Jon Grimwood - Effendi

Café Le Trianon was closed. That meant the private lift that went straight up to the floor above and the offices of the Third Circle was out of action. And that meant Hani had to use the stairs from Boulevard Saad Zaghloul. She didn’t mind; in fact, things were much quieter in the HQ of Iskandryia’s civil service now that the lift and the telephones had stopped working.

Unfortunately, people still kept interrupting her.

Hani hit a hot key and her list of satellites vanished. Although the subroutine that was supposed to be making contact with Avatar kept running in the background, without success.

“Hani. What are you doing here?”

Ingrid Nordstrom saw the young girl’s face freeze and stepped back, forcing a smile.

Life at the Third Circle had been difficult these last few days. There was no real work for her to give the staff when they came in, but equally no one had given Ingrid permission to let them stay away.

She sighed.

None of this was the child’s fault and actually Ingrid liked Hani. Much more than she usually liked children, or most other adults, come to that. The bey’s young niece was the politest child Ingrid had ever met and the quietest. And if not for the child’s obsession with computers, no one would have noticed she was here at all: but with just two machines working in the whole office, it was inconvenient if Lady Hani decided to monopolize one of them.

“I’m halfway through a story,” said Hani. “I’m good at stories.”

She was too.

Raf thought she was with Khartoum, who thought she was at the madersa with Donna. And Donna thought she was shopping with Zara. Whereas, in fact, she’d walked from Shallalat Gardens to Le Trianon by herself. Later she’d say sorry, if she got found out, but at the moment things were much too critical to explain.

“It’s a fairy story,” said Hani, “sort of . . .”

“What’s it about?”

Hani’s face creased in concentration, one finger hammering at the Pg Up key until she found the passage she wanted.

“And lo as dusk fell over the stony desert, a son of Lilith came out of the night wrapped in a mantle of darkness. Across his chest he wore a necklace of human teeth and in his hand he carried a staff carved from the wing-bone of a djinn . . .”

Out of the corner of her eye Hani could see the woman frown so she skipped down a few paragraphs.

“. . . and when the sun rose over the rose-hued walls of Al Qahirah, the son of Lilith hid in the shadow of a house and wrapped darkness tight around his thin body. And this day passed as days always pass, slowly for those who labour and more swiftly for those to whom life is joy.

“Women came with water jugs to the standpipe as did a slave leading a thirsty donkey. For though Needle Alley was too narrow for a camel to pass, the donkey was thin and the carpets it carried were loaded on its back rather than in panniers as we do now . . .”

Hani stopped. “There’s more,” she said politely. “If you’d like me to read it.”

Ingrid Nordstrom shook her head. “I need to go.” She seemed about to say something else but hesitated on the edge of speaking.

It would be about the son of Lilith, Hani imagined. Most of the people Hani had talked to about this, which admittedly was very few, were unsettled by the idea of djinn and vampyres. “This vampyre’s good,” explained Hani, her voice firm. “You do get good ones . . .”

The woman looked surprised.

“It’s true,” Hani insisted. “I’ve checked it in a book. If a son of Lilith survives seven years undetected, he can travel to a land where a different language is spoken and become human. He can even marry and have children. Although,” Hani paused and her face grew serious, “the children will still be sons and daughters of Lilith.”

“How fascinating.”

“And I won’t be much longer,” Hani promised. “As soon as I’ve finished here I’m going to the library.”

“Take your time,” said Madame Ingrid, and was surprised to discover that she meant it. Hani had become such a regular at the Third Circle it was hard to remember she was there on sufferance . . . That was what the bey had said the first time he brought her in, on sufferance. Ingrid wasn’t to let Hani become a problem.

He’d been staring at Hani when he said it.

Ingrid decided to leave the child to her story. These were difficult times for everyone. And getting more difficult. She just hoped the bey wasn’t being too strict with the girl.

A window opened in the air in front of Avatar: a sleek black ’copter, blades chopping to a deep bass beat, smoked-glass windscreen and not a decal in sight to say where it came from or who might be inside.

“Floating focus,” said the Colonel. He was talking about the spectacles.

“And the ’copter . . . ?”

“Mi-24x Hind gunship, adapted for three 20mm cannon with Hellmouth, Rattlesnake and Quickdraw rockets—$189.3 million, plus $1.6m per missile. Old model.”

“No,” Avatar said crossly. “I mean, who does it belong to?”

“No idea,” said Colonel Abad. “It won’t tell me. Didn’t want to tell me its model number or price range until I told it you were in the market to buy one. Then the imprinted sales coding took over, always does . . .”

Avatar looked at the tiny machine that floated in front of his eyes. Watching as toy-sized doors blew back and even smaller figures tumbled out, guns ready. Somewhere just above his hearing, sirens wailed and a gun spat, distant as the echo of yesterday’s firecrackers. The black-suited figures were firing over the heads of an unseen crowd.

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

The Colonel thought about this for a split second. “As much as you want and more.” His voice was apologetic. “It was the hidden door,” he explained. “Not an original idea but effective. One of the Medicis did something similar at the Pitti Palace. Of course, the difference is, this one had a silent alarm.”

Even Hani had been impressed. Solder shut every normal door on level Dminus4, then leave an exit through the back wall of a strong room. The safe’s entrance had featured antique defences: tear gas between inner and outer layers, tasers positioned down both sides of the frame, all the stuff that putting a gun to the wounded suit’s head had miraculously disabled. But the trapdoor at the back, that had tripped an alarm satellite in low-earth orbit. And half the intelligence agencies in Europe were busy going ape-shit . . .

It looked like one of them had arrived.

Climbing the first twist of stairs was easy. More so since Colonel Abad showed Avatar how to adjust the spectacles to infrared. The cold the Colonel could do nothing about, except get Avatar back to the warmth of an upper deck as soon as possible. Although, at Colonel Abad’s suggestion, Avatar did empty his rucksack of its handcuffs, pepper gas and rope, and slice a hole in the bottom and another on either side, then invert the bag to wear as a tunic.

“Protect your core temperature,” the Colonel advised him, “if you want to stop your brain from shutting down.” Avatar was slightly surprised to learn his brain could shut down, but he did what Colonel Abad suggested, mainly because he’d been doing pretty much everything the Colonel said since it first suggested he turn on those lights.

“You’re manipulating me,” Avatar said, stopping dead at the thought.

“That’s my job.” The familiar bearded figure smiled sadly, having first popped into floating focus. “Only in the specifications it’s called functional motivation.” With an apologetic shrug, Colonel Abad vanished and Avatar was left staring at riveted steps lit by a dull red gloom.