Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

Bahir bowed his head. “What is your command?”

“Yes, yes, kill him.”

Bahir felt a momentary flare of joy. At last . “It will be done. But, my lord, you must tell me where you have hidden him. When last I checked, he had been moved. I hope at your command.”

The narrow lips stretched in a cunning, self-satisfied smile. The Caliph rested a hand on Bahir’s head, then slid it down and across his cheek. The palm was moist with sweat. Bahir felt his own sweat trickle like an insect crawling through the hair at his temples, and burn in the sword cuts. Each throb of his pulse counted the passing seconds. “I hid him in the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid.”

And as Bahir swept his golden cloak around himself, and felt that nerve-deep stretch and pop, he reflected how the choice of hiding place exemplified everything that was wrong with Abdul-Alim.

His arrival never made a sound. When he left a space there was a faint pop, like the bursting of a soap bubble as air rushed back into the space previously occupied by his body, but the arrival was soundless. There was no warning for the four guards who sat around a card table on folding chairs. Their Uzis leaned against the legs of the chairs or were slung by their straps. A softly hissing propane lantern threw its yellow glow across the massive cut stones. Jayewardene sat on the floor. His hands were tied behind his back, his ankles bound, and his head was covered by a hood.

Bahir drew his scimitar. The soldiers scrambled to their feet, and one tried to hide the hip flask. They salaamed. Bahir thrust the point of the sword at the man fumbling in the pocket of his fatigues “You … will be dealt with later. Now bring me the prisoner.”

They rushed to obey. The cords around Jayewardene’s ankles were cut and he was pulled to his feet. The secretary-general almost fell again as he tried to balance on feet gone numb. Bahir sheathed the scimitar, and threw his arm around the Indonesian. Oddly, there was no comment from beneath the hood.

But perhaps as a precog he was expecting this , Bahir thought.

“Turn around,” he ordered the soldiers. The sand gritted on stone as the men shuffled around until their backs were to him. Bahir drew his pistol, and shot them in the back of the head with two quick double taps. There were shouts from up the corridor. Bahir flung the cloak around himself and Jayewardene, concentrated, and teleported. They were gone before the reinforcements arrived.

He dropped the secretary-general in an auto graveyard in New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan. The air held the tang of brine and oil from the passing ships, and the rusting hulks of old cars loomed all around them.

The hood covering Jayewardene’s head fluttered as he sniffed. “I do hope you’ve left me reasonably close to the UN,” he said mildly.

“Reasonably,” Bahir said in English. “You show an admirable calm.”

“This was a time I saw true. May I know my rescuer?”

“Sorry. No.” Bahir laid his hands on the man’s narrow shoulders and turned him a hundred and eighty degrees. “You’ll get wet and muddy, and perhaps fall a time or two, but if you walk straight ahead you’ll come to a road. Someone will stop. Eventually.”

“You have a low opinion of people,” Jayewardene said gently.

“They so rarely disappoint me.” Bahir teleported away.

There were more people in the room when he returned, and Abdul-Alim was regaining his swagger. One of the Egyptian generals was arguing that the Caliph should stay in Cairo while the Baghdad advisors stuttered their objections. Abdul pushed through the crowd. There was an eager light in his brown eyes.

“Is it done?” he asked.

“Almost,” Bahir said. He gripped Abdul on the particular pressure point on the elbow that delivers paralyzing pain, swept his cloak around them, and teleported away.

The wind that cried like the souls of the dead in Aswan also blew in Cairo. As Bahir and Abdul-Alim appeared in the center of the marketplace, Bahir heard the dry clacking of the fronds on the palm trees that clashed and shook under the wind’s assault.

Open-air stalls filled the dusty square, but the sellers of Egyptian souvenirs were absent. There had been no tourists in Cairo for many weeks. Instead, the stalls held foodstuff and cooking oil. The smell of overripe melon mingled with the pungent, oily smell of kerosene, and that of coffee. The shrouded figures of women with baskets over their arms glided between the stalls. In cafes, men in keffiyehs drank the thick coffee, played dominos, and argued.

Their sudden appearance stopped every conversation, and pulled a few screams from the heavily veiled women. Bahir transferred his grip from Abdul-Alim’s waist to the nape of his neck. With his other hand he drew his scimitar.

“What are you doing, fool? Take me back at once!”

Bahir ignored him. He filled his lungs so deeply that he felt pressure against the waistband of the trousers that he wore beneath his dishdasha and jalabiya .

“Hear me! Abdul-Alim has led the armies of the faithful to humiliating defeat at the hands of Western crusaders and abominations! His foolishness has cost the life of our great hero. The Righteous Djinn has fallen.” A moan ran through the listening people. “The caliphate will fall, the oppressors will return.…” The moan became a roar. “ Unless …” The roar was muted. “… we unite behind a true leader, a great leader. Not this weak and useless man.”

Bahir gave Abdul-Alim a hard shove. The Caliph staggered a few steps, struggled to keep his footing, failed, and fell forward onto his hands. Bahir ripped away Abdul-Alim’s keffiyeh . Gripping his scimitar in two hands, he spun in a dervish’s dance and swung the blade. It whistled through the air. Bone and sinew offered momentary resistance, then blood jetted from the severed neck. Abdul-Alim’s head fell with a meaty thwack onto the flagstones.

There were screams and wails. Bahir thrust the bloodcoated blade into the air. “ PRINCE SIRAJ! LEADER OF THE ARAB PEOPLE! SIRAJ! ”

For a moment there was confused silence, then a few tentative voices began. Siraj. Siraj. Siraj . More and more people took up the name. Soon it was being shouted, and people went sprinting away down the narrow streets to spread the word. People still loyal to Abdul the Idiot drew knives and flung stones.

Bahir swung his cloak and teleported away as the riot began in earnest.

He reappeared on the grounds of the Mena House Hotel. The long shadow of the Great Pyramid fell across the date palms and jasmine-scented gardens. Bahir looked up at the rough sandstone blocks marching toward the pinnacle. The westering sun sent the shadows of the palm trees across the manicured golf course and up the walls of the hotel. The way the shadows fell created the impression of lines on paper waiting for a mighty pen to write a message.

And the message is—Britain is back , Bahir thought.

He closed his eyes and prepared himself. If teleporting left him feeling as if every nerve, bone, and sinew in his body had been plucked like a violin string, the transformation was even more disturbing. It burned along his nerve endings as he watched the skin on his hands lose the golden tan and the blond hair on the joints of his fingers turn brunette. His hair now brushed at his collar, and his face felt vulnerable as the beard vanished. He felt his body lengthening, as if invisible hands pulled at his flesh like the hands of a potter coiling soft clay. It pulled at his wounds and hurt like the very devil. Finally it ended.