's waiting inside. He'll explain."
"About time."
"Over there," repeated Idries and then sunk to his heels, grabbing oxygen from the hot air. Stains had blossomed under his sleeves and a dark patch spread from the centre of his chest, where sweat had soaked through the blue cotton of his cheap jellaba.
Moz knew it was bad when Hassan came to meet him. Quite how bad he only realized when the older boy put out his hand.
Absent-mindedly, Moz shook it and then watched Hassan step back to touch his hand to his own heart and then forehead, lifting his fingers away with a slight flick of the wrist. It was an old-fashioned, sadly formal gesture.
"I'm sorry," Hassan said. There was none of the usual bravado in his voice. He could have been Moz's friend, not one of his lifelong enemies and loser of their most recent fight. "I had no idea..."
"Where is she?"
"Behind the Jesu."
This was an old statue of the nasrani god draped in the robes of a Sufi and staring up to heaven. Heat, wind and a poor choice of sandstone meant that the figure was barely recognizable.
And the choice of location meant that whoever was responsible knew Malika's childhood secrets. Behind the Jesu was where Moz and Malika met as children, that summer they became friends. A circle of beaten earth in the middle of a thicket of thorns. A place, even then, of crushed beer cans, soiled tissues and peeling, piss-coloured filters from stolen cigarettes. That was how Moz thought of it, when he remembered the place at all.
"It's bad," Hassan said.
Moz looked at him.
"Whatever you're imagining," Hassan said, "it's worse." Without even thinking about it, the older boy made a sign against the evil eye. "You don't have to see her," Hassan added, as if he'd only just realized that. "I can ask my uncle to--"
"She was my friend."
The very flatness of Moz's voice told Hassan this was not an argument worth having, so instead he pointed to a gap between two bushes. "Through there," he said. "I'll be waiting. The debt is mine."
Settling himself against the trunk of a pine, Hassan reached into his pocket and found a packet of cigarettes. It took him three goes to get his fingers steady enough to light one of the things.
CHAPTER 48
Washington, Tuesday 10 July [Now]
"How's Ally?" asked Paula Zarte.
"Still wants a cat." Gene Newman's smile was sour. "Still thinks I should be able to talk her mother into allowing it."
"And that stuff with the boy?"
The President looked at his Director of the CIA. "You're keeping tabs on Ally?"
Paula Zarte shook her head. "Ally texted me," she said. "Girl talk."
Gene Newman wasn't sure how he felt about that. And there was something more important worrying him. "You know," he said, "the First Lady's not going to like this."
Glancing round the low-lit restaurant, Paula took in the other couples bent over their meals or gazing into each other's eyes. A plate of squid-ink linguini sat untouched before her.
The President had eaten two grissini, leaving crumbs all over the white linen tablecloth, and was looking doubtfully at a bowl piled high with mussels. A bottle of a good Frescobaldi Frascati was chilling in an ice bucket next to their table.
"She's not going to know," Paula Zarte said.
When Gene Newman raised his eyebrows it was in a studied, post-ironic sort of way. It was simpler than asking the question which was on his tongue. Just what the fuck did the elegant black woman in the simple Armani jacket think she was doing? She'd called him direct and they had an agreement about not doing that. What's more, she called him on his family cell phone, a number he didn't even know she had.
It was true he'd had an assistant her husband was seeing reassigned to duties outside the White House and he knew how outrageous that was. Paula also knew this was how it worked. In these kinds of deal it was the woman who got moved or fired, because she was invariably younger and had less powerful allies.
If he'd had his choice, he'd have made Mike take the ambassador's job in Ecuador but Paula was against that. Mike and he had history, which was pretty obvious really, given he'd slept with the other man's wife.
"Stop worrying," Paula Zarte said. "At least, stop worrying about that. And believe me," she said, "there are a lot more serious things for you to worry about."
"You think nobody's going to talk?" The President gestured at the tables around them. He'd been sat with his back to the wall, next to a door that led through to a loading bay. One of his agents stood by the door, another guarded the loading bay and a third guarded the loading bay exit in the alley outside.
"Of course they're not going to talk," Paula Zarte said. "There isn't a single person here whose salary isn't paid by the Agency... They're mine," she explained, when the President look bemused. "The place was closed for renovation. As of now it's opened a week early."
Paula Zarte smiled. "The owner used to be one of ours," she added. "It was simpler to do it this way."
"Simpler?"
"It gives us deniability. Say this gets out. What's the worst anyone can say?"
"That we had supper together in a tiny Italian restaurant where no one in the White House has ever eaten before. One which was obviously chosen because it was out of the way."
"Exactly," said Paula Zarte. "And what's the inference?"
"That we're having an affair."
"Again." The black woman sat back in her chair and nodded. "Believe me," Paula Zarte said, "as rumours go that's way better than any of the alternatives."