Jon Grimwood - Effendi

“It works like this,” said Raf patiently. “The magnetic force gets squeezed as the tube behind it explodes. That creates a huge rise in current in the coil ahead. When the current finally hits the loop antenna it sprays out a terawatt of electromagnetic energy . . . From detonation to destruction takes less than . . .”

He clicked his fingers. “A hundredth of that, probably less. There were seven of these spread across the city . . . Six went off.”

“But the worst is now over . . .”

“I wish,” said Raf, meaning it. “The worst is only just beginning.”

“Then even more reason . . .” The Graf put down his little pipe. “This trial . . .” He stopped and pursed his lips. “The thing is,” he said, “Berlin are . . .” The Graf shrugged and reached again for the pipe. “My problem is . . .”

“Berlin are worried,” said Raf. “Who wouldn’t be?” He picked up his own pipe but didn’t actually inhale, merely watched thin strands of pungent smoke spiral away into what the Graf saw as darkness and Raf knew to be a different density of light.

By now Astolphe de St. Cloud, France’s ambassador to El Iskandryia, would have heard that Ashraf Bey was locked in a meeting with the ambassador from Berlin and would be at the mansion’s gates demanding admittance. Raf was depending on it.

“The trial . . . ?” Raf prodded gently.

“We want it in Berlin,” said the Graf.

“No.” Raf shook his head. “Absolutely impossible.”

“You misunderstand,” the Graf said, sounding nervous. “We demand it be held in Berlin.”

“As I said, impossible.”

Something flitted across the young man’s face that looked to Raf remarkably like relief. “We will be making an official protest . . .”

“I’m sure you will,” said Raf gently. “But the trial will be held in Iskandryia. Not in The Hague or Paris or Berlin. And I’m relying on you to be a judge . . . The court will be calling Jean René . . .”

Ernst von Bismarck nodded knowledgeably.

“The photographer who filmed the aftermath of the massacre,” Raf explained. “I should also inform you,” he added, pulling Hani’s scribbled note from his pocket, “that my intelligence officers tell me Hamzah Effendi may call a character witness from his own brigade.”

“Impossible,” the Graf said. “Every one of them died except Hamzah. I’ve read the report.”

“If that’s true,” said Raf with a smile, “it should make for an interesting trial.”

The Graf frowned. “I will inform Berlin of the situation.”

“How?” Raf asked and watched the Graf realize that doing so would be less simple than he’d imagined. “How will you go about informing Berlin?”

“By letter. There’s a passenger service to Syracuse . . .”

“If it runs.”

Both ferries would run, Raf already knew that, because one of the first things he’d done was send Hakim to Maritime Station to find out which of the regular boats had been caught in the blast and which, if any, had been lucky enough to be at sea.

They were currently two Soviet liners without electricity, a worthless aircraft carrier, and half a dozen expensive yachts that now needed a partial refit. The people who owned those could afford the damage. It was worse for the fishing boats. Almost all of those had lost their navigation systems and sonar. They also had engines that now wouldn’t start.

“Oh,” said Raf, “if you do write, be sure to tell Berlin that I’m closing the city. A total curfew is being imposed. Other than mine, all cars are banned, assuming any still work. No one comes in or leaves without my written permission . . . My handwritten permission,” he added grimly. “Except for those travelling under a diplomatic passport or a carte blanche, obviously enough. And the accredited press. They can come in. They can even bring cameras. Leaving, of course, is another matter.”

“How long . . . ?”

“Until we catch the bombers.” Raf rose from his chair, waited until the Graf realized his meeting was over, then walked the young German to the chamber door.

“I have a city in meltdown,” he told the boy, “a natural gas plant that can’t pump natural gas, a petroleum refinery that isn’t refining crude, no electricity, no telephones. The few computers that still work are dying by the minute. Most cars don’t run, garages can’t dispense gas . . . You know what that means? No working hospitals, no schools. Think about it.”

Raf ushered the Graf through the hall and out into the rain. Good-byes said, he went back into the darkened chamber and listened.

“You can come out now,” he said.

Very slowly, Zara appeared. “You knew I was here.” It was half question, half statement.

“I heard you.”

“Across that distance?” She stared in disbelief from where she stood to where Raf and von Bismarck had been sitting.

“I can hear the heartbeat of a bat,” he told her simply, “and see a hunting cat across Zaghloul Square at the dead of night. Everything that has ever happened to me I remember. Everything . . .”

I can’t die, he added in his head. I can only be killed . But he kept those words where they belonged because her smile was already gone, shocked out of being by his honesty, her shock coloured round the edges with unease, even fright.

“You mean it, don’t you?” said Zara.

Did he? Raf nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I do.” He didn’t mention that he could smell expensive scent oxidizing on the inside of her wrist, an overlay of white willow extract from her shampoo and something underneath all that, much more animal.

“You remember everything?” Zara asked in disbelief.

“Exactly as it happened.” Raf stopped opposite the girl and caught the point at which her eyes widened and she remembered that night they’d spent on her father’s boat. Her mouth had tasted of olives and her breasts had rested heavy in his hands, salt with the memory of a wine-dark sea and blood from where she’d bitten his lip.

There had been more, but not much, not as much as he wanted. Now things between them were broken and the memory was what he had left.

“I’d better get off to bed,” said Raf.

“What about me?”

“Choose a room, use it. Call it protective custody,” Raf suggested. “Find Khartoum,” he added when Zara looked blank. “Tell him to find you something or else share Hani’s room. She’d like that . . .” Raf paused, took a deep breath. “Alternatively, there’s always mine . . .”

“What about seeing the French ambassador?” Zara asked. Which wasn’t exactly what Raf expected her to say.

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he waiting . . . ?”

“Undoubtedly.” Raf shrugged. “I don’t want to see the man,” he said. “And besides, St. Cloud hired a man to have me killed.”

Raf smiled at her surprise.

“The night I first arrived,” he said. “Someone tried to knife me . . . I told Felix. It was one of the things he was investigating when he died . . .”

“What happened to the someone?”

“He attacked me, so I killed him.”

“And that’s the scar?” Zara said when Raf had finished hanging his jacket in an old rosewood cupboard. In her hand was a wineglass, still half-full of white Rioja. It was Raf’s glass. Her own was long since empty.

She pointed to a seam visible along his wrist.

“No,” said Raf, pulling off his shirt. “This is the scar.” He traced a line across his ribs with one finger and felt the faintest echo of hardened tissue. “It was only a flesh wound, nothing more . . .

“What?” he asked when Zara smiled, a little sadly.

The room was lit by a single candle that sat, fat and pale in a dish turned from a single section of monkey puzzle, the ancient wood so thin that the candle’s dancing flame made it translucent. The monkey-puzzle dish sat on an oak table beside a metal bed so old that its horsehair mattress rested on wire mesh. Since the room Raf had chosen was originally meant for the General’s personal use, the choice of bed undoubtedly held some special significance.