Jon Grimwood - Pashazade

'I don't have a wallet,' said ZeeZee, which was the truth. He had an iris-specific platinum HKS card in one back pocket of his combats and his carte blanche in the other. Other than that, nothing. No rings, not even a watch. Well, only the Omega he'd bought duty-free on the plane and the G-Shock in his pocket, and he wasn't about to give up either of those. For the average mugger, ZeeZee was a big disappointment. Actually, as a mugger's target he was bad news, full stop.

ZeeZee kept his voice soft, unthreatening. For good measure he tried a small half-smile. But darkness visible already drew an unseen circle around them both and inside his head the fox was smiling as it memorized the layout of a tiny alley, a street at the back of Rue Faransa, so narrow and insignificant it appeared on no maps and the panniers of long-dead donkeys had managed to scratch grooves into both walls at once.

'Wallet,' repeated the golem features. There was a dogged determination to his voice but his small eyes were clean. Whatever need he was feeding it wasn't chemical. 'Now.' He raised the knife slightly to show he was serious.

'And I've already told you,' someone said, using ZeeZee's voice, 'he doesn't have one.' Most people would have stepped back, away from the sharp blade. ZeeZee stepped in close, until he could see tiny broken veins on the man's nose and smell stale garlic on his breath. It was definitely the man from the neighbouring queue at airport, and he was still staring at ZeeZee's hair.

'No wallet. No cash. And besides ...' ZeeZee smiled. 'If you need a knife, you're batting in the wrong league ...'

The man opened his mouth.

'No,' ZeeZee said firmly.

Golem features shrugged. 'Too bad,' he said. And then his blade whipped up, aimed at a point behind ZeeZee's diaphragm — except that ZeeZee was already some place else. Pain blossoming across his side as he pivoted sideways to let the knife scrape across his ribs. Ugly but not life-threatening. The status report concerned his wound, ZeeZee realized, not his opponent.

Dodging the next blow was easier. All ZeeZee had to do was pivot to take the putative knee to the groin on his hip.

'You're going to die,' said the attacker flatly, seeing ZeeZee's gaze flick round the deserted and darkened alley.

ZeeZee laughed.

'I died years ago,' he said and unravelled in one fluid sweep, a sideways twist creating exactly the right amount of space to let him bring his palm up under the man's chin, snapping back his skull so hard the sound of teeth breaking echoed off both alley walls. Without further hesitation, ZeeZee buried his forearm in a suddenly exposed throat and crushed the golem's larynx.

The follow-though, where ZeeZee's elbow swept back to crack a skull and drop the man to the dirt was unnecessary, but he did it anyway. The old Rasta he'd learnt from had been very strict about always completing each sequence.

In all, it took less than two seconds. And had there been anyone else in that alley to watch, which there wasn't, they'd have been presented with moves so fluid, so controlled that they could have passed for some deadly ballet.

'Shit,' said ZeeZee, blinking hard. Two courses of primal therapy, a complete twelve-point plan and three years of anger management straight down the drain. Personally, he blamed the fox.

Under a blue blazer golem features carried a new ceramic Colt in a flashy leather shoulder holster, the fancy saddle-stitched kind with a chrome buckle just guaranteed to show up under a full body scan. So maybe he wasn't such a professional after all.

Apart from that, the idiot was clean, right down to labels cut out of his clothes and no keys of any description in any of his pockets. The only other thing of interest, was a polaroid in a crumpled manila envelope. ZeeZee knew exactly what the shot would show even before he examined it. But he was wrong.

He wasn't the man in the photo staring out at the world through hooded eyes, because he'd never worn a goatee beard like that or had elegant hair swept back behind his ears. And he'd definitely never worn a drop pearl earring. But the man in the picture was him. The high cheekbones were his, the heavy nose, the whole shape of the face was the same, right down to his mouth.

And in the background of the picture, just out of focus behind the man, was a soaring minaret outlined against a shockingly blue sky. The mosque to which the minaret was attached was impressive, heart-breakingly beautiful and undoubtedly famous but ZeeZee could honestly say he didn't recognize it.

Pocketing the polaroid, ZeeZee rolled the body against a wall and left it there.

'Head south towards the equestrian statue of Khedive Mohammed Ali, turn right at Place Manshiya and walk briskly on. The road directly ahead is Rue Faransa ...'

ZeeZee thanked the map without thinking, not noticing the glance he got from other tourists waiting their turn. Talking to machinery was a prison quirk. Even in soft habitats like Huntsville it could be the closest anyone got to a day's decent conversation.

Walking briskly was out, what with the gash over his ribs taped shut with instant skin from a chemist behind the bus station, but he managed a slow stroll through the square towards the waiting statue.

From the Khedive's bronze turban and fierce beard, to his gut bound round with a vast cummerbund, and the ornate horse pistol hanging from his saddle, Mohammed Ali was impossible to miss. Though his mount looked unnaturally square at the corners, as if the sculptor had used up all the roundness available to replicate the Khedive's impressive bulk.

ZeeZee stopped rubber-necking Mohammed the moment he realized he was the only person on Place Mohammed paying Khedive the slightest attention. He didn't want to look the tourist, even when that was so obviously what he was.

The first three shops in Rue Faransa sold bric-a-brac masquerading as antiques. A Bakelite radio in one window caught ZeeZee's eye but when he went inside to examine it he discovered that someone had replaced the original valves with a cheap Somali chipset. So he put the radio back in the window and retreated under the shopkeeper's watchful eye.

Two clothes boutiques followed, both in the process of closing for the night and both featuring short dresses in washed-out silk by designers ZeeZee had never heard of, though given the prices displayed in pounds Iskandryian, US dollars and Reichsmarks everyone else obviously had.

The next shop looked much more promising. It sold mens-wear, was still open and, even better than that, had an industrial-strength air-conditioning unit sticking straight out into the street. ZeeZee couldn't tell how expensive the suits in the window were from their price tags because there weren't any such tags — which probably made the garments concerned seriously upscale. But since it wasn't really his charge card he could live with that.

Something tastefully restrained was playing on the sound system as he entered. Gorecki probably. One wall was matt black, the rest sand-blasted brick. All of which left ZeeZee as singularly unimpressed as the intimidating elegance of the boutique's French manager, the simplicity of her stark granite desk and the three obsidian-topped work tables.

ZeeZee might heal unnaturally fast but he was still in too much pain from his ribs and far too strung out to take note of the shop's expensively understated detail. All he noticed was a framed page from Esquire, showing a man wearing a black tee under a loose lightweight black coat with matching trousers. The shoes the model wore had Cuban heels and sloped to a point at the toes. The outfit looked elegant, sophisticated and just slightly threatening. But most of all it looked cool. Not fashion-victim cool, just as if the model wasn't overheating.