Jon Grimwood - Felaheen

"That's Lady Hana al-Mansur," he explained, returning to the question. "She recently came into a rather large sum of money. Courtesy of Hamzah, Quitrimala . . ." Having mentioned North Africa's richest man, St. Cloud watched understanding finally reach the American's face.

"Ahh, yes," said the Senator. "Her uncle is Governor of El Iskandryia. Wasn't he implicated in that dreadful . . ."

"Ex-Governor," St. Cloud said firmly. "He resigned ." The way the Marquis said this suggested that Ashraf Bey's resignation had been anything but voluntary.

"Wasn't there also something last year about his niece being kidnapped?"

"Apparently," said the Marquis, draining his glass. "Something like that. And I have to admit to being rather surprised to see Lady Hana." Not to mention furious , St. Cloud thought to himself. Quite apart from the fact he was now unable to gossip loudly about Ashraf al-Mansur, and the Marquis had been counting on doing precisely that, St. Cloud had paid hard currency for a complete list of guests, then paid out again to swap his chair for one two down, less prestigious, obviously, but infinitely more useful.

Five thousand dollars had been the cost of getting to sit on Senator Malakoff's left rather than his right. US dollars well spent because Malakoff's right ear was perforated, a fact known only to its owner, his doctor and the Marquis de St. Cloud who'd made a point of acquiring his medical records. Apparently the Senator's partial deafness was the result of a recent diving accident in Baja, California. And since the Senator was forbidden to dive by his wife, who believed he'd been revisiting his misspent youth with a prostitute in Tijuana, well . . .

So now the Soviet first secretary was juggling the upside of finding himself in a better seat than expected with wondering exactly why America's latest roving fact finder consistently ignored every comment the ambassador made.

"I'm having a little party afterwards," St. Cloud said quietly. "Very select. I was wondering if you'd be interested?"

"A party?"

"Out at Cap Bon. At my house."

The building in question was actually a palace erected for an exiled prince of Savoy and St. Cloud's parties were anything but small. The Marquis was relying on the American to know that. "You, me, some friends, a few girls . . ."

He'd have mentioned boys but the Senator had voted against repealing legislation outlawing homosexuality and St. Cloud was not someone to come between a man and his prejudice. At least not when that someone was retained by some of the biggest oil shippers in the world.

"Mostly Japanese girls," St. Cloud admitted. "Although I have borrowed a rather lovely Mexican, a bit inexperienced but very beautiful." The girl in question, who was actually Spanish, had been told to keep that fact to herself.

"Mexican?"

St. Cloud nodded. "Lovely girl," he said, "you'll adore her."

After oysters and champagne, Kashif Pasha's nod to the two terms he'd spent studying at the Sorbonne, came wood pigeon stuffed with dates and wrapped in layers of fine filo pastry, so that each mouthful became an adventure in archaeology.

With the smoked pigeon came a wine St. Cloud didn't recognize, tannat and auxerrios, almost prune-flavoured, made from grapes grown in an iron-rich subsoil beneath a sun slightly too hot for real subtlety. One of the Emir's own vineyards probably. Although, if this was the case, then St. Cloud wasn't sure why each bottle was carefully wrapped in a linen tablecloth to hide its label.

The very fact Emir Moncef served wine outraged half his visitors, while the fact he justified this by quoting Jalaluddin Rumi, rather than relying on timeworn arguments of modernization and rationality, worried the other half.

St. Cloud looked to where the old man sat silent at the top table, trapped between his son and the wife he hadn't seen for decades. This was, everybody understood, an important moment of reconciliation. Getting father, son and wife into the same room had taken high-level negotiation and no one quite understood why the Emir had finally agreed.

"God he looks miserable," Senator Malakoff said, noticing St. Cloud's gaze.

"Wouldn't you?" said St. Cloud. He glanced pointedly at Lady Maryam whose moon face was almost hidden beneath a silk hijab. There was no doubting that she was almost as wide as she was tall.

Senator Malakoff nodded. Yes, he could honestly say he'd be miserable if that was his wife. "How much more of this do we have to endure?" he asked the Frenchman.

"Hours," said the Marquis. "We've only just begun."

Which wasn't strictly true. As well as the guest list, St. Cloud had seen the menu and, provided one discounted the palate-cleaning offering of sorbet and the snails, goat's cheese and fresh figs which were to be served last, the number of courses was limited to five, since wild trout and rabbit were due to arrive simultaneously as were baklava and baked Alaska.

"Hours?" The Senator looked so sick that St. Cloud smiled. As well as partial deafness the man suffered from a notoriously weak bladder; a serious flaw in someone charged with establishing contact with the party of Kashif Pasha.

St. Cloud knew about that too . . .

Clicking his fingers for a waiter, the Marquis whispered something in the boy's ear, leaning rather closer than was necessary and watched the waiter scurry off, reappearing seconds later with an empty jeroboam of champagne.

"Piss in this," St. Cloud said, placing the bottle beside the Senator's chair. "That's what most of us do."

Pigeon was replaced by lamb roasted in charcoal, testicles still hanging from each gutted carcass like fat purses. Each table got two of the animals. Enough to enable every guest to reach forward and pinch fingers of hot meat without having to stretch. Unnoticed by most guests, the Sufi dancers gave way to a shaven-headed young man backed by a trio of nasrani jazz musicians dressed in black. Each note that ululated through the dining room had a haunting quality that filled St. Cloud with feelings of loss and regret. The Marquis hated it as a matter of principle.

"He's good," said Hani.

"Who is?" Murad Pasha spoke though a mouthful of roast peppers. He was fastidiously picking slivers of vegetable from the dish on which the lamb sat, his fingers getting so soiled and greasy that he'd abandoned his napkin and taken to using the edge of the tablecloth instead.

"The Sufi."

"Is he?"

Hani looked at her cousin, who shrugged.

"How would I know?" Murad demanded. And there was a sadness to his words at odds with the wry smile that lit his face. No boy should have eyelashes that long, Hani decided before considering his question.

Knowing such things came naturally to Hani and so she'd never stopped to wonder how she knew. Reading was part of the answer. She did a lot of that. And questions. Aunt Nafisa always told her she asked too many of those. But mostly she just made connections. Adding one fact to another to arrive at a third that was obvious in retrospect.

"Our porter," she said carefully, "he's a Sufi and this is his kind of music. Also my Uncle Ashraf . . ."

Murad Pasha raised dark eyebrows. He'd heard all about Lady Hana's uncle. "He's a Sufi too?"

"Possibly," said Hani with a shrug. "They like the same music. I was going to say that really he's . . ." She lowered her voice and the boy bent closer, head tilting so that Hani could whisper; but the truth about the sons of Lilith went unspoken as one of the guards behind the Emir suddenly yelled.

And grabbed for his automatic.

"Emir."

Time slowed and within its slowness Hani watched the Sufi raise a revolver, thumb back the hammer and let go, the trigger being already depressed. His first shot drilled the bodyguard through his still-open mouth. Blood and splinters of vertebrae exiting in a vivid splash from the back of Nicolai Dobrynin's neck.