‘But you do understand, Antonio?’ he asked, his voice beseeching. ‘You do understand what must be done, what the Holy Father has instructed is to be carried out if the unthinkable happens?’
Morini nodded again.
‘You need have no concerns about that, my old friend. I know where my duty lies, and the importance of the Mother Church. You can rest assured that I will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that it will never, ever, see the light of day.’
‘And the other measures that I explained to you?’ Gianni insisted.
‘They are unpleasant,’ Morini said, choosing his words carefully, ‘but in the circumstances I am certain that they would be entirely justified. Those, too, I will arrange to carry out if it ever becomes necessary to do so.’
5
‘I don’t know what it is about that woman,’ Angela Lewis said, ‘but I find her incredibly irritating.’
She and her former husband, Chris Bronson, were relaxing in the lounge of her flat in Ealing, watching the large LED television that she’d purchased the previous day, and which Bronson had then spent hours installing after they’d got it back to the flat. For the last thirty minutes they’d been watching a popular antiques programme.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Bronson replied. ‘She’s always got this smug-git expression on her face and you can just tell that she thinks she’s absolutely wonderful. It’s a pity, because apart from her I really enjoy the show. But I suppose for you this antique stuff all feels a bit amateur?’
‘Not exactly. The world of antiques is simply enormous, and there’s no such thing as an expert on everything. I know my way around ceramics, obviously, because that’s what I do all the time, but every time I watch this’ — she raised one elegant bare leg from the footstool and pointed it at the television screen — ‘I learn something new, something outside my particular specialization.’
‘And I suppose like everybody else you keep hoping that some hideous vase or something you pick up for a few pence at a car-boot sale actually turns out to be some long-lost priceless relic from the Ming Dynasty so that you can retire on the proceeds,’ Bronson suggested.
Angela glanced at him, a smile playing over her lips.
‘There are a couple of problems with that scenario,’ she said. ‘First, the chances of a Ming vase — or any other really valuable antique — turning up at a boot sale are vanishingly small. And second, I’ve never been to a car-boot sale, and I’ve no intention of going, so if your idea of a dirty weekend is tramping around a muddy field in the rain wearing wellington boots and looking at stalls covered in overpriced twentieth-century souvenirs from Brighton and Blackpool, you’ll be going by yourself.’
‘Actually,’ Bronson said, ‘my idea of a dirty weekend is a lot less like that and rather more like the one we’ve just spent.’
‘Installing television sets?’ Angela laughed.
‘I was thinking more about what we got up to after I’d lugged the box up the stairs and got the thing working.’
‘Well, I thought you deserved a lie-down after all your efforts. That’s the only reason that happened.’
‘Of course, of course. In fact, I feel as if I could do with another lie-down right now. Unless you’ve got any better ideas, that is.’
Angela stood up from the sofa and looked at Bronson, running a hand through her shoulder-length blonde hair. Yet again he was struck by her resemblance to a mid-thirties Michele Pfeiffer, especially her mouth, though her eyes were green rather than blue. Bronson still entertained occasional fantasies about seeing her in a Catwoman outfit, but the time had never seemed quite right to suggest it.
‘We’ll have to eat something at some point, I suppose,’ Angela said, ‘but right now I’m not really that hungry. Maybe if I took a bit of exercise that would give me more of an appetite.’
Then she turned round and walked over towards the hallway that led to the bedroom, her hips swinging under her short skirt.
‘That works for me,’ Bronson said, standing up quickly to follow her.
Forty minutes later, having comprehensively unmade the bed and done their best to exhaust each other, Bronson and Angela lay side by side, propped up on pillows and each sipping from a glass of red wine.
Angela seemed somewhat distracted, which was unlike her.
‘Is everything OK? Are you busy at the museum at the moment?’
Angela shook her head. ‘Not really. Well, in a way, yes. I mean, there’s nothing much of any interest going on there at the moment, but we’re actually pretty busy. To be perfectly honest, I’ll be quite glad when the next two weeks are over.’
‘Why?’
‘You know I enjoy my work, but about ten days ago I had another two boxes of potsherds delivered to me, and for whatever reason the powers that be have decided that they needed results quickly. I presume there’s some exhibition coming up and they want to put some of the reassembled vessels on display. The trouble is that all the shards of pottery seem to be about the same size and almost exactly the same colour, so trying to achieve anything meaningful is a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle when you have no idea what the finished picture is supposed to look like.’
‘That must be incredibly frustrating,’ Bronson said.
‘It is. It’s frustrating and boring and important and urgent all at the same time, which is a pretty unpleasant combination. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow morning at all. Which is why I want to make the most of today,’ she added, snuggling up close to him.
6
The present Khan el-Khalili souk dates from 1380, but it had been known as a Turkish bazaar for decades before that date. The name itself is something of a misnomer, because khan translates as a ‘caravanserai’, rather than a bazaar or market, and is a reference to the stopping place for traders and their camel trains that grew up on that site in the fourteenth century. In those days, Cairo was one of the most important merchant towns anywhere on the old Silk Road, and the Khan el-Khalili area was where most of the trading in the city took place.
In the latter part of that century, the Sultan Barquq began his madrassa in Bayn al-Qasrayn, sparking a rebuilding programme, one phase of which resulted in the establishment of the souk. It’s changed very little over the centuries. It’s still Cairo’s main souk, a maze of narrow streets, twisting alleyways, tiny shops, street traders, mediaeval arches and bizarre architecture, mosques and madrassas. The sights, sounds and smells — especially the smells of the spices — would be familiar to anyone who had ever visited a Middle Eastern bazaar: in fact today it is visited by almost as many tourists as locals. Visitors walk in a daze, staring about them at the astonishing range of goods for sale, at the antiques and antiquities, carpets and kilims, lamps, gold, silver, jewellery, alabaster ornaments, pottery, shisha pipes, cloth and textiles, clothing and anything and everything else.
On a particularly stuffy day, while pale and sweating visitors ambled through the streets and alleys of the souk, a local dealer slipped silently and efficiently through the crowds. He dealt in antiques and collectables — a term that covered almost everything — and knew that many of the objects he saw on the stalls, being touted to passing tourists as genuine ancient relics, were probably significantly younger than he was, and in some cases might have been made as recently as the previous day.
Anum Husani visited the souk almost daily, trying to seek out the genuine goods, the occasional real bargains, and any attractive items of whatever age that he could sell through his shop. He knew most of the stallholders, and was in his turn known by them. He knew what he was looking for, and was used to getting what he wanted at a price which he felt was fair, even if the negotiations involved prolonged haggling and more than one visit to the seller.