Jon Grimwood - Effendi

The journalist looked from the Khedive to the liner, then back again. A tiny camera hummed in the air a few feet above her head; one lens focused on her face, the other fixed on whatever she had in her sights. “Electricity,” she said as understanding suddenly lifted the frown from her face.

“You’re going to use the ship to power El Iskandryia.” Enough capacity to power a small city, she was pretty sure that was in the liner’s specifications somewhere.

“Power the city?”

It was a good idea, the Khedive was happy to admit that. But that wasn’t why the liner had made her first landfall in forty years.

“No,” he said. “Nothing so altruistic. After yesterday’s unprovoked attack on the liner, SS Jannah needs a refit.”

Instant anarchy. Just add . . .

Ignoring the explosion of questions, Tewfik Pasha examined the crowd, his eyes skipping bland and blind over Zara and Raf, until they finally fixed on the man for whom he’d been searching. The Soviet ambassador, Commissar Zukov.

“The attack was yesterday, at noon,” said the Khedive. “Eight men in a Mi-24x Hind gunship . . . A Soviet-made attack helicopter,” he added. Though for most of those gathered on the Silsileh, including Commissar Zukov, no clarification was necessary.

The Commissar was an elderly diplomat, waiting out his last years in a relatively unimportant post. And the Khedive had few illusions about the fact that Iskandryia was Zukov’s reward for a lifetime of doing exactly what he was told. In the man’s face, the Khedive could see panic and fear, but no guilt. Which was what the Khedive had expected.

“It’s possible the helicopter was stolen,” Tewfik Pasha admitted. But then pretty much anything was possible.

“They were terrorists?” The voice came from his right, a Frenchman.

“No,” said the Khedive, “they were jewel thieves . . .” He paused to let the crowd of journalists assimilate that fact. “At least, I assume that’s what they were. They certainly broke into the safe.”

“I thought the vault aboard SS Jannah was unbreakable?” The Englishwoman with the lacquered hair had refound her voice. And the hunger in her blue eyes told the Khedive exactly how this story was going to play.

“Nothing is unbreakable,” he said carefully.

“Particularly not to a safecracker with a thermal lance.” Avatar grinned, his voice street smart enough to suggest he knew all about things like that.

Flashguns fired.

No thermic lance had existed, but she wasn’t to know that and nor was anybody else. The helicopter had been kept. The bodies Tewfik Pasha had ordered tipped over the side. As far as the Khedive was concerned, the press could report that as burial at sea.

“Was there a battle?”

The Khedive thought about that one.

“There was a short skirmish,” he said finally, with an apologetic glance towards Avatar and his bandaged shoulder. “As you’d expect, security aboard the SS Jannah is excellent.” The Khedive’s lips twisted into a sour smile. Now he was beginning to sound like an advertisement for Utopia Lines.

“So the thieves were arrested?”

“No,” the Khedive said. “They came armed and they were killed.” His gaze took in the Commissar, von Bismarck, the American Senator and that old man from Paris whose title kept changing. “Except for two of them,” he added as an afterthought.

On cue, two burly crew members dragged the crippled Soviet girl down the walkway. Behind her staggered a small man, a revolver held to his cropped skull by a third crew member. Cameras fired, as the Khedive meant them to.

“Ashraf Bey.”

Raf stopped his whispered conversation with Zara and stepped forward. The bow he gave was slight, little more than a nod.

The Khedive raised his eyebrows. “I’m putting these two in your charge.”

“Highness,” said Raf, and raised a finger. One of his uniforms instantly broke away from holding back the crowd. “I’m transferring the prisoners to you,” Raf said. “Take them both to the Imperial Free . . . And you.” Raf looked round for Hakim. “Make sure they get full protection. And a doctor,” he added as an afterthought.

Protection from what Raf didn’t say.

“Excellency . . .”

Raf turned back to the excited huddle of journalists.

“What is going to happen with Monday’s trial?”

“In what way?”

“Will you continue as magister . . . Now that His Highness has returned?”

“No, he will not.” The Khedive’s answer was clear enough to reach the back of the waiting group. And even if it hadn’t been, there were enough floating cameras and mics aimed in his direction to carry his reply to the waiting world.

“From now on,” said the Khedive, “Ashraf Bey will be acting as city prosecutor . . .”

The gaze Raf met was unbending. A decision had been made publicly and was not to be broken. “After all,” Tewfik Pasha continued, “combating crime is a major part of any governor’s remit.”

“In that case, will you still be allowing Miss Quitrimala to represent her father?”

“What case?”

The English journalist didn’t seem able to answer.

The Khedive stroked his small beard, looking for the briefest moment exactly like his grandfather as a young man. “As magister I will accept anyone the defendant chooses to appoint,” he said carefully. “Although, in the circumstances, I would strongly recommend a trained lawyer.”

“But Quitrimala refuses to appoint his own defence . . . What’s more”—the Englishwoman’s voice was taut with the human drama of it all—“he categorically refuses to accept anyone appointed by the court.”

“Well,” said the Khedive, “that is his right.” For the first time since Tewfik Pasha appeared on the jetty, he looked straight at Zara.

Hani sighed.

The corridor was painted a drab institutional beige. Along its edges the dirty plastic floor tiles curled up to allow the floor to be sluiced clean. A relic from the bad old days when this wing had housed the insane, the incontinent and the politically inconvenient.

Three states that often went together.

At least they did under the Khedive’s grandfather, after military doctors had finished their various forms of rehabilitation.

Raf moved quietly along its length, doing his best not to blink at the brightness bleeding in through windows opaque with grime. He wore no dark glasses and even five years’ worth of dust and spiderwebs was not enough to soften the light.

Hakim and Ahmed he’d left hanging in the Athinos café opposite the hospital’s front steps. Not very willingly Raf had to admit, but he’d overruled them with alarming casualness before making his way unannounced into the ugly concrete building. Along with the two guards, he’d left Eduardo, who was still in shock at discovering that “the man,” as he insisted on calling Raf, was governor of Iskandryia.

The façade of the Imperial Free had a preservation order on it, as did all the buildings that fronted the Western Harbour. The view from the sea was so famous that, years back, Koenig Pasha had decreed the skyline could not be changed.

When Raf had first arrived, the security guard inside the main door was watching Ferdie Abdullah, his eyes glued to a public screen, like somebody recently denied one of life’s basic necessities. If he noticed the scowling young man with the flowers and Dynamo cap, he thought no more about it.

Raf had returned the nod of a passing porter who was vaguely aware of having seen the visitor somewhere before, probably the last time the Dynamo fan came to see whoever he came to see. His fiancée from the size of that bouquet. No sane man would waste so much money on his wife.