Jon Grimwood - Effendi

Raf shook his head.

“Inertia. Iskandryia’s been a free city for so long no one can quite imagine how North Africa might operate if we weren’t. Well, take a look at the newsfeeds. People out there are beginning to imagine it . . .” The General swallowed back the last of his cognac and breathed in, inhaling the fumes. By the time he’d finished coughing he’d apparently reached a decision.

“So far as I can see,” said the General, “as Chief you have three main problems.”

“I have?”

“The first,” said the General, “is personal. The way life works is public virtue, private vice. You keep doing it the wrong way round. The remaining two problems are more serious . . .” Koenig Pasha’s voice was harsh but thin, its determination at odds with an old man’s frailty. “One big problem, one slightly smaller. First, find out why tourists are being butchered.”

“We think . . .”

The old man sighed heavily. “The problem,” he said, “is that you don’t . . . You’re going to tell me the killer’s dead, again. Burned up in that fire. You think I don’t get reports from your office? Forget finding out who carried out the latest atrocity. I told you to find out why it happened.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?”

“Break heads. Use the Army. Take whatever you need from the treasury . . .” The old man looked for a moment as if he might be about to rescind that last suggestion, but instead he shrugged. “Just find out. And keep it out of the papers and off the newsfeeds.”

“That’s the big problem, right?”

The General’s smile was wintry. Flicking a curled leaf from the arm of the bench, he followed its brief and twisting fall. Then he told Raf what Senator Liz really wanted and exactly why he, the General, couldn’t give it to her.

With trembling hand, the General took a crisp sheet of paper from his desk drawer and reached for a fountain pen, the black Mont Blanc inlaid with a silver cartouche bearing the arms of Prussia.

The old man was still writing laboriously when a knock came at the door. A second knock followed and when the General didn’t answer it was Raf who said enter and watched the door open a little. The boy who’d let Raf into the gubernatorial mansion slid sideways through the narrow gap, only to stop and glance anxiously between Raf and the General.

“General Koenig?”

The old man nodded but kept writing.

If the Khedive minded his chief minister sitting while he himself stood it didn’t show. In fact, nothing about the boy suggested he found the situation in any way odd, and only a glance at the ornately framed painting on the wall convinced Raf that he stood opposite El Iskandryia’s absolute ruler.

“. . . The newsfeeds.”

Without looking up, the General tapped one corner of his desk and a long glass with an opalescent Murano frame lit to reveal a worried woman standing outside an old-fashioned mansion, built in an early-twentieth-century style dismissed as High Arabesque. In an open subframe in one corner, fire engines hosed down the broken shell of something sheet glass and concrete.

Raf caught the words casino,firebomb and US negotiator . And then the main picture flicked to a woman in a black suit behind a large desk. On the front of the desk was a large seal displaying the American eagle. Chaos, lawlessness and organized crime cropped up in almost every other sentence. Just in case Senator Liz’s anger wasn’t obvious enough, C3N had thoughtfully run Arabic subtitles along the bottom of the screen.

“Don’t underestimate that woman,” the General said, “she flew UN ’copters back in the little war.” He reached for another sheet of paper and scrawled two lines across its china-clay surface, then signed the sheet with spidery handwriting and pushed it across the desk towards the Khedive, his fingers shaking. “All I need now is your signature for these . . .”

The boy signed without dragging his attention away from the news, which showed a crime team sifting the wreckage of the smouldering casino. A voice-over was talking, guardedly, about rumours of a dead girl found nearby. Raf got the feeling that more was intentionally being said with the gaps than with the words.

“Enough,” said the General, tapping his table to blank the screen. “We need to concentrate on getting His Highness out of here . . .”

“I’m sorry?” The Khedive looked startled, then stubborn. “No,” he said. “I can’t possibly . . . Not now.”

“Your holiday,” said Koenig Pasha. “What time’s your flight?” The voice was little more than a cross whisper from an old man. And he did look old, if one looked past his immaculate uniform to the liver spots speckling his trembling wrists or the carcinoma scars that puckered one side of his neck, below his sunken jaw.

“Fik, what time . . . ?”

Mohammed Tewfik Pasha blinked, tears prickling up until he had to look away. Okay, thought the General, maybe that was a little unfair . He couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d used Tewfik’s pet name. Maybe when he was ten, that time the boy caught scarlet fever and was confined for days to a darkened room with curtains soaked in vinegar, much to the disgust of the palace’s English doctor . . .

“Early evening,” said the boy. “The flight’s collecting me at sevenP .M.”

“And you are going alone?”

The Khedive shook his head.

“She’s the wrong choice,” said the General tiredly. “You know that.” He stared at the boy, seeing anxiety turn to stubbornness, and sighed. “Do what you have to do . . . Just remember, your job is to be on that flight. And yours,” he said turning to Raf, “is to make sure His Highness goes.”

Folding his resignation into three, Koenig Pasha gave the sheet of paper to Khedive Mohammed with a slight bow. The letter to Raf, the General folded just the once and handed over with a nod. Then the old man waited until they’d both read and then reread what he’d written.

Nothing so slight as a mere ring. Instead, long bursts of increasing frustration filled the large hall.

Raf had been ignoring the bell for a while.

Sighing, he looked round for someone to answer the General’s front door and realized there was no one but him. So he went to answer it himself.

Another bad mistake.

While he and Zara stood, staring in disbelief at each other, the study door swung back and the young Khedive stormed out, tears of frustration streaming down his soft face.

Whatever final retort the boy was about to make died when he spotted Zara, with her cases. For a moment, it looked like the boy might walk across to where Zara stood, but then he shot Raf a bitter scowl, turned away and ran up the stairs. Somewhere a door slammed, then there was silence.

And as Zara stared between her suitcases and the emptiness on the landing above, Raf glanced into the study, his eyes meeting those of the General. What Raf got was an abrupt nod and an amused if wintry smile. And then the old man stretched, stood up from his desk and walked resolutely to the door, which he closed. The General didn’t even pretend to need his cane.

“What are you doing here?” Zara’s query was curt.

“Leaving,” said Raf. “To visit a crime scene.” He looked at her. “Oh, yeah, and trying to keep your father from being arrested for murder . . . Take your pick.”

Zara practically threw her suitcases into the boot of Raf’s Cadillac, stamped round to the passenger side and climbed in, shutting the door with a slam. As an afterthought, she reached behind her for a seat belt and found nothing. Felix had never got round to having them fitted and Raf hadn’t bothered to make good their lack.