Jon Grimwood - Effendi

Avatar was pretty sure Zara would have loathed the palm, not to mention the cabin’s kitsch Victorian screen plastered with pictures of children cut from old magazines; both of which had been meant for Zara, because this was to have been her cabin. And Avatar had been assured, by a very shocked steward, that everything in the suite had been selected personally by the Khedive himself.

If so, the Khedive had even less idea of what made his sister tick than Avatar imagined. And that included sending her a naked spider.

Avatar looked round his cabin for a scanner, realized there wasn’t one and took a lift down to the bleached-blond retro of the SS Jannah ’s business suite. After he’d got over his shock at being told everything was free to a guest of the Khedive, he found and made do with a fax.

Hell was a circle with bars and walkways, guards and unseen voices: level after level of honesty, each level more brutal than the last. Endless faces that Raf knew intimately and had never before seen. A cold that filled his mind and chilled the inside of his bones.

“Ice,” he heard someone say. “A massive dose of methamphetamine. Close to fatal.”

“And the voices?”

“Cerebrospinal tests show viral RNA associated with schizophrenia.”

“He’s caught a virus?”

The voice was amused. “Someone did. Twenty million years ago. All we’ve got are molecular footprints.” And then the voice and the white coat it wore went away and the darkness came back in.

Sometime later, a small hand slapped Raf back to life, then cross fingers swung his head from side to side, like a physiotherapist checking mobility.

“Come on,” demanded Hani.

She sat perched on top of his quilt, knees bent either side of his chest, her face almost touching Raf’s own. The blur of movement Raf saw when he finally opened his eyes was Hani moving away, shifting backward.

For a fleeting second she looked relieved, but when Raf checked again that expression was gone. “About time,” Hani said, scrambling off his chest. “You won’t believe the trouble you’re in.”

“I can’t be in trouble,” said Raf, “I’m . . .”

“. . . the new governor.” Hani rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t try that one on Zara.”

Over Hani’s shoulder Raf could see a distant blue sky, small white clouds and rays of golden sun that reflected on the skin of flying babies. Next to a cluster of pink cherubs floated an even pinker woman dressed in a strategically placed wisp of cloud.

The room in which he lay must have been thirty feet high, maybe more. Its ceiling was domed, the dome supported on marble pillars that, when he looked closer, turned out to be painted onto plastered walls.

“Late Victorian, trompe l’oeil,” Hani told him, following his gaze. “The dome’s earlier. You should see my room.”

The child slid off the bed and onto the floor. “I brought you coffee,” she said. “Proper coffee.” She indicated a cafetière and a china cup resting on a salver. The small tray was silver, a length of gold twisted like rope along its edge. Next to the salver was a sprig of bougainvillea stuffed into a tooth mug, the French kind with a slablike base and heavy sides.

Its smell was sickly.

“I picked it in the garden.” Hani’s eyes were open wide. “You should see the statues,” she said, “they’re all . . .”

“Naked.”

She nodded. Then carefully put the cup on its saucer . . . The thing that really worried Raf was just how hard Hani was trying to pretend that everything was normal.

“Why are they naked?” Hani asked, as if an afterthought.

“Perhaps it was warmer in the old days.”

“Yeah, right. But what about . . . ?”

“Coffee,” suggested Raf and Hani smiled.

Pushing hard, she managed to wrestle the plunger to the bottom without spilling any onto the tray. Equally carefully, she poured Raf half a cupful, then her face came apart and tears overflowed her eyes.

“Milk,” she said, between sobs. “I forgot the . . .”

Raf let Hani pour him a second cup of black coffee. Her tears over and not to be mentioned. At least not yet.

“You blacked out,” said Hani. She used the term confidently, something overheard and assimilated. She seemed about to say more but instead lapsed into thoughtful silence, glancing at Raf when she imagined he wasn’t looking. Whatever she saw seemed to reassure her.

“Here.” She passed him the cup but he was already asleep. He slept for another day.

“Excellency . . .” Khartoum stood in the open doorway, the chewed stub of a cheroot in one hand and a tea glass in the other. It took Raf a few seconds to work out that the old man was waiting for permission to enter.

Permission given, Khartoum shuffled past Raf’s bed to put his tea glass on the floor in front of a huge sash window. Yanking back the velvet curtains and throwing up the bottom sash, Khartoum carefully repositioned the glass until it stood in the centre of a patch of brightness.

“Sunlight increases strength,” he told Raf, as the bey scrabbled for his dark glasses. “And green glass is good for added serenity.” The man paused. “As for fresh air . . .”

“What about air?”

Cupping his hands, Khartoum indicated the empty space within. “This one handful contains more power than every single substation in El Iskandryia . . . No, in the whole of North Africa.”

“Nice idea,” said Raf.

“One person’s mysticism is another’s zero-point energy.” The old man shrugged. “I have a message for you from Koenig Pasha in America.”

“You?” Raf said it without thinking.

“Donna was scared to take the call and Hani is too young . . .” An element of disapproval tinted Khartoum’s voice. “So I talked to him. Ya Pasha says three things. The first is that next time you are to take his calls. The second is that he hopes you found your picture instructive . . .”

The old man nodded to Raf’s bedside table and the yellowing engraving ripped from Dante’s Inferno, with its naked man clutching at his slashed-open chest. It took Raf another few seconds to remember the solemn aide de camp who’d delivered it to him outside Le Trianon, the night his fox finally died.

“The third and final thing,” said Khartoum, “is that His Excellency is most impressed.” A smile crossed the old man’s face. “The networks are waiting. The UN is waiting. C3N is going insane. Senator Liz has started talking about you as a new force in North Africa.”

“Why?” Raf pushed himself up on his pillows.

“You’ve kept them all waiting for three days.”

“I’ve . . .”

“That’s how long you’ve been . . . asleep.” Scooping the tea glass from the floor, Khartoum carried it across the room and offered it to Raf. Black slivers of bark floated in water thick with sediment, some of which had settled at the bottom of the glass.

“Take it,” Khartoum said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

Raf did. At least he took the tea glass, but that was all. “Is this going to make me sleep again?”

The skeletal man snorted. “You’ve slept enough,” he said. “It’s time you woke up . . .” He paused on the edge of saying something, glanced at Raf huddled under a thin quilt and said it anyway.

“Demons are useful,” said Khartoum. “They keep us respectful of the dark. But you let yours ride you like djinn.” He stared long and hard. “I see them look out of your eyes. You think we don’t know why you always wear those dark things?”

Walking over to the window, the old man stared out at the mansion’s famous garden. From behind, he looked as fragile as a dying tree and as solid as rock. “Hani’s asleep outside your door,” he said, tossing his words over one thin shoulder. “That’s where she’s slept since she got here, but you know that, don’t you?”