Pashazade a-1

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Raf smiled. 'Ashraf al-Mansur,' he agreed. 'Hamzah Effendi sent you?'

  'Yes, Your Excellency ...' Shrewd eyes glanced over Raf's shoulder at the madersa's narrow entrance with its porter's bench and traditional blind ending. Getting building supplies in that way would be next to impossible. As for removing the walls of an upstairs office once it had been taken down ...

  'Does Your Excellency ...'

  'On Rue Sherif,' said Raf. 'Bricked up.'

  Five minutes later, the foreman came back with two workmen who looked even younger. Each carried nothing more sophisticated than a crowbar.

  Next to arrive were the police. Two officers came at dawn. Stepping over rubble to pass through the freshly opened front door. No one had reported noise or called in with suspicions about a truck parked on Rue Sherif. And they didn't come to check that builders were meant to be ripping out a wall to make space to remove bits of a crime scene. They came for Raf. And it was a measure of Felix's fury that he didn't come himself.

  Five minutes after the two officers appeared, Madame Mila arrived in a long blue Mercedes, with tinted windows. The kind of car that screamed important government official. Raf could put the sequence together in his head. Hamzah had turned up at the precinct with his lawyer, quoting Raf as his reason for being there. Hamzah had left the precinct. In a fury, Felix had woken the Minister to get permission to bring in Raf.

  The only thing Raf didn't understand was why the Minister had immediately called Madame Mila or what Madame Mila could want from him. It turned out to be his signature.

  'Sign here.' The woman thrust out a notepad and a stylus.

  Raf glanced at the screen and shook his head. 'Not without knowing what it says ...'

  'You can't read?' The woman's voice was incredulous.

  'Not Arabic,' said Raf, 'though I can speak it ... How well do you speak English?'

  The woman said nothing.

  'Well, then...' He reached for the pad and passed it to Hani. 'You tell me,' he said. 'What does it say?'

  The girl skimmed the swirls of Arabic, then read them again slowly, her lips twisting as she mouthed the words to herself. 'I don't want this,' she said to Raf, her eyes suddenly enormous with fear.

  'Why not?' he demanded. 'What does it say?'

  It was Madame Mila who answered. 'An order is being issued for Hani to be made a ward of my office and given into protective custody.'

  'An orphanage?'

  The coroner-magistrate looked at him as if he was mad. 'Lady Jalila has offered to stand guardian to this child.' She glanced at Hani. 'You are a very lucky young lady.'

  'If that's a court order,' Raf said slowly, 'why do you need my signature?'

  'A formality,' said the woman.

  'And without my signature ... ?'

  'The girl will still be taken.'

  'Just not yet,' said Raf, nodding to himself. He handed her back the pad. 'I'm afraid I can't sign this ... The child will stay here with her nanny.' He pointed to where Donna hovered in a courtyard doorway, scowling at the noise. The old woman was cook, housekeeper and mopper-up after Ali-Din. Being the child's official nanny should add no extra burden.

  'So,' said Raf. 'Am I under arrest?' He fired off his question at the elder of the two police officers. 'Well?'

  'Of course not, Your Excellency, but we have been told to bring you in for questioning.'

  'In that case,' Raf said. 'I'll be with you as soon as we've all had breakfast.' He paused, to look at their doubtful faces. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'You can get on the blower and tell Felix I'm not going anywhere.'

  The meal Donna provided was simple, 'aish shamsi bread warmed on an oil-fired range in the kitchen, which was where they ate. It was served with a thin dribble of sweet butter and a large mug of chocolate dusted with cinnamon. Donna also made chocolate and warm bread for the builders, then carried another tray out to the waiting police car.

  'Woman's gone,' Hani told Raf, translating from Donna's Portuguese without missing a bite. The child looked less frightened now that daylight had arrived and she had a plate of warm food in front of her, but she was still obviously worried. 'Do you really have to go?'

  Raf nodded.

  'But you'll come back?'

  'Of course,' Raf said firmly. 'They probably just want to talk about the stuff I did in America.'

  'When you were an assassin ... ?'

  'I wasn't an assassin.'

  Hani actually smiled. A faint flicker as if she was the only one to get the punchline to a particularly obscure joke. 'Of course not,' she said. Grabbing a whole slab of 'aish shamsi, Hani started peeling off strips. 'I'm off to feed Ali-Din,' she announced and slipped from the table. Seconds later, Raf heard Hani's feet clattering on the stairs up to the qaa. It was the first time she'd stepped inside the house since her aunt was murdered.

  Raf was distraught, apparently... Having missed out on Tuesday's murder and Wednesday's autopsy plus funeral, Thursday's tabloids had decided to make up for missing time by running the killing, autopsy and funeral as one breathless story, with endless sidebars of comment and very few facts. Actually, it was mostly comment or conjecture, with little blind URLs at the end of each paragraph to remind readers that they could always download more of the same.

  He was also desolate, missing and strangely unmoved, Raf discovered. A little-known figure in Iskandryian society, rumour now had him as one of the most-influential fixers in North Africa. His work in America was so secret that every justified request to the Minister of Police for official information had been met with an impenetrable wall of silence.

  There was a long-lens grab of him sitting on the gravel next to Hani outside the al-Mansur mausoleum and a standing shot taken at such an extreme angle it had to have been lifted from a spysat.

  'Lies,' snarled Felix, sweeping the papers from a table. 'Like most of the crap you've told me.' Felix jerked his head at the officer standing beside Raf and the man stepped backwards, looking doubtful. So Felix jerked his head again and the officer scuttled from the room.

  That left Felix and Raf together in a cell no more than ten paces by ten paces. All the light was artificial, glaring down from a single strip crudely screwed to a filthy ceiling. Blood — or what looked like blood — was splattered up one wall and around the chair in which Raf sat. A relic of earlier encounters.

  The fat man's bunched fists were shaking with anger.

  Raf stood up and stepped away from the table.

  'Oh, don't worry,' Felix said bitterly, 'No one would dare get heavy on your ass. We're not that stupid.' He slammed a file on the table and nodded to Raf to open it. Inside was a single sheet of A4 paper. At the top was a pixelated mugshot of Raf, still wearing dreadlocks and beard.

  'We received this while you were on your way in,' said Felix. 'Only it was crypted so we couldn't immediately get it open. But that was okay, because five minutes after you arrived we got sent a neat little 4096-bit key. Nothing too complicated, right? Because we're police and we're stupid ..."

  The fat man pulled a packet of Cleopatra from his pocket and tapped loose a cigarette. Ignoring the 'No Smoking' sign glued to the door, Felix lit up with an old 7th Cavalry Zippo and dragged carcinogenics deep into his lungs. 'You know, it's hard to believe anyone of twenty-five could have built up this kind of record.'

  Raf ran his eyes down the sheet with rising disbelief. It was hard to imagine how anyone could have that record, full stop ... Personal envoy from the Sultan in Istanbul. Weapons training at Sandhurst. A spell in Paris, counter-intelligence at Les Halles. A level of security clearance so high its name was blanked out because no one at the precinct had authority to know it existed. Throw in genius-level IQ, eidetic memory, weapons-grade negative capability and it read like a biofìle straight out of ...

  'Yeah,' said Raf, 'I find it hard to believe myself.' Every year of his life was covered, from leaving school to arriving in Iskandryia: he just didn't recognize any of it.

  'Mind telling me why you warned Ham
zah?' Felix ground his cigarette butt out on the table top and promptly lit another one, inhaling hard. His jacket stank of cigarettes, whisky and disappointment. 'Unless, of course, it's a secret.'

  'No secret,' said Raf. 'He just didn't do it.'

  'And you know who did?'

  'No.' Raf shook his head. But he did know it wasn't Hamzah.

  'Let me see,' said Felix. 'Your aunt arranges a marriage that comes apart before it happens. Hamzah threatens to kill her. She dies. We decide to bring him in for questioning. With me so far ... ?'

  Yeah, he was.

  'And then, very strangely, you tip him off and a few hours later his boys are demolishing large chunks of the al-Mansur madersa. Conveniently destroying a crime site in the process.'

  'It gets worse,' saidRaf. 'My aunt took Hamzah for $2,500,000 in commission on that deal. It's missing.'

  'Sweet fuck.' The fat man's cigarette went head first into the table, dying in a shower of sparks, and out came a hip flask. Felix examined the thing as if he'd never seen one before and thrust it angrily back in his pocket. 'You wanna coffee?'

  An old Otis hauled them up to ground level and they left together, walking under the oppressive grandeur of the precinct's entrance portal. On their way through, every officer at the front desk stared at Raf until he stared back and ten people looked away at once. 'Get used to it,' said Felix. 'Where do you want to go?'

  'Le Trianon.'

  'Should have guessed,' said Felix and clicked his fingers for a taxi. It was only 9.30 in the morning, but the fat man still recognized when he was right over the limit.

  Raf was shown to his table only seconds after two Americans were ejected to make space. The New Yorkers stood on the other side of the red silk rope, glaring and muttering until Felix went to talk to them. They left quickly after that.

  'What did you say?'

  'Me ... ?' Felix waited until the maître d' had finished arranging his plate so one octagonal edge exactly aligned with the table.

  'Which one would Sir like?' The man asked, nodding to a trolley filled with pastries.

  'All of them,' Felix said bluntly. 'But I'll take those three.' He pointed out three pieces of baklava dusted with crushed almonds. 'And bring me a proper-sized cup of coffee ...'

  'Well?' Raf asked.

  Felix looked down the street as if he might still see the departing New Yorkers through the press of bodies filling the sidewalk. 'Said you were the Khedive's personal hit man and they'd been hogging your table ... You're not, are you?' Before Raf could answer, Felix flipped up his hand. 'Don't feel you have to answer that, obviously.'

  Huntsville had been simple. Raf had understood the rules. Most of which he'd kept and a few of which he'd broken. He'd taken who he'd become on remand and kept the identity, because it worked. The freaky hair and biker beard had been good protective camouflage. But trying to understand his new life was like pushing water up a hill. Every time he got near the top the fox curled up inside his head warned him it was the wrong hill or the water was gone. Raf was tired, more scared than he dared admit and he was alone in a city that got more, not less weird the more he knew about it. And then there was Hani ...

  'Look,' said Raf, 'can I tell you something?'

  Felix bit off another chunk of baklava and Raf took this for assent.

  'That piece of paper,' said Raf, 'it's crap, all of it. I don't have weapons training. I'm not in the Sultan's employ. I've never even been to Stambul ...'

  'Yeah, right.' Felix asked, swallowing his mouthful. 'So what were you doing in America?'

  Raf didn't answer. He couldn't.

  Felix sighed, but whatever he wanted to say was cut dead by a sudden buzz from his watch. 'You'd better get home,' he told Raf as he tapped the off button. 'Madame Mila's turned up again.'

  'She called you?' It sounded unlikely even as Raf said it.

  'No, that was Hani.'

  'How did she know I was with you?' Raf asked.

  The fat man scooped up the last sticky crumbs of baklava and stuffed them into his open mouth. 'More to the point,' he said, 'how did the kid get my number?'

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Seattle

  'And where do you think you're going?'

  ZeeZee paused on the steps while a doorman raked him with the gaze that hotel staff everywhere reserve for tramps, hawkers and delivery boys who've come to the wrong entrance.

  'Got this.' ZeeZee lifted the cardboard crate a little higher and waited. What people expected to see was usually what they saw: it cut down on thinking time. ZeeZee had been about five when he'd worked that out. The doorman expected elegant diners and the occasional delivery boy too idiotic or ignorant to find his own way to the service entrance at the rear.

  Which was what ZeeZee gave him.

  'Where do you want it?' ZeeZee might sound stupid but he was being intelligent, more than intelligent ... Unintelligent people who disappointed Hu San usually ended up having accidents. While people intelligent enough to be disappointed in themselves mostly decided to suck on a gun barrel, to save Hu San the trouble.

  ZeeZee didn't intend to do either: but nor was he stupid enough to try to hightail it out of Seattle. His only route to safety was to face up to Hu San in such a way that he was both alive and forgiven when the confrontation ended. And since getting to Hu San before Wild Boy had been an impossibility, success depended on meeting the woman later, in a place Wild Boy didn't go.

  That Hu San knew nothing about the upcoming meeting was obvious. Her evenings at SHC were private, a shrine of calm in the busy wilderness of her day, and it had never occurred to her that anyone might dare interrupt.

  Getting unnoticed into SHC took a pair of overalls, a Mariners baseball cap worn back to front, bad attitude and a case of vintage Mumm. Not that ZeeZee could afford twelve bottles of champagne, but any price that saved his life was cheap.

  'Round the back, idiot.' The doorman glared at ZeeZee, then stepped quickly back as a thin woman in Arctic fox climbed the steps and nodded for the doorman to start the revolving door.

  'Good evening, Madame. I do hope you have a pleasant—' That was as far as the man got before ZeeZee pushed forward.

  'Just tell me who gets this, okay?'

  Both fox-fur and doorman turned in shock.

  'Look,' said ZeeZee. 'Somebody has to sign for this crap.' He shifted the clinking box higher still, until it half blocked his face. 'Come on ...'

  The woman stared at him. She had the taut manner of a judge or maybe an upstream divorce lawyer. Someone prosperous, someone who expected lesser species like delivery boys to show her respect. 'Who do you work for?'

  'Why?' ZeeZee borrowed the look he gave her straight from Wild Boy. A hard-eyed stare that ended in a deceptively gentle smile. 'What's it to you?'

  The doorman was giving ZeeZee directions and a name before the boy even had time to return his attention to the uniformed flunky. 'There,'said ZeeZee, 'that wasn't too hard ...'

  Darkness, silence and cats. His three favourite things. Or maybe the three things that made him feel safest. The stink he could have done without. Scrawny grey shadows fought over an empty foie-gras tin fallen from a sodden cardboard box, pencil-thin backs crooked in anger. Along one side of the courtyard was an open loading bay, along the opposite side were trashcans, all overflowing.

  Either the garbage union were on strike or SHC hadn 't heard of recycling. Whichever, the courtyard stank of rotting food and cat piss. Seattle's most exclusive dining club had two faces and this was the other one.

  'Elmore,' ZeeZee demanded of an elderly Hispanic sitting on the edge of the loadingbay, pulling heavily on a cigarette. Dead butts littered the ground below his dangling feet like empty cases from an over-active machine-gun.

  The man jerked his thumb behind him, towards darkness.

  ZeeZee adjusted his eyes. The darkness was large and empty, overlooked by internal windows and stained across its scuzzy floor with food spills and scabs of old chewing gum.

  C
hoosing a door at random, ZeeZee kicked it open and staggered down a passage past the open door to a kitchen, case clutched firmly in his hands. Heat blasted out at him, along with the stink of grilled fish. Somewhere inside the kitchen a radio was playing an ancient Daniel Lanois track, the soft rock drowned beneath a crash of plates and the clatter of table silver.

  A swing door at the end of the passage flipped ZeeZee from one world to another: the back-of-house peeling green paint changing to distressed wooden panelling, as the old linoleum underfoot became carpet, not deep pile but expensive and exactly matched to the pale colours that swirled down the room's long hand-made curtains. He was staring across a foyer and through a revolving door, straight at the back of the uniformed doorman.

  It was time to change identities.

  Dumping his overalls in a swing-top bin next to old-fashioned porcelain urinals, ZeeZee crammed his champagne crate in an under-sink cupboard beneath the powder room's row of stone basins. Of course, he had to flip the cupboard's brass lock with the blade of his pocket knife, but the damage was minimal and a twist of torn-off paper jammed the door shut again.

  The figure that straightened up in the mirror was smart. Unquestionably young but neatly dressed in white shirt and Hermes tie bought for the occasion. His blond hair was just slightly too long but combing was enough to turn the look from unacceptable to merely louche. A fat cigar was all it took to finish the part of rich boy about town ...

  'I'm sorry to trouble you, Madame.'

  Hu San looked up from her notebook to see an Armani-clad barman hovering nervously at her elbow.

  'One of our new members is most insistent about joining you.' The Turkish boy's nod was discreet, but there was no mistaking he meant the young man who stood at the bar, smoke spiralling up from a Romeo y Julieta held tightly between the fingers of one hand.

  Dark eyes locked onto ZeeZee's face. There was no shock or outrage, barely even surprise. It was, thought Raf, like looking into a deep well and not even knowing if there was water at the bottom. 'Send him over,' said Hu San. 'But tell him to lose that cigar first ...'