Jon Grimwood - Felaheen

Finding a new suit had been as easy as kicking in the window of a boutique opposite Ibn Khaldoun's statue in Place de la Victoire, about three hundred paces from Bab el Bahar. By then, dawn's call to prayer had come and gone and only isolated trucks still circled the medina like flies disappointed by the quality of their meal. The boutique was very elegant, with a wide range of supposedly embargoed Western goods, but it should have spent more on security.

On his way out Raf met a handful of other looters on their way in. They liked his suit too. In fact they liked it so much he went back to point out the appropriate rack. And it was only after he left the second time that he put on the shades he'd taken to match, casually ditching his cheap contacts into a storm drain.

An hour's walk from Ibn Khaldoun's statue had taken him to the edge of the Bardo. A complex of original buildings with rambling faux al Andalus additions, the Bardo featured palaces built on palaces, the bedrooms of one situated over the reception rooms of another until the different parts ran together into one impossible mess.

No one had ever cataloged its contents. Records even differed as to the number of rooms. And each attempt at rationalization made matters worse. Although it was widely agreed among architectural historians that the rebuilding of 1882, during which medieval mashrabiyas were replaced with sash windows along one whole side, was undoubtedly a low point.

All the same, the Bardo complex still counted as the most recognized façade in North Africa. One result of an old etching featuring in the opening credits of A Thousand Flowers , a long-running, widely syndicated Turkish soap based in the nineteenth-century harem of Ahmed Bey, where a thousand concubines languished under the guard of five eunuchs, played by bald Sudanese women.

No men were ever seen. And although some flower would occasionally be plucked from her languid divan and sent through the Door , she would return an episode later, usually in a state of unspecified bliss, distraught or just more worldly-wise.

Gossip, treachery and friendship, the plot ran regular as celestial tram lines. Its avid following the by-product of the originator's desire to draw her cast from a dozen nationalities, as Ifriqiya's beys had filled their harems with a variety of Egyptians, Turks and Southern Europeans, mostly captured slaves.

Various bearded Jesuits were sent, both in reality and in the soap. And indeed, in reality one such missionary spent three years camped in a wing of the Bardo Palace waiting for an audience that never actually came; despite an invitation from a bey devoted to the memory of his nasrani mother.

Now the Bardo was home to the world's largest collection of Carthaginian mosaics, an unquantifiable number of bad Victorian paintings and Kashif Pasha, his retinue and his mother. (With only Kashif's direct appeal to the Emir ensuring that Lady Maryam and he were allocated different sections of the crumbling complex.)

No flag flew from the mast over the main gate when Raf arrived, which meant no adult member of the al-Mansur family was currently at home.

"We're closed." The young sailor guarding the gate held his rifle slung across his chest, the way those on guard always did. His face was set. And only his eyes revealed uncertainty.

Raf halted, smiled . . . Made a minute adjustment to his maroon Versace tie. "Good morning," he said. "I'd like to see your commander."

Sailor and notable stared at one another. Although all the sailor saw was himself reflected in the blankness of Raf's new shades.

"Now," Raf added, his voice polite but firm. He'd once watched his school doctor use just that mixture of courtesy and menace on Raf's Swiss headmaster.

"I don't have a commander."

Raf sighed. "Then get whoever you do have," he suggested.

Leaving his post, the boy vanished through a small door cut into one of two double doors behind him. Endless heavy nails had been hammered into both to form repetitive patterns which, to Raf's eye, looked out of place against the delicacy of the pink marble columns supporting the arch into which the doors were set.

With a shrug, Raf stepped through the arch after him and found himself in a courtyard.

"You left the door open," Raf pointed out, when the returning guard opened his mouth to complain. Behind the boy Raf saw a grey-haired man in blue uniform raise his eyes to heaven.

"Morning, Chief," Raf said.

The elderly Petty Officer nodded. And in that nod was everything he felt about using untrained conscripts as guards and about notables who turned up at dawn, expecting to be shown round the Bardo.

"The palace is shut, Excellency."

"I know." Raf knew nothing of the sort, but that wasn't really the point. Straightening up, he adjusted his cuffs almost without thinking. "I'm Ashraf al-Mansur," he said, "the Emir's middle son. I've been asked to investigate last night's attack on my father."

"Attack?"

Raf didn't bother to reply.

"So it was . . ." The NCO's voice faltered.

"I think you'd better introduce me to your commander," Raf said and stepped farther into a courtyard overlooked by fifty sashed windows and a dozen balconies. The European kind.

He looked around him. "My father here?"

The old man shook his head.

"Lady Maryam?"

Another shake and a quick suck of yellowing teeth.

"Okay," said Raf. "How about Kashif Pasha?"

The NCO opened his mouth, then shut it again. Had the pasha been in residence then, as well as having the al-Mansur flag flying, that gate would have been guarded by Kashif's own soldiers instead of raw recruits. As it was, Kashif's men were rumoured to be busy, making wide-ranging arrests.

The one person Raf did find was Hani, although he found Ifritah first, scooping the grey kitten up from a tiled floor and tossing it over his shoulders like a stole.

"Hey," shouted a young girl who slid through a door and kick stopped, leaving a smear of burned leather on the marble under her heel. "That's my . . ."

She took a look at the man facing her.

"Oh," she said crossly, "you're back."

"No," said Raf, "I've been here for days. You're the one who's just arrived."

"I was here yesterday," Hani said. "You can ask him." She pointed to a door through which a young boy appeared. He was dressed in a blazer and had a striped tie quite as smart as the one Raf wore.

"Murad al-Mansur?" said Raf and watched the boy glance round before nodding. They both knew what was missing from the picture. "Where's your bodyguard?" Raf asked.

"Kashif Pasha doesn't think I need one."

"Because no assassin would want to kill a child?" Raf's voice made it obvious what he thought of that.

"That wasn't what I said." Shrewd eyes watched the newcomer. "Or what he meant."

"Murad's my cousin," Hani announced.

"And this is my niece," said Raf, nodding to Hani. "I do apologize."

The boy looked between them. "Then you're . . . ?"

"Ashraf Bey," said Raf. "Your half brother, her uncle and the new Chief of Police."

At the bey's side the NCO froze, his reflex reptilian. Almost as if stillness could put a wall up around his thoughts. All it did was draw Raf's attention.

"You," Raf said to the man. "Tell me what you've heard . . ."

"Heard, Your Excellency?"

"Outside, you said, So it was . . . The question is, so it was what? "

"The Army of the Naked," said the man, his voice hesitant. "My chief said they'd carried out an attack."

"That's a lie," Murad Pasha said. And blushed when the NCO gazed at him in surprise. "I've got a radio," he explained hurriedly. "A Radiotechnika Atlas . The kind that gets all the stations . . . A birthday present from the Soviet ambassador," Murad added, as if owning a radio needed explanation. "The AN absolutely deny having anything to do with the attack."